Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work on a helpdesk that deals mainly with corporate customers with broadband probs. So, inevitably, I always have to speak with office juniors/cretins instead of their on-site IT agents. When the account is setup a security Q&A is always given, so that we can give the caller certain information concerning the account. Here's some of the better ones.

Question: How long is my member?

Answer: 19 Inches.

Question: What colour is my pussy?

Answer: Ginger.

Question: What is my mother's maiden name?

Answer: Death.

Question: Where do we holiday?

Answer: Church.

Question: If it doesn't work?

Answer: Kick it.

Question: *sentence in arabic*

Answer: *One word in arabic* followed by a short condescending laugh.

Question: Where does the sun not shine?

Answer: Up my wife's arse.

Question: What don't dent?

Answer: Horses.

The thing is...sometimes the person doesn't know, and inevitably shouts across their office to a colleague. embaressment? I think so...

Ok it's been a while since I last visited TT, let alone posted. I have to tell you what has literally just happened to me sat here at work. Pass the retard bucket, I have another entry...

Fuctard: "I'm trying to configure a new user on our network but I'm having problems."

Me: "Ok what is the error message you're getting?"

Fuctard: "it says 'Failed to add username to security - there may already be a user of that name'."

Me:"Have you tried a different username?"

Fuctard: "um, no. Doesn't it have to be the same as their windows username?"

Me: (thinking - how the f*ck would our software know what your network usernames are??) No it doesn't - try a different name."

Fuctard: Oh - it works now.

Me: (sounding amazed) Oh Great! Thank you, good bye, *click*

I don't know who's the bigger moron. Me for sticking with this job or them. The one main difference between me and them is that when they die the avergage IQ of the planet actually goes up!

Aarooga.

After 15 minutes of trouble shooting system -

Ok sir, there does not look to be a resolution here other than running the recovery cd that came with your system, insert the cd and reboot your system.

ok, doing that now

alright, it is pretty straight forward from here, give us a call back if you get stuck.

minutes later

aaaahhhh, hi, the recovery was running fine but everything all of a suddenly stopped, I'm not sure what to do.

Is there any sort of message on the screen?

aahhh, yes there is.

Could you read that back to me, please

Please insert disk 2 of the recovery, press enter to continue

Just got off one of the funniest calls I've ever had. I work tech support for a fairly large ISP. One of our poor customers had installed our setup program INTO her desktop folder! There were files and folders all over the place! We cleaned this up only to find something even more odd: the customer's USERNAME in the Telephone Number box. The username was 7 digits long, and each letter corresponded (on a typical phone handset) to the CORRECT number to form our dial-up number! The customer put this in because, as she said, "it was easier to remember than your dial-up number and I thought the modem would dial the numbers instead of the letters"!!!

How she ever discovered that her username corresponded to our dial-up number in her area, I'll never know.

Our 20' x 10' machine room has an air conditioning unit ... rated at 4kW. It also has a 6' x 9' south-facing window and two doors (locked)

Today, we have the following kit in it

1x "small" HP9000 (single processor)

1x "medium" HP9000 (dual processor)

2x big HP9000 (quad processor) with big (12-drive) RAID unit

1x Alpha (PC-sized)

1x Microvax + external 6-drive SCSI unit

1x IBM RS6000 (PC-sized)

1x Sparc station (dual cpu)

3x PC towers

VDU's for all machines

10x assorted comms equipment

Usually we have a few more multi-processor machines, plus their associated terminals.

For some reason, our managers seem surprised when equipment stops working as the outdoor temperature soars into the 30's (90+ degrees Farenheit) on sunny days.

Always expect users to lie.

ME - Do you know what version of Windows is on the computer?

USER - Yes. (silence)

ME - Can you tell me that version?

USER - Uhh...no. Let me see... how would I find that out?

ME - [proceeded to walk customer through finding out Windows version]

*sigh* At least she didn't try to make something up.

I work in tech support helping users connect, and was having user do a ping test...

(me) ok sir, go ahead and on the DOS prompt type "ping", as in "ping-pong" but without the "pong"...space, yahoo.com

(user) ok, I did that but it says "unrecognized command"

(me) did you type p as in paul, i-n-g?

(user) Oh!! I typed 'king yahoo.com'. I thought you said "k as in king-kong!"

Does anyone remember the good old days when the contrast level on a monitor used to be about 50%, when screensavers where intended to prevent CRT burn-in, and when monitors had a life expectancy of over a year?

Keyboards weren't split down the middle (for ergonomic reasons - is it just me or is the B key on the wrong side?), a mouse had two buttons (who needed more? Certainly not MAC users), a power switch could be used to turn OFF a computer...

... and people could spell!

Just reminiscing I guess. :D

I got a call from a customer with a dead computer that he wanted fixed.

It was a one year old Dell with a P4 1.7-gHz, etc., and he said one day he hit the power button and it just wouldn't boot up.

He said he hardly used this computer as he & his wife used their laptop computer and the kids used the desktop (which now didn't work) for gaming and MP3's.

So I went to his house and took the case back to my shop to check it out.

Plugged it all in and hit the power switch, and got nothing. So I popped the case to check the connections to the hard drive and noticed something different about this computer immediately: it had no hard drive inside!

I called him back and let him know the situation and he said "Really? Hmmm, I'll ask my kids what happened to it and call you as soon as I get it back.

Two days later he calls and tells me his son took the hard drive out of the case and brought it to a friends to hook up to another computer and forgot to bring it back.

I drove over and got the hard drive from him and noticed a good-sized chunk of metal missing from one of the corners and another corner with a big crack in it. So I shook the drive, heard nasty rattling inside, and let him know it had been dropped hard and was probably defunct, but would try it anyways.

It didn't work, so I got him a new hard drive, installed it and the OS, and brought it back to him in working order.

He then asked if there was anything he could do to prevent it from happening again, so I pointed out the case lock brackets and told him he could get a padlock for it.

He shook hs head, smiled sheepishly and said "Well, if it keeps them from messing with the insides, I guess I'll have to do it."

I wonder if he did ever do it.

Charter Communications, our cable and internet provider (for 2 years), called this afternoon. I don't have a phone, so they used my 30 cent a minute cell phone number, which I, being an idiot, had provided them. I had been late for a couple of payments, but was (so I thought) currently up to date, so I waited through their standard intro, to see what was wrong and how much more they had decided I owe.

They wanted to speak to customers with computers. Assuming they had gotten my name from their pipeline (internet) account list, I agreed that I do indeed have a computer. They then (at 30 cents a minute, mind) proceeded to try to SELL me pipeline on the phone! I gave them a very quick tongue-lashing and hung up on them.

Now in order to get my number, they would have had to look up my account. EVERY time I've had a service or billing problem, and they've looked up my account, they have noticed I have the pipeline service, because they always confirm that their information is correct. Am I crazy, or is something wrong here?

BTW, I did sign up for the national do not call list

I worked hardware support for a large company. We had first level support that would rush the ticket to us. One customer told the support tech his computer stopped working. It was an HP Jornada. The ticket said:

"Customers requests help with broken computer. Customer has a GRENADE."

Several years ago I used to work in field tech support, and this was just after Windows '98 was released. The customer's DOS-based ordering system didn't like '98 so during an office upgrade I had to downgrade the OS on their new Dells to '95.

One of the PCs was delivered with a faulty CD-ROM drive. The eject button was broken so I called Dell to get a replacement shipped out. I *stoopidly* let on that I'd downgraded the PCs to '95....

Tech support oik: These PCs are designed to run with Windows '98 sir, that's why your CD-ROM doesn't work

Me: Er no, it's because the CD-ROM is broken

TSO: Sir, it's a well known fact that many drivers are not compatible between '98 and '95

Me: I'm aware that this is the case for a number of devices, but not CD-ROMs

TSO: Sir, your CD-ROM is not working because you have downgraded your operating system

Me: No it's not - it's because the eject button is broken; it's a mechanical fault....

TSO: downgrading your PC will have that effect

Me: What, breaking the eject button?

TSO: of course - '95 and '98 use different drivers

Me: You realise that I am a field technician for a computer firm?

TSO: Then you should know about the problem with '95 and '98 drivers (was this guy stuck on page 1 of the manual or WOT!)

Me: Can I speak to your manager please?

TSO: (smugly) he will say the same thing, sir...

So the grinning idiot (I could feel the grinning over the phone) passed me on to his line manager, who fortunately knew a thing or two more than his colleague and sent me a replacement drive. Now I am a techie and therefore prone to grinning at the suffering of ignorant users BUT - I have huge amounts of sympathy for all the poor people who must have called with similar problems and possibly spent *fortunes* fixing their computers thanks to this dolt. Even though this was 4 years ago I will still never buy from Dell...!

A friend of mine told me this story, and it has been around for a while, but it actually happened to him recently. He runs a small computer business in our town, supplying PCs to homes and businesses and he gets a call from a customer one afternoon, it went like this...

Dealer: How can I help

Customer: My coffee holder on my computer is broken.

D: The coffee holder?

C: Yeah, thats it. Its attached to the front of the box thing.

At this stage the dealer asks for the pc model number and checks his records for an optional extra sent out with pcs that might be mistaken for a coffee holder and draws a blank.

D: I'm sorry, but I can't be sure what you're reffering to. Can you describe to me how you use it?

C: (long pause) OK. Its on the front of the box.(speaking slowly like the dealer is an idiot) You press the button on the thing and and it slides out so you can put your cup of coffee on it.

The dealer had to quickly press the mute button on his phone so the customer couldn't hear his roars of laughter.

The customer was using the cd drawer as a coffee holder.

I work as Tech support for a local ISP. We have Dail up service, Broadband service, and Wireless service.. however they all have the same number and usually we have to transfer them to the correct department due to the customer not following VERY HARD 3 step process it is to get a tech for either of these 3 departments.

Myself I work in Dail Up tech support.

One day I had a person call in with 3 complaints. Here they are in the actual order that they gave me:

1. The menu is too damn confusing.

I asked them how they got to a tech.

The user's reply was " I just hit buttons... I don't listen to that recorded ( blank)."

2. The software we gave him didn't look like AOL's software.

I didn't say anything that time.

3. The last one was that he couldn't dail into the internet.

Now the last complaint I could deal with. I started going through the steps of helping the user.

Asked what the error he was getting.

User didn't remember... it seemed like he was too angry to even listen to me but I tried to help out.

Checked the number

it was fine

checked his username and password

that was fine

checked the modem ..

that was fine

At this point the user started getting really upset towards me and stated the following. " This is all because I loaded that ( blank) software of yours. I should just stop my service. I should of never called you ( blanks)!"

Finally I asked the user to check the line going from the wall to the computer, to see if this was a no dail tone issue.

" What line?" he asked

" The phone line sir. The one the modem dails through." I replied.

At this point he got really quiet. " You mean it needs a phone line to connect to the internet."

" Yes sir." I sighed, " Cause just like your phone .. your computer needs a phone line to dail to the internet sir. You do have Dail up service right."

Again it was really quiet. I heard in the background the familiar modem tones and the sound of

the user cursing to himself.

" Sir?" I asked wanting to know if he was going to pick up the phone.

He picked up the phone and said, " I fixed it no thanks to you!" Then the user hung up.

I may not be a tech support person, but I am the guy my friends go to when they have computer problems.

Anyway, so one day my friend is telling me about how his keyboard is "scrambled". So that day after school I come over to his house and looked at hs keyboard. I just stare at it for about a minute. Here is what I see in the letter rows:

ABCDEFGHIJ

KLMNOPQRS

TUVWXYZ

Me: Why are the keys like that?

Him: Oh, I thought it would be easier if they were in alphabetical order, so I popped them off and re-arranged them.

It took about 15 minutes to explain why that wouldn't work, 30 minutes for me to go home and get my keyboard, and another 10 minutes to put them back on right.

I have never let him live that down...

I got a call from a user one day that just made me wince in fear.

U: user

T: tech ( me)

T: hello and welcome to ____ dail up tech support, How may I help you today?

U: I can't get signed into the internet it keeps saying invalid username and password.

T: Okay well what are you typing in?

U: ______@______.net and for the password _______

T: ( after verifying the account) well that is correct lets see .. are you able to dail into the internet?

U: Oh I am able to connect it is just when I go to my bank site it asks me for my username and password. I put it in and it doesn't work.

T: ( I smiled to myself) well the bank site is asking for the username and password you set up with them. You need to put that in there.

U: You mean I have to pay more money to get a link to that website?

T: No ma'am you just need to set up a username and password to get into that site. Just like if you went to any other site that asked for a username and password. _________&__________.net and ____________ will only work at sites that is sponsered by ( local ISP name).

At this point I continued to explain that when you go to a website that is asking for a username and password that is not sponsered by us that she would have to set up a username and password through them.

And after 10 min she had this to say, " That is stupid."

Let me note that she had a list of complaints to us... all of which were questions how to log into sites such as ebay.com, hotmail.com, and my personal fav a porn site that I will not mention here.

I had a call from a guy that complained that whenever he tried to call out from his computer he got and error saying there was no modem.

Sure enough it came up with the modem was not responding.

Since it was outside of my scope of support to help with modem reinstallations I told the user to contact their computer manufacturer.

The following is his response.

User: Computer Manufacturer... what's that?

Me: That would be the people that you got the computer from.

User: You mean my brother? I don't want to call my brother he owes me money!

Me: No sir, you need to call the people that made the computer.

User: ......

I found out the user was using a Dell computer so I gave him the number for Dell and sent him on his way. That was the worst call for me I must say. He had a very heavy southern accent.

Boy the calls I'm getting from this MSBlaster Worm is too much. It's too much dumbness in such a short peroid of time.

Me: "Right click on the Internet Explorer Icon and click on properties."

Luser: "Double click ?"

Me: "No. 1 click"

Luser: "Ok."

Later I get the same questions over and over.

This person say's they had the computer since last Christmas (02).

ARG!

If I owned a computer shop, all buyers would be taking tests to rate their CPU IQ.

KILL, KILL, KILL all bad software that lets people stop using their brains.

From:

A raving Tech Support,

Lord Cyberwize

E-mail from a customer: Comments in [square brackets] are mine, comments in (round brackets) are hers.

"Please remove me from your [opt-in] email lists - I was unsuccessful at several attempts despite following your (complicated) instructions."

I found several things wrong with her complaint.

1) The instructions to remove her address from the list included TWO steps. Count them. One, two. The first to address an e-mail, the second to put the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

2) She was not on the e-mail list and not receiving e-mail from me.

3) She had successfully unsubscribed from the list BEFORE writing me the e-mail.

Ahhh...(l)users...I suppose it's job security.

I work as a service technician at a local computer repair shop doing all the typical computer repairs and stuff when a customer phones up one day. Customer is asking about her vulnerabilty to hackers. She explained to us that her printer wouldn't print, and that she beleived that hackers from either the government or her local ISP were trying to prevent her from printing her "very important" documents. As a result, her printer just stopped printing anything, in fact, it wouldn't even turn on, power wise. I asked what kind of printer it was, and it turns out its just a common everyday Bubble Jet Printer. I inform her that there is no way a hacker can turn off her printer, so she requests a service call. Long story short, I go down there, look at the printer to find the power button is busted and inform her that the printer is in fact broken, but she continues to insist that it's the government's doing. I leave very quickly as to avoid saying anything that I would regret. I should of been tipped off when she told me she couldn't answer my questions because she had "brain problems" that prevented her from remembering certain things. We didn't try to collect the bill, as we were pretty sure the government was probably also trying to steal her money.

This user managed to forward to roughly 150 people another virus hoax email, I informed her it was a hoax and gave her the link to Symantec's virus research site so she could look these things up in the future. This is the response:

Many thanks,

I didn't know how to check it out and it came from a professional yoga teachers' list that I respect so...

Your information will help in the future.

Maybe if the yoga teacher had only been an amature she would not have been suckered in by the hoax.

I work as a network admin and support specialist mainly in the hospitality industry. During the middle of a support call my colleague holds the phone down and begans to laugh histerically. He explains that during during the call he'd told the client that he would need him to go to the server to further troubleshoot. He was amazed when he heard the client yell, "Hey Sue", "We need you over here."

So this blonde who works with my wife tells her the home computer keeps freezing up, and someone told her husband it may be the memory. I replyed, "see if she needs my help..." and the following day my wife reports "No, it's all fixed. The husband found some diagrams from the manual and re-seated the memory, and now the computer works, except that it is empty." Well, if you call that fixed...

She was most disappointed to lose her digital vacation photos she was -about- to mail everybody. The vacation was 6 months ago

On what was going to be a quiet Monday morning I get a call from a customer complaining that his exchange server was not working. This is a customer who claims he depends on email and even a minute without it is a disaster. The whole office alos use Exchange as a general storage area and do not have or want any limits on the mailboxes.

After getting him to do some simple checks it turns out that the mail stores are dismounted and so I arrange to go on site to investigate further.

When I get there ( a two hour drive ), the exchange server hard disk is full, which explains why the stores are dismounted. With a bit of juggling and moving some older log files the stores remount and exchange is acessable again.

At this stage the cause of the problem was found as one (l)user had an enormous mailbox. Opening the mailbox showed thousands of emails all having been returned as delivery failure. This user had sent out an email on the Friday to all the customers and prospects on the company database, and each email was about 100K.

The result of these returned emails and the associated log files were to fill up the remaining space on the Exchange Server.

Now he knows why we recommend limits on the size of mailboxes !!

Our small software and consulting firm was hired to take over support and maintenance of a billing system for a local public utility (water) This system had been in development for better than five years and was still light years from flying on its own. However, due to indescribably impenetrable client stupidity it had been put on line 3 years before in spite of warnings from the initial developers that it was not finished. These warnings got the initial developers fired off the project right after they put it on line and it didn't work in spite of the fact that they tried to warn management that this is exactly what would happen. It turns out that deadlines had been missed due to constantly changing specifications etc. etc.

Now a second IT firm was hired to "fix" the application things now being much more difficult since the system was on line and in an infamous display of bridge burning, the water works management had somehow eradicated all traces of the previous billing system. This firm worked on debugging the original application while being bombarded with constant demands for new features, while hardware was changed without their knowledge, programs that the main application interfaced with were upgraded or replaced, all without prior consulting or knowledge. The water works management never let the right hand know what the left hand was doing.

At the end of their third year, this firm was fired for "non-production" having had their pleas to completely rewrite the application go unheard and in spite of their heroic efforts to perform the equivalent of a heart transplant on a marathon runner while he was in the middle of a race.

When we came on the job, we realized that unless we could rebuild the application from scratch that we would never be able to do more than put out fires. However, since like all public utilities all the water works had to do to generate more money was raise rates, they were not

concerned about paying our hourly rates basically to show up when c

alled and resurrect the system when it crashed or trashed their DB, events which occurred on a daily, and sometimes twice or more times daily basis. So we took the job knowing that 1) we were going to be well paid to be fly swatters, 2) we would never be able to rewrite the patchworked code so that it had at least a modicum of integrity, and 3) we would eventually be fired off the job when the bozos in management thought we had had what they considered enough time that the monstrous

cludge should be fixed.

There was a certain amount of frustration knowing that nothing we did would ever have any permanent effect but we knew what we were getting into going in so we were philosophical about it. The density of the (l)users on this project defy accurate description. Some incidents

follow:

(M)=Me

(L)=(l)user - most frequently the general manager of the utility.

(L) When we click on the menu here it's supposed to print a report on disconnections.

(M) Has this always been part of the system?

(L) Yes

(M) Has it ever worked?

(L) I don't know.

(L) Good! You're here! It's down and we need to print invoices.

(M) (after checking several peons working happily on the system and supervising invoice printing) Why did you think the system was down?

(L) I can't remember.

(L) We're getting GPS and the system needs to store all location data.

(M) We'll need to talk to the provider of the GPS application and get some specifications.

(L) And who would that be?

When we first came on this project one of the main things they had always wanted and neither of our predecessors could implement was the ability of the system to provide an "on the fly" calculation of a customer's bill so that if they called today, they could be told exactly what

they owed today...not at last billing or next billing, but today based on last meter read and prorated waste and sewer charges to date plus any late fees etc. Of course we immediately asked for a

written explanation of how this was calculated. When we were asked to leave after a year

and a half this was still not implemented because they had never been able to provide the specifications of how to calculate this.

I'm sure that until this metropolitan area runs out of IT firms, this project will go on and on into the dim future, bouncing from one IT group to another consuming massive amounts of money and never being finished. Sort of the Flying Dutchman of software development. The people in

this city should be grateful that they get water at all.

I work at an elementary school as a Library Tech, but am often called upon for tech problems or told about problems folks are having, as the area tech is only scheduled for two half days a week.

All teaching staff have laptops--several of which are starting to have problems as they're going on four years old. I've changed the names to protect the guilty. One of the teachers, Mary, had been having problems with her laptop. John, our tech, had switched laptops for her at least twice by the time this incident happened. Now, when he changes the laptops, he always switches the old HD into the new machine (the problems usually aren't HD related). Anyhow, one day, Mary is complaining to me that there are a bunch of email attachments on her laptop but they are NOT hers. I forgot about John always changing the HD with the machine, so I told her that he would've wiped the old HD before giving it to her. Seems she was concerned because she had a picture of her mum on the comp and didn't want someone in the future getting it. Well, I didn't convince her that the attachments had to be hers, so I told her to speak to John the next time he was in.

A couple days later, I walk into the staff room and Mary is telling John about these email attachments that aren't hers. He asks her what they said. "Oh, I didn't look at them, they weren't mine." Fine. He says he'll take a look at them, to see who they belonged to. "Oh, well, I didn't want them on there, so I deleted them." I have to give John credit, he kept very calm. So he explained to her, at least twice, that they would've had to have been hers since it was HER hard drive, not someone else's. Mary is like "Oh, no, the names weren't anything I would've asked for or received." She brings up the issue of making sure her files would get deleted when she was done with the laptop. John reassured her, that, yes, he would make sure the HD would get wiped clean when the time came.

Mary had to leave at this point...and if looks could kill, she'd've been near de

ath, cus John was pissed. (Mary has a knack for making comp techs dislike her, this is the second one we've had that can't stand her.) John looks at me (I managed to contain my laughter til after Mary left the room) and says, very sarcastically, "Can you remember every email attachment you've had in the past three years?"

I said, "No, but then consider the source of the complaint." Mary is one for always complaining and whining about tech stuff. He just shook his head and laughed. Mary went on her way, totally unwilling to believe they were her attachments.

Upon receiving an emergency call, a user reported that her hard drive was making funny noises and needed somebody to look at it immediately. She did not want to lose any files.

I dropped what I was doing and ran up to her office.

After running several diagnostics, I neither heard a noise nor found any issues with her hard drive.

She was looking over my shoulder so as I looked up to tell her I could not find any problem we heard the "noisy hard drive."

I looked down and to the left of the PC was her pager set to vibrate. Since she didn't answer her page it would periodically vibrate until she would answer.

I picked up the pager and said I think I found your problem and gave it to her. Her reply was that "oh that wasn't the sound." So I left her saying that if she ever heard the sound again to give us a call. She never called back I wonder what the sound was?

This is short but true funny story.

I got a call from a woman asking about cable modem internet access.

These are the exact words:

"Hello, I'm interested in the internet you're offering. I have a question though...is the internet a computer or does it come through the TV?"

I work at a very large software company in Redmond, WA, and worked with RAS (Remote Access Services) on Windows. One day, an engineer on the end-user side called me up and asked me a question: "When you're using multilink (RAS can use multiple analog phone lines as one to increase bandwidth), is there a built-in limitation to make the second line only work at 33.6 kbps?" "No, why?" I answered.

"Well, I have a customer who's out where she can't get SIDN, DSL, or any other fast connection, and she's using two lines in multilink. The second line never connects at over 33.6 kbps."

"OK. What happens if she reverses the phone lines?"

"Same thing--we've been racking our brains."

"OK. Have her do this: Set it to dial line one, then, while calling, listen in on line 2."

After he contacted the customer, her responded with "She can hear the computer dial and connect."

"Call the phone company--she's got excessive crosstalk. The sound from line 1 is keeping line 2 from connecting at full speed."

While working helpdesk for IBM, we get used to helping customers find the machine type and serial numbers for their machines, as the people who build them put them in the darndest places.

One particular evening towards the end of my shift, I had been trying to explain to one lady where on her machine she might find the sticker with the numbers needed by me to open a case....

I had her look on the back, the bottom, the lower right hand side and the lower left hand side, but she just couldn't seem to find it.

By this time of the day, I'm usually a little loopy and often find myself questioning myself as to my mental status.

I decided to go back to the basics and start with the model name (Aptiva, Netvista...) to narrow things down a bit...

She said, "It says E-Machine"

I couldn't believe that I didn't fall out of my chair and I asked her to say it once more....(I also put my phone on speaker so others around me would believe it)

After several strange looks from my co-workers, I politely told her that IBM doesn't produce the E-machine and found her the number for tech support for her machine....

Think I'll have an extra beer tonight when I get home.

A customer once came in asking for battery chargers. I walked her over to our chargers, explained where the different sizes of batteries fit into it, and handed one to her.

She took it, looked at the back, frowned, and told me, "This one has a plug on it; don't you have any that don't plug in?"

I'm not tech support; just one of the few people in the office who knows anything about computers. A person that I had put an Excel spreadsheet together for called me one day and told me that the spreadsheet had stopped taking numbers. "The letters all work, but it won't take any numbers," she said. I walked over to her cubicle, hit the NumLock button, and said, "Now try it." After delightedly typing in a few numbers, she turned and asked me how I fixed it.

I just got this call:

CU - (concerned user)

ME - (me, obviously)

ME: Hello, IT Helpdesk.

CU: Hello there, my computer might be broken

ME: Oh, well would you mind elaborating?

CU: It says that my computer is open to potentially harmful attacks, so it must be broken because you said that won't happen.

ME: Okay, could you describe what you see?

CU: Well, there are two boxes, one is a website I was visiting, and the other is a blue box with white writing which says what I just told you.

ME: Right, what's the title of that box?

CU: Spysafe Advertisement - Microsoft Internet Explorer

ME: (mute) I don't get paid enough for this...

ME: Hello ICT Helpdesk, Good afternoon!

CU: Hi there, I can't get in.

ME: Okay, so is that your email or network account?

CU: I don't know, it's broken.

ME: Right, can I have your surname, then I can find out some more about you.

CU: It's XXX

ME: Okay, I can't seem to find you on here, is your name spelt X-X-X

CU: Oh, I just got married, it's YYY

ME: I still can't find you. Are you on the network?

CU: I'm on the computer at my desk.

ME: No, I mean have you got a username and password?

CU: I have one for my home computer..

ME: For here, did you submit a new user form?

CU: What's that?

ME: Nevermind, just open up Internet explorer from your desktop

CU: The start?

ME: No, the desktop. Click the big 'e'

CU: I don't have a big 'e' on my desktop, it is blank, with writing at the top and a white square in the middle.

ME: That would be Word. Can you click the 'start' button in the left corner, then programs, then Internet Explorer?

CU: Windows Explorer?

ME: No, internet explorer, the one with the 'e' near it.

CU: Okay, it's open.

Me: Can you clear what's in the white box at the top?

CU: There is no white box. Oh, yes there is.

ME: Right, can you select it, then press backspace?

CU: What's backspace?

ME - starting to laugh at the ridicolousness

ME: The big key with the arrow pointing left in the middle of the keyboard.

CU: Okay, that works, now what?

ME: Type h-t-t-p

CU: a-b-b-e?

ME: no, HTTP

CU: Okay, now what?

ME: Then a colon.

CU: What's a colon?

ME: Why not talk to your manager about getting some IT training before you become a system user...

Just read this in my ArcaMax Human Factor newsletter, and had to share.

A Seattle computer consultant bought a Blackberry, a wireless device that allows users to access email / corporate data / phone / the Internet -- off eBay for $16. After inserting a battery, the consultant found 200 internal company email messages from a New York City financial services firm.. including a data base of 1,000 names / email addresses / private phone numbers, Wired News reports.

A former vice president at the financial services firm (who had left the company months before) tells Wired News he thought that the data would have been erased by removing the battery. The former vice president's firm says all employees sign a contract promising to destroy or return any confidential proprietary information.

Now, I don't know a damn thing about Blackberries or other peripheral devices.. but I *do* know that your data doesn't magically disappear if you remove the battery from one of these things! Gotta wonder what that person was thinking.. hahahahaha.

One of the funnier incidents. In our organisation we have various shared network drives, but two are featured in this:

P - in the format "USERNAME on XXX (P:)"

S - in the format "DEPARTMENT on XXX (S:)"

So, I get a call from an irate old lady from upstairs. "Other people's names keep coming up on my computer!"

I start to weep silently, knowing it's going to be one of those days. After prodding her for a while, I find out that when she accesses "her" documents, other people's names come up in the 'from' and 'to' fields and vice-versa.

I walk outside and bang my head on the desk repeatedly - they're all accessing and editing documents on the shared drive.

I calmly tell them that I'll copy the files to their P drives, and to let me know their usernames. Sure enough I copy them. I then have to spend another half hour explaining to them why the documents still have other people's names on them when they open them (because they were edited before I moved them over).

And you guessed it, they still kept opening up the shared drive documents and shouting down the phone at helpdesk. I wouldn't mind so much, but these users are the "It was much better before we changed!", "We never had these problems before!", " I don't care how it happens, just do it!", "This is broken!"

These are the same people who called the helpdesk for a call out because they wanted to swap PCs across some desks (with no local files, and exactly the same specs) - because "That one is deidre's!"

I sigh.

Had a caller one day who was asking why he was repeatedly getting mail returned saying it contained a virus when he was "utterly positive" that he didn't have a virus on his system. I then quizzed him about the content of the emails and he then said "It says it is infected with Sobig.F, but that can't be possible as my anti virus says their is no such thing." I then asked him how long it had been since he updated his anti-virus with the latest virus definitions. "About four months ago" the caller replied, "it's kind of like a trip to the doctor's office, it ought to last me at least 6 months, shouldn't it?"

I was doing tech support at an ISP and at the time we had no toll-free number, but had clients out of state.

They signed up and we sent them a packet, part of which was 5 floppies to install IE 3.

I get a call from someone who asks: I put disk 1 in and it is working, do I need these other 4 disks (all of which were labeled 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, etc)?

We once had a temp secretary girl transcribing our voice mail into our tech issue tracking system. She wasn't fast on the tech stuff.

One entry was "[blank] called and wants to know how many Mega hurts her machine is."

I've had my share of hardware and software support woes, but I'm discovering that some people are just universally dense.

To make ends meet, I've been working in a convenience store that also sells gasoline.

There are a few people who don't understand why we run out of gas if a tanker doesn't make a scheduled stop. Then there's the group that can't figure out how they get 3 grades of fuel into 1 tanker.

Fortunately, there are only a very few who don't understand why smoking at the pumps is a problem. For those few, we have a big red button marked "ALL STOP."

Then there are quite a few who don't seem to understand that $1.00 isn't enough to buy an item marked $2.49. Or that illegal (as in unlawful) is a synonym for negotiable.

And guess what? They all have computers and they all have perpetual trouble with them. They're going to keep calling and tying you up forever with nonsense problems. They'll make no effort to learn and keep making the same mistakes. It's never going to end.

Well, we do get to make fun of them once they're gone. ;)

Overheard some years ago in a PC hardware shop:

Salesman: ...comes complete with a 9600 baud modem

Customer: A *baud* modem?

Saleman: Yes madam, baud modems are the very best you can buy.

Had to leave the shop before I embarrassed myself laughing!!

I get alot of these (bear in mind, it's late friday afternoon):

Me: Hello, ICT good afternoon

Overenthusiastic Person: Hello there, I'm from XXX (normally M$) and I was wondering if you'd like to participate in our survey/questionnaire?

Me: Hang on, I'll just put you through to my superior

- Divert to call fax machine in storage building down the road -

Heh.

ME: (spiel)

EU: Hello, I'm calling from Brunswick Surestart

ME: Yes.. I assume you have a problem?

EU: Yes, my computer just died.

ME: Okay, are there any lights on?

EU: No, all dark on the PC. The heater plugged in next to it has also gone off. Hang on - it seems everyone's computer has gone off...

ME: (And I never thought I'd actually get a powercut call...)

Changing from a pier to pier network between two computers to a Base100TX hub, I was surprised to hear my family thought that transferring one file from one PC to another (with no other network activity) was slower.

No amount of trying to convince them that using a hub will not slow the network down worked. And I actually made a home network for these people!?

After a huge powercut throughout South east England, I get a call from a satellite site - "OUR PRINTA ES BUROKKEN!" [sic] - Of course they hadn't thought to turn it off then on again. Jeez.

I'm a sysadmin in some software developing company. One day I got a call from one of our employyes that thought about himself as kind of Computer "guru". He claimed that driver for his mouse is performing strange activities. "The mouse is mirrored" he said.

I asked what he means and he replied that every mouse move is opposite, like left-right and up-down. After a few moments (I just had to make some pause so I'll not laugh in the phone) I asked to click on the mouse button. Just click. After almost 1 munite of silence he appologised and hang off.

There where no buttons under his fingers, they were close to arm. He just hold the mouse back to front.

I went out to a client who claimed that the printer we had sold her along with her new computer didn't work. I came to her house and she showed me the printer. I checked the cables og looked to see if the driver was installed... It wasn't. I asked her for the driver disc, but she didn't know where it was. Her son had installed it for her. While she looked for the disc I was going to fix a paperjam in the printer when I found the driver cd... INSIDE THE PRINTER in about 15 pieces ... she had apparently placed the cd in the sheetfeeder and started printing.

After reading the Blue Screen Of Death at McDonalds story, it reminded me of this. About 18 months ago, i was at Wonderland (Theme Park in Sydney), and one of the rides is going up a large tower in a carriage with 4 seats, then freefalling.

Normally when you get up the top, there is a tv screen with a '10, 9....' countdown, although one occasion we went up there, there was a windows error screen (it was an old 3.1 error, the big white box with a small error message and an ok button). We all had a good laugh, then i said "hey, that means we dont know when its going to dro....."

i have a friend whose cd-rom went out rcentky and she had been complaining to me regularly. I had assumed that like in most semi newish comps her cd-rom drive was her only optival media drive. well today she comes to me Sara = Me Amber = her

[22:34] Amber : HI, I FIGURED OUT HOW I CAN INSTALL GAMES INTO MY COMPUTER WITHOUT MY CD-ROM. I DON'T KNOW WHY I DIDN'T THINK OF IT SOONER LOL

[22:38] Amber : I USED MY CD-RW INSTEAD

[22:40] Amber : I'M GOOD LOL

[22:40] Sara : you dork!! why didn't you tell me they weren't the same!!!!!!!!!