Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work as a Systems Analyst/programmer doing whatever the boss wants, and think I'm pretty good at it. Several years ago after a series of layoffs at the company I worked for, I inherited support of an interactive voice response system (IVR) - call in to sign up for training classes. I knew enough to telnet in to the sco unix pc and dink with the application a little, but had no documentation about the system and was only vaguely aware of where the equipment was kept in the computer room.

One day in January I got a call from the users. The IVR was not answering the phone. I telneted to the application and it was running. I went to the computer room, unplugged the telephone line from the computer, and plugged in a phone. When dialed, the phone rang and worked fine. Finally, I gave up and called support. We didn't have maintenance, so they charged a pretty penny to answer any questions, but I had the company credit card ready.

This is approximately how the conversaton went with the engineer helping me fix the system:

Him: We may need to reset the IVR machine.

Me: Do you mean reboot the computer?

Him: No, the IVR machine.

Me: All I see is the computer.

Him: There should be a big black box near the computer.

Me: Oh, here it is. Big and black.

Him: Ok, hit the reset button.

Me: I don't see a reset button.

Him: It's on the front.

Me: I still don't see it.

Him: It's right next to the red light.

Me: What red light?

Him: The red light on the front of the box.

Me: There's no red light.

Him: Yes there is.

Me: Where?

Him: About three inches from the top, four inches to the right.

Me: Oh, here it is. Only the light isn't on.

After I checked on the back of the box to double check, I said to the engineer: "You can laugh all you want, but just wait until I hang up, but I'm sure it will help if I turn it on." Of course the computer operators had turned the box off over Christmas.

So, I'm just as stupid as the rest.

I do a help desk support line where my primary duty is to help people navigate the company website and give them their passwords when they forget. I got a call one day from a man named Mr. Bedard. He needed to get his password because he could not remember what he set it to. ( Since they have to change the password every 90 days) The conversation went like this, " How may I help you?" "Yes, I need my password, I can't seem to remember" "Yes sir, may I have your name?" "S*** Bedard." "Thank you. Well, I see your password is "PASSWORD" in all capitals." "Yes, I know, I usually type my password in all capitals, now what is my password?" " Sir, your password IS "PASSWORD". I-"

"I KNOW that I have a password, just tell me, I got to get my stuff in!" " Mr. Bedard, I'll spell your password, it is: P-A-S-S-W-O-," "I KNOW HOW TO SPELL THE WORD, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TELL MY PASSWORD? WHY DO YOU PEOPLE MAKE THINGS SO DAMN DIFFICULT" Calmly I tried to explain one last time. "Mr. Bedard, you set your password to the word "PASSWORD". When we change your password it is usually "123456". I am trying to tell you that your password is-" " I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS ANYMORE!" Then he hung up the phone. I entered the log and went about the rest of the day. Five minutes later the phone rings again, " Thank you for calling, how may I help you?" There was nothing but silence- and Phil Collins' "Easy Lover"(the same song he was playing when he first called) playing in the background , "Hello? Hello?" I paused and smiled, " Is that you, Mr. Bedard?" All I heard was silence, " I know it's you sir, I can still hear the music in the background." Slowly I hear the sounds of the music go down and again there is silence, "Mr. Bedard, I can still hear you breathing." Suddenly you hear the sound of a hand smacking across a set of lips. " M-Mr. Bedard, you figured out your password was "PASSWORD" didn't you?", there is a long pause before I heard a quiet,"yes". "Mr. Bedard, is there anything else I can do for you today?" pause "no" he squeaked. "Well, thank you for calling back, have great day." "bye" was all he said.

Over 6 years of working for a major computer services company supporting a well known car rental company, we have sent out notice after notice to our customers on various issues including outages, virus warnings, service changes.

Invariably we would receive calls from customers that they never received such notices. Being an email admin also, I would look at their mailbox and wow!! What a surprise, found every notice unread in their Deleted Items folder.And moved each right back to their inbox.

Called each end loser, tell it like it is, whoa yeah. And ask them please to look at your inbox. Open the notices and follow the instructions to the letter and call us only if you have done what you have been told to do yourself. And see below why. i.e. new company owners tolerate no nonsense and are not paying for employees who refuse to follow instructions.

And it gets better, the losers who refuse to learn even the basics on how to manage their email, since their company has been bought out by another that as a matter of written policy has fully locked down non-changeable limits on email storage sizes are totally screwed. They either figure out with a tech, not ours now, how to get all the garbage out of their mailboxes or are locked down, can't work and can't complain. And the new techs tolerate no complaints at all.

Because, boo-hoo, no one is listening anymore to nonsense.

I have had to change my voice mail many times recently because another company is taking over the platforms I used to support on schedule. Many customers who were used to calling me directly, leaving messages despite my recorded warning that unless they called the help desk first would not receive either callbacks or any assistance whatsoever. (Company written policy for billing)

I am now at the point in my voice mail message where I say plainly that unless you contact the help desk, there will be no return calls since I no longer administer such and such systems. Ya know what, the folks still leave messages. Did ya also know, *D takes care of the same quickly.

And if you think I'm being a louse, the assistance they request is no longer part of our support contract at all. All of that former admin access has been completely removed by the other support company. And it is useless now for me to even call the customer. And probably would get me fired and I need every paycheck at this point.

As you know many freemailers give the opportiny to answer a secret question in case the password got lost. There are even some freemailers which let the customer pose that question - a good thing and a bad in itself.

Two weeks ago I was called to help a person living in my house as she could not connect to her freemailer. I went to her and checked, and saw immediately the missing password. So I asked her, and she told me she had lost it. 'No problem' I said, we will have a look to her secret question.

Most of these secret questions are like 'What's the name of my pet' and such. But when I saw her secret question I took a break and went to the bathroom to console myself. Why, you ask?

Easy. Her secret question was 'Was ist mein Paßwort?' [What's my password?].

At home I wrote a lengthy letter to her freemailer, explaining what went wrong. I would not doubt they had a merry time there, and they wrote back that she will receive a new password by mail, and they could not help but pity me for my customers.

Viele Grüße,

Christian

I work for a small Isp. And we have this user that calls in all the time wanting us to support his hotmail account. We recently had a problem with our email server. After we got that fixed he called in and said our email problems effected his hotmail account. The only thing I could say was dur. I told him that we dont support hotmails mistakes and directed him to hotmail for advice. He then said what do you support and hung up.

This one is definately in the top 5 worst calls of all time list. I was doing tech support for a major consumer computer company. This customer calls in saying that her keyboard has came unplugged and she cannot get it plugged back in. I pulled up the specs on her system to find that it was a USB keyboard. I described to her exactly where it needed to be plugged in, still cannot get it to plug. I'm describing the port, the location, the picture that is beside the USB port...nothing. Even had her husband come and try, still can't get it to plug in. I'm getting complete frustrated and just not understanding what the problem is. Finally about 30 mins into this call, she says something about the pins are in the way. PINS???? There are no pins in a usb port!?!?!?

Me: Can you tell me what the picture looks like that is directly beside where you are trying to plug the cable into?

Moron: Well...it kinda looks like a printer..

I was speechless for about 5 mins....I honestly don't understand how some people function in daily life. How many people does it take to plug in a USB devices?

This happened about a year ago, but I've only just found this site, so thought I'd share it with the community.

I work in a large call centre with several hundred pc's all running NT4 and our IT dept is usually pretty much run off it's feet but the following story may explain the backlog a little.

At the time, I was an agent on the phones and we noticed that 2 pc's weren't operationalNow, having worked with pc's for 15 yrs or so, I saw the problem straight off but we're not allowed to touch anything other than our own applications; no problem - report it to team leader who reports it to IT. It being a simple problem, I assumed it would be fixed promptly....no. 2 techs came up with their Ghost floppies and 1 went to each system. They proceeded to press every button on the keyboards, the power buttons on the pc's & monitors & scratch their heads. After about 30 mins of watching, I had to tell them (it was affecting my calls laughing so much) to look at the power light on the power adapter lead (it was out). This led to more head scratching. How could the light be out when it was switched on at the wall? It took a total of an hour and ten minutes for them to diagnose a blown fuse (with assistance) & replace it in the plug.

Needless to say, the two in question no longer work for the company.

Recently my roomate decided he wanted a computer. This was much to my relief, as I had the only comptuer in the house located in my bedrom and he had a penchant for staying up far later than I. I tried to convince him to buy it part by part and have me build him a custom box. In the end, we settled on a custom machine ordered through Future Shop as so he could pay it via FS Credit Card. His system was very nice, and the salesman was nice enough to let him demo a few games on a system similar to the one he was purchasing. This only made his want for his own at home greater. Shipping via Purolator would take 7-9 business days.

The first problem was the shipping address. In all honesty, it was partly out fault as we were unable to provide a proper street address for delivery. We live in a hick town, where street numbers don't play much of a roll in daily life. 7 Main St is more commonly refered to as "The blue house next to the red house" kinda place. We finally did discover the proper address a few days later and enlightened them. Well, two weeks later, no computer and no idea where it is. Third weekend without a computer passes, and tensions are rising. Since I'm the one that convinced him to buy this computer, it's somehow my fault. Mentioning that purchasing the kit and assembling in hours was my first opinion only makes things worse. Finally, three and a half weeks, we get a phone call from Future Shop. The computer had arrived at their store location (over an hour from our residence) and that prompt pickup is required or it will be shipped back.

We drove, and argued for some recompence ($20 for gas even) but to no avail. Mike ended up buying a copy of BattleField 1942 (1.45 patched) from them which crashes at the end of every campaign. He's not happy with them at all. But, goes to show you, listen to the geeks and peace ye shall find!

Me: lets unplug the power to your modem.

Customer: how do I do that?

Me: Back of the Modem black cable is the Power cable.

Customer: *getting frantic* I don't know what your telling me!

Me: When you plug in your vacuum cleaner and you are done, you unplug it right?

Customer: Right.... and....

Me: Its the same thing, find where it plugged into the wall and pull it out.

Customer: *complete histerics* I don't know your jargon. I am a novice, you have to slow down!

Me: *thinks to myself: am I on the same call as her?*

Heres a common one. I'm a tech at a small regional store for a large retail chain.

Yesterday a rather angry looking lady lugs in her laptop - one thats she had for a couple of weeks.

Off the bat, she starts screaming that it dies when its connected to the Internet and the mouse freezes, and she wants a new one - RIGHT NOW!

I ask if a little message comes up saying that the machine is about to shut down, and she says yes. I then tell this irrate customer that she has a virus - probably Blaster.

Well... the next five minutes are her screaming "Doesn't it come with a virus scanner?" "All the computers I've brought before, I've brought with virus scanners..." and so on. Finally I get a word in to tell her that unless she'd run the Windows XP updates, a virus scanner wouldn't have stopped it. Big Mistake! Another five minutes of screaming that these problems shouldn't exist, and that it's our problem that she didn't know she had to update Windows (even though her previous machines had Windows 98 and ME, both of which have Windowsupdate links on the start menu.) Of course, I have to put that fire out by stating that its the customers job to run updates, and it's really not our problem if they don't know about them, because our job is not to teach them how to maintain their machines.. we just sell em and fix em if they break.

Anyways, whinge, bitch and moan later and I tell her to leave the machine with me and I'll take care of it. Admittedly I'm a little concerned at that point why no one mentioned a virus scanner to her. The way our systems are setup is that you get the base system, then you can pretty much work out what else you need from there. This way we don't wind up selling customers things that they don't need, plus lets us be more flexible when packaging in what they do.

So.. I fix the machine - 10 minutes work without hassle. Then the guy who sold it to her came in asking if it was this particular customers machine, to which I told him it was. Without me even mentioning my concerns about not selling her a virus scanner, he spends 10 minutes whinging about how she walked in, walked up to the machine and said she wanted that particular one, and when asked if she wanted anything else, like bags, AV, firewall, etc. because they aren't included, she carried on that she didn't "need any of that s*hit* because she "knows more about computers than" the salesperson... and this is the sorta person who will try to sell you everything + kitchen sink.

Obviously she does know more about computers than him. That particular salesperson mightn't have known that was a virus issue either..... if it was dark and the LCD was dead.....

I have done support for a major virus protection software for about 2 years now, and the people get more stupid everyday. I have learned that no matter how hard you try, YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!

One day, as I was just coming back from lunch, I settled into my cube and logged back onto my phone. It sat idle for about 30 secs before it rang.

I answered with my normal greeting......then the customer began to describe the problem.

It seemed that the company she worked for had just bought a new computer to do thier software testing on before they turned it loose onto the network.

The lady stated that the IDIOT that ordered the computer was supposed to order it with the competitors anti-virus software and she wanted my assistance to remove ours.

This is what happened next:

her: Can you help me get this off so I can install the other?

me: You bet!

her: before we get started I want you to know that I am the office manager, and in charge of the software testing for this company.....so dont try to give me the run around by going into useless files that have nothing to do with what we are doing......I need to knopw that you know what you are doing before we start.

me:Would you like to get my supervisors guarentee that I do?

her:Yes,please.

me:Please hold

I went to get my supervisor to speak with her and re-assure her that I DO know what I am doing....this took about 10 mins. I then took over the call again.

Me:Ma'am, doe sthat make you feel more at ease with my skills?

her:YES

me:OK, Lets get started

her:OK

Me: I need you to double click the "my computer", then follow this path C:\program files.

her: I am there.

Me: Do you see our file?

Her: yes

me: Right click on it and select "delete"

her: it is gone now.

me: Great, now close the window and we will continue>

About 10 seconds of silence at this point.

me:ma'am?.......have you closed the window yet?

her:well.......no?!?

me: are you getting an error message?.....is it frozen....do we need to reboot?

her: no?!?!?!?

me: Ok, close the window so that we may continue.

her: I cant

me:Why?

her:they dont open.......they are all one piece of glass!!!

me: can i get a little more information about your company?

her:Sure!

They have my resume on file!!!

I took a call from a new customer who said her new laser printer was dead. I tried to walk her through the basics but she got upset when I asked her if it was plugged in. She immediately asked to speak to my supervisor who then sent me to fix the unit at her house. When I arrived the customer showed me the system and the printer was not plugged in. The maid had unplugged it to vacuum the rug and forgot to plug it back in. after about 12 apologies she paid for my time & travel

I work for a large computer/printer company that has a name of two letters doing enterprise level phone support. I mostly support servers and do Microsoft premier support for sysadmins whose companies purchase our support products. Because of this, ever family member in a 2000 mile radius requires my assistance to do phone support for them.

The worst of them, however is my MIL. She is an intelligent woman, however if it plugs into a wall she is afraid to touch it.

The other day, she called up and asked me to come over and fix her cable, as it hasn't worked since she had a power outage. I give her the usual speech about how I will do what I can, but she needs to learn this stuff in case it breaks and I cannot help her. I walk her though the usual stuff (power on, is it broken in one room or all of them, does her cable internet still work, etc), and it sounds like everything is ok, so I tell her that I will assist her with it when I come over for dinner with my husband a few days later.

I get over there and she rushes me to the bedroom to show me how the cable isn't working. She turns on the TV and shows me a snow screen. I walk over and hit the power button. All is well. Sheesh.

Working for a software company I was providing support to our customers. Unfortunately, a power company in Canada had an 800 number that was only 1 digit different than ours so we frequently got calls for them. The worst thing was, there was 1 lady who called nearly every week. Here's about how it went each time:

Me: "Y Inc" Technical Support, how may I help you?

Customer: I need to pay my bill to get my power back on.

Me: Ma'am, who are you trying to call?

Cust: You.

Me: But what company?

Cust: Your company.

Me: Are you trying to reach "X power company"?

Cust: Yes, that's why I called you.

Me: This is "Y Inc", not "X power company"

Cust: Why are you answering their phone?

Me: I'm not, you called the wrong number. Their number is very close to ours.

Cust: Well can you transfer me?

Me: No, they are a different company. You dialed the wrong number and need to hang up and call again.

Cust: But why did they print your number on their bill?

Me: They didn't, you dialed it wrong. Please hang up and dial again.

At this point I just hang up because she obviously wasn't "getting" it. Mind you, this happened weekly with this lady - you'd think she would catch on...

I was working a highschool summer job as a best buy computer tech back in 98. One week we ran a special on the IBM e-3n personal computer. This computer mind you was released from the factory with 100mhz memory and a dip switch setting of 66mhz... But thats not the point.

As the story goes a lady came in one day to our counter empty handed. She said she had just been referred there from the customer service desk rather irate that they would not give her her money back and that she wanted to speak to a manager. We asked what the problem was and she said the computer she just bought cought on fire and burnt the desk it was in and part of her home. Nothing too serious but she expected us to pay for the computer, the desk, and water damage to her home. Yes Our policy says that we cut checks like that to customers who come in with those stories.... Right....

We told her that she needs to bring the computer in to return and we could exchange it as it was past the 30 day money back period. She screamed all sorts of stuff at us and the manager threatning that the computer could have killed her kids.... Oh well.

Later that day she came back with several heavy duty garbage bags full of soot and ashe and burnt circuit boards.... her husband was carrying a fiew more bags and a charred but intact IBM E-3N... They tried to empty one of the bags on our counter but were stopped.

Aparantly it was the monitor that actually cought on fire. After she was reluctantly refunded her money she left. Just for grins I hooked up the smoke smelling computer and it worked perfectly.

On my second day of work, early morning as soon as I walk in user complains her monitors screen is very blurry, I went to her desk checked the resolution and monitor setting seem to be perfect to me, I told her there is nothing wrong with the monitor, she comes back after few minutes and complains the same thing, this time I went with her and confirmed there is absolutely no blurriness. She pauses for few seconds and tells me she doesn't have her glasses on, she pulls her glasses out of her purse, puts it on and glare's at the screen and confirms, now its better.

I was laughing all day.

Afshan

I once worked part time as a hotliner, helping users of a blood bank computer system - MS-DOS at that time. I received a call from two female hospital staff on the Faroe Islands. Their pc would not work, it kept making clicking sounds.

So I recommended that they try switching the plugs for the mouse and the keyboard. To their amazement the computer now worked. And then one of them made a remark that really shocked me: "Please do not blame us. We are only women."

I really hate myself for loosing speech at that moment. I should have told them, that the fault was not theirs and that the problem was caused be designing the pc with identical plugs for mouse and keyboard.

I still wonder if the Faroe Islands did not have women rights groups or what the reason was for women to belive that they are more stupid than men.

I get this call with a woman that is upset cause AOL stoled her credit card. Me wondering how did AOL do that? We went through all the steps she had takin and at a point said that she put her credit card in the credit card slot on the computer. She had put the credit card in the floppy disk drive.

Well like most people these days I work in tech support. And this has to be the crowning moment of my first week in the job.

Me : Good afternoon and welcome to ******* support, how can I help you?

User: I need you to troubleshoot my internet. I listened to the phone message but the problem in my postcode wont affect me.....

ME : (STUNNED SILENCE)...for the love of God. Can you just repeat that sir?

User : (Penny drops)Oh!

Moral : Yes we have magic fairies who allow select people not to be affected by internet outages. I mean come on guys!

Part of my job description is to provide support for all our computers. We are a small team, and develop software.

Any way, my boss calls me into his office one after noon.

Him: Why won't our software import my CSV file???

Me: Hrmm ... let's have a look at your CSV - ah, here you go, you're missing a column.

Him: ARGHH!!! Why doesn't our own $#%*#&$%$# software tell us that.

(At this point I take a deep breath)

Me: Show me how you did it, please.

Him: Watch ...

And at the end the following message, in Red, appears on his screen:

"We are unable to process your CSV file, as you are missing the ****** (the required one, no less) column from your CSV"

I go back to my office ...

On site one day in the middle of a fairly involved firewall install and setup one of the (l)users came over to me and made the statement "My Document won't Print". After a few more questions I manged to get the further information that the document on the screen of her computer would not print to the shared colour lsaer printer; and the distinct impression that it was all my fault.

I promised to look at it once I had come to a suitable point to stop what I was currently doing and 20 minutes later went to her computer.

The document would print to a shared mono laser, once it had been selected, but sure enough it would not print to the colour laser and neither would a test page. The printer queue showed about 10 items waiting to print and the print queue paused!! Once unpaused all the documents started printing.

When the (l)user was told that it could not print as the printer had been paused the response was "Oh yes, I stopped it printing the other day".

EEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!

I'm in canada and i work for a tech support company that supports cable internet to americans.

I had a customer call in that had a ton of spam e-mails on her e-mail. She wanted to know if we had a spam blocker but in her words a button that you could press that would stop the e-mails from coming in. To make matters worse she was actually e-mailing these spammers back and telling them to remove her from their lists, which indicates why she was probably getting hit so hard with spam. She said that she had used a previous internet service that had let you push a button and stop all the spam e-mails from coming through (i'm guessing it was dial up). She asked if we had anything like that and of course we don't becaues that sort of thing would be totally null on a cable service. She then proceeded to ask me why our company hadn't invented something like that yet. What was i supposed to say to her? How am i supposed to know why our head office which i don't even know where that is, didn't decide to put spam blocker on the list of things to invent this week. So I told her that we were in the process of getting on that and she might see it come out soon.

Why god why?

K, quick story, from several years ago.

I was hanging out at my friend's house. This friend knew that I knew a little about computers, so we're talking and she tells me that their computer isn't starting. So I go in, look at it... plugged in and etc. I try to turn it on, it smokes slightly and doesn't come on. Not wanting to start a fire, we decide to call tech support from the computer's makers.

At this time my friend and I were both about 11-12 years old, and (I think) fairly intelligent people.

So, we call the tech support, tell them what the problem is... the woman on the phone has us check power again, etc, same stuff as I did... Then, finally:

"Is there an adult there I can talk to?"

"No."

"Ok, then maybe you should call back when there's an adult there..."

Looong silence on our end (we had two phones on).

This tech did not even try to tell us anything remotely complicated to do. I may be missing something, but apparently, you must be at least 18 to follow instructions...? I have seen (adult!) people described on here who were stupider than we were...

So, my boss, (we'll call her Ms. Clueless) calls me in a panic. "Deimodius (not my real name), you know the latest VendorX .pdf you were sent? I need it".

No problem, I tell her. Just a sec and I'll email it to you.

A little while later she calls back. "Deimodius, this isn't the right one. I need the one with the 'Product X' set. Your Dad sent it to you about a week ago".

Hmmm... okay, i say, let me look.

I search my HDD, knowing that I have _any_ document relating to the Vendor X in _only_ one of two places. I scour my HDD and conclude that I do not have the .pdf she wants. However, I do find a .zip file conatining .jpgs, one of which is the Product X in question.

So I call Ms. Clueless and leave a message, "Ms. Clueless, I do not have the .pdf you want, but I do have the photo as part of a collection in a .zip file. If you want to come up I can show you the photos and you can see if they are the right ones."

I don't bother to offer sending the .zip because she refuses to learn how to unzip archive files (another story in itself). A few minutes later I return from the bathroom to find a message on my phone.

"Deimodius, it wasn't a .pdf your dad sent, it was a .zip file. I've sent it to you now. Can you please turn it into a .pdf so I can email it like I usually do?"

(bang bang bang goes my head)

I call back. "Hi, Ms. Clueless, did you get the message I left for you?" (No, she says.) "It was right before you called me. I said that I have the .zip file and that it contains only .jpgs. No .pdf." I say.

"Yeah," she exclaims, "Can you turn it into a .pdf for me?"

(bang bang bang)

"No, you can't turn a .zip file into a .pdf. It contains individual .jpgs. There are no SKU numbers, no text, no vendor information, just .jpg photos."

(I didn't feel like telling her I could create a .pdf including all the photos because, 1. that would be more work for me, and 2. she would want to know why it didn't have all the vendor info in it like her .pdfs usually do).

So, Ms. Clueless says, "Ok, well, how do I get them then?"

Well, I explain, they're all in the .zip file you have.

"But i can't open .zip files."

Well then I say, I need to know which ones you want.

"But they don't have any info on them, and I don't know what they're called."

(bang bang bang)

So I direct Ms.Clueless over the phone on how to open Windows Explorer, navigate to my computer over the network, and access the shared folder where I keep the files.

"Ok, but I still don't know which ones are which" she laments.

"No problem," I say, "just click on View > Thumbnails, and you can see them all."

"Ok, thanks." click. she hangs up.

Hmmm... I think, now how long will it be before she accidentally deletes them from my HDD. Good thing I still have the .zip file they came in.

I don't expect new users to know everything about Windows, not evven the simple things, without learning about them first. This woman flat out REFUSES to learn how to use her computer. She knows how to turn it on, she knows how to run Word or Excel, and how to type and send email. God help her if she needs to do anything else.

She doesn't save files to her HDD when she receiv3es them, instead she simply keeps EVERY FRIKIN' EMAIL she's ever received!!! That's how she files stuff!!! God help her if it goes poof.

her favourite saying: "Can you please make it into a .jpg/.pdf for me so i can blast it off across the email waves?"

EMAIL WAVES?!?! It drives me bloody nuts!!!

I recently contracted to do some work for my old company as they no longer have local IT people. They had a list of issues for me to work through and the first on the list was a printing problem.

A user with a local printer was unable to print. The printer was brand new and she was already considering getting a new one because she was so frustrated.

I checked the usual (is it plugged in, turned on, connected?) and while I was checking the connection the light dawned. The poor child had plugged the mouse into the only USB port and used the USB-to-PS2 converter to plug her printer into the mouse port!!

A friend and former co-worker received one of our former company computers that was going to be thrown out. It's a pretty good machine (I bought one for myself for home at the same time I purchased several for the company and it's still running fine) but it's about 4 years old now. It runs Windows 2000 and is perfectly fine for Excel, Word, and e-mail, which are his basic needs.

When he left the company, I cleaned it up for him and showed him how to use it and told him if he needed help to let me know. He's a nice guy and pays me a small fee when I help him.

Recently he called saying he was getting a system disk error (no floppy in the drive, really!) and the machine was making a horrible noise (uh oh!). I asked him to bring it to me and determined his hard drive was dead. What cracked me up was his description of his reaction to the noise. He said when he heard the noise he thought he smelled smoke and thought the computer had a fire alarm!

Now when he calls for help I ask him if he's checked the batteries in his PC smoke detector.

I work for an ISP and at around midnight, i received a call from 50-ish guy who was having problems with his internet connection. First thing that popped into my mind was to tell him to turn off his pc, the modem and remove the coax from the modem.

Him: turn them off?

ME: yes

Him: Okay (followed by long silence)

Me: Sir, are you there?

Him: yeah, it's too dark in here. why did i have to do this?

Later on, i found out that he switched off all the power at his house. He had to feel his way around to switch everything back up.

(aka A Perl Script Called Buffy)

Well, it was a government network. Windows, to be precise. 3.1 on the workstations and NT on the servers. And the login/logout scripts were pretty crude. When a user logged in, every INI file on their home drive was copied down to the PC. And when they logged out, every INI file in the relevant Windows directory was copied back to their home drive.

The more experienced among you are already groaning silently, are you not? For verily, the users did install a bajillion and one shareware programs on their PCs which vomited forth an ocean of INI files, which were then copied to the users' home drives. And to the home drives of any other user who logged onto the affected PC. And onto any PCs that were logged onto by affected users. Etc, etc ad infinitum. Suddenly, logon procedures take 15 minutes instead of 15 seconds, due to the eight thousand INI files that are being copied each time.

Now, consider the problem of INI files set to read-only. Consider that the copying processes in either case allowed a read-only file to overwrite a writeable existing file of the same name, but did not allow a previously existing read-only file to be overwritten. Vampiric behaviour, essentially.

Consider that some of these said INI files contained user data.

Now ask yourself how many users logged onto a PC, found they had someone else's user details, and logged off again hoping to solve the problem?

Do you think it solved the problem?

Do you think the affected (or alternatively, INfected) user would then refrain from trying another PC - or seven - before calling the Helpdesk?

And now consider that some of the affected users were managers who travelled between offices and thus were able to infect the entire country again and again and again. Vampire INI files indeed.

So, after the twentieth time I had deleted several thousand INI files each from the accounts of hundreds of users on a server, and reset their user details INI files back to read-write, and repaired their required INI files, knowing full well that as soon as they logged off their next PC they would all be reinfected immediately, I sat down and had a chain of thoughts.

The chain went along these lines:

1) People are calling us about this problem. A lot.

2) This interrupts my nap. A lot.

3) Therefore we need to start targeting this problem.

4) Doing it individually is no good.

5) Doing it on a server-wide basis is better.

6) I only (at this young age) know DOS batch programming.

7) This is not the best language for repairing broken INI files.

8) Perl is available on the office network.

Thus, I sat down and taught myself Perl, and very carefully tested and documented each line of the ultra-simplified program that would run over a given server and fix these problems. It would kill the vampire files and restore peace and harmony. Mostly.

I called it Buffy.

Buffy was not the world's most elegant Perl program. It was not the world's most compact program. It was three-quarters explanatory text and inline documentation. The rest of it was pure brute force. It could never wipe out the problem, but allowing it to roam the network once a night would keep the vamps down to reasonable numbers.

From the moment I decided to learn Perl, to the moment Buffy was ready to rock, seven hours rolled by. Seven hours of flipping through tutorial books and man pages. Seven hours of taking ultra-excruciating care that Buffy could cause no collateral damage on our fragile operating environment, adding backup/restore functions and documentation upon documentation.

I printed out a copy of Buffy, with all the documentation beautifully formatted, the code segments highlighted and each line explained in detail. I took Buffy to the LAN people, who had been wondering why the network choked to death at 9am and 5pm every day, and explained the problems with multiplying INI files and vampiric read-onlies.

The LAN folks agreed it was a problem. The LAN folks programmed in Perl themselves. I took the printout of my avenging angel, who had cost me blood, sweat, tears and my lunch break, and reverentially presented it to the LANites, for verily only they had the authority to approve it.

And the LANites did look upon Buffy. And they did see that it was good. And I didst say unto them, "I beseech thee, allow this digital valkyrie to be our avatar, and to walk among the user directories after nightfall, slaying evil wherever it may lurk."

And the LAN staff said -

"No."

And you know, nothing was ever done to address those problems, which persisted until the day the network clients were all converted to Windows 95. Which had its own issues, of course. But that's a story for another time.

Next time: Laserfire!

I purchased a new laptop from a company whose name rhymes with Bell. All was fine for several months, when suddenly the laptop's battery stopped charging. It would work fine on AC power (i.e. plugged in) and it could draw power from and operate on a full battery, but it refused to charge the battery once it had drained. The result was that once the battery was out of juice I had to keep the laptop plugged in 24\7 or it'd instantly power down and lose everything I'd been working on. To top it all off, the power cord was a bit loose in the socket, so if I accidentally jiggled my knees or something while holding the laptop, the cord would fall out and the whole thing would power down. (I took care of that issue with some electrical tape to stop the cord from escaping the socket so easily, but it's a good indicator of what the problem actually was.)

An important thing to note is that at this point my laptop was still covered by warranty, so everything -- tech support, replacement parts, shipping costs -- was completely on Bell's dime. I didn't have to pay for a thing.

On to the story. The first time I called tech support about this, the tech ran me through a bunch of software updates and patches which had nothing to do with what was obviously a hardware problem. I played along because I figured he was a tech support person and knew more than I did about it, or I wouldn't be calling him. Who knows, maybe there's some obscure firmware I'm not aware of that could affect whether the battery charged. He tried to have me update the BIOS version, which wouldn't work because the laptop wasn't recognizing the now-drained battery. After literally four hours of this I had to terminate the call because of an appointment. I had briefly mentioned when I first described my problem that I suspected the AC adapter was faulty, but wasn't sure that it was possible for the laptop to work normally when plugged in if the problem was with the cord. (A note: He didn't understand what I meant by "AC Adapter" and we went round and round for a moment before I said "power cord" ... this should have clued me in but somehow didn't. He told me that I was correct, it wasn't possible that a faulty cord could still deliver power to the machine and yet not charge the battery. I believed him and we went on to the aforementioned 4 hours of software updates.)

On the second call, a new tech diagnosed the problem as a faulty battery and promised Bell would send me a new one. A few days later it arrives, I stick it into the laptop, and... ha. Still won't charge. I call Bell again. This time (and I'm on my third tech by now) I'm told the entire system board will need to be replaced, so I send my laptop in to Bell for repairs. It comes back with a new BIOS update but other than that, the problem still exists. Battery won't charge.

Now, the paperwork that comes back with it swears up and down in five inch high letters that all systems are completely and thoroughly tested to ensure they're in working order before being returned to the user. I know Bell is a national company with a reputation for fine technical support, so it seems odd to me that they'd swear my laptop worked fine in the factory and yet it stopped working when I had it at home. This in turn leads me to believe the problem's something on my end... since we've already replaced the battery, the BIOS version, and the friggin' system board, there's only one possible culprit left. Something that was different about the testing they did at the factory and the conditions here at home. Hmm, what could it be.

I called Bell for the fourth time and have to interrupt the tech halfway into his spiel about BIOS's (what IS it with these people and their assumption that updating the BIOS will fix everything?) and carefully explain my theory. I beg him to send me a new AC adapter (fortunately this tech comprehends that I'm talking about the power cord). No dice. He informs me that since the laptop is able to draw current from the outlet when plugged in, the cord is therefore working fine. All my efforts to explain that we'd tried everything else were in vain. Finally in frustration I ordered a new cord from the Bell website, paid for it myself, and had it shipped overnight.

The battery charged as soon as I connected it.

Let's think about this... Bell paid for nearly 12 hours of technical support, a new laptop battery, a new system board, and overnight shipping for all of these things (which is not cheap) at a total cost of several hundred dollars... when the problem all along was a $30 power cord. Which they absolutely refused to send me when I pointed out that it was obvious where the problem lay.

I don't get it.

Jenni

I work as an independent consultant and I had a customer call me about being unable to access the internet. She said she had spent 2 days trying to fix this and even took a day off of work. Dell told her to reinstall Windows, which she did (sigh) and her ISP (rhymes with Cheaple PC) actually told her not to call back, because they couldn't fix it. Well, the dialer software wasn't installed! That should have been item 1 on their script.

It's calls like that that make me ashamed to be in the tech support business.

I had a customer call in, complaining about spam. The conversation went like this.

C: Yeah, I'm getting like 50 of them a day. They are all about my penis size. Do you have this problem?

Me: um, please hold.

Me: [mutes, laughs for about 2 minutes]

An end-user, who is very high maintenance, called one of my desktop technicians and wanted to know if we had watch batteries. It seemed her wrist watched died and she wanted us to replace the battery.

*************************************

One of our Help Desk analysts called to tell me one day.

A user called to complain that every morning all the papers and stuff on their desk were rearranged. The user wanted to know if the desktop support people were staying late and doing this.

People are just crazy!

Called up the sales department of a major computer manufacturer a few years ago, wanting information on CD burners. I asked the sales rep about CD burners, and his reply, "Have you tried gasoline and a match?" Sad thing was, he was dead serious.

While consulting to a large computer corporation in the Atlanta area, I was answering and screening calls in the customer's National Help Center.

I received a call from a woman complaining about "nothing working on her PC" when using the mouse.

After hearing some of her complaints, I decided to walk her through some basic steps of opening the programs on her new workstation. Telling her to take the mouse and "left click" onto a program icon on her computer screen. This should open the program she wanted.

After several attempts of opening the program without success, the user seemed agitated. In the background I could hear a tapping noise every time I instructed her to click onto an icon on her screen.

I then realized the problem was a loose nut on the keyboard problem. I instructed her to place the mouse back on her desk and move it around on the mouse pad, then press the left button, and Do Not place the mouse on the computer screen and tap it.

The scary part is that she gets paid to work in this office.

Nightmares

Ok, I have a new tech support story for you guys. But from the (l)users perspective. I realize that my first mistake was buying a Dell, but it was cheap and it works pretty well, except for the antivirus software.

Peter Robinson: Thank you for contacting McAfee Online Support Center. How can I assist you with your McAfee software today?

Me: I purchased a Dell 2400 on Saturday. It came with McAfee virus protection

Me: when I tried to set it up it said that my product had already been registered and I needed to log in, but it had not been registered with my e-mail address etc.

Peter Robinson: Heather, if I understand correctly, you are not able to register VirusScan. Is this correct?

Me: how do I get my virus scanner to work properly?

Me: correct

Me: it says that it has already been registered

Peter Robinson: I would be happy to help you with this issue.

Peter Robinson: Have you previously contacted McAfee support regarding this issue?

Me: no, I just bought the computer this weekend, I contacted the seller, who told me to contact Dell, who told me to contact McAfee

Peter Robinson: What version of Windows are you using? (95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)

Me: XP

Peter Robinson: Which McAfee programs are currently installed? If you are not sure, you can find them by doing the following.

1. Double click on My Computer

2. Double click on the Control Panel

3. Double click on Add/Remove Programs

4. Which McAfee programs do you see listed there?

Me: Security Center and VirusScan

Peter Robinson: What is the exact message that you are receiving while registering?

Me: hold on, let me bring it up again.

Me: when I attempt to update it tells me I need to register

Me: I agree to the EULA

Me: It gives me fields to fill in, name e-mail address, etc.

Me: I click submit, and it says "Your Dell PC has already been registered for this McAfee product subscription. If you need access to your service, click the 'Log In' button."

Me: But I have never registered it.

Peter Robinson: Do you have the registration window open?

Me: I can bring it back up

Peter Robinson: Based on the information you have provided, I can now provide the steps that should resolve your issue. If at any time there is something you do not understand, will you please stop me and let me know?

Peter Robinson: Please open the window.

Me: sure

Me: done

Peter Robinson: Do you see the link "Already registered customers click here"?

Me: "Current McAfee User Log In ?

Peter Robinson: Click that link.

Me: ok

Me: it asks for e-mail address and password

Peter Robinson: Enter your email ID and password.

Me: I don't have a password for this... I've never registered it.

Me: "the e-mail address or password you entered was invalid. Please try again"

Peter Robinson: How do you login to McAfee website?

Me: ?

Me: I clicked the link on the setup error screen

Me: http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/dell

Peter Robinson: How do you login to the website?

Me: I didn't log in... I clicked a link, it sent me to a support page, I entered my name, e-mail address and problem and it connected me to you

Peter Robinson: What is the email ID you are using?

Me: *******@yahoo.com is my e-mail, but I have not yet been asked for a password.

Peter Robinson: Do you have any other email ID?

Me: no

Me: I just bought the computer. I have never registered the product before.

Peter Robinson: May I place you on hold for a couple of minutes while I research this issue?

Me: sure.

Peter Robinson: Thank you for holding.

Me: no problem

Peter Robinson: Since you had McAfee pre-installed on the system, I will suggest you to contact DELL support.

Me: hahaha... I did. They said to contact you, since you are who the product is registered through, and not them. Thanks. I really appreciate the corporations responsibility to their customers.

Me: Have a nice day.

Peter Robinson: Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?

Me: If you want a civil response I'd say no.

Me: Just copying this chat to send to my buddies who work in tech support, I think they'll find it comical.

He got a bit upset after that and tried to reiterate some bs about Dell installing the sotware, but I closed the window. I have read many tech support stories, and have been regaled by my friends with them over and over. I know punting when I see it.

A kid I work with has been doing HelpDesk work here for about a year. The other day I was helping him troubleshoot a problem and told him he would need to use the Win2K disk.

Kid: What disk? Do we have that?

Me: You have built a computer before right?

Kid: Yeah but ive never used a disk.

Me: Really? So you've been doing it from an image on the drive?

Kid: No I wipe that before I start. Then I restart the computer and it starts installing Windows from the beginning.

Me: Really, so what do you just magically pull the OS from the cloud of magic computer dust around you?

Meanwhile he is walking over the the latest computer he has been building that day...

Kid: OH. Well...yeah i guess there is a cd in there.

Me: And so how did it get there?

Kid: Well I didnt put it there.

Turns out the other technician (who is also my husband) had been secretly inserting the disk at the right moment while the Kid wasnt looking. He had been installing the OS on every computer over the last year thinking he didnt need a disk. His new name is now the Magician Technician.

My boyfriend and I share a house and also share a computer. I am not the techy one in the house - I'm an adept computer user who knows enough to know what she doesn't know. As a result, I get on well with call-centre techs as I do exactly what I'm told and I don't go around deleting system files.

Boyfriend, on the other hand, takes three hours to type an email and doesn't know Word from a hole in the wall, but is pretty good at the technical side of things. Unfortunately, he knows it. He knows, in fact, just about enough to be dangerous.

So one afternoon, after rebooting the computer, he tells me that the machine is running slower. He knows this because he spotted a number relating to the speed when it rebooted and it was apparently less than previously.

"But it's running fine. You can't tell."

"Yes you can," he insisted.

It was imperceptible, but he swore blind he could tell it was slower, and decided to run a system restore so as to put the settings back a few days. Good idea, huh?

Nope. It crashed halfway through the restore and completely screwed the system. Two days of blood, sweat and tears later, he got it working again, more through brute force than anything else - and he did NOT call tech support at any point. That would have been too easy. Everything we had on the computer was lost, including the operating system - Windows ME, which we didn't have the CD for as it had been pre-installed. As a result, we ended up with a fresh install of Windows 98.

Boyfriend REALLY hated having to downgrade. He wanted a better version of Windows. So, despite my pleading, he decided to Do Something while I was away at work. I had my mobile switched off at the time, but when I picked up my voicemail, I had a rather sheepish message which nearly made me tear out my hair:

"Er... I've er... f**ked the computer again."

He'd downloaded 98se and it had turned out to be corrupt. This time all his persuading would have no effect. He tried 98 again. 95. 2000. Not having it. In the end, we had to get a programmer friend round to do a complete system wipe and install XP.

And everything was lost AGAIN.

At least we have XP. And we now have a CD writer to avoid losing all our stuff again. But if he doesn't learn to control his itchy computer fingers, I may have to remove them...

I work as a lab assistant in the computer labs at my college. It's a terrible job, boring, drives me crazy, but anyway here's the story.

A young lady comes in to the lab and starts working on a computer. After a while she declares that this computer is messed up and she is going to move to another computer. Seeking to fix whatever is wrong and help this lady I ask her what seems to be the trouble. She points to her screen, saying "Look!" (in a tone implying that I'm a moron and the computer is obviously terribly broken). Ok, I look on her screen and she has Windows Explorer open with the Address drop-down opened up. The odd thing is that it seems it's automatically and repeatedly scrolling through the list. I look down at where her keyboard would be and yes, this is true. Her book-bag was on her keyboard, resting on amoung others, the down-arrow.

I'm sorry, but next time you walk into a computer room, don't put your bag on that convenient slide-out KEYBOARD!! and expect the computer to behave normally!

Customer 1: "How do you dare to send me a vide about the war! My wife is deaf! She did not hear anything about the war!!"

___________

Agent: "Please spell your postcode for me!"

Customer 2:" K for Kween! D for delta ...."

I'm a PC/Network support person for about 150 users. I had a guy phone me from the warehouse:

Hi ***** I was working at my laptop on my desk and had to leave for awhile, came back and my screen was blank (IBM Thinkpad batteries suck) anyways I asked him to move the pointer and he does says it's dead please come a see. So I walk across the whole building to the warehouse office only to take one look at the laptop plug the adapter back into the back of the laptop, looked at him and walked away. And this guy gets the big bucks and for what?

Not exactly a tech story, but the things you see in college...

#1. An HTML class was required of my major and I ended up taking it at night (3 1/2 hours of things I already know, for the most part). The night instructor was different from the day class instructor, whom I absolutely adored. I knew it was going to be a long quarter when the guy didn't even show up the first night because he forgot what day the class started! So, the next week, he was there and we got started. Omen number two - "I'm a software developer, but I dabble in HTML." Oh good lord, I"m thinking. Then we start going over things. And he completely forgets to lecture on the uses of the paragraph and line break tags. He didn't remember until he heard me explaining it to a couple people who sit next to me. Oy!

#2. My networking class. We get around to the chapter about helping to troubleshoot network problems (basically, how to be tech support ^^). Anyway. There was an MCSE major in class who was always trying to show off his knowledge. Here's how it goes:

Prof: Somebody has a problem with their computer. They can't get into the network. What is the first thing you check?

So-smart-student: Check their MAC address. (He obviously overestimates the average luser)

Me: Is it plugged in?

The look on his face was absolutely priceless. Love the site, btw!

I work in a POS computer support center.... On day I get a call from a lady explaining to me that her program was on her screen but closed all of a sudden. After a couple minutes she explains to me that the monitor doesn't have power to it, and that the she can't see where to open the program... So I check the power connections on the back of the monitor.. just fine... Had the lady check to see if the power bar is turned on... She's not sure what a power bar is... after some time of explaining what a power bar is... She starts looking for it... in the 10 minute process of hearing her trying to get behind the desk, and moving things around, and trying to see if she can find the powerbar, I hear her say: "I can't see, can u get me a flash light".. at this point, I'm confused... I ask her why she needs a flash light... "The power is out in the mall and it's really dark in here!!!!!!"