Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I was working as the assistant IT manager for a local college. We had a collection of Laserjet 4 printers, one of which had a 500 sheet paper tray.

On this occasion one clever student had noticed that the reason his work wasn't printing was that there was no paper in the tray so he sought me out and asked me for some paper.

I handed him a pack of A4 paper and informed him that the tray will take the entire pack. Calmly, he opened the tray and placed in the paper - still wrapped.

Then he wondered why it still wasn't printing.

I got a call recently from a guy complaining that the internet was dead.

When I asked him what error message was displayed, the reply was "No Signal, Check Cable" and a black screen.

I advised the customer to press the power button on his pc.

his reply was "Oh, it's come on again!"

This story was told to me by my aunt at a family gathering.

(Names are changed to protect the innocent and the guilty)

At the place where my aunt works, there is a woman who is very computer illiterate. Of course, she has a job that requires a lot computer usage.

One day, this woman is having trouble opening a file. The problem was that she didn't know how to open a file in the first place. As she had had the job (and the computer) for a while now, someone inquired as to how she had been opening files that she needed.

Her response? "I just get Bob to open them for me."

Bob was told never to help the woman again.

I was a tech for a blossoming .COM. One conversation I was witness to, stands out in my mind to this day. One of the programmers added a button to the back end of a user management system that allowed you to DELETE the user. Normally when employees quit or are fired they are changed to inactive so that the time they worked is still tracked. One paticular manager Deleted a former employee and became enraged when afterwards they were unable to find the employee in the system. The conversation when like this:

Manager: I just deleted Johnson and now I can't find him!!!

Programmer: What part of delete didn't you understand?

Manager: Delete should not delete people!

Programmer: ? should I change it to Add?

Programmer: What do you want delete to do?

Manager: I dunno but Delete shouldn't completely remove the user.

Programmer: I am not changing the functionality of Delete simply because you dont understand it.

After that every delete button in the company when pushed first furnished a Webster definition of the word delete.

I started working for a small IT training company in the UK as a IT Manager about 2 years ago bee there ever since, this is how i go the job.

I started in office work there for the cash (I was unemployed for a while). the tech at the time thought he knew everything. list below.

1.He was going to build the new network in c++ (eergh)

2.Installed win2k on all 20 machines saying that he has a special license from microsoft allowing him to distribute anywhere for 3 months.

3.The computer would'nt run any courses, when quized about web plug-ins he said what are plug-in's.

4.He would repeadedly lose urgent e-mails only for us to find them in the deleted itmes folder. (cost me 20 hours + work)

3.He repaired a computer for a student, he plugged the IDE lead from the hard disk to the cd drive not connecting the the mainboard.

4. Used windows 98 as a file server and a gateway and using a currupt copy of anologx proxy that crashed every 30mins

It turns out this guy could'nt do his ABC's never mind write c++ .he even whent to a business meeting in shorts and a t-shirt and lost us an important partnership deal. Ever likely I got the job a chimp could do better than Him.

I work with cell phones now. Let me tell you thats a whole different breed of customer.

I'll tell you about two of the calls I've had today.

Call 1: Customer wants to pay bill

(paraphrased for quickness)

Cus: Heres' my credit card number (7 digits)

Me: Uh thats to short.

Cus: No it isn't.

Me: Ok (Inputs number)

System: The number is wrong.

Me: The system says the numbers wrong.

Cus: It is?

Me: Most credit card numbers are 16 digits

Cus: You mean it wants the rest of these numbers?

Call 2: Finish setting up phone and finished call the last thing I heard the customer say is "How do you hang up this thing up?"

There are two offices of the same company. I work as a sysadmin in one and in the other.. well the other is run by this woman who hates technology, doesn't understand it, and doesn't want to. Let's call her Soulless Cow. Soulless Cow is on a power trip and must have her office run just so. I was hired 4 months ago and she still outsources her tech support at a very high price even though the office I work in is about 6 blocks away.

My first experience with that office was when my boss told me to go there because Soulless Cow said someone deleted windows. I asked if he had any more information than that and he didn't. So I got there and I asked Soulless Cow if she could give me any more information in the way of symptoms, what has changed, etc. and she just said "These are public computers and someone must have deleted windows...there are no windows that come up when you turn it on..." So there ended my quest for info. I sat at the computer, turned it on, and heard a *loud* annoying, clicking, grinding sound. It took me all of 20 seconds to tell that the hard drive was mechanically broken. So I replaced the hard drive and everyone was happy. Later that week, I called that office to ask if there were any more problems. A couple days later, my coworker who goes to that office a lot said that Soulless Cow told her to tell me to not call her because she's too busy and she has this outsourced company to do her tech support and if she needs anything *she* willl call *me*.

So one day, my boss says the other office is having trouble and asks me what would cause black page printouts from a laser printer and since I don't really know much about laser printers except for what I've read in my A+ books and practice tests etc, I told him it was probably dirty rollers, but I subsequently spent the next 15 seconds on google and knowing Soulless Cow, I changed my tone (pun intended) and told my boss someone probably didn't install the toner cartridge correctly. A couple days go by and my boss

comes up to me and says Soulless Cow got a quote from her outsourced company on printer repair and it was too much so they bought a replacement printer and they need me to install it for them.

Now my complaint is that they wouldn't call me to look at their printer, but they'll call me to install a REPLACEMENT printer!! Remember, I'm 6 blocks away and a lot cheaper than this outsourced company. So I rant to my boss and of course, he understands, but can't do anything about it. Then he says "oh yeah and this woman (different woman) doesn't want you to change any passwords on the computer you install the printer on" and I say (quite confused)

"why... would.."

"I know, but she just wanted me to make sure I told you."

"but.. what!?"

"just go"

So I get there and the secretary leads me to the unopened box and the computer and I am once again reminded not to change this person's passwords. I told the secretary I don't have any need to do that and she said "yeah, I know, you just need to hook up the cables and install the CD." and my eyes got wide and I was just thinking "so why the hell am I here doing it for you!?"

*sigh*

So I open the box and there are no worded instructions. The only instructions are just a series of numbers and pictures. It's that easy. So I hook it up and log into the computer (I had to switch it to log in locally as opposed to the domain since I don't have a username for the domain). I notice that there wasn't a printer cable in the box and I realized that they don't usually pack cables with printers anymore (it's been awhile). So. against my better judgement, I ask Soulless Cow if she has any spare printer cables. She asks me what kind of cable. So I say "ya know, any standard printer cable.. what they call a parallel cable.. or a USB cable." I could dumb it down any more than that. "Of course I don't know what that means." she says and I'm just thinking "then why'd you ASK!?" I ask if she still has the old printer with it's cabl

e and she says... she says... "it's being looked at"

Do you understand how this is wrong on so many levels? She is telling a sysadmin, who is in the process of setting up a replacement printer, that the replaced printer is being looked at by someone else...

Skip ahead a couple more days

My tour of duty is over.

I heartell from my boss that the company fixed the replaced printer.. at a cost of $120.

Bang head here -----> X

My recurring problem has to do with cheap ISP's and the computers I've *given* to other people.

Naturally that means "lifetime support, infinite replacement parts, infinite labor, on-call 24 hours a day", especially with family.

The problem comes up with dial-up ISPs. It starts with a call like this:

Aquaintance/friend/family Member: "Dave! My computer is broken! Come over and FIX it!" (I am not exaggerating. This is literally what I am told.)

Me: "What's wrong with it?"

Them: "It doesn't work!"

When I press for details, they can never provide any over the phone.

I come over, the computer boots normally, everything seems to be OK.

Me: "What's wrong with it?"

Them: "It doesn't work!"

Me: "It seems to work just fine."

Them: "I can't get onto (www.somewebsitethatisdownjustnow.com)!"

Alternate: "I can't get my email!"

Alternate: Some other DNS or external server based failure.

What has happened several times is, they've called their $10 a month ISP's technical support over their problem, and then the guy goes through his multi-hour script in broken English from halfway around the planet, and concludes their computer is "broken". I can only guess at what the actual wording is, because it's filtered through an abject lack of comprehension and passed on second-hand to me, after the fact.

Perhaps I've learned my lesson. Put all second-hand computer equipment through a wood chipper and pretend it never existed.

A little background: I'm a senior level systems administrator with over 12 years of experience working with unix systems. Even so, sometimes I get stumped, or just don't know what I need to know and then... I call tech support.

In my 12 years of experience, I have firmware patched an untold number of servers without issue. However, it came time to firmware patch a particular new type of enterprise level system that I have never firmware patched before. I assumed going in that things would be very similiar. Little did I know how wrong I would be. Of course to pull this off, the system would need to be down and the only allowed downtime was in the middle of the night. So there I was, sitting in a cold computer room with a subordinate, getting ready to patch a server in the middle of the night.

I first unpacked the firmware patch and tried to run it like normal, only to find that things don't work the way they used to. Instead of installing the firmware directly from the system you are patching, you need to enter into a hardware mode and download the firmware patch from a completely different server. OK, no biggie, I read the instructions, move the patch over to another server, and start following the directions, step by step. Only to discover that the firmware patch is not downloading. At which point I began the great attempt to figure out what is wrong. I tried a number of different strategies without much success, reread the instructions multiple times, all to no avail. A sneaking suspicion is wandering through my head that the networking information needed to communicate via tcp/ip is not configured inside this hardware mode, but have no clue how to access that configuration.

Me: OK, time to call tech support and get their help on this.

Companion: OK, I'll give them a ring

C: Hi. Yes. This is Soandso at large government agency, tech support information is.....

C: We are having a problem firmware patching a server, OK, thanks.

C to me: they are forwarding

me to the proper group.

C: Hi, yes, case ID #, yes having a problem firmware patching a server. Yes I read the instructions.

C: OK, he says to do these steps......

M: Those are the instructions, verbatim, word for word from the README file. Tell him we did this already.

C: We did this already.

C: He says that we need to (same instructions)

M: Give me the phone. I am Soandso's boss, I want this case immediately escalated to a senior engineer with the proper expertise and experience.

Techie: That is not needed, we can get this done, according to the manual...

M: I have read the manual 10 times, and been futzing with this thing for the past 2 hours, I need a senior engineer.

What is going through my head, is that this guy is reading the instructions directly from the manual, which I can now recite by rote. Which means this guy has as even less experience than I do!!

T: According to the manual...

M: I have read the manual, I have done what it says in the manual, I want to escalate. I think this has to do with the network configuration settings on the server....

Big mistake.... I said the word NETWORK!

T: (cutting me off) OH, this is a network issue, I'll forward you over to the network group.

M: NOOO!!!!!.... (ring! ring!)

This now put me in contact with a new tech support guy who was even more clueless. I will give him credit, he knew he was clueless, and he was determined to help me. He conference called in another techie and we began trouble shooting the situation, the new guy wasn't quoting the manual (he's done this before) but he still had limits and we quickly hit a wall. Suddenly I am talking to yet a 4th engineer and when he came on, I asked him if he knew what he was doing and he said yes. 30 seconds later I was staring at the configuration and seeing nothing but blanks for the IP address, netmask, broadcast, etc. 2 minutes later it was configured and the download worked perfectly.

It seems I had

one bit of knowledge the first tech support people didn't have. I knew my limits, and I had the experience to know theirs as well. Had they just listened and sent me to the right guy, I could have been done in 3 minutes flat instead of the hour it took due to call transfers, being put on hold, etc.

Kalli

Actual conversation earlier today:

start.myisp.net

http://www.myisp.com?

start.myisp.net

myisp.net?

start.myisp.net

fprrtmyisp.net?

start.myisp.net

startmyisp.net?

if you want to go to a porn site.

what?

start.myisp.net

www.sart.myisp.com?

start.myisp.net

www.start.myisp.net?

start.myisp.net

startmyisp.net?

start.myisp.net

http:\\?

start.myisp.net

ww?

start.myisp.net

start.myisp.net?

yes

After being turend onto Linux by a friend, I was trying to set up the internet connection, and while configuring, i called *name of major cable tv/internet provider, starts with C...* and asked for some simple information, hostname, dns server, etc. and then they asked why I wanted this information, I told them I wanted to connect my Linux os to the internet. 10 (imaginary) bucks to everyone who thinks they know what the fool told me....

Him: "I'm sorry, we don't support linux"

Me: "Then it must be hard to conect to 80% of the Servers on the internet." *Click*

I've done support and presales for a variety of products. For one call the caller needed to upload a file to us for me to look at. I asked him to do so, and he hesitated - "How do you spell FTP?"

Another one was asking me if they could use a networked product from outside the network. I explained that they could if they had some sort of authenticated network access, such as a VPN connection. "How do you spell that?"

If I hadn't spent five years as a radio presenter I'd really start worrying that I wasn't speaking clearly...

The rest of the story is irrelevant - This is a question from an IT Professional - Who gets paid good money as a DBA.

"How do I click on a cell in Microsoft Excel?"

I think Ive said enough already.

Funniest ever call i heard about was this woman ringing up my work asking about her sons phone bill (it was in her name because he was under age). It had all these 1900 numbers on it, and she asked the rep what they were. The rep didnt know, so he rang them. They were Gay Sex lines.

He told the woman, she flipped out and screamed her sons name and slammed the phone down.

Finding out your sons gay from a phone company, priceless.

I was working for a collection agency not so long ago where I was the local tech support for about 400 users. The network "services" group didn't like me because I actually fixed things instead of waiting for one of them to fly 2000 miles from their office to mine to fix a keyboard or mouse problem. Not that this ever happened, which is why the local office hired me in the first place. So one day we finally migrate from NT to Windows 2000 Advanced Server and the network services guys get the bright idea of restricting my rights to nothing. When I log into my profile I get pretty blue screen and nothing else. When I call them up they get a good laugh at my expense and then explain that they have no intent of restoring my access, effectively putting me out of a job. These guys are the TR-80 speed techs so I figure I'll see if they read the whole migration document on NT to W2KAS. I went to log in as the root and entered my password as "password" and what do you know? I immediately promoted my profile to just under the root and gave myself admin rights to everything. Then I restricted my tech friends from the trouble ticket system (Remedy) to see what would happen. Instead of figuring out what happened the techies created new profiles thinking that theirs were corrupted by the migration. I was laid off about a year later during a bankruptcy and I still am able to log in to the system and no one ever approached me about the root problem.

TECH;Welcome to tech support, how can I help you?

CUSTOMMER; Well, I have DSL at home... and now I hear strange noise over my phone line...

TECH; Yes, I ear it to... Here's what we gonna do, we're going to unplug your modem and see if we still ear the noise.

CUSTOMMER; I can't, I am not at home, I am in week-end house...

(if only the call ended here...)

TECH; Sir, I see in our database that you call earlier today for the same problem and our tech told you to call your phone company tech support... did you call them?

CUSUMMER; Yes, and they told me they would send me a tech...

My dad, before he retired, had moved up from computer engineer to computer diagnostician, which effectively meant he didn't get to do any of the "fun stuff" (although I'm sure a lot of the engineers would have sacrificed the fun stuff for his salary). Can I just warn everyone that technical skills do not run in the family - I am a good computer user, but not an engineer, so this won't be deeply technical. On this occasion Dad had just returned from a trip to Greece to upgrade a system for a client, and was therefore handed the phone when said client called to complain.

"It's not running the reports properly."

My dad figured out fairly quickly that this was not the person he usually dealt with (a rather tech-savvy female director) but a young male plod.

"What's it doing?"

"It just stops after five minutes."

"Does it give an error message?"

"We haven't been in there." (This was a very large system - it had its own room, but all the computers were hooked up on a network.)

"So how do you know..."

"It comes up as finished on the screen."

At this point Dad heard a female voice in the background getting increasingly louder and accompanied by running footsteps.

"WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?????"

Click.

The female director later called and apologised. Apparently these reports usually took about half an hour to run, but after the upgrade things were running a lot faster. The plod had looked at his screen, seen it had finished after five minutes, and thought "That can't be right... it should take half an hour, it must have crashed!"

Despite having a father who was a computer engineer and diagnostician, I am not a technical person, nor do I claim to be. What I am is an adept computer user, which in a previous (temp) job led me to be the point of contact for problems with a computer program known as the "Purchasing System".

The program we used was not particularly complicated, but all the data had to be entered properly when raising a purchase order otherwise when it reached me I couldn't process it. Despite their being trained on this, there were certain people in the company who were the bane of my life - they didn't bother to enter prices so I would have to look them up, they would enter their product codes wrong (a combination of their cost centre and a code for the item class, such as ST for stationery) which thanks to a bug would lock the system and force me to crash it, or they would fail to enter enough information on the product. In order to process each item I had to assign it an item code, for which I needed some kind of catalogue number for the product, and it was in this situation that I encountered the Woman From Hell. (WFH for short.)

Her purchase order had to be sent back due to an unidentifiable item of stationery - she had the catalogue code wrong. (Stationery came from a company with a catalogue on its website - I had checked the code and it came back unrecognised.) She returned it to me with the comment "It's correct!" attached. I sent it back, politely pointing out the problem AGAIN. She then rang me up in a blazing fury.

WFH: It's for recordable CDs!

M (me): Yes, but I need the correct code for it.

WFH: It's for recordable CDs! That should be good enough.

M: No, I need the code so that I can put it through the system. The code you gave me isn't coming up on the website.

WFH: It's correct!

M: I'm sorry, but it isn't. Could you check it again?

WFH: No, I can't check it again. I'm a busy person and you're only a temp. You clearly don't know what you're doing. I'm sending it back and I expect it to be processed this time.

When it came back again, I checked the code and it was most definitely wrong. Not wanting to tackle her again, I passed the problem over to a slightly more senior colleague, who checked it over herself and then sent a coldly polite email to WFH, reminding her that we were also very busy people and did not have time to look through thousands of codes to correct her mistakes.

She corrected it herself and I never had a peep out of her again.

I've seen someone stick a CD in an old 5 1/4" floppy drive thinking it was a CR-Rom!

Another issue: I've also seen someone that had put an AGP Video card in a PCI slot (don't ask 'cause I don't know either).

Part of my job is tech support for a group of academics. A few months ago, this professor with more grant funding than sense asks me to upgrade his Pentium2 to WinXP (retard edition). I tell him his 2 gig HD won't cut it for the XP install. He agrees to buy a replacement.

A few weeks later, when his system goes titsup, he upgrades to a P4. I get a free 60 gig HD for my home computer out of his old box before it hits the skip.

Many years ago, when I was a printer tech, I got a call from one of the users in the building that the printer was jamming constantly, and they just HAD to have this presentation ready, could I please fix it ASAP?

After determining the type (an old LJ3), I went to the location with a spare fuser, pickup roller, etc....,

and as soon as I opened the printer, I saw the problem.

These people were creating overheads for a projector, and were using the acetate (clear) sheets, and one of them was completely wrapped around the fuser and welded to it.

Asking a few questions, it appears that they ran out of laser transparencies, and "borrowed" some from the box for the inkjet printer. These are NOT able to handle the 400f+ of a laser printer. I kept a straight face while I replaced the fuser, but everyone in the shop was howling when they saw the "shrink-wrapped" fuser.

After reading "Cup Holder's Revenge", I started thinking about how to cool your beverages. And then I went surfing and found something called thermoelectric coolers at hitechtec.com. Check it out, I think -150 C is cold enough.

Alright. This guy calls me a few weeks ago complaining that he cant get this device (Name withheld to protect me- thus ill call it WIDGET) to work. Customer has the widget installed correctly and had completed most of the upload process. During the upload process you have to update a txt file and to review the contents before going for full system update. Wanting to investigate further I asked the customer to fax me a copy of the report that the "widget" creates so i can examine it before giving a more accurate diagnosis of the problem. After kindly giving him my efax number i saved the call to my personal que and awaited the fax. 10,20,30 minutes , 1 day, 2 days later no fax no nothing so i closed the call..

Now fast forward a week. I get back from lunch and my boss calls me and asks to see me in her office. Well it turns out that customer A emailed her and complained that i was condesending and rude to him and most of all short, as if i wanted to get him off the phone. As it turns out he resolved the issue himself shortly after we ended the call and felt as if i didnt do anything to help him? DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO HELP HIM. such BS i say. I didnt know what i was dealing with thus i took the most logical course of action which was to have him send me the report. Plus as i told my boss, How is it my fault is the customer resolves the issue before i call him back. Actually isnt that preferred ???? And at the very least acceptable?? grrrrrrrrrrrrr Life as a tech.. Gotta love it!

While working as a temp a few years ago, I was acting as main point of contact for the purchasing system and for stationery orders, which were fairly straightforward to do using the purchase order program but which still seemed to throw several people a week. (Not half as bad as your average tech supporter, I know.) On this occasion we had just gone live with a new system specifically for ordering stationery (the new stationery providers used an order form on their website). For months beforehand we had been working frantically to ensure that everyone who needed it would have their own log-in for the site, their own protocols for ordering (so no-one could go ordering filing cabinets without permission, as had happened once or twice) and a link in their Favourites. However, I had been warned - and was aware anyway - that things were bound to go wrong in the first week.

The first phone call was, in my opinion, perfect.

"Hi, I can't find the link on my homepage. I'm sure it's just me looking in the wrong place..."

I love people like that. I helped her look and it turned out IT hadn't put it on for her, so I raised a call with IT and she went away happy.

Then came the next one.

"I can't find the link! Where is it? It's supposed to be on my homepage!"

I might add at this point that you had to BE on your homepage to access your Favourites. Don't ask me why. This company was so security-conscious you were barely allowed internet access. I asked her where she was, and she replied "On the homepage, of course!"

"OK, can you go up to the menu bar at the top of the screen..."

"Where?"

Skip fifteen minutes of invective as I discovered she was on a completely different page. Get her back to the homepage.

"At the top of the screen is the menu bar. Move your mouse up to Favourites... click... OK, run down to [name of company]... hold it there... it should be in there."

"Oh. Well, it should be easier to find."

Click.

Several more people rang that day, all of whom fitted into one of two categories: "It's all my fault... oh, isn't it?" and "It's all YOUR fault... oh, right." Finally, just before I went home, I received a raging email.

"I wasn't told ANYTHING about this stationery change-over and I'm supposed to be ORDERING and I don't know what to DO!"

That's the shortened version. The long version slandered me completely, as it declared that she had received NONE of the emails I had sent out, had been invited to NONE of the training sessions (which I had organised), and in short had been ignored and mistreated. All of this was complete bullsh*t, but made me slightly concerned for my job, since she had copied her email to just about everyone above me. I passed this email to my manager, protesting my innocence, and was fortunately told not to worry... this woman was one of the many who deleted all her important emails and thereby dropped herself right in it.

Just thanking God she didn't manage to drop ME in it.

I have done tech support for a fairly large ISP for 3 years. In that time I thought I had heard it all. Today I was proved wrong. A customer called because someone informed her that email messages to her were bouncing and her mailbox might be full. She insisted that her mailbox was empty and she had no idea why she wasn't getting these messages. She then says to me, "Can I go to my unbounce page and unbounce myself?" I wasn't sure if I should laugh at her or apolize because she was so clusless.

One day I'm trying to help a user from Colombia who speaks absolutely no English. I use my little spanish just to walk her through giving me her IP Address, since we have PCAnywhere running hidden in all employee PCs.

After I manage to connect to the client, in order to certify I'm connected to the right PC I usually move the mouse around in circles and ask the user if they see the mouse thing on the screen moving in circles...

Ok, I understand she does not see it moving in circles.

Crap, minutes gone by and I'm still trying to figure out it is her desktop I see on my screen.

Asked user one more time to make sure the mouse is not moving in circles. She replies something like this:

"The little arrow on the screen is moving in circles. But the mouse is still sitting still on the mouse pad. Does that help?"

I used to work in a government building as an extremely low-level administrator, which effectively meant getting spat on by everyone above me. However, unlike one particular idiot in the office, at least I knew how to work a fax machine.

I didn't like this guy. I mean REALLY didn't like him. He had an annoying habit of hovering around my desk waiting for me to finish whatever he'd given me to do (he even followed me back and forth from the printer on one occasion), would badger me while I was eating my lunch, and was always booking meeting rooms for himself "just in case" and then refusing to give them up when others needed them. The fax machine was directly in front of my desk, and so I got a good view when he started fiddling with it one morning.

He must have put the sheet through three times before someone offered him help. (Like I was going to.)

"Do I have to dial 9?"

The other guy turned to me, so I said "Only if you're dialling an outside line."

Arrogant Git (AG, if you will) ignored me, so the other guy asked him if he was dialling an outside line. He wasn't. He was faxing it to another building. OK, so no 9. We'll skip ten minutes while AG got the extension wrong as myself and the other guy tried to tell him it was five digits, not four, and get to the point where the sheet went through.

"Check it goes," he said to me, and went off.

I checked the machine. It hadn't gone, and on the display was the five-digit extension - with a 9 in front of it.

Sigh.

And just to add insult to injury, AG had managed to throw a glass of water over the table the fax machine stood on. He hadn't hit the machine itself, but had left an almost invisible puddle in front of it, where the paper came out. So the next man to use it fed his paper in, and SPLOSH!

I have 2 stories here. While I have done some tech support in past years, neither is especially tech related but will sound familiar to some tech support people here.

First:

I had one man come in, asked the cashier for 2 "things" (his words) that were on hold for him. The cashier calls me up since I might have better luck getting an answer as she has a long line. I get him to tell me that he is talking about printers. I ask what brand/model since I vaguely remember my manager putting a couple on hold just after opening that morning (this was at 4 pm, we opened at 8).

Him: (getting majorly pissed)They were put on hold for me!!! I called and got them put on hold!!!!

Me: Who did you talk to? Was his name xxx or xxxx?

Him: I don't know, it was my sister that called!!!

Me: I'm sorry sir, please calm down. You said it was you who called, that's why I asked. Let me go up to the service desk and see what is on hold. Do you have the name it was under?

Him: I can't deal with this !@#$. I can't believe you people!!! Why can't you just give me my printers??

Me: Did you already pay for them and are just picking them up? (we do have a will-call order, but that could have been backed up since we were busy)

Him: No, I haven't paid for them yet!!!!! I can't deal with this !@#$ anymore!!! (goes running/stomping out the door, tripping on a "wet floor" sign since it was raining buckets)

Me: Have a nice day (trying partially successfully to hold in my laughter at his "graceful" exit)

I had to repeat his performance to everyone who duly laughed at him, except my main manager who never finds a missed sale funny, even for such an a**hole.

---------------------

Second:

Background: We have flyers that come out every single week advertising different sales and such. We generally run out of the good priced items very quickly, especially if the item in question costs above $50 (stocking costs)

Had an older couple come in wishing to buy a shredder on massive sale. They become very upset when I tell them we were out of them (it was a week sale and they came on Friday, as anyone in retail knows sale items are usually gone by then). This transpires:

(while husband is off looking at God knows what)

Me: I'm sorry, we are currently out of those. We can give you a raincheck for the item (not company policy, just our stupid GM's policy)

Her: But you have the display out there. Why can't we have that?

Me: Well, we have a legal liability to have a display for every single sale item. That is the law as I understand it. My managers will not allow the display to leave the store willy-nilly, otherwise it would have been gone on Sunday.

Her: Oh, ok.....

Me: But you can get it for the sale price when it does come in. Remember what I promised about the raincheck?

Her: Ok....

Me: I'm really sorry we couldn't help you today. Please call back next Wednesday and we will hopefully have them in then.

(leaves to help another customer, thinking I defused the situation)

A few minutes later her husband who had disappeared for the previous conversation reappears, very irate-looking:

Him: Ok, I know you don't have any of that thing in boxes but you can sell us the display!

Me: (smiling the whole time) Well, I explained it all to your wife sir. What we can do is --

Him: Your explanation was bull!@#$!! I need that shredder right this second!!

Me (thinking): Yeah, I'm really gonna be nice and give you what you want with you screaming in my face.

Me (talking): It is companywide policy, and in fact legal liability that says --

Him: I don't care about your legal liability! I'm a customer and I want that shredder now!!

Me: Sir, I cannot give it to you. Would you like me to --

Him: I want you to get me that shredder now!!!!

Me: Sir, I explained it to you the only way I can. If you don't like it you can call the Better Business Bureau.

Him: I will!!! And I'll call your corporate office and report you specifically!! (I had given the woman my card as part of the raincheck agreement I made.....)

Me: (still smiling) Well, have a nice day sir!

Me: (thinking) He's gonna get laughed at by both the BBB and the corp office.

It's been about a month since this happened and no feedback from corporate or the BBB. I made sure to tell my managers about this so they have been looking for anything on this and nothing has yet come up.

A week back, I called my phone company and asked to have distinctive ringing added to my phone line. This is because I wanted to add a Fax (with distinctive ring capability), a modem (with DR capability) and a TDD device (with DR capability) to the phone. The person on the other end cheerfully added the DR servie; she gave me the new numbers and ring patterns and politely sent me on my way, quite happy. Except when I got home, I couldn't find the paper on which I'd written the numbers. The online "account management" didn't list my extra numbers, so I called their support line and got the business office:

Person 1: "**** how may I help you?"

Me: I had distinctive ringing added to my home telephone number, and I lost the paper with th enumbers and ring patterns. Can you look them up for me?"

P1: "I'm sorry, but I'll have to transfer you to repair--they have that info."

[Ringing]

Person 2: "Repair; this is *****; how can I help you?"

Me: .

P2: "Is this is for your home phone, or is it a cell phone?"

Me: "My home phone."

P2: "I'm sorry, but you were accidently sent to mobile repair. The extensions are pretty similar, so I can underatand the mistake. Let me transfer you."

Person 3: "Repair services; this is ****; how can I help you?"

Me:

P3: "I'm sorry, but I don't have access to that. You'll need to call the business office. I have their number."

Me: "I called the business office; they sent me to mobile repair, who sent me to you. Can you please transfer me to someone who knows what he or she is doing?"

[Click]

I called back.

Person 4: "Hello and thank you for calling ***. How can I help you?"

Me: "Hopefully you can be less useless than the last three people."

P4: "Sir; I understand you're frustrated, but have we really been useless?"

Me: "The woman in the business office told me she couldn't and transffered me to mobile repair. The guy in mobile repair sent me to landline repair. The guy on landline repair told me to call the business office, then either hung up or disconnected me when trying to forward the call."

P4: "I guess we have been pretty useless. OK. Let's see if I can do better. What's the problem?"

Me: .

P4: "Which main number is this on; I see two under your account."

Me: .

P4: "One moment please. Here they are: .

Me: "Thanks."

P4: "I'm glad I could help. Is there anything else I can do?"

Me: "Yes, please put yourself in for a commendation for understanding what I needed and getting it for me."

P4: "You're welcome, but I was just doing my job."

Me: "Thanks again for your help; bye."

P4: "Have a good evening sir. By the way, why three DR #'s? If I may ask."

Me: <I explain>.

P4: I'm glad I don't have to sort that mess out. Please call again if yoy have any more trouble."

[Disconnect]

Why couldn't the first person in the business office do the same job? It's just a guess, but I suspect it was either an ID-ten-T error, or just laziness.

My wife and I just bought a new computer a couple of days ago, our first with a DVD-ROM. When I went to work, I told my wife that she should try watching a DVD on the computer, just to get a feel for how the computer worked. She seemed pretty confident, so I let her go at it and I went off.

When I got home I asked her how it went. She told me that no matter what she tried, she couldn't get it to work.

I went into the office to have a look. The first thing my eyes fell upon was the TV remote. She told me that no matter what button she pressed, she couldn't get the computer to play a DVD.

It was all I could do to keep that gentle look in my eyes as I told her, "Hunny, that's just not going to work..."

I used to do tech support for a printer manufacturer (whose name I won't say, but it's an anagram of PH). This call happened a few months ago, but it's still fresh in my mind...

Me: Thank you for calling *yada yada yada*. How may I help you today?

Lady (polite as can be): When I try to print I get an error message saying (some bizzare message I'd never heard of before. But, hey, at least she knew it)

Me: Have you added any new hardware or software lately?

Lady: No.

So, I go about the standard trouble-shooting, but no matter what we do, re-installing the printer, rebooting to Safe Mode, anything, we're getting strange errors. Finaly, after I told her the problem must be her operating system, she confessed:

Lady: Well, after my son used the computer last week, I found a directory called windows that had a lot of files in it that I didn't know what they were, and when I opened them up in Word, they were all strange words and things that looked dirty to me. So I erased everything in the files and then saved them again.

(silence)

Lady: I did something bad, didn't I?

Yes, ma'am, you certainly did.

This happened a few years back but was brought to mind by a similar occurence just today. A member of our HR department, reknowned for constantly overestimating her own importance with respect to the rest of the world calls me and says, "Mark, I think the e-mail server's down..."

(Like I wouldn't know - I'm the sysadmin, it's not like these things aren't my whole life or anything)

"...I'm not getting any e-mails"

So I tell her that I know it's working perfectly because (a) I can access my e-mail, (b) I'm receiving messages with no problems and (c) I'm consoled into the damn thing watching e-mails merrily trot back and forth between everybody else in the building

I ask her if she's considered the remote possibility that nobody has sent her any e-mail today, so she replies by telling me that she hasn't had any e-mails for four days now, with a definite "I'm important so people must want to mail me all the time" sort of attitude. I send her an e-mail. She gets it. She won't accept that the e-mail server is functioning a-okay and the other 650 users are quite content.

So, I check through 4 days of logs, of 10,000 records each, and sure enough she hasn't received any e-mails in 4 days. She hasn't sent any either. To this day, she will not accept that the e-mail server is not actually capable of lying. She went on maternity leave last year, and in my first committtee meeting with her after her return she made a comment along the lines of "since we know the e-mail system is so unreliable... yadda yadda yadda..."

So thousands of £££'s worth of investment in a system (Novell GroupWise btw) that has handled hundreds upon thousands of e-mails and crashed ONCE in 3 years is still not enough to convince her that for four days, nobody saw any particular need to send her a message.

I can't for the life of me imagine why! :-)

I am sysadmin for a college for Further Education (ie vocational courses) in the UK - one of the courses is a Diploma in computer studies, the advanced section of which covers networking theory and practical implementation. This is a conversation between me and the networking teacher which occured 2 years ago whilst we were planning the requirements for this particular course.

Him (The teacher, who should really know what he's talking about): We need Windows 2000 Server for this course

Me (who actually does know what I'm talking about): We're not licensed for that, but NT4 Server will do you just as well until we can sort out the additional licenses

Him: But we need 2000, NT4 won't meet the curriculum requirements

Me: Er - they're pretty much the same thing and NT4 will do everything you need - why 2000 in particular?

Him: Because NT4 server won't do DHCP and DNS...

And you teach WHAT exactly!?

If my stories all appear together I apologise for hogging the board but I've had a bad day and am after some payback on the people I work for / with! (and there's more!)

As is pretty much standard practice, our staff can log onto pretty much any PC they please - individual logins, roaming profiles, you know the score. This e-mail was sent to our helpdesk this morning (from a l-u-u-u-u-SER (thanks Jim Carrey) who has been here since forever). On one level I can sort of understand where she's coming from. On another, more sensible level, I would like very much to shout at her a lot:

====

To: IT Helpdesk

From: muppet of the highest order

Hi all,

I'm trying to log into a PC in another office, but I don't know the username. Can you tell me what it is.

Thanks

Jane

====

How are you logged in? How did you send this e-mail? You're over 50, do you still not know what your name is? You've worked here for 10 years! how do you function in a normal human existence? Would you like me to wipe your arse for you? ARGH!

(me again!)

Told to me by my former manager (Paul) who also used to work tech support before management happened to him:

Paul had gone to fix a problem. Normally, like all good techies, he would never ask for a user's password, however without direct access to a copy of the admin console to reset her password, and trying to fix something that involved many reboots, he told the user that he would not normally ask this, but for convenience sake, could he have her password. She wasn't a luser by any stretch of the imagination, but refused. Quite correctly, you may think, if she hadn't simultaneously turned a deep shade of purple. Again, Paul explained that this wasn't normal practice, and for security he would ensure that her password would be reset afterwards, and he's going to be here for some hours, and may need her to log in over and over and over, so please can he have her password.

Eventually he convinced her to write it down on a post-it note, blushing crimson and excusing herself from his prescence pretty sharpish.

Her password...?

"CLITORIS"

hehehehehehehe!!

(and Mark again!)

I used to work contract support and this was one of those days. The customer did not have a support contract and I was fully booked for the day with callouts from fee-paying customers:

The customer phoned and told me their server had "frozen" and they couldn't do any work. I pointed out that they were not on contract and I was booked out for the day and they would have to wait until tomorrow. The customer started getting angry, blabbing about how many thousands of pounds they were losing per hour - at which point I really wanted to point out that if they weren't so stingy in the first place, I'd be there in a shot - however I offered to talk her through a reboot over the phone, which she refused saying she wanted an engineer on site NOW and even threatened to get a story in the local press about how crap our company was if nobody showed up. Regardless of right or wrong, this was only a small company I worked for and something like that might have killed us, so I capitulated and offered to drive by on my way to my first job, explaining that in addition to the normal £55 per hour, minimum first hour payment, she would be billed an additional £25 fee call out charge - which she grudgingly accepted as long as their server worked again.

So I get there and the female MD immediately starts going off on one; why is it that customers think that losing their religion at IT support will make us more inclined to fix things? I take one look at her "frozen" server, PLUG THE KEYBOARD BACK IN, and hey presto, wooo, the server works!!

They hadn't even bothered to check if they could access their server-based purchasing system, they'd just gone to change the backup tape and when the server (Netware 3.12) didn't respond to keyboard input they called me.

We billed them the £80 and they refused to pay as I'd only been onsite for about 5 minutes (4 mins 30 seconds of which spent listening to her bitching). We instigated court proceedings. They settled before it went to court (I mean, £80 - that's a good night out for two at a fine restaurant, and this was a multimillion pound business they were running). They never called us again.

Their company folded two months later... HA. HA. HA. !

(and Mark yet again! I'm on a roll)

Couple of months ago one of our remote lecturers brought her laptop into our IT dept. explaining that her laptop had stopped working the night before and she needed it fixed urgently.

(I should point out here that although a number of the stories I've posted involve female clients, this is not a sexist thing it's just the way it happened.)

When our techies opened the case, they found the TFT screen scratched and bleeding and one of the hinges broken, the shell cracked and half the operating system missing (although it still booted). MS Office had been deleted, along with the My Documents folder. Out of curiosity I had a look and found no less than 5 porn diallers (the sort that install their own DUN connection and bill you at premium rate) on the system!

And of course, this had all "mysteriously" happened overnight...!

(last one tonight, I promise)

Follows on from my last story about customers threatening IT support - I apologise for the foul language but it's kinda necessary to the story. We were upgrading an entire network and the customer was unhappy that this was taking more than a few minutes.

Customer: If you don't fix my !@#$ING e-mail I will !@#$ING KILL you!!

Me: *packs up, drives off, leaves the company with a half a network and no functionality. Takes the rest of the day off, along with a bottle of wine and never, ever, ever goes back there again*

Sheesh, we've invaded small countries for less than that.

Way back in 486 time, me and another teacher (call him Fred) were playing with a screen saver called "After Dark". One of Fred's kids was playing with Fred's laptop and changed the Hot Key from CTRL-SHIFT-S to the letter "e". So my friend is typing in WORD and keeps booting into the screensaver (every time he hits "e"). Well Fred is not stupid and figures out the problem pretty quickly.

Next Monday Fred tells me about it and we think its a huge giggle - so next time I'm in the Principals's office when he's not there, I change the hot key on his screensaver to "e".

Well I don't hear anything else about it until about 3 months later when the Principal and his Deputy are discussing the problem and planning to uninstall the screen saver. I wander into the office and miracle of miracles, I know what's wrong and fix it immediately. They think I'm wonderful and I don't spoil it by indicating that I had set the problem up in the first place.

Thing that I found most amusing was that the Principal had not used his computer in 3 months!!

This Principal also had a variation on the "any key" problem. He had an application that wanted an answer (Y/N) and asked me where was the "YES" key?

If your not familiar with solid ink thermal transfix printers, they are basically a very fast color office printer, they also expend alot of heat. I had a customer call in, whom had been moving the office around. The printer was turned on and plugged in. Mind you this printer not only stays warm when its on, it weighs about 150 lbs. Someone decided they would just pick it up and move it "while tured on". This thing is about as big as most adult mens upper torsoes. Needless to say he was supprised by the printers fuzzy warm feeling, and its gerth. He almost dropped it, then proceeded to adjust his weight and more or less, toss the printer on the counter it had been on. It then displayed an error code, which i will refer to as ID10T. When she turned it back on for me the error was gone, but the printer made a noise like a mack truck with a bad exhaust manifold. UH THATS NOT COVERED UNDER YER WARRANTY.

I used to work as a techie for Palm Inc. My favorite few calls are as follows:

One lady called in, absolutely furious because she said there was no stylus in her box. So I told her the stylus comes *inside* the handheld - she says "There's nothing there, I tell you!" and proceeds to holler and yell. So I asked her to settle down and look at the back of her Palm. She flips it around and says "What am I looking for?". I asked her if she saw a 'funny looking notch' at the top corner. She says "Yeah, right here." I asked if there was a piece of plastic jammed in there. She says "Yeah, what kind of junk is this?". I told her that was her stylus. She says "Well how am I supposed to get it out?!?". I asked her to please try using her finger nail to pry it out. She said "I just painted my nails, that's why I didn't try to get it out before!"...

...

Another gentleman called asking about what the Palm warranty covers - he wanted to know if it would cover water damage. We said it would, but ONLY if the warranty was purchased BEFORE the damage was made. He then made a rather small "Oh" sound. He then went on to admit that he had been using his Palm at a urinal stall and dropped it in before flushing, and apparently the fluid in the urinal - well, needless to say, it didn't work anymore, and he was hoping to get it replaced.

What I'm wondering is, if he was using 2 hands to operate his Palm, how... ?

...

And this one, oh my. We had this gentleman call in and ask us "What's your top-of-the line best, most expensive model?" I explained to him all the features of our newest and best models, and he decided he wanted to order the color, high res, super expensive Palm. He also decided to order all of the games expansion cards we had with it. He then proceeded to ask "Do you need to know how to read to use this?" I explained that is was just like any computing device, and literacy is usually helpful to get the full potential of the device. He asked "Do you think my 4 year old would like it? I just HAVE to get a better present than her mother is getting"...

Right. What's a 4 year old going to do with a wireless handheld computer?

This is odd.. a story from a user about a Tech-Support ;-)

I am well aware that there is nothing this Helpdesk can do to help me, but forwarding this to a technician who develops the Firmware for the Router.

You say that all the vital functions work, yes they do.. But I want to use all of its features, and I did cough up a lot of money for it.

The attached textfile contains the SSDP-packet the Router sends, where it reports the wrong IP for eth0. I want to be able to select wich interface it whould report, or that it will report the IP the user sets him/herself, and not its default IP.

This IS a bug in the firmware, and I want an updated firmware where this problem is solved.

And please, not another respond by some Helpdesk person who don't understand the contents in this mail, or the logged packet wich is attached.

Sincerly

Daniel Roth

mr.roth@gmx.net

----- Original Message -----

From: SpeedTouch Helpdesk

To: 'mr.roth@gmx.net'

Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 5:40 PM

Subject: [spam] 1-1801123 / BE305885 / How to configure Router

Dear Mr. Roth,

Thank You for posting your Request to SpeedTouch Helpdesk.

We summarise your request as follows, please correct us if the following information proves

to be incorrect or if additional information may be useful in helping us to solve your issue:

Product:

Computer:

Computer Model: Desktop

Operating System: Windows XP SP1

ALCATEL Product:

Modem: ST 510 R4.0

Driver:

Problem:

The problem as I've figured out, is that WinXP isn't able to connect to

the interface 169.254.234.249/16, since I use 192.168.0.x/24 on my

network, and have set the IGD to use 192.168.0.254/24. (However, it has

assigned two IP to the eth0-interface)

pppoe 81.227.113.116/32 Auto pat

eth0 169.254.234.249/16 Auto none

eth0 192.168.0.254/24 User none

loop 127.0.0.1/8 Auto none

If i check for a new firmware, it tells me that I'm already running the

latest Firmware available. What i believe is the error, is the router

reporting the 169/16-address to my WinXP-machine and an updated Firmware

should correct this.

See topics "uPNP-aware Internet Gateway disappears" at

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?author=Daniel+Roth&email=mr.roth@gmx.net

for complete log of my troubleshooting.

Attached Packet:

Frame 567 (399 bytes on wire, 399 bytes captured)

Ethernet II, Src: 00:90:d0:5a:5b:1a, Dst: 01:00:5e:7f:ff:fa

Destination: 01:00:5e:7f:ff:fa (01:00:5e:7f:ff:fa)

Source: 00:90:d0:5a:5b:1a (192.168.0.254)

Type: IP (0x0800)

Internet Protocol, Src Addr: 169.254.234.249 (169.254.234.249), Dst Addr: 239.255.255.250 (239.255.255.250)

User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 24922 (24922), Dst Port: 1900 (1900)

Source port: 24922 (24922)

Destination port: 1900 (1900)

Length: 365

Checksum: 0x1c8d (correct)

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

NOTIFY * HTTP/1.1\r\n

Request Method: NOTIFY

HOST:239.255.255.250:1900\r\n

CACHE-CONTROL:max-age=180\r\n

LOCATION:http://169.254.234.249:80/IGD.xml\r\n

SERVER:SpeedTouch 510 4.0.0.9.0 UPnP/1.0 (DG233B00012979)\r\n

NT:urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:WANConnectionDevice:1\r\n

USN:uuid:UPnP-SpeedTouch510-1_00-90-D0-5A-5B-1A_WCDpppoe::urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:WANConnectionDevice:1\r\n

NTS:ssdp:alive\r\n

\r\n

Solution:

Considering that the elementar hardware and software functions of the SpeedTouch router are proven to be working and that this situation looks like a complex networking question which needs much more time and information to be solved, providing a solution to your question unfortunately goes beyond the support boundaries of the SpeedTouch Helpdesk.

Thank you for making ALCATEL products part of your Internet Solution.

Kind Regards,

Speedtouch Helpdesk

I'm stunned... Doesn't the people at that Tech-support realize that it is a bug in their firmware, and I've supplied all information they need to troubleshoot and improve the functionality in their hardware ??

/Out

i was once called out to a customer, who had mistakenly deleted a folder containing a large majority of their data. they had a tape drive, and about 20 tapes. on attempting to restore the data - it was apparent that the data had been deleted the day before - they had backed this up - on inspecting the other 19 tapes - i discovered that they had not been used in about 2 years. obviously they had lost their data.

the cherry on top - they blamed my company for not telling them to rotate the tapes, or how to check/restore backups.

(they never purchased any equipment from us, and we had never done any work for them before this.)

i thought this story was worthy.

Ok, this might seem like a rant ... but my head hurts from banging it on the desk so much.

I am not a tech support member (have been in the past tho) I am jsut the poor sap that everyone asks for help cos I "know something about computers".

I get a phone call from a branch office. The conversation goes something like this ....

IT : me

WG : muppet

WG : Our internet is really really slow, we need to make it quicker

IT : Er .. but you upgraded the connection last week from 512 to 1024 ... it should be lots quicker...

WG : Yeah, we checked, and its definitely upgraded, but if anything, its slower.

I get them to do a tracert, ping, server processor load, everything is whizzing along ....

IT : Ok, so what have you changed in teh office then ?

WG : Nothing

IT : No, seriously, what have you changed ... anything at all ?

WG, well, we plugged in the other switch, but nothing with the server.

IT : (deep breath, wondering why question was so hard first time ....) Ok, what switch ...

WG : well we thought it would be good to have all the switches plugged together, so that upstairs could have the internet on their computers too.

IT : ok, how many computers downstairs and how many upstairs ?

WG : Well, we originally had 7 downstairs, and we have 14 upstairs ......

IT : (already thumping head on desk) Ok, so you doubled the bandwidth and tripled the number of users ......

WG : Well its just that the upstairs people use a program that run on the web, and they upload pictures all day to this site, and they say it is really slow ..... (click)

I swear ... what did they expect ..... my head hurts ... I need a lie down.....

I cant believe the stupidity of some of the people here at B---ch.

(G.B. will be the village idiot, I mean example here.

Apparently they dont have any smart people where he's from.

His (G.B)compaq Armada M700 s lease was up in June, we havent had any get in and to him because of delays in shipping

Anyway, his computer wont power up, either with the battery or powercord. So what does this retard do?? (Oh this is were it gets good)

He takes out the battery and SPITS on the leads. (The last time I checked water and electricty, and water and electrical components don t play nice together)

And then he comes here and tells me, he spit on the leads. I open up the battery bay, and sure enough, there s a watery substance on the battery.

That s a biohazard. We don t get special gloves or tools to handle !@#$ like that here, and this tard. AN ENGINEER WHO HAS HAD TO TAKE AT LEAST 1 CLASS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, spits on an electrical lead. I should give him a fork and ask him to check the wall plug-ins

I used to do tech support for an ISP, here is one of my favorite stories.

My last call one day was from some old guy who started with "i know what you guys are up to and it better stop, or else". um, scuse me? he went on to say that the isp is trying to hack into his computer, his new norton firewall software told him so. Apparently he contacted the Better Bussiness Beurou and we're in big trouble, he has a list of over 17 ip addresses, oooh. I tried to explain to him that it's probably just customers on our network with virus's and they are spreading without them even knowing it, but no, he was smart to my ruse and yelled at me to stop giving him more bull!@#$ like everyone else. I said, ok sir, you seem to know about our networks than us, perhaps you'd like to tell us how to fix your problem? I put him on hold for 1 minute while i got a email address for him to send his 'logs' to, i told him i was putting him on hold so i could get that address for him, when i came back, he bitched about it. Yes, we have nothing better to do that try to break into his pityful 486. I should have written down his email and ip address and posted them to a few newsgroups.

Why is it that some customers cannot plan?

A Monday morning phone call form one of my customers who is a small builder; 'We have moved our office to the new room but the computers don't work'.

Not really suprising as they had not installed any network cabling or moved the ISDN line.

Long time listener, 5 time poster.

I have an obsolete pager that I can't get service for any longer.

However, it still receives text messages.

Headlines, stocks and the like.

Whenever a category is updated a symbol on the LCD screen flashes and (optionally) the pager beeps once.

So what? you may ask. Just wait.

Several months ago a client picks up his PC, pays cash, and while I'm copying the receipt takes the money back.

(Yes, I made a stupid mistake. take the money THEN write 'paid' on the receipt before the client leaves)

Of course he denies taking it.

Present day:

The PC needs service again!

He brings it to me again! (Ok... not HIM but one of the teen kids.)

The AdAware I had installed had never been updated and to the best of my knowledge never run since I used it.

200 items removed but it needs a full install. AGAIN.

I back up the 'My Documents' to a DVDRW so I saved the kids MP3s and some documents.

I format the HD, reinstall Windows, drivers, AdAware, Norton Anti Virus (the CD I had sold him months ago!) and restore data.

It's ready for pickup.

Just one more thing...

You know that empty area in the bezel of some of the older Gateway towers? Just behind the dark plastic?

It's more than large enough to hold a pager.

No name please.

well we just found the site tonight(WE AS IN porchlight.ca)

so heres our story

about 10 min a go a user call in to change his user name when we asked what he gave use the same user name but asked us to make it in uppercase so i asked why and he said the lower is to small and he could not read it

I work as an IBM tech support person for the Thinkpad division.

One day I got a call from a girl who tells me her laptop won't boot up.

her: My machine just doesn't seem to be getting any power!

me: have you tested the plugs to be sure you're getting power?

her: yes

well, this conversation went on for a good 30 minutes. I finally had done all I could to try and see why her machine wasn't powering up!

I recommend that she send her machine in (based on her warranty)to our repair shop for repair.

There is a few minutes of silence and then she bursts into tears.

I ask her what is wrong:

her: well, um....this is kind of embarassing!

me: ahhh go ahead, it's fine...tell me.

her: well, I...um.....threw up into my thinkpad. Do you think that might cause it to not boot up???

(DOH!!!)

on the call with the guy right now and this is just part of it

me)what would you like for a username

HIM)o you mean my password

this is a call i just got off of

asked them if they had to jacks on the back they said nope just one then later she askes if it should be in phone or line

lier says i

ok just got off another call

OMG

ok lets call my company goodisp.ca

and the other bellisp.ca

this guy is with us now and has had past problems with forgeting that

so the user or luser calls in and says that he has not received any mail in a few days so he sent a test one to himself

(im thinking cool this will be easy check his web mail tell him there nothing wrong and go back to reading this site)

well then he tells me that he got a reply so good right, nope it was returned and it said bah bah abha bellisp.ca bah

so i check his setting and they are all for goodisp,ca

then it hits me and i ask sir can you tell me you email address and he says luser@bellisp.ca

[Excuse me for language errors, I am Dutch]

I am just a person who helps people out of computer troubles so i mostly do hepl via Telephone or On Site within a few miles of my area.

As happened at a phonecall shortly ago:

Me: Hello with , what can i do for you?

Caller: I have a problem with my internet.

Me: Can you be more specific? What exactly does it do NO more?

Caller: I cannot connect anymore...

Me: did you change any cables or connections lately?

Caler: Yes, the rounded grey cable was damaged beceause i inadvertedly placed my couch on it so i had to exchange that cable.

me: (Assuming from "rounded grey cable" that this is an Ethernet cable) Do you have any experience in replacing an Ethernet cable?

Caller: ehhm... well i know that there are ony four wires used for Ethernet so i have cut off the connectors with a few inches of wire and connected a standard 4-wire telephone cable on the approperiate colors.

Me: (Just in time to cover the microphone of my phone) laughed out loud... After a minute or so i uncovered the mic. and asked "And you are certain that this wil work"?!

Caller: Are you telling me that an ethernet signal is capable to detect that it went into the wrong type of cable?? A Cable is just a cable!

Me: Well to make it short and certain: DO GET AN ETHERNET CABLE CORRECTLY TERMINATED BACK IN THAT RUN AND YOU WILL SEE THAT IT IS WORKING AGAIN. AFTER THAT YOU CAN CALL ME BACK IF YOU STILL HAVE PROBLEMS!! [click]

He never called back, but a day later i received an e-mail with his excuses and an acknowledgement that it is working correctly again.

He had indeed replaced the hole cable for a good Ethernet cable.

Twinhead.

Well, this happened to my fried in old days when Unix was something to fear - uknown and unknowable... they had a guy that installed their unix machines, and installation will took at least 7-8 hours; since it was done in afternoon, my friend will often fall asleep in chair near by until all was done...

One day, he decided to learn how to do installations by himself, because of high cost in both time and money that installation guy was charging. Can you imagine his furry when he realised that you can install whole system in jsut the fraction of the 8 hours time?

Rest of the time guy spent runing defragmentation, unnecessary formating all hard drives, defragmenting again, installing and deleting programs ... you name it!

What a weasel!

I'm an network infrastructure technician in the Army and was stationed at the Pentagon when this happened. One of my fellow soldiers got out of the Army and landed a job in another of the tech controls inside the big 5-sided thing. Well, for some time a number of computers and monitors that had been replaced but still kept in storage in the tech control I worked at had been disappearing. In fact, and there was easily over a half dozen of each, they ALL vanished eventually.

A few months after getting his new job, my former co-worker was caught. It seems he had loaded up a full-size dolly (the ones with 4 wheels and a platform, not just 2 wheels and a handle) and walked out the door of the Pentagon itself with it loaded fully with tech equipment which he loaded into his car. He would've gotten away with it except that he immediately went back in, loaded up another dolly and tried to get out with it but this time someone noticed. When police checked out his apartment they found all the stuff that had been missing there. I don't know what happened to him, but he sure ain't working at the Pentagon no more!

I am in the Army and was working at a tech control help desk. An Airforce E-7 (3 up, 2 down) calls me to explain that his system is down, explaining apologetically that he doesn't know much about tech. That's OK, I tell him, we get plenty of calls like that and I'm thinking how nice it is to have customers who outrank you but aren't afraid to show that they need help. They're SO much easier to work with. Right? THEN...

I ask to set up a loopback in his "House" to see if his system comes up. He says he doesn't know what a loopback is. No problem, I've been here many a time, so I explain it, but repeatedly. Finally he claims to understand, sort of. Anyway, I tell him to jack a loopback cable into his patch panel. "A what?" he wants to know. More time spent explaining what a loopback cable is and what it looks like. Repeatedly.

Then he cannot understand what a patch panel is and by this time, my co-workers who are listening to this start laughing at ME when after a couple of attempts at explaining, I tell him to look for the big black plastic piece of wall equipment that has a bunch of holes in it. His reply? "Well, I've standing in front of that the whole time I've been talking to you." I tell him what to do and he tells me that they have already done that. ??? Wondering if he's full of s--t and just pushing everything on to me now, I say "And so you think you're good in-house?"

"No" he replies. "It's us, we're the problem" He explains to me that they have techs right there working on it right now. So why did he call me? "OK, were you hoping I could talk to one of them and maybe help out, then?" "No, they seem to know what they're doing, I don't want you to do anything at all."

OK, so now I'm guessing that he was worried that an alarm would go off in our tech control indicating a problem with him and that we would be able to step into his end and wreak havoc on what his own techs were trying to do (though on his circuit we couldn't do that), even though he could've just told me this in the first place and is now acting irritated and as though I called HIM.

BUT...

About and hour and a half later he calls back and wants to know what we've been doing for his circuit. I repeat back to him that I thought his own techs were working on it. He tells me that they were, but now are gone and wants to know what we've been doing since.

I asked him if they had fixed the problem at his end yet. He says "No, but what are you doing about it?" I tell him that we can do nothing and that his own people have to handle that. He asks when they will come in, I tell him to ask them. He says "Oh, yeah, one of them stopped me in the hall and told me they would be back at such and such a time."

I suggest that that would do it then and he then asks me to confirm what time they will come in. I immediatedly repeated his answer back to him and he said OK and asked me if I was sure. Taking a chance, I said "Yes" and he wrote that down and got off the phone. He never called back and I never inquired further.

Here's a little diddy from when *I* was a college helpdesk geek. This was back in the day when PCs and macs were neck in neck so the lab was half and half. I'm sure you all remember the problems with macs ejecting a 3 1/2" floppy when they were locked up right? Here we go:

User: "My computer is locked up and it won't give me my disk."

Me: "No problem. Let me grab the super-high-tech disk retrieval device." (the SHTDRD was an unwound paperclip with a laminated tag identifying it as the SHTDRD)

User: Cool! This has happened to me once before at home. Do you know where I can get one of those?

Me: It's an unwound paperclip.

User: But do you know where I can get one?

!!!

I was helping a guy with some problems he was having on his mac, and during the course of the call realised it was probably a corrupted preferences file - best option was to dump the file, empty trash, restart... and a new clean file would be created with not much more inconvenience than entering settings again.

However what struck me was he put the file in the trash but then said

"I can't actually empty the trash, that'll delete everything in there, and I have a lot of secure documents I want to keep hidden in there..."

Yeah. and I keep all my tax receipts in the kitchen garbage bin too!

from Is support:

Customer: My internet service was suppose to start today and I still don't have internet.

Tech: Is your computer on?

Cust.: yes!

Tech: what are the lights on the modem?

Cust.: what's a modem?

Tech: the box with lights on it.

Cust: I received a box yesterday in the mail but it doesn't have lights.

Tech: Oh, did you open the box?

Cust: No.

Tech: Well, you have to install the hardware first if you want to receive internet.

Cust.: What, you must be crazy!You mean I have to do all that? You promised service today! You're @%#*! crazy!

Tech: It's not like a tv mam!

Cust.: well kiss my #$@%! (click, dialtone)

from IS tech support:

Customer: ...........you don't know what the hell you're doing do you!!!

Tech: what version of windows do you have?

Cust.: windows 92,I bought it in 92.

Tech: It's not a car sir.

from IS tech support:

Customer:....you don't know what the hell you're doin'!!!

Tech: I'm sorry, what is on your screen sir?

Cust.: nothin' it's black.

Tech: black? is the power on?

Cust.: what?!

Tech: is the green light on, the one by the big button on the computer?

Cust.: no?!

Tech: Can you push the big button in front of the computer

sir?

Cust.: Ohhhh, ok. I see it now! Well,waddya know. The internet service is on now! Did the server just come on?!

Tech: Uh, ......yes sir. That's what it was.

I use a Mac sometimes, and I needed a copy of Stuffit Lite in order to decompress a binhexed file. So, fine, I get to the page for downloading the program.

The Stuffit Lite is binhexed.

Hey all ive been reading tech tales for about the past 4 weeks it keeps me busy during my keyboarding class(yes im still in high school) and figured id contribute.

Well one day im at my friends house blowing stuff up in his backyard like most people i hang out with do at 6 o clock at night. about five minutes into it my cell rings.

its my 12 year old brother. We just bought him a new computer for his birthday so hed stay off my precious pc.

he tells me that his cd burner is not reading anything so i hop in my car and drive back to the house. i get to my house about 10 minutes later. I go back to my brothers room and go into device manager making sure theres no conflicts or anything. there was none . So i said well give me a blank cd. so he does but he hands me one of those memorex mini cd-r cds. (he thinks there the coolest thing ever). so i stuck it in there and burnt a music file andit worked.

so i said to him did u stick in the right cd drive. he says i stuck it in this one.

He points to the floppy.

God i hate stupid people.

No.. this isn't some sex story.. well. it kinda is. I work in satellite communications.. I get to see lots of things on the satellites. I'm at work today.. and my supervisor notices that one of the monitors has something "different" on it. I pull it up on my monitor and it's a woman being "serviced" by a woman with a HUGE umm.. artificial stimulater in her hand. So I pull up the reciever control on my remote station and flip the channel... just as the door behind me opens up.. and in walks my supervisor's boss.. along with someone from corporate headquarters.... and the corporate bigwig's parents!! If he'd have walked in just a minute sooner.... *LOL*

A user came in to find her machine had the Blue Screen of Death. We didn't find a problem and the machine seems to be fine, but the user wanted to be safe and back up her files.

After a quick refresher on using DirectCD she got to her work, and I went back to mine.

Later in the day I discovered she had spent all morning backing up files from drive M: which is storage space on one of our file servers.

That's right. Half of a day wasted backing up files that weren't on her PC, and were being backed up nightly anyhow.