Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I think this qualifies as a pretty routine call with someone over 60 years old, but it's funny none the less...

I support printers, and my job is to trouble shoot issues with them and help install them...

Me: Thank-you for calling ********, can I get your phone # please??

EU: ***-***-****

Me: Thank-you, and which product are we calling about today, sir??

EU: ***** ********

Me: And what can I help you out with today??

EU: Well, my printer prints out pictures with streaks on it....

Me: Okay, which version of windows are you running sir??

EU: Windows 98SE...

Me: Okay, is your computer on right now??

EU: No.

Me: Okay, if we can turn it on, okay, we're going to...

EU: No, no, I'm on the phone...

Me: I'm sorry??!

EU: I got DSL, and they said that I'm online all the time, so in order to use the phone, I have to shut my computer off...

I explained how DSL only uses part of the phone line, and that the computer can be on whenever he uses the phone...

He was grateful, but it still didn't sound like he fully understood...

You hear the horror story. No electric, not plugged in, doesnt know how to turn it off, all of these things are real. But to me the scariest thing of all is the call I get everyday. I am tech support for a large ISP and help people install their dsl. At least once a day I talk to a "technician" this is someone who is getting paid to do this for the customer. I have talked to some of these people that didnt know how to get to the device manager in windows. I actually had to explain to a "technician" once how to right click on an icon. So I guess the moral of my story is this if you are paying someone to do this for you make sure they know what to do. Also if you are one of these "technicians" then dont call me and tell me that you are. I am going to think you are an idiot. I may even treat you like an idiot. And if I dont treat you like an idiot it is only because I like my job and would rather not lose. So keep that in mind the next time you call tech support and say that you are a "technician" or that you know EVERYTHING about computers because we know different. If you were an expert then you wouldnt call us. Just call and tell the truth. I am stumped, I am not sure, or even I know a good bit about computers and I am a technician but this is not my area of speciality and I am just not sure what needs to be done. All of these things will cause us to say ok and give you quality support.

Routers, god bless em. I work for a major ISP doing dsl tech support. Our scope of support does not allow us to troubleshoot a cust if they have a router in the equation. They must create a direct connection from the phonejack to the dsl modem to the computer. Simple enough, right? Not this day!!!! I get a call from a cust stating that they are getting error 678 on winxp. Now, I love USING win xp,but I absolutely hate working on it. The problem with error 678, is that it is not a specific error code. It encompases a large territory.

Well, this call started off normal enough"Hi, thank you for choosing sbc...blah blah blah." one of the first things I always ask, is does the cust have a router, or hub for networking purposes. Simple enough question. Again, NOT THIS DAY. I ask the cust, and of course, the response is"No". So I start to troubleshoot the issue. After nearly wearing out my mute button to vent frustrations away from the cust and preserve my job...I get the truth, but accidentally. Yes, I said accidentally. The cust is by this time(nearly 2hours) rather frustrated, and blurts out"Well my other 3 computers work just fine, why cant this one work?" I quickly started devising a way to reach through the phone at that time...I again asked the cust if he had a router installed for networking purposes."No, just that little black box with the ports for my other comps." After putting him on hold and banging my head repeatedly on the desk top, I explained that that was indeed, a router. I hear the cust's wife in the back ground"Router? What router? we dont have a router...Well, I informed the cust that he would need to disconnect, so we could troubleshoot the router, and by the grace of the computer gods, he thought I meant disconnect the call. So, yep, you guessed it, he hung up. Im sure the next tech unfortuanate enough to get him got a cussing because the last tech told him to hang up so they could troubleshoot the issue. I guess he thought I was supposed to use my mental telepathy to fix his comp....SH

EESH!

It's only February, but I think I've got a winner.

A guy having trouble installing MYOB calls up. It sounds like a full hard drive. So I thought I'll get him to check it before someone goes out.

ME: "Could you double-click My Computer"

Luser: "HOW THE FSCK CAN I CLICK YOUR COMPUTER. THE PROBLEM'S WITH THIS ONE."

He hangs up.

I'm glad we didn't get that job.

While I was in tech support for a "cow" oriented company, I knew techs (that still work there) that would completely format and reload a pc because windows defrag program wouldn't keep running with other programs running. Another time I recieved a call that "the computer still has the same problem as before." The previous (trained)tech UPSed a 19" Monitor across country to fix the problem: The client couldn't close the open windows because the resolution changed. I had her go to the taskbar, right click the mouse and then cascade the windows. This solved her problem and I paid for her to send the monitor back.

It is documented that a tech recieved a call where the monitor was "smoking and popping" (it was on fire), so the tech sent the client video drivers on a floppy disk.

Then there was the time someone was dumped on me. That means that the other tech was in the middle of fixing the client's problem. The client had trouble with her CD-ROM and had the computer apart in order to do more troubleshooting. I asked what the original problem was "I can't hear anything". I had her put the computer together and then go and turn the MUTE button off.

I was more than a little aprehensive when my "new" manager failed to see the significance that the cow company had given her a computer with a 5 inch floppy drive....

I am the Network Administrator/IT Support person for a medium size company. I have one user who documents every details of every error message she receives on scraps of paper and leaves them on my desk. She is the only user who has ever done this, she never takes note of what she was doing at the time, only the HEX values etc in the error message...

One day I got back to my office after a trip to the server room to find a perfectly drawn diagram of the BIOS screen of one of our clone PCs. Ronda had switched on her PC and it had booted into the BIOS configuration....

I worked for Gateway for many years and overall I must say I enjoyed the experience. I have two stories that come to mind at the moment.

1) I was second line support for NT 4.0 when I took a particular call. You know it's going to be rough when the cust greets you with "I want a replacement computer sent out immediately." Turned out a small graphics company had purchased 3 identical systems from us, networked them, and connected 2 high dollar plotters from other printers (we only sold hp deskjet, etc..). Well, the two computers that had the printers physically connected could speak to both printers just fine, but the third would not load the drivers for either printer. The poor gentleman, who was nice enough to tell me it wasn't ME he was mad at, had been paying 2 consultants $90/hr each for 3 months and they had not resolved the issue. I forget the exact error but I recognised it as a problem with the o/s. We all know that images don't always come out perfectly. Upon telling him we needed to reload he was quite upset and it took me and my manager quite a while to convince him to give us an hour. Fifty-six minutes later it was talking to both printers and he sent a letter of commendation. I had wisely refrained from telling him that his two consultants had been ripping him off but in his letter he mentioned they were no longer contracted with his company.

2) One Saturday morning I take an overflow call from the general queue. The customer had just received a replacement monitor for their new system and it was not working either. Apparently, the system had no video right out of the box. Sadly, the monitor was the new (then) Crystal Scan EV700 which was displaying a message that it was not receiving a signal and to check the connection. After reseating the vidcard all worked well and the customer was very happy. I then located the tech who had failed to troubleshoot properly and lectured him on listening to what the customer is describing, and to troubleshoot instead of throwing par

ts at the problem to get them off the phone. You see, it's not ALWAYS the end user!

I'm not really a tech but I know enough about computers that when my dad isn't home (he knows a bit more then I do and has better people skills) I get the questions. Recently my mother was freaking out because she had seen this link:

http://omgwtf.superlime.com/computer_bomb.jpg

I had to calmly explain to her that a program can in no way alter the chemestry of a CPU and make it 'blow up'. People who write web sites like that should be shot becasue I am sure that there are people out there who (like my mom) don't realize that it is all a big lie.

Okay, so I get a call from a user saying their computer won't turn on. Since they're in the floor above me I figure I'll check it out personally. It turns out their monitor has died but the rest of the machine is fine.

Me: Hey it's just your monitor which is stuffed, I'll take it away and bring you a new one in a few minutes.

User: How long will it take to transfer all my data over?

Me: No, sorry, I said only your monitor is faulty, your computer is fine. I'm just going to replace your monitor.

User: But what about my files? How will I access them?

!!! I must admit I laughed my arse off about that one.

This happened to me several times regardless of what email package I was using. A user would call up and complain of not having received emails for several days, an example follows:

User: I'm not getting my emails as of 2 days ago.

Me: Are you sure? Maybe no one has sent you any emails?

User: No, I get several hundred emails every day!

Me: Have you changed any email settings recently?

User: No I've only used it like I always do.

Me: Okay, did you get any error messages logging in this morning?

User: No.

Me: How about when logging in to your email?

User: No.

Me: Okay, can you open your browser and bring up the Internet, just to verify your network connection is okay?

... it works fine...

Me: Okay, can you try replicating your email?

User: Okay it's done now.

Me: No new emails?

User: No.

Me: Did you get any error messages?

User: No.

Me: Did anything unusual happen at all?

User: No, it did what it always does.

Me: 'Hmmm... ' I'll check your account and user profile, just give me a minute.

...so everything is fine with that too...

Me: Can you try sending me an email to see if that works?

User: Okay...

Me: It worked, that's weird! If you go to [blah blah blah] are the options for receiving email ticked?

User: Yeah they are.

Me: Look I'm a bit stumped about this, I can't think of any reason it should be behaving this way.

User: Well I really need my email to work! It's important!

Me: I'll tell you what, I'll come over and see if I can figure something out...

Five minutes later, I take a look at their PC and discover that they have unknowingly changed their inbox to display oldest messages first, so that the new ones were all appearing at the bottom of the list, off the screen!!!

So we install Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1 on a customers computer because it's required for Microsoft Money to work. Money works fine now.

He calls back 2 days later. I can't get my printer to work. In Money I ask? No, when I try to install it, it says something about an INF file or something like that. Um...download the most recent driver, if that doesnt work, call the printer manufacturer.

Why do they call me?

I called a person back concerning a Network dialup issue. She told me she had gotten in but she had a problem getting into Web based mail via Netscape. Since we give users two browsers, I asked her to try Internet Explorer, which she said she could not find. I asked her to go through the Start menu. She immediately says: "I don't have a start menu and I believe the PC is locked up" So, I'm thinking, Ok than lets reboot. Power off your PC by pushing the power button. She than tells me that the screen is still there.

Me: Ok, go to the back of the PC and pull the power out. It's a black cord in the back of the PC, directly at the top."

Me: "Did you pull the power out?"

User: "Yes I did."

Me: "Ok, plug it back in."

User: "I plugged it back in but the screen is back with the same thing, Windows with no start menu."

Me: "Are you sure you pulled the POWER plug and not the Monitor cable?"

User: "Yes, I'm sure."

Me: "Ok, lets pull it out for 5 seconds."

User: "Ok, I've pulled it and put it back in and I still have the same screen."

Me:(After taking DEEP breathes away from the phone) "Okay, you know what, I'm going to send a field tech over to assist you with this. They will contact you later. Have a great day!"

I used to work for a laptop repair center and here is my story.

I received a call from a customer one day asking if his hard drive could be upgraded to a higher gig drive (his old one was clunking and making noise). I asked him what laptop he had. He told me the model and I suggested which hard drive he could purchase without having any problems. He then asked if he could install it himself, and of course I told him yes. He then asked me how to get to the hard drive. As I was explaining to him how to get there, I knew he was lost. I asked him if he could bring in his laptop and that I would be more than happy to install it for him. Later that afternoon he comes to the shop, and I noticed that the hard drive cover was already off. I told him that he was on the right track in removing the old one. Upon removing the old hard drive I noticed that part of the lable was missing (you know the one that says void if removed). I mentiond that to him and he tells me that since his old hard drive was clunking he decided to take it apart and oil it. I politely told him (even though I almost burst out laughing in his face) that he killed his hard drive. The killer to all of this is that his old hdd still worked. Maybe he should be the one in the funny white suit like they show on TV when these things are being made.

I work for the helpdesk of a fairly large company and I've been here around 6 months or so. Sometimes we get really really bad calls but this one seemed to take the cake for me.

Me=well duh me :)

EU=complete and utter idiot that I hope won't breed

ME:Hello thank you for calling blah blah may I have your serial number?

EU:Where's that at?

ME:On the bottom of your drive.

EU:What's a drive?

ME:(silent groan, knowing this is going to be a long call) It's the product you bought from us ma'am.

EU:Oh. *rattles off serial number*

ME:And what seems to be the problem.

EU:Well I can't figure out how to burn a cd.

ME:blah blah blah is it connected and whatnot.

EU:Yes

ME:Okay then go to your desktop and open up

EU:Do I have to close windows to get to my desktop?

ME:You mean you have programs running right now, right....?

EU:No just Windows.

ME: Do you see a whole bunch of icons on your screen?

EU:Yes

ME:You see one that says ?

EU:yes

ME:Okay that's what you want to open up.

EU:okay....how do I do that?

ME: Double click ma'am

EU:Left or right?

ME: Left ma'am

EU:It came up!

ME:Okay what kind of cd do you want to make?

EU:A music cd

ME:Okay click the music cd button and then find your files on your hard drive to add them to your layout.

EU:Confused pause

EU:I have to have music on my computer to make a music cd?

ME: Errrr yes...or an audio cd that you own that you would like to make a copy of

EU:So...how do you get music on your computer?

ME:I think you might just want to search for it on the internet?

EU:Okay so do you know any good sites for that?

ME: I really wouldn't be able to advise you on that ma'am, you might want to contact your computer manufacturer

EU:Oh okay thanks.

ME:Thanks for calling blah

I thought (l)users like this only existing in my nightmares, arghhhhh!

I used to do tech support for a cable modem ISP and there were a few sites that we had nothing but trouble with. One was in florida and there was no end of trouble with them as the cable lines were underground, and under the water table. But the kicker came one day after a hurricane hit the area.

(M= me C= caller)

M: Thank you for calling (ISP) technical support This is Michael how can I help you

C: I can't believe you service is out again I have been having horrible service with you for months and now your service is out again. (I was a little lost as the caller ID simply said unknown)

(as I tried to get more info from the customer I kept hearing a loud whistling sound like you hear when driving down the freeway with you window open. After a little it got lounder and I was having problems hearing the guy)

M: Could you close the windows near you please I am having trouble hearing you.

C: Sorry the cable and phone boxes were torn off the side of my house during the hurricane and there's a hole in the wall. I'm calling on my cell phone.

(fortunatly for him his power was attached entirely underground so there wasn't any trouble with that.)

(the end was the kicker though)

M: Why are you worried about your internet connection when you've just been through a hurricane?

C: Well I was going to look on the internet to find a contractor for the repairs.

I work for a small cable company, supporting our internet services. We provide NICs when necessary, and I just had the following conversation:

Me: Did our technician install your NIC for you?

Cust.: Yes.

Me: Ok, let's check device manager...hmm, your NIC isn't detected there.

Cust.: Well, I installed this NIC before your tech came to hook me up, and I haven't taken it out.

I banged my head on my desk as I politely referred him to his NIC manufacturer for support.

Here's a few that I had to share:

We've all probably seen/heard the trend towards PC modding. Well, my friend decided to jump into the trend himself this weekend, by cutting a window hole in the top of his brand-new aluminum case WITH ALL THE HARDWARE STILL INSIDE THE CASE!!! (Think AthlonXP 2600+ 333FSB and plenty of other performance goodies)

Maybe he'll get lucky and nothing will short...

And I'll win the lottery, too.

Also, he trashed a computer a few years ago by vaccuuming it with a standard belt-driven vaccuum. Zap...

Also, another friend of mine from college killed her brand-spankin' new (at the time) computer (Scream machine that 'Daddy' bought her, waaayy too powerful for just surfin' the web, etc.). She complained about the noise coming from the comp (Think Delta 60mm fan, a couple 80mm fans), and I explained to her that it was the fans that made that noise. I should have explained that they keep the processor cool and the processor *MUST* be kept cool.

She cracked the case open and unplugged all the fans(amazing that she figured that part out), and unfortunately, this computer did not have the automatic shutdown on overheat feature, so she fragged her processor good.

I'm a heavy user of PCs in my spare time, mainly playing games within a clan. Often if people are struggling with software setups members of my clan will ask or be refered to me not because I am a pro but because usually I have had that same problem once before and can remember how to deal with it or at least make an educated guess.

One time a clan buddy couldn't get a piece of software working because he was missing a vital Library file. It was a common and well known problem and was easily remedied by putting the DLL in the correct folder.

I sent it to him and he became confused because it wouldn't work.

'It says I need something to open it with.' says he.

me::'No you dont need to open it, just put it in your System32 folder in WINDOWS'

He::'What if I unzipped it?'

me::'You can't unzip it, it isn't a zip file. Just cut and paste to your system32 directory in WINDOWS'

He::'Where is it?'

me::'what?'

He::'I can't find the file'

me::'It will be in "My Recieved Files" in "My Documents"'

There then followed a half hour discussion on how to find whereabouts the file I had sent via MSN had been saved to. He couldn't follow my instructions on how to find the default path using the actual MSN program.

me::'OK scrub that. Go to your start bar abd click SEARCH'

He::'K'

me::'done?'

5 minute pause

He::'It isn't called SEARCH its FIND is that ok?'

me::'yes it is. Now type in the name of that file and hit search'

He::'Can't you just send it to me again?'

me::'You already have it. I sent it to you, we just need to find where it is.'

About 5 minutes or so later he announces he has found it.

me::'Great now just copy it, go to your System32 folder which is in the WINDOWS folder and paste it in there.'

He::'Its warning me not to mess with anything here'

me::'Just trust me and go in there and paste the file'

He::'how do I paste it?'

me::'same way you copied it, right click anywhere in the system

32 window and click paste'

He::'So how do I copy it?'

.....

Anyhow about 15 minutes after that he finished the conversation with 'hey thank you very much it works now'

A shockingly satisfying result! Only took just over 2 hours to sort out and having succesfully achieved what had seemed impossible at various points in that extended period of time, he was now in a position to make his name come up with fancy letters when he was playing a game!

I really wonder how the professionals manage when they have time constraints and serious problems to deal with.

A real email I got. Nice typo ;)

Description of Issue: Hello. i have a modem but i recently deleted some material needed to run the modem. I need to reinstall the software but i do not have the dick any more. It asks me to put in a disk called "Windows CD-Rom" but i do not have that disk. I also do not know what the modem number is or any thing like that. I believe my modem came w/ my computer so i really dont know much about it. So i was wondering if you could assit me in trying to fix this problem.

I hate how whenever you take a breath the customer either takes that opportunity to flood you with irrelevant information; says "Hello?! Are you there?!"; or (my favorite) "Maybe you could ask someone else?"

We had an email the other day from a rather confused member of staff.

It simply said: "I am unable to print to a network photocopier"

A What?!?

How does that work? Do you hold your document up to your PC screen, press enter and hope a copy comes out the other end?

HOW TO PLEASE YOUR I.T. DEPARTMENT

[A quick check list for those who need to make contact.]

1. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

3. When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.

4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.

5. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.

6. When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

7. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

8. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.

9. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

10. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We're collectors.

11. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

12. When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

13. When an I.T. person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shor

tly?" That motivates us.

14. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

15. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

I work as the tech support manager for a fairly large and prestigious law firm.

One day, I got a call from one of the senior partners, saying there was a strange noise coming from his computer, and he couldn't read his e-mails. I dutifully went to have a look.

He demonstrated the constant high-pitched beeping, and showed me that when he double-clicked on an e-mail to read it, the e-mail opened and immediately closed.

After half a second of detailed, high tech troubleshooting, I nodded my head thoughfully, and turned the handle of his coffee mug around, where it had been holding down the Escape key on his keyboard.

:-)

In 1970, I learned Cobol and Fortran in college, am now sys admin for Unix/linux/winnt sytems.

Recently purchased a new Dell and wished to upgrade the mem from Kinston as is cheaper than factory. In Singapore went to a shop that had a salesman who had an odd way off scuffing his feet as he walked on the carpet. Asked for the mem and he comes back 20min later, mem chip in his hand, out of the box, fingers touching the contacts, and proceeds to cross the room towards me while scuffing his feet on the carpet. "No I don't want to buy that memory chip, thanks anyway" I say. "Why not?" he says. "Do you know that static can kill a chip?" I ask. "There's no static on this chip he says....it plugs in and is powered up all the time!".

I bought some Kingston mem at another store. Sigh.....

After reading 'A Mouse Tale' in the January 2003 edition, I was reminded of a trick played in my office last year.

Because I look after the databases for the company, I get in well before the development team. One morning I was feeling exceptionally vile to them and as two of the developers have their desks back to back, I swapped their mose cables over between their computers.

It was fun watching them try to figure out why when they moved their mouse (they got in and pretty much powered up at the same time), the mouse went a different way to their movements. IUt didn't take long to rumble what had happened and who was responsible, however.

But, the sods got their own back. I was expecting a revenge attack the following morning, but I have to bow to their cunning.

I got in and turned the computer on, and guess what, the mouse didn't move! "Bah!" thinks I and goes round the back of the tower to plug the mouse back in, but it already was!!! "Hmm!" thinks I and went to get my Boss's mouse to test, but it was missing (sound of a penny completely refusing to drop here).

After about 10 minutes of checking cables and settings, I was beginning to think that there really was something wrong. Then it clicked! My desk is one of those where the cables disappear through a hole in the top to keep them hidden. Sure enough, when I pulled my mouse cable, the plug emerged from the desk. Opening the bottom drawer revealed my Boss's mouse tucked away with it's cable snaking out the back and into the case.

I'm gonna get flamed for this I know, but I never put them down as being that crafty. Oh Well! April 1st is gonna be fun .. now where's my revenge book ...

Way back when I stared to do Telephone Tech Support I worked for Packard Bell (now out of business in the US) I recieved a call from a customer with modem problems..

I went to the modem properties and asked what it showed for installed modems (this was windows 95 days)and he said there were several.. I asked him how many.. after several minutes he answerd that there were 47 modems listed. I instructed him on how to remove them.. after 5 or so minutes. he told me ok.. I then proceded to isntall the proper modem drivers and wouldn't you know it.. the modem worked properly..

I have many tales..as I have been doing telephone tech work for 8 years.. don't ask why I don't know

Whenever I feel like I'm the guru I'm reminded of the times I've goofed. My most embarrasing moment came over a printer (blasted things!) I had just started my career as an IT Professional and I was called on to fix an HP 4L that wouldn't print. Those of you who have seen these know that they really have no business in the office, but it was already there when I started so I had to at least try to make it work. The only clue it gave me was an error light -- and it didn't print. Re-installing it did no good. Turning it off and on and rebooting the computer didn't help. So I called in our outsource ( still the place I go with printer problems) and they sent a technician out. It took him 2 seconds to figure out what the problem was -- no toner cartridge. I felt pretty silly.

M(Me)

L(user)

M: Hello, how may I help you?

L: I need help! My windows directory will be deleted!

M: Who sir?

L: Well, I was doing something in windows explorer, and I pressed the delete icon while my windows directory was selected!

M: What happend next, sir?

L: Well, nothing! I pressed the mouse button on the delete icon, and now i must not let go or my windows directory will be deleted, and I can not reach the power off button to turn the bloody thing off!

M: (I changed 3-4 colors, then just hang up)

I work at a webhosting company. I swear, AOL shunts all of it's offal to us. For example, We received an interesting email into our support center. This is the entirety of it:

Subject: Resend Login Instructions

Body:

i was at the restaurant ball saturday nite, and it says to click on "recent events"...there is no such heading to click on...what next?

Does anyone remember the days of coax and twinax controllers for mainframe and as400 networks? It wasn't so long ago. Shortly after beginning my career as an IT Professional the service department at my company decided to remodel their office space. To achieve the plan they wanted, they had to take down a wall. The construction crew, part of the service department staff, took a power saw to the wall and just cut right through it. Naturally they cut right through the cables in the wall as well. Through several remodels I've discovered that construction people are salt of the earth but very clumsy around technology.

Does anyone remember twinax? I'd never seen it before so it took me a little while to find someone who knew how to fix it. Meanwhile the parts people couldn't work on their terminals -- their whole chain was down. And who do you think was harrassed when it took a day to get them back up??

I'm a sysamdin and at my company branch this translates to computer system and phone system purchasing, warranty rep, hardware and software support, network administration and support, PBX admin, and voice-mail admin.

A couple of years ago I got a new PBX and voice-mail system installed at my branch. Much time and effort went into this process and the results were good for all my users but one. The receptionist from hell. One of the "features" of any new system is the things you don't know about yet. It's a learning process. Some people are not patient with this process. Our receptionist was not patient with anything.

For the first few months (until her insanity in this an other areas got her fired) she was constantly harrassing me about one problem or another. Usually this problem would turn out to be luser error or a misunderstanding of how things should work. For instance, she was immediately irrate because she thought the new system design, complete with DID (Direct) numbers for all users would immediately reduce her call volume. She had to be reminded that it would take some time for the callers to be told what those direct numbers were.

My most frustrating problem with her came over an error message, ACA Short or ACA Long. At first these error messages were confusing to both of us because they came into the console looking like phone calls but when you answer them there is no one there. Sometimes they would come in in bunches and she'd have to clear each one. I had our carrier check the lines and did some research to discover what this might be. It turns out ACA stands for Automatic Circuit Assurance and are associated with unusually long or short calls.

When I explained this to the receptionist, she wouldn't accept my explanation and insisted that I "fix" the problem. She sent me harrassing e-mails, copying my boss (which eventually contributed to her downfall) and brought it up at every opportunity. She even went so far as to call the carrier wh

en I was out of town at another site and release the T1 for testing during business hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After that particular incident, our boss (GM of the branch) had me draw up a set of instructions for what to do when I'm out of town and we went over it with her together -- he was hoping it would help but no luck.

She continued to harrass me, as well as other employees and was eventually fired for creating a hostile work environment.

Hello, I'm a TSA for a major DSL company out of the U.S. . If anyone that has DSL knows about the filters that you need to place on all of the phone lines (RJ11 cables). Well, one day the person sitting next to me received this phone call, it was some old man on the phone and boy, was he ever mad. He was carrying on about how he is going to sue the company for what has happened. After about 10 minutes of this guy yelling (while on speaker phone) we finally find out what had happened. Apparently, the last time that he and his wife called in for help, a tech agent told his wife to place a filter on the phone line. Well, it seems she wasn't sure of what phone line to place it on. She was outside at the top of the telephone pole try to place the filter on the line but could not find where to put it, then she got stuck up there. The firetruck was called to get here down, you could here the siren in the background. After that the call was transfered to management as you probably figured it would be. We never heard what the outcome was, hopefully she got down alright. I still can't figure out why the man sent his wife up the pole. ???

I just got this little gem:

Me: Ok, go ahead and shut down the computer please.

Customer: The whole computer?

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

I was helping out on a computer party, since I'm in the crew there everyone comes and asks me about all kinds of weird hardware and software problems. The two worst ones I can remember are theese:

1. A guy came up to the crew area complaining they didn't have network on his table, and wondered what was wrong. I walked down to check, and saw that some smart person had replaced the poweradapter for the switch (clearly labeled with what it was) with his cellphone charger... and then they come complaining for no network...

2. Another guy needed help with re-partitioning his harddrive. This is a simple task since he allready had partition magic installed. I set it up for him and told him not to reboot his computer while it was working on this.

two hours later he came up to me saying he needed help. it seems he had stuck his finger in the CPU fan and broken off one of the blades, and wondered if that was a bad thing.

The sad thing is that not all the data were lost when I turned off his computer to prevent the fan to shake his motherboard to pieces.... that would teach him what to do and what not to do.

It Was an average sunday afternoon usuall network issues consuming the call however the call I was about to recieve would send me into laughter...

Before I could even finish my Greating This customer started going off "yha I got my tractor stuck I just can't get it going..bought one of those new massey fergison tractors from Dan down the road and Can't get any webpages,"

(Pause While I try to compose my self) "What is your phone number sir" He gave it to me "What is your userid Sir" "USERID? What's that where would I find that under the hub cap" "NO Sir You wouldn't find that their"

"Whell it's not behind the seat just found a pile of Cow $%^& their"

"It is Something you would have been given when you signed up for the internet." "My wife did all of that she's not here right now"

"Sir I'm going to have to transfer you to customer service to get the corect userid and password." "Okay No problem." "Sir is this Dial Up or High Speed for your tractor." "Dial up." "Just on minuit sir and I'll get someone from Customer service for You."

I was going to talk to the person form Customer Service I couldn't do that to anyone so i was going to tell the Agent of the situation but while on hold he hung up. I don't know if this was a joke or not and I'll never know one other tech in my center had the same guy too.

Back in January 2001, I bought a new PC running Windows 98 Second Edition. During the last two and a bit years, it has performed sterling service for me, doing all sorts of things. However, over time Windows setup deteriorated, and both performance and reliability reduced as bad Windows updates broke the shutdown on powerdown feature, and uninstalling MSDE had the unfortunate effect of breaking

Windows to such an extent that it would bluescreen about twice a week.

"Time to reinstall" I thought, and decided rather than 98, I would put Windows 2000 on it, as M$ have announced the retirement of 98 support, and anyway as an IT pro it was about time I got to use it in earnest, rather than via using somebody elses machine. I have access to machines running WinXP so didn't want to put the latest and greatest on it.

Because of the setup problems I decided to wipe everything and do a fresh installation rather than upgrade, which I did, put the CD in and booted the system. Setup started, looked around the system and "Setup cannot continue. There is no hard drive in the system" appeared. My jaw dropped. I could see the hard drive through Fdisk, Partition Magic and a Win98SE bootdisk.

I tried the old Win9x trick of creating a small partition, copying the files onto the hard drive and running WINNT.EXE from there. It started OK, but crashed when it went into the graphical part of setup.

I tried the same trick with Windows 98, but the same problem. It just wouldn't allow me to reinstall Windows. By now it was 11pm, I was tired and went to bed.

I had problems sleeping, and woke up 8am the following day. Tried CD-ROM boot setup again to no avail, so I decided to open the case just to see if the hard drive data or power lead was loose.

Neither were, and I didn't expect them to be as I could access it through the other systems but it did set a light bulb shining in my head:

My hard drive runs from a UDMA100 controller, whereas the CD-RW and DVD-ROM run from the ordinary onboard control

ler. I used my dad's PC to download the Win2000 drivers for the Promise UDMA100 controller and manual, extracted them to a floppy disk and booted from the CD. I hit F6 to specify a custom disk controller and put the floppy disk in my A: drive, chose the model and hit ENTER.

Setup ran properly from then on with no problems. I now have a fully working Windows 2000 system.

Moral of the story: Sometimes SETUP can be to clever for its own good, not returning back to a basic PIO mode setup via BIOS driven setup software. Even specifying the controller left the system running in PIO mode, so I switched the channel to use Ultra DMA. I haven't seen any noticeable performance difference though since doing it. Perhaps it is because the swapfile hardly gets used and I get 200Mb free memory reports from the performance monitor.

It runs like a rocket compared to before, partly because of 2000 which is more suited to the specification of the hardware but also probably due to the fact that it doesn't have remnants of uninstalled software present and piles of unwanted junk and crappy excess DLL's.

My second posting here, It's been a while as I was transferred to a different city.

Anyway, I took over my firm's IT support, and I've had quite a few encounters over the last little while, seems my predecessor was a bit non-user friendly, here's some of my favorites.

A user came sheepishly into my office one day to see if I could check out his dialup VPN. No problem, I fixed it up for him, seems his dialing profile was corrupted, and a fresh one was the cure. He says "Wow, but what about my DSL software?" To which I reply, "What about it?" (It's a PPPoE system so you have to have the third party interface to get it to work with the VPN) He says "Well, (previous tech) said they wouldn't fix anything on my computer untill I got rid of that. Thanks for fixing me up." Hmmmm...I wonder why we install VPN for then....

Another user comes up to me in the coffee room and asks if I can replace the enter key on his laptop. No problem, it's warranty, all I need is you to email me the serial number and I can order up the parts. he says "Oh, (previous tech) said I had to get it fixed at a local shop and bring in the reciept. I went all over town and nobody has the parts. I havn't had an enter key for about six months." (can you say void warranty?)

Finally, my favorite. A while back we upgraded the memory in a good chunk of our fleet to deal with a software upgrade. Memory upgrade was fairly simple, but two part. Install the new DIMM, and change the size of the paging file. My predecessor finished the project off in record time, however, many machines in the fleet still performed poorly. Seems this tech did not feel the need to change the paging file, so now I have to nail down all the machines and modify that. The users, however, are amazed at how fast the machines run after the paging file matches the memory.

Proof positive, it's not always the users who are at fault. In fact, this group keeps telling my regional manager how much easier I am to work with, and much more intuitive. *Sigh*,

it's good to be the king.

damn submit buttons... always thowing off my mojo. (accidentally submitted a zero-body message blah blah blah)

Anyway, on to the story:

I have been on both sides of tech support over the years. Usually supplying it, but sometimes calling in. This is an experiance I had with a Qwest tech, who didn't seem to have a solid understanding of her job description.

This was back in the days when most call centers were getting flooded with the Code Red calls, so I had been waiting for over an hour with a connection issue that was unrelated to Code Red...

M: ->Me

T: ->Tech

T: Qwest DSL Tech Sup..blah blah blah

M: Hello, we're having a pretty bad packet loss problem that appears to be occuring at the first DSLAM hop out.

T: What is your login ID and OS?

M: XXXXXXXXX and Redhat Linux

T: I'm sorry sir, we don't support Linux.

M: I know. The problem is not with the computer. The problem is between the DSL router and your DSLAM.

T: I am not supposed to provide support on Linux systems sir.

(bear in mind I have talked to qwest techs zillions of times and never run into this problem. They just walk me though like an NT4.0 box and I do the mental conversion on the fly. NEVER been a problem.)

M: That's okay. Just pretend I am using windows. the problem isn't with the computer anyway.

T: But you already told me you were using Linux. We don't support Linux.

M: (getting irritated) Well do you support the cisco routers that you supply your customers?

T: Yes.

M: And do you support the lines going INTO those routers?

T: Yes.

M: Then could you please help me diagnose the packet loss between our router and your DSLAM??

T: I'm sorry sir, I can't help you if you are running Linux.

(AARRGGHHHH!)

M: Could you perhaps transfer me to a tech who *understands* their job description? (I know... I know. That was bad)

T: Sir we all have the same rules and anyone you talk to is going to tell you the same thing.

EVEN thou

gh I already knew that that last statement was NOT true (I have spoken with MANY techs who didn't get tripped up over the Linux thing becuase the UNDERSTOOD that I was not asking for OS support), I decided to drop it. I already felt bad over the whole job description thing, so I get my case number and hang up.

A few hours later I call back, talk to a different tech, and after a few elavations, they finally get a field tech deployed to look at the DSLAM. Sure as hell, there were boards that needed replacing. The next day everything was running smoothly.

After some thought, I decided not to grill the techs supervisor over the issue, because I am sure she disliked me as much as I disliked her. I opted instead to send a very carefully worded message to the Techs supervisor suggesting that there were, perhaps, areas of their support boundaries that needed..umm.."clarification."

Todays Lesson: Don't assume that a user is extra clueless just because he is speaking like he knows something. Sometimes they do.

Todays Lesson #2: Quit being a jackass to the techs.

After reading quite a few of the tales and after dealing with my step-father-in-law, I'm suggesting that "common sense" be renamed "uncommon sense." For background I'm not currently doing paid support just the unpaid kind for family. Here's a quick rundown on what I've gone through so far with aforementioned SFIL:

He had (notice past tense) Norton installed, but never paid any attention to when his definition subscription was due to expire and somehow managed to ignore the countdown-to-dead warnings they send. So, after getting kicked off his ISP for sending 4782 copies of various virii to people, I checked. Norton was deader than a doornail and had been for well over a year. "But I have a Norton picture (icon) on my desktop. That means I'm protected, right?" What the f#($??!??

After doing a system scan from his brand-new copy of Norton (and finding over 125 files corrupted from various forms of Klez alone)which took almost 3 hours due to his having a massive porn collection on his computer, I had to head home so that my husband could get dinner at some point that evening. I left a large note covering his monitor telling him that his system was clean, Norton was NOT installed yet and to leave the computer alone until I could finish with it the next morning. I arrive early next am and computer is wigging again. Yes, he'd used it, gotten his email and promptly opened 8 or 12 more infected attachments and reinfected his computer. 3 hours of scan and remove again. XP and Norton do not want to get along so I fight with the damnable thing until I'm out of time again, leave another note threatening death and destruction if he uses his computer.

That evening I get a call from SFIL...oh-oh. He only calls with computer problems. Yes, he's been on the computer again. Yes, he's checked his email again. Yes, of course he opened and *RAN* the attachment from a person he doesn't know with a great subroutine for getting rid of KLEZ (I'm sure you've all seen that little beauty). To try and shorten this

up, it took a total of about 24 hours of my time to clean his computer and get Norton installed. Here's to Uncommon Sense and those who actually have it!

My newest Step-father-in-law story--

He calls....oh-oh. His computer *and* my mother-in-laws' computer are both wigging out. After much talking I find he's installed a piece of spyware software that shall remain nameless but has acquired a bad reputation for a) not working well with XP (which they both have), b) installing it's own (and friendly companies) spyware,c) offering a "free trial" that shows if you have spyware but demands $30 to actually remove it and d) having a user agreement where you agree that they (and their friendly companies) can load pretty much anything on your system without your knowledge or intervention!. After finding that it "broke" his computer, he promptly loaded in MIL's computer (which she needs for work) to see if it would happen again. Surprise, surprise! It broke her computer, too! I go over the next day, uninstall this piece of crap from both computers (including the little files it leaves behind after uninstall) and install a free, well-known spyware package on their systems. Clean them both of spyware and leave. I get a call that evening from SFIL somewhat unhappy with me for having uninstalled his program that he'd *paid* for!! Why did he pay for it when it crashed his 'puter? Because "if I didn't, I couldn't get the spyware off my computer!" Ummmmm....you can't get it off if the 'puter doesn't work, now can you? ARRRGGGHHHH!!!

Ah yes...The almighty example of people with more money than brains...I was a senior tech for a major comp. company when I was on the receiving end of this lovely jem:

M=Me

C=Customer

M:Hello Mr. Smith, my name is Larz a senior technician with BLAH BLAH BLAH, how may I help you?

C:You guys sold me this F&*#ing piece of S*1T and I want it fixed right F*&^ing NOW!!!!

M:OK, sir....What is the issue?

C:The damn letters are way to f'ing small, I can't read a damn thing!!!

M:OK sir, can you see the little arrow on the screen?

C:Ya

M:OK, I need you to right click on the desktop, and that will let us change the size of everything on the screen

C:I'm sick of this BS, that can't possible do anything!!!

M:Please sir, I will get this resolved for you. Please right click on the desktop.

C:Ok Hold on...

****30 sec. pause***

C:Ok...And like I said it didn't do a damn thing

M:Nothing at all????

C:Nope...And my pen just ran out of ink, so I can't try again!!

Where's my freakin' gun....

I've just been reading some more of the archive here and was reminded of a story from my former employment. I worked 13 years as an emergency dispatcher for a police agency. We took an awful lot of stupid calls, but this one fit here. Please keep in mind that this is a 9-1-1 telephone call and the caller kept pointing out that I shouldn't treat him as if he was stupid since he was a computer tech at M****S*ft:

Me: 9-1-1, what are you reporting?

CT: There's a huge accident! Get out here now!!!

Me: Where's the accident at?

CT: Here!!

Me: Sir, where are you calling from?

CT: My cell phone!

Me: What road are you on?

CT: The freeway. (Well, that certainly narrows it down).

Me: Which freeway?

CT: I'm in Seattle. (Yes, that certainly does narrow it down...hmmmm...I-5, I-90, SR520, SR99, SR104, etc.)

Me: Which freeway in Seattle?

CT: It's on the bridge. (Again, hmmmmm. The I-90 bridge, the SR520 bridge or the Shipcanal Bridge on I-5?)

Me: Which bridge, sir?

CT: Don't talk to me like I'm stupid! I've worked as a tech at M****S*ft for 6 years and I'm not stupid!!

Me: Sir, I'm not implying that you're stupid , but I have to know which freeway you're on. Are you on 520, I-90 or I-5?

CT: Don't talk down to me!!

Me: Sir, I'm not talking down to you; which of those freeways are you on?

To shorten this up, it went 5 more minutes (luckily other, *smarter* people had called in, the info had been dispatched and patrol cars were on the way before I even finished with dweeb boy here), with him insisting after every other question that he wasn't stupid and that he worked for M****S*FT. Methinks he doth protest too much. Aside from not knowing which road he was on (other than "it's the one I drive everyday") after working in the area for 6 years, the dumbest part of all was a) he wasn't on a freeway, he was on a city street and b) he wasn't on a bridge, he was on an overpass. I know (l)users can be a pain in

the butt, but try to remember the old Will Rogers adage: "Everybody's ignorant, only on different subjects.

Tech Support: (a lady with a strong southern US accent) Hello, thanks for calling _______. Can I help you?

Me (a Canadian with no discernable accent): Yeah, I returned a defective network card a few weeks ago. Can you check to see if the replacement s been shipped out?

TS: Your name please?

Me: My name is Kevin ______, but it s actually in the name of my boss, ________ Hiltz.

TS: Spell the last name please

Me: Hiltz. Ach-Eye-El-Tee-Zed.

TS: Huh?

Me: Ach-Eye-El-Tee-Zed.

TS: Why do you keep saying that at the end?

Me: Saying what at the end?

TS: Zit.

Me: What?

TS: (annoyed) Just spell the name again.

Me: Ach-Eye-El-Tee-Zed.

TS: Why are you saying Zit at the end? What kind of letter is that?

Me: (not clueing in) No, Zed . Ach-Eye-El-Tee-Zed.

TS: (very annoyed) I ve never heard of a letter called Zit . What language are you speaking.

Me: (suddenly realizing the problem, and laughing) No, Zed . The last letter of the alphabet. You pronounce it as Zee. It s pronounced Zed in Canada.

TS: That s not true.

Me: (still laughing) What do you mean it s not true? I m Canadian. I think I should know.

TS: I don t think this is very amusing. (click)

(Fortunately, I didn t get the same agent when I called back, though I had to explain why I started to laugh when I was asked to spell Hiltz again.)

This is not a story of tech support dealing with a stupid customer. This is a story of the customer knowing more than the tech support he (I) was calling.

I called Belkin tech support recently when a firewire card I was installing stopped registering after I installed the drivers. As soon as he picked up I immediatly stated what I assumed the problem was and what I had tried to fix it. This was so he would know I was fairly knowledgable and not one of those callers who can't seem to get thier computer to work after they put processed cheese slices in the disk drive.

I told him that I had discovered the card had been misinterpereted by the computer as a different component and all I really needed was how to change it back. He wanted to know how I came up with this. I told him that in the "System Properties" tool "Device Manager", I changed the radio button to "View Device by Connection" and ruled it out through there. Silence for several minutes. Then he comes back on and says "My computer can't do that."

The final kicker: he suggested I return it for a refund, then go with a different company.

Hi I'm a 3rd line tech and system admin

We had just set up an anti-spam system in adition to our normal email blocking system. This means we started blocking on keywords in stead of just on size attachment type etc.

After a while I found our 3 person helpdesk litteraly Roling On Flour Laughing this Email had just hit the Support mailbox.

"

Re: Junk mail deleted (keyword(penis))

How Big? It didn't fit!

"

The lady in question thought her mail was blocked on size. We just left it that way none of us could go up or talk to her for weeks without bursting out laughing

Keep the stories comming

3rd Line'r

I got a call one morning from a user who was having trouble reading a floppy and insisted that her drive was bad. The explained to me that she had copied files to her brand new disk the night before and now her computer wouldn't read the disk. Dead floppy drives are nothing new to me, so I grabbed a new one and a screwdriver and set off for her cubicle. I sat down and tried to access the drive. It made the most god-awful sound I have ever heard, so I popped the disk out and looked at it. The label is STAPLED to the disk. (I kid you not.. RIGHT through the center) When I asked her about it she explained to me that she had not been able to make the label stick so she stapled it. Then she asked me if that was bad. (!) Oh, and the reason the label didn't stick is because she hadn't removed the backing from the adhesive.

I still carry the disk around in my laptop bag so I can show people.

A little over a year ago my company decided to convert all it's business units to Lotus Notes/Domino (from Exchange ). This has to be the most painful software transitions I've ever experienced. Not one user I encountered didn't hate Notes with some level of passion. After a while, though, most seemed to become numb to the change and make it work for them.

One luser, however, continued to blame Notes for every problem he had with e-mail. My favorite rant came one morning when he came back from a trip and was upset because he hadn't received an e-mail all morning. All the way back to his desk I had to listen to the tirade about how horrible this program was, blah blah blah. When I checked his Notes client was set to Out-Of-Office and wasn't retrieving anything. When I changed his location to Office, it started working fine. He got very quiet after that.

Wish it meant he didn't rant about anything anymore, but perhaps that would be too much to ask.

I recently called my cousin's ISP because I had formatted his computer and installed Windows XP and forgot to write down the dial up number, the POP3 server name, and the SMTP server name. The call went like this:

Me: Hello, I was wondering if you could tell me the names of your POP3 and SMTP servers and the number your customers use to dial in.

Tech Support: Um, ok, what OS are you using?

Me: Uh, Windows XP. Why?

Tech Support: So click on Start, Control Panel...

Me: No no, I know how to set it up, can you just give me the dial in number and the server names please?

Tech Support: And then click on...

Me: Are you reading from a script?

Tech Support: Uh, yes.

Me: Could you skip down to the part where you get me to put in the dial in number.

Tech Support: Uh, ok....here it is, now type 555-5555 and click....

Me: Ok, can you now skip to the email setup and tell me the server names?

Tech Support: Hang on.....ok, now type pop.XXXXXXXX and smtp.XXXXX in the boxes that say POP3 Server Name: and SMTP Server Name.

Me: Thanks, bye. Click.

I had this caller that had bought this new computer from us just to play this new game, Medal of Honor. But he bought the bottom of the line computer that only had integrated video. This is basically how our conversation went.

Me: I see you have integrated video on your motherboard. Your computer doesn't meet the minimum requirement for that game.

C: But I bought this computer just for this game.

Me: If you want to be able to play this game you will need to purchase a video card for your computer.

C: I don't have the money for a new video card. Where can I download one.

Me: You can't download one you have to install a part inside your computer.

C: My friend has a good video card can I copy it and put it on my computer.

Me: No It is a actual piece you have to plug inside on your motherboard. It involves opening the case and plugging something in.

This conversation went like this for a good 10 minutes until he finally believed he couldn't download a video card.

I work for a rather large communications corp(three little letters that stand for absolutely nothing) in the internet communications field. More specifically, I am a dsl technician. I was having a great day, things were going smoothly, then I had "THE CUSTOMER". You know who I'm talking about. The one that has you looking at your phone with a perplexed look upon your face as you wonder how anyone could be that clueless.

Well, this call started normal enough, cust called, I gave my opening script. He gave me the phone number so i could access the account. No luck, account wouldnt come up. I asked him if it could be under a different number. This is where the call went south.

C=cust

M=me

C"Well, this is whats goin on. I bought this comp from my neighbor, and it had this dsl modem with it. I hooked everything up, even got the manual, so I know its all correct, but I cant get connected.

M."Sir, do you have dsl service through @#$? C>" Do I have to have service through them?M>Yes, you must have dsl service in order to use our equipment to connect. C>"You mean I have to pay for it!?!?!M>at this time, I become rather tickled and place cust on mute, explain to my super, who is walking by, and here him laugh all the way to his office. I take the cust off mute, explain to him that he must purchase our internet service in order to recieve a signal and be able to connect. C>"Well, had I know that, I would not have bought it from my neighbor!!!" Click. Oh, the joys of tech support!

I had a friend working for a small PC repair shop in my hometown. He had not been working there for long, when a young woman came in with a service question. This young lady was an absolute master of Windows 95. Or so she thought.

Her symptoms were apparent of a full hard drive and low RAM. Their suggestion was, upgrade the RAM, or delete unnecessary files. She said, "OK, how do you delete a file?" Holding back chuckles, my friends manager sat her down at a workstation and showed her how to drag and drop files in the recycle bin. "That's a small recycle bin, are you sure it can handle all those big files?" she innocently asked. Now, holding back tears, they went to the back and asked the other store tech to finish with the customer so that they could laugh until their faces turned blue. My friend said they should program a dumptruck to roll across the screen to pick up all those "big" files. Ugh.

Jason

I am a Sr Technician on a Dsl Isp contract.

I took a call from a T1 agent wanting to know what to do with a customer that was having an authentication issue.

I asked her what the csr os was and she informed me it was a Sewing Machine. The csr Dsl worked fine but she could not get her 56k modem to hook up to the internet ... and, she had tried 2 modems.

She got the previous tech to changer her password but it still didn't work

Hi:

I'm the only computer-literate person in the family, so all trouble-shooting in the family goes to me. Also, I recently got to be the web server administrator in a obscure research group in my university. This time, I have to troubleshoot myself as i wreak havoc in the poor Linux server.

My family:

001 **

My brother-in-law: I purchased this comp months ago, and have installed Windows 95, do you know how it works?

Me (who has only touched Win 3.1. at that time, and had not touched a comp for two years): Not a clue.

My brother-in-law: And you call yourself a informatic? I learnt Windows 95 all by myself in these months!

Me: (thinks) Months?? Took you months to learn W95???

Later, my brother-in-law dumped that same computer, and it took me minutes to configure a modem, trash around with Scandisk, etc. Never told him anything, however. Think he noticed himself later when listening: "I accidentally erased the boot sector and had to reinstall windows and then created a 8 GB FAT16 partition with the linux install disk, causing a 20 GB disk to list 28 GB, blablabla.

The OTHER brother-in-law has not still learnt. Quote: "And you don't know how to transfer Outlook Express adresses to Word and you call yourself an informatic?"

010 *****

The dumped computer from above gets dumped to my sister. My YET ANOTHER brother-in-law asks: "Can you install this game here?"

Answer: "Hu, well, you see, a fresh intalls of Windows lefts free only 200 MG of hard disk, and it takes almost 5 minutes to load (a 486 with 8 MG RAM), and this game uses 3D graphics so, not, you can't.

Him:"Can't you make it fit? By erasing things, and so on"

Answer: "Sure, you only need to buy a new computer. No, don't upgrade this one. You need a PIII to run this game!"

011 ******

Father: "How do I put this text from here to there?"

Me: "See, you select this text and then press..."

F: "No, no, wait,

you go too fast. Slow down. How do you select text?"

Me: (thinks) Dad, you've using Word for three months!

Me: "Well, you push the button and then drag..."

F: "Wait, wait, how do you do that?"

Me: "Aaaargh, Dad! Just look at my hand!"

F: "Do you keep the button pressed?"

Me: (thinks) Ok, calm down, he's 65 years old. The fact that he is claimed to be one of the most intelligent, wise, fast-minded and hard-working people in a 4000 habitants village doesn't mean that he is receptive to computer sorcery like copypaste.

So, yet again, he has to be explained one word at a time how do you:

- keep the mouse button pressed

- click the left button without moving the mouse

- click the *right* button without moving the mouse

- select an area

Me: "Well, now you have FINALLY selected a text and not pushed or clicked anything (which makes you lose the selection), you can copy the text."

F: "Copy where?"

Me: "In the clipboard" (mistake 1)

F: "Where is the clipboard?"

Me: "What?? You don't need knowing that. Just copy and paste and then you'll be in a better position to know what happens." (mistake 2)

F: "But I want to know where the clipboard is! And *what* is it? You know it because you are informatic and you know everything and I don't and then explain as if I already knew everything (goes on like this)"

Me: (thinks) I don't have a blazing idea in Hell about "what" or "where" the clipboard is, as it is propietary source and can see how it is implemented, and anyways you won't be thinking that I'm going to explain you about dinamic memory assignment"

Me: "It's a place where you put things."

A bit later, I have explained:

- that the clipboard is always there, as soon as you start windows

- that it is empty until you put something in it

- that when you put something inside, the old content goes away

- that you can put anything inside: texts, pic

tures, files, etc.

- that when you "copy", you are in fact making a exact copy of the data you have selected, you are not cutting it (we haven't still arrived to "cutting")

- that you need to select *something* in order to copy

- that you can use Edit -> Copy

- what the Ctrl key is

- how to push Ctrl+C in the exact manner to actually get the bl**dy thing copied.

Me: "Good, you can go now and try to copy this" (he hadn't still copied anything!)

F: (Makes Edit -> Copy) "Where is the text now?"

Me: "In the clipboard."

F: "How can I be sure about it?"

Me: "Well, you just copied the text."

F: "Is there some way I can see the clipboard?"

Me: "Sorry? You mean the clipboard *content*."

F: "Yes."

Me: (thinking about explaining him how to install and use the clipboard viewer) "Eeeer, actually not. There isn't."

F: "Oh".

After some unsuccessful tries (and three days), my father finally learns:

- that when you paste, you paste "somewhere". You don't simply make Edit -> Copy and Edit -> Paste, because you are pasting exactly exactly in the place you are copying.

- that the computer doesn't know where to want to paste the text

- that the "up arrow key" is the SHIFT key

- that you can select more text using SHIFT

- that he doesn't need to copy files, even if the right buton menu allows him to do so. ("what file do you want to copy?" "duh" "and why" "duh" "copy to where??" "don't know. I wanted to know, so I asked you."AGH! I'm gonna make you pay per-hour!")

Me: "Dad, did you already learn to copy-paste?"

F: "Yes, it is easy."

Me: (thinks) ¿Really?

Me: "Well, after all I'm a good son (and a bit masochist), so now I'll now show you how to CUT-paste."

100 **********

Sister: "Will you teach me to surf Internet?"

Me: "Sure. Just open Internet Explorer."

Sis: "How do I do that?"

Me:

(thinks) Ohmygod.

Me: "Errr, you double-click here, in this icon."

Sis: "Do I use the mouse?"

Me: (thinks) OHMY.

Turns out she has been using a computer for contability for four years, and three months using a Access DB I made for her, but doesn't know how to close a window!

Finally, she gave up (in five minutes, after learning she has to TYPE the addresses).

101 *********

Father/Sister: "Will you clean again this crappy keyboard whose keys stop working twice a year because their keys are so lousy designed?"

Me: "NO, NEVER AGAIN, GO BUYING ANOTHER ONE!"

F/S: "But you cleaned it last time, and I need to put it in that dirty room there in that crappy house in the garden where it is almost never used."

Me: "NEVER AGAIN."

F/S: "Oh, well, it wasn't necessary anyways."

Me: "AaaaaAAAaaargh!" (I already suspected it was not needed. They have a brand new computer sitting here, but sometimes it's better for them to use the old dumped one, that my father keeps in the country house. At least they put a plastic on it to prevent cats pissing all over it, like they had already done whith the monitor display. Ugh. Guess who had to clean it up later.)

110 *********

Here, I am the (l)user. Fortunately, I had made myself sure that no one would be around (just in case I make a mistake, you know).

Now, here I am, alone in the University, installing a new ethernet card in the server. It already has one, but, hey, I could need another one (ok, it's a clear luser thinking).

The server is already stopped and open, so I'm also instaling some SCSI disks I got from a dead computer. But before I install the ethernet card I have to recover the old data in the disks, because they're from a computer that just died. It had Windows 2K, and I have to mount a NTFS filesystem (which, if you have ever touched Linux, will know it is NOT supported by default).

Then I edited some files, and I edit

ed "/etc/mtab" using emacs (yes, I know it is a *very* stupid thing to do). So emacs creates backup files with the same name, adding ~ at the end. Then I rebooted.

Oh, my god, the thing will stop after mounting the root filesystem, and my mind flashes: "Oh, s***t, the file called "mtab~" is the "lock file". I have just locked myself out the server."

There other computers in the room (Windows 2K) that I can use, so I can search for help in Internet, and check if the server still serves pages (it doesn't, of course).

After three hours searching google I get inside the server again using a rescue disk I just made (no ,no one had actually thought before into making a rescue disk for the server, quite surprisingly).

Later I discover that the syslogd doesn't work properly and I can't get logs of what is happening in the machine.

I stop the syslogd (it's a process running in background) and start it again. Infortunately, I didn't use the -m 0 option, so every 5 minutes i get these words in the screen, in the middle of what I'm doing: "-- MARK --".

I go crazy thinking that MARK is a hacker and that I have to do something about it.

Then I use netstat -avtn and see lots of connections with apparently no purpose, so I pannic and disconnect the ethernet cable (luser thinking? Perhaps). After a while, I discover that it was two different crawlers crawling our pages and a lot of connections made by programs.

I switch the cable again, but I can't get any pages from the server (using the other computers in the room). I go crazy again, since the server reports no problems, configuration is OK and I didn't change anything... or didn't I?

Oh, I plugged the ethernet cable into the OTHER ethernet card, the one I had just installed, mind you. IP 0.0.0.0, no DNS, no gateway.

Waaaah, I'm a luser!! 12 hours to install two stupids disks and a card! Waaaah!

Me: "Unplug your modem for 10 seconds."

Him (after 10 seconds): "Now what?"

Me: "Did you plug it back in?"

Him: "You didn't say to do that."

Me: "Well if you don't plug it back in after 10 seconds, it wouldn't be 10 seconds, would it?!?"

So though I no longer work in Tech Support, I'm still forced to deal with the ridiculous questions from some of my customers at my new job.. selling wireless phones. Not a big deal in most cases, until you get to our internet-capable phones.. then, it turns into a real nightmare of half-worded questions and glazed looks.. example: today a customer asked me if the "Internet was based on PocketPC".. right after he tried to tell his wife that one of our prepaid accessory card (actually a CD in a metal case) was compatible with Infrared reception. ah, good times. just can't get away from the idiots.. and he's still right here in front of me. kill me.

OK, to put it in a nutshell, I was in a course last week (won't say who or what, except that it was for a variation of *NIX) for the sys admin.

This particular course was for those who have a base knowledge and understanding, and are moving onto slightly more complicated things (like setting up directories :-/ ) etc etc...

Obviously not everyone is going to know the basics, but this is why there are 'fundamentals' courses...

Day 1, hour 1, and three hours are lost when one of the students asks about the 'ls' command and what it does! (Those who remember DOS, think of a simple dir /w).

That set the tone for the week.

And in the possible case that the instructor is reading this, sorry for some of the comments, and sleeping for most of the week ;-)

I was asked by a co-worker (an incredibly annoying one, the best word to describe her rhymes with "rich") to set up a multimedia projector for a presentation. I was looking for the nearest outlet for the laptop and I just gave up and muttered that I'd just run it off the battery for the time being. Her eyes popped wide open, her jaw dropped, and she said with wonder in her voice, "Oh, the laptop has a BATTERY?" I believe my response was something like, "Of course it does, that's the whole point of a laptop!"

In 10th grade health class we had to do presentations. One of the over achieving chicks made a presentation and saved it to her folder on the school's server.

So she was up and they brought in a computer with projector on a rollaway. They plug it in and boot it and turn on the projector and everything. Then i'm watching (the projector was on) as they try and try to log onto the server. After about 5 attempts I explain to the teacher it needs to be connected to a network cable to log in. The teacher and the girl kinda look at me funny and I walk over to the class's teacher computer and point to the cable. I said you can unplug this and put it in that one. He said something about I dont think we can do that and then they had one of the tech directors come down and also try to log on. I also explained it to her and then they eventually plugged it in and got it going. Took about 15 minutes to plug in a network cable cause everyone in the school (including tech directors) needs to follow the rules, which are supposed to protect the equipment (meaning making it unusable) stupid stupid people.

Not exactly a tech tale...but just goes to show people don't listen....

Many years ago after college I moved to the Twin Cities to look for a job. After I had my phone installed I noticed I was getting quite a few wrong calls from people asking for help ordering radiators and such for their cars. After several calls I found out they were calling a 1-800 number for an automotive shop in the south somewhere. Turns out the phone company had something crossed and I was getting these calls routed to my phone as well as my regular phone calls.

Well I went about having the phone company work on it (very slow mind you!) I purchased an answering machine and put a very clear message on it.

"This is XXXX AND NOT ABC Automotive! If you have a message for XXXX please leave your name and number. Please do not leave any messages for ABC Automotive! (repeated several times!)"

Needless to say my answering machine was always filled up with messages for ABC Automotive (can't people listen?). Several times, the caller called me by name, and without other information asked me to call them. As I was looking for a (better) job, I called them back....URG! It was always for ABC Automotive.

I reached the breaking point after a few months. I was home one day and a call came in...I screened it and it was a guy asking me, by name to call him..so I picked it up.

He starts:

HIM: "Yeah XXXX, is Gary around?"

ME: "Gary?, this is XXXX, there is no GARY here"

HIM: "OH, he must be gone, well is Chuck there? You see I need a new radiator for a ......"

URRRG! I had enough!!!

ME: "Oh, you didn't hear...Chuck is dead...."

HIM: "Oh man! really?"

ME: "His wife killed him when she found out he was having and affair with Gary..."

HIM: "Wow, that is wild, well is Gary there then?"

ME: "No, he is down in Florida at NASA.."

HIM: "NASA? what is he doing there?"

ME: "He is installing a new clutch on the Space Shuttle..you see it kept slipping reverse during launch.

.."

HIM: "Wow, that is quite a feather in your guys's hat to work on the shuttle...Well, can you help me...?"

Well this went on a bit....the story getting more and more fantastic...Finally I asked him if he heard the message that this was NOT ABC Automotive...

HIM: "Yeah, but I didn't believe it...." ????

After trying to convince him this was a personal number, etc. He said he understood this was NOT ABC Automotive...

HIM: "Ok, so you are just a home number?"

ME: "Yes...NOT ABC AUTOMOTIVE!"

HIM: "Ok, well sorry. But could you have Gary call me when he gets back from Florida?"

ME: (SIGH) "Sure......" CLICK!

I would feel bad for ABC Automotive except that I had called them and explained the problem and that they were losing business...They said they didn't care. After 6 months (yes 6 months!!!) It finally got cleared up. The phone co didn't make me pay for the long distance return calls I had made...also, I DID have an 800 number for 6 months for distant relatives....

Cheers

I'm not a tech support guy or anything, Just a student at the local high scool. Anyway, I noticed the credit recovery program instructor doing something peculiar...

As it turns out, they were about to delete all the files on the computer with "t?" in the filename!(? means I can't remember the second character)

So I had to uh... kinda pull the mouse out of their hands(to their great bewilderment) and VERY slowly and tediously explain that the program called "t?" and files with "t?" in the filename were completely different. After about one and a half hours, they finally got the point and I figured out why the computer lab kept crashing all the time.

You know how Microsoft word saves by making a seperate file and then deleting the file and then renaming the second file? Well, this generally doubles the amount of disk space required to save a file.

So, I came up with a solution: save the 600 or so kilobyte file on the desktop and then MOVE it over onto the floppy, overwriting the old copy.

Well, as it turns out, we're not allowed to save anything on the hard drives AT ALL under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. My credit recovery instructor saw me doing this, and started yelling at me that my 600 or so kb files (I had deleted it all three times I had used it in the past) were filling up their hard drive! Well, it would take a lot of those files to fill up all 15 gigabytes of free space available on the computer.

So after calmly explaining my predicament(sp), they said:

"Well lots of other people in this room use word and they don't have any problems!"

"Those are one to three page essays. This is forty pages of notes."

"So? That shouldn't make a difference!"

Ugh. So it took me an hour and a half to explain THIS to them(I had taken an hour and a half before to explain the difference between a program name and a filename). They still glare at me when I save on the desktop.

I work at the front desk of a small computer sales/repair business answering phones and helping customers. Here are some examples of questions I get all the time:

Caller: "Hi do you sell used monitors?"

Me: "Yes we do."

Caller: "Do they come with windows already in them?"

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A PERSON WHO LIVES IN A CAVE:

Neanderthal: (after walking over to the section of new computers on the shelf with big price tags) "Do you sell computers here??"

Me: "Yes sir, you are standing next to them."

Neanderthal: "Well, what are they good for? I mean, are they just for offices and stuff?"

Me: "No sir, you can use your PC at home."

Neanderthal: "Well, what do they do???"

Me: (absolutely speechless) "ummmm..." I was beginning to wonder if this man understood what a car is used for, or what a tv does, or what a refrigerator might possibly do.

ONE LAST STORY:

Customer: "hey i'm calling because I bought a computer from you guys and now my sound doesn't work"

Me: "when did you first notice the problem sir?"

Customer: "today when I turned on my computer it gets no sound. Yesterday it was working fine"

Me: (after asking him to check the volume properties to make sure he didn't have his sound muted) "Is there a light on the front of your speakers?"

Customer: "there is but it isn't on"

Me: "you probably need to press the power button to turn the speakers on sir."

Customer: "oh, well that did it, and one more thing," (now speaking in a distressed and very panicky voice) "the other day my friend came over and said that the red light on the front of her computer keeps flashing and that might be a problem. then I looked at my computer and it does the same thing!!! What do I do???"

Me: "please calm down sir, that just means the computer is using your hard drive."

Here's what happened:

One of my classmates(who isnt very computer literate but is still very capable) saw the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! for the first time. You know, that Windows 2000 ram-dump screen? They walked over to me(I was the computer brainwizard guru guy in that class) and told me the problem.

I went right over to the computer and, lo-and-behold! They were right("It won't work.")!

So, I was very professional and wrote down the little 0xblahblah number at the top of the screen and said,

Me: "This is what many computer users have come to lovingly refer to as the 'BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH'."

A little color actually drained from their face.

By the way, this happened two days ago.

Them:(stammering) "Well, what do I do?"

Me: "You do nothing. I'll fix this."

So I sit down and start ticking random keys, looking professional, and after about 30 seconds descreetly hit the reset button.

Them: "Thank you! So, what could have caused it?"

Me:(looking VERY professional) "Well, it could have been a computer virus, or a complete hard drive meltdown. That can happen if the hard drive gets too worn out."

Them: "Oh no!"

Me: "Well, it could always have been a fluke."

Them:(horrified face) "What if it wasn't?"

I'm glad I have a good poker face, as I thought my lungs were brusing as I was trying not to laugh.

Me: "Well, I'll need to confiscate this disk for a day and see if there's any viruses on it."

Them: "Okay..."

Me: "Great! I'll have this back to you tomorrow!"

Them: "Okay..."

And that's when something REALLY wierd happened. About three minutes later, ALL the computers in the lab froze at the EXACT same time!

She was petrified.

I was at home once and all of a sudden, the printer stopped printing(WHAT are the CHANCES of THAT?)!

So, after checking all the plugs and even pulling them out and checking each individual pin with an ohm meter, reinstalling the drivers and rebooting the computer, changing the ink cartridges, and bandaging my bleeding stubbed toe(I kicked my chair out of fury) my dad comes along and picks it up about a foot off the desk and drops it. Immediately afterward it spat out the 17 documents I tried to test it with!

Hoo Wuda Thunk It?

Most of us have experienced people looking for the "Any Key"

or trying to use the CD ROM tray as a cup holder. I thought I would share some of the more unusual I have encountered personally over the years.

I received a call from a receptionist that works in our local police department. She complained that she was installing a new program on her PC, and when the program said to "Insert Disk #2", that it would not read the disk. She would get a "General Fault Error". After walking her through several DOS commands to check her drive, I assumed the drive had failed. So prior to going to the customer site, I ordered a replacement 3.5" diskette drive for her PC. The following day, I went to the desk of the lady with the drive problem. A diskette was in the drive, and could not be read or removed. Therefore, I replaced the drive. However, after removing her original diskette drive, I then discovered she had followed the instructions exactly. When the program said "Insert Disk #2", she did just that, on top of disk 1, jamming 2 diskettes into the drive at once. The first diskette was not visible until I removed the drive for a closer inspection. I have only seen this stunt once, and not heard of it anywhere else to date.

The second strangest call I had, was another Assumption on my part (Ass out of U & Me), I received a call from an older secretary complaining that her mouse would not work. Assuming the mouse had failed or was dirty I took one with me to the deskside user. At first glance, I could not find her mouse on the desk. She then pointed it out to me, under the desk on the floor. She had been trying to use the mouse with her foot like a dictation machine. Demostrating that the mouse worked properly when placed on the desk, using hands, not feet, was something I thought I would never do. I charged a $200 "Training Fee" for my Field Service Call.

Wes Duncan, CEO

JW Duncan & Associates, Inc.

So I get a followup call from last night - a manager needs help entering last night's sales into her back office system. This basically involves keying in figures from her register tape into our very old COBOL sales ledger program.

So we get started, and the first 2 figures go in nice and easy. Now, in order for the system to calculate the difference between these figures, the lUser has to page down to the second screen, then page up back to the first screen.

Me: Ok, just hit page down then page up.

User: Done.

M: Ok, there is now a figure in the difference field. Key that same figure into Day Sales.

U: No, there's no figure in there.

M: *thinking she has made a mistake keying in the opening and closing readings* Are the opening and closing identical?

U: No, they're different.

M: But there's no difference figure? Try page down and page up again.

U: It didn't put anything into Close Difference, but there it's put 39 dollars into Day Sales.

M: Ah, ok, that's a bit odd. Try page up and page down again.

U: No, it didn't work. It just changed the day sales to 3939 dollars.

M: Riiiighhht.... *just about to dial in when I look at my keyboard* Just out of interest - are you pressing the keys labelled Page Down and Page Up, or the 3 and the 9 on the numerica keypad - they have Pg Up and Pg Dn written on them?

U: Oh my god... I'm so sorry.

She pressed the *right* page up and down, and all was better.

I work with support for one of the major companies around, and this is a story i got from one of my colleagues.

A customer called in and was pretty frustrated after being thrown around from one tech to another. The problem was that the sound did not work. They had been into device manager, reinstalling drivers etc etc etc. My friend asked the customer if he could double click the sound icon in the system tray and check if anything was checked out. Guess what was the problem....

Conclusion: always look for the little things...

I'm not tech support, but I know the most about computers in my family, so I am often turned to if any problem occurs.

My dad recently bought a computer that came with a fax maneger program. I agreed to help him set it up. After I tried to set it up, my dad told me it wasn't working, and anytime someone called, he would here the fax tone and their conversation would be inturrupted. He decided to give up on the fax program and tried to stop it from interferring with our calls, but failed. He then asked me if there was anyway to stop it. I told him if he pulled out the phone cord, the computer wouldn't be able to intercept calls. He said that was a good idea. Later, he came up to me and said, "I can't pull out the phone cord, because then we won't be able to recive e-mail". "Dad, we just got broadband, remember, you were the one who spent hours trying to set it up." He decided that pulling out the phone jack would work and went off to the computer. He then called our home phone on his mobile, but still got the fax tone.

I knew how technically-challenged he was so I figured it was because he had pulled out the ethernet cable insted of the phone line so I went up to the computer to point out the problem. When I saw the cable missing from the back of the computer, I burst out laughing, he had unplugged the speakers!

Our tech support is provided via email. We receive a LOT of email for AOL users that are along these lines - this is just the latest (message's have been abreviated to give the gist).

AOL user email: I'm trying to install your software, but it keeps saying it is going to harm my computer. I don't want to put this on my computer if it is going to be a problem. Can you send me a copy that will not hurt it.

Tech support: Please provide what is occurring just before you get the message and provide the exact message(s) you are receiving when you begin the installation so we can determine what is occurring

AOL user email: When we click on download it says it will hurt our files. Can't you just give me the software? I have all my other software in boxes, why can't you give me the software in a box? But make sure it will not hurt my computer.

Tech support: The message you are receiving is a warning message to you from your internet browser to make sure you accept downloading a file off of the internet. Unfortunately, some files you download can contain virus and harm your computer. (and so on and so forth...)

AOL user email: But it keeps saying it will harm my files whenever I click on the download. There is something the matter with that download. I think you should send me the software in a box. Here is my address....

This isn't really a tech support tale, but a funny tech story anyway... I was working on a client's website (hosted on Unix) and was trying to get a simple content management script up and running. I downloaded it from the author's website, and then realized that it was a gnu-zipped tarball (.tar.gz) and that I didn't have any compatible decompression software on the 'puter I was using at the time.

So I figured I could find some shareware that would do the trick - sure enough, a google search for "untar" and "macintosh" did the trick, and I found a downloadable app that would do the trick. I downloaded it and dragged it to Stuffit, and stuffit refused to decompress it. So I thought, "that's wierd" and tried it again. It didn't work again. I finally went in and checked the file extension on the compressed untarring program, and sure enough.... untar.tar.gz.

Sorta defeats the purpose... :-)

Hmm not really tech support, but I wonder what there like with computers......anyway, I was in the bank one day, and, as usual, there was a lineg athering behind me, so I finished up, and left... when I came back to get something 10 minutes later, the same person who was stadining behind me was trying to jam his card into the machine, and the three poeple behind him didnt have a clue as to what could be wrong....so I reached over , and turned his card around for him ( the cards only go in one way).

The best part? They were all in there 40's, and I'm only 15..... you'd think they'd figure it out in 10 minutes, but after some of the tales I've heard here, I'm no longer surprised.....

I was in Walmart one day looking for some software, when I noticed an older couple (40 - 50 years old) looking at the mice. I saw that they were looking at the least expensive ones and completely ignoring the better ones.

me) You would do better with a more expensive one.

man) (Scoffing) We have tried that with the last two we bought, after two or three months they all stop working, cheap or expensive.

me) (What?) How many mice have you been through?

man) Five or six, I don't really remember.

me) When you say they stop working, what exactly do you mean?

woman) The pointer starts acting strange, it jumps all over the place and gets hard to put it where we want it.

man) Yeah, then it finally stops working completely, and we have to buy a new one.

me) (got it now!) Has anybody shown you how to clean the mouse?

man) Clean it? What do you mean?

me) The ball on the bottom of the mouse picks up dirt and lint and gets the rollers inside dirty, then they won't roll right, making the mouse hard to control.

I took one of the display mice and showed them how to remove the ball and clean the rollers, they left without a new mouse and said they would try cleaning the one at home first.

A lady called in wanting me to fix her Outlook Express. She had recently decided to quit using our mail program and switch. Our cd automatically sets up Outlook Express, but I went in and checked the settings. Her mail server names said "Outlook Express". I told her we need to put in our mail server names. "But I don't your EMail- I want Outlook Express mail."