Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

A few years ago I was overseeing the installation of an ISDN line into a school site. After being contacted by the telco and assured it all worked I went out to the site to test the link.

The first thing I noticed was there was no line power on the NT1. Of course the connection did not work so it was back to talk to the telco.

The telco tested the link remotely and assured me it tested fine. Still no success on site. After a number of calls, a technician arrived on site. Unfortunetely I was not on site when he arrived. To prove to the clerical staff that the line worked, the technician plugged a standard phone into the socket, bypassing the NT1 and made a call. He then left before I had arrived.

When I arrived on site and tested the link there was still no success. Being puzzled by his ability to plug in a standard phone, I tried it and it worked.

After a week of phone calls, still being told the line tested OK by the telco, I finally got on to someone who was able to help.

It turned out the telco had installed a new phone line. It took two weeks after the installation date to finally get a working ISDN line.

I do tech support for a software company and I thought I had heard it all, then one day our largest client a big HMO on the west coast called to ask if I could remove some data from the database. Well normally we won't do this for all kinds of legal reasons, but this one was different.

Seems somone in thier call center had taken a call from a client and entered the clients data in the databse, sounds normal, but this client was in the Federal Witness protection program. Now I don't know if the rep asked or the information was volenterred. I ended up removing the clients real name, fake name and physical address from the database.

I work in a small government department in the UK. Recently a stupid policy has been started that of the HR (human Resources) becoming responsible fore registering new users to the system, the theory being as they are the HR department they know about new staff and can get them registered before they even arrive. This is something that used to be done a day or 2 after someone arrived. Now it takes 4-5 days for someone to be registered so with twice as many staff and prior warning it still takes HR over twice as long as we did to get someone registered.

It's a terrible tale of betrayal but it wasn t my fault he got fired. Well maybe a little bit. I was on the web help system, just assigning problems. My phone rung and a very angry and frustrated IT guy starts go over the problem.

The new web app they were trying to use wasn t working.

It would work the first time but after that would throw up errors.

This was a few years back, so I was young and inexperienced, but I did know exactly what the problem was. cache .

The web app didn t work through a software proxy.

I told him (in a nice way) not to use a proxy.

Him But I ve turned off caching

Me Yeh, we tried that, but it doesn t work. You have to stop using a software proxy

This went on for a while.

Him Look I m sick of your attitude. I ve had over 20 years in IT and I know what I m doing

I replied in kind way I have a gift for calming people down.

Eventually he went to the NT server and accessed the web app from there with the proxy off.

It worked the first time, and then a second and then a third you get the picture.

Him It works

Me You can t use a proxy it was in the docs we sent out

He didn t thank me but put the phone down.

I was smug, I like solving easy problems even if it does take 1 ½ instead of 10 mins.

I walked into the next office to tell my story and I notice the boss on the phone smiling.

He says goodbye and puts the phone down.

He then explains that he was speaking to the boss of the company with the problems and that the IT guy had wasted 2 weeks or so on this problem, costing them quite a lot of money.

As I understand it that company let him go.

Please be warned however long we have been in IT none of us are always right.

TS: Hello, tech support.

Customer: Hello, yes, I cannot get mt email to work on my laptop?

TS:what is it doing? can I walk you through some things?

Customer: uhmm.. sure, can you get it in now and work on my email?

TS: where are you?

Customer: I am in my car at the corner of Midway and Harbour Drive. the laptop is my trunk. go ahead.

TS: really....hmmmm--lemme work some magic here. can I call you back when you get to a place where the PC can be accessed or at least turned on?

I have worked in I.T. for 15 years and have decided to make a career change. I am taking classes at a local vocational school, where the teacher knows of my computer experience.

One evening she was working on an Excel spreadsheet, and she kept having problems with some "strange white spaces" showing up when she clicked on "certain areas". She asked me to have a look.

It took me a second, but I realized she was leaning over to look at the screen, and was pressing the space bar with her boobs.

Good thing we're all girls! How would a man explain that without getting slapped? :)

I saw something recently that reminded me of the numerous stories of (l)users who mistakenly use the CD-ROM drive as a cupholder.

It turns out that there really is such a thing. I was browsing a certain website, which shall remain nameless, when I found that they sell something called the ThermalTake XRay, a combination cupholder and cigarette lighter (for use with car adapters, etc) that fits in a drive bay.

Don't say you weren't warned. Share this knowledge only with people you are confident will use it wisely. Otherwise, when the luser says his cupholder is broken, it really may be true.

Working in a high school, you get used to kids forgetting their passwords, but this case was special.

The procedure at our school was that if a student needed a password changed, they filled in a little form asking for their name, which year of school they were in, their class, and of course the password they would like to use.

One student came to my office and needed her password changed as she'd forgotten it. I gave her the form and a pen and she began to fill in the details, then sat there looking very lost for a little while.

Finally, she spoke up about what was bothering her.

"Excuse me, Miss, I'm stuck"

"What do you need help with?"

"In the bit where it says to write my password, do I actually write down my password, or do I just put those little star thingies?"

I got a really big laugh today when a customer called me and said "Hello. I'm stupid" ... Then he went silent until i asked him what the problem was. It was just one of the regular problems. But that "Hello. I'm stupid" saved my day.

One of out customers called me yesterday and said that their computers had disconnected from the Citrix server.

The WAN line was down, so I asked him to restart the modem/router.

Customer: "Can't you just fix this"

Me: "I can't fix anything or alert our ISP until you have restarted that router"

Customer (is silent for some seconds) "OK, where is it?"

Me: "I suppose it is in a tech room or office"

Customer "OK, i shall see if i find it."

A couple of minutes of later he comes back.

Me: "Did you find it"

Customer: "What does it look like?"

Me: "It's little box with some light on. It's named .... (company name) or Alcatel"

Customer: "Ok, i shall go and look some more"

He comes back a minute later

Me: "Did you find it"

Customer: "I found the tech room, but I don't dare to touch anything there"

Me: "You have to restart the router for us to help you"

Customer: "Ok, then we'll have to do without net"

Lucky for him the WAN line came online by itself a little later.

Ok... some back ground first. Years ago i used to work for a fly by night outfit. Let's call the company FBN Computers (sorry if there is such a computer company), they make really lousy computers really really cheap.

I get a call from a user, while trying not to get shocked by a motherboard test, on a metal desktop, with no wrist strap (they weren't provided, and not exactly something I wanted to spend $20 on at the time)...

Him: Hi, my computer is smoking.

Me: Well, sir, you need to turn it off and bring it in right now. That is a serious hardware problem.

Him: No, no. You have a driver to turn the smoke off.

Me: Well sir, are there any noises also coming from the computer at the same time there is smoke?

Him: Yes my hard drive is whining like a jet engine.

Me: Sir, there is no driver for this, your hard drive is burning up. You will need to bring it in.

Five minutes of this to go round and round with this guy.

Him: LOOK! Give me the damned support you are suppose to.

Me: (Irritable and slightly aggressive) FINE! Click start, click Find, click files and folders, type in NOSMOKE.EXE and hit find now.

Him: (after a few moments) file not found.

Me: Well sir, I suggest you call Microsoft and get the latest version on the file. Perhaps that will keep the smoke in your machine.

Him: Thank you.

20 minutes later....

Me: Hello this is **********, how may I help you?

Him: Microsoft said that there was a hardware problem, to contact my computer vendor and have the machine looked at.

Me: Ok, sir, you can bring it in now, if you like, we are open until 9pm.

Him: They also said that you can put the smoke back into the hard drive just like the makers of the Hard drive when it is made at the factory. How long would that take?

Me: Repacking the hard drive with Factory Smoke, sir, is quite a long process, and quite expensive...are you sure you don't want us to put in a different hard drive?

Him: Well, if it is over $50 dollars to repack the smoke do it....

Me: Yes, sir, we will be happy to get you a new Hard drive....

I have cable-based internet access. In the summer of 2001, my provider was AT&T Broadband. One day in August (we'll say the 12th), I try to get online, and nothing works. I call tech support, try the reboot/recycle modem/etc stuff, move into more exotic ideas like trying different network cables (fortunately, I had an extra I knew worked), and so forth. Eventually, on only the second call, they decide that the problem is my rented cable modem, and a call is scheduled (for the 22nd, 10 days later) for a tech to come and replace the modem.

The week of the 22nd, I get back from a trip and find a message on my machine. While I was gone, a tech (T3) had called saying he had a way to get me back online without the replacement, and I should call back. I figure, "hey, why not avoid the hassle," and call back. When I do, the woman (T4) I talk to is blissfully competent and a quick review of the case tells her that, yes, I do need the new modem after all.

Suddenly, my stupid-senses tingle! (They're like spidey-senses, but go off when I'm about to be exposed to gross stupidity). I ask T4 to verify my modem-replacement appointment. T4 comes back and says that, apparently, T3 had cancelled it when he called with his magic solution. T4 is able to find a new appointment on the 29th.

Once that's all set, I ask to speak to the supervisor, and register my _slight_ dissatisfaction with the whole situation (review: it took 2 different calls to get to the replacement appointment, and then a 3rd cancelled the appointment without even telling me). He apologized and said that they would be pursuing a more intensive program of training for their phone techs soon.

All I could say there was, "Oh, good."

I had set up a Linux firewall for my ex-Girlfriend's parents a LONG time ago. They had broandband, and wanted to play online at the same time. So, I set them up a little firewall running on an older P-2 system. The little guy ran great, never needed a reboot, and never gave them a hassle. Unfortunately, as good as Linux is, Lightning will still beat it. So, I built them another POS pc, threw the same itteration of the firewall on it, and brought it over to them.

After the lightning strike, they had plugged on of their PC's into the cable modem directly. No biggee. I have had trouble with IP releases for Comcast customers before, but they had waited so long to plug it in, it did not present an issue. Well, I go to put in the new firewall, and of course, It will not snag an IP from Comcast since their old PC was still plugged in when I arrived. Seen it before, and in the past, just call 'em up, and tell them I need the old IP released/dissassociated from the account. No problem, right?

Wrong. Call 'em up, and then it starts:

Tech support: "What version of Windows are you running?"

me: "Doesn't matter. I just need the IP released for them becasue they are gettig a new PC on it.

Tech support: "Well, I need to know what version of Windows you are running on the new PC."

me: "Well, I am not running Windows, I am running Linux."

Tech support: "What version of Windows is that?"

me: "I told you, they are not running Windows. They are running LInux."

Tech support: "I don't need the software they are running, I need the Windows version."

Me (getting smart now): "Well, if it HAD windows (It only had a BASH shell on it), it would be 'X'!"

Tech support: "OK, On a Mac, you will need to access the network options."

Me (irritated): "Its NOT a Macintosh...It is a PC running Linux."

Tech support: "Well, Sir, Its called 'OSX', not 'nine-X'"

(apparently he thought I said nine-ecks, not Linux)

Me (Getting tired): "Look, Its a Pentium 2-400 running Linux. That's L-I-N-U-X. The 'Alternative' OS. That's not important though, all I need is the IP released for this customer, as the new machine has a different MAC address than the old one, and is not getting an IP."

Tech support: "Sir, a Mac should get an address as long as someone has not changed the network settings from factory."

Me: "MAC! Media Access Control! Part of he Data-Link layer of the OSI model! NOT macintosh. Not even APPLE!"

Tech support: "Sir, on a mac..."

Me: "Look, Just escalate me to teir 2 support so I can talk to someone who is not reading out of a knowledgebase."

Got escalated, and the tier-2 guy and I had a good laugh about it. He popped the old IP and we were rolling on.

I was helping the department out and got a call that an old HP printer would not go on line. After talking with the operator who told me The thing just stopped working, I did the normal troubleshooting but kept coming up empty. After a while I started looking for something jammed in the printer. I did not find a paper jam but when I took out the toner cartridge I noticed that the transfer wheel on the cartridge was showing. I told the operator that this was odd and that the toner cartridge shouldn't look like this. I went and got him a new cartridge and when I opened it I showed him the new cartridge and how it had a hinged plastic cover over the transfer wheel. He then said OOOHHH that s what that was and pulled the same hinged cover out of his trash and said "I saw 'Low Toner' on the display took out the cartridge to shake it and this 'fell' off." I thanked him for giving me all the information so I didn't waste my time trying to diagnose his problem and left.

I got my first job in the IT arena doing in-home warranty repairs for multiple manufacturers... well first paying job in IT.

My part of the job was nice because I just had to drive to the users home, get the part the comapny had sent to them, and swap it out. Wheter or not it fixed it or not did not matter as I was "only there to swap the part". If it failed to repair the problem I was to direct them to tech support.

Anyway, I got a call to head to this home and I checked my mapbook to see where it was. As I get closer to the house, I notice it is in a Gated Golf course community and the homeowner has to be called to allow me in. After the brief wait to get in to the community, I get to the house. This place SMELLS like money, and I grab my toolbag adn head to the door.

The maid lets me in and ushers me to the "lady of the house" where I introduce myself. She asks me to follow her to the computer and starts telling me about the problem, "Well for precautions we unplug the power cord from the wall when we go out of town. About half the time it works when we get back and half the time it does not."

We get to the system, and the part that the company had shipped was sitting there waiting for me. It was a power supply,,, logical,, I guess.

So I proceded to test the system and nothing had power,, nothing, Monitor, or system unit. So, I traced the power cables from the back of the monitor and system unit to the Power strip/Surge suppressor, and then traced the power cord from the Power strip/Surge suppressor and it was plugged in to one of the available ports on the Power strip/Surge suppressor.

I informed the user of the issue and went to call in my ticket to close the call. Now here is the ID10T issue.... the company I had to call in to had me swap the power supply anyway, "..Or I would not be paid for that call."

WHY OH WHY??

Actual questions I've received about upgrading our software (Followed by answers I *WANTED* to give.)

What will happen if I have almost enough room to upgrade?

-- You'll have an almost successful upgrade.

It says to remove holds reports, but we don't have them.

-- Maybe you should create them so you can remove them.

Do I have to download both upgrade files?

-- Only if you want the upgrade to work.

Why do I need to make a backup before starting?

-- You don't. That only applies to our imperfect customers.

A fellow administrator sent me an email asking what options were required for a particular command to do something.

I replied back with: RTFM

He replied saying options RTFM didn't exist for that command.

me: please press the start key on your key board

she : what's that?

me : ???*****??

me: how may i assist you today?

she : you know what the coffee tray u fixed in my computer is no good it just throws my cups down ??

me : so , you got a coffee tray inside your computer?

she : yes , i just press a button and it comes out .

me: ?? really and can you play movies on it ?

she : no , that's some thing else i want to tell you about . i heard you give disk players but i didn't get one ?

me: so my dear lady it is not the coffee tray but it's your disk player or your cd-rom okay?

it was the year of '98, and it was a cold misserable morning. I were still busy getting some coffee for my self, and the help desk was about to open. 1st call i took set the mood to depressing. frankly i liked misserable more.

So we had this custom software which the user will install. During the instalation, the installer would dial up, make the payment, and give your account details. It was a seamless setup. Start the install process, when its done you are a customer, and we have all your details. Fool proove!!!!. Yeah RIGHT!!

So this lady called and told me our software does not work. I did some investigation over the phone, and as fas as i could tell the computer did not pick up her modem. Simple enough to fix i though. I asked her to locate the modem, make sure all the cables was plugged in, and that the modem had power. Ok so there was no external modem. Still simple enough, then it must be internal right? I asked her to locate the flylead from the phone line and trace it back to where it connects to her pc. Ok so no fly lead. I soon discovered that she does not own a modem. I looked at one of my co-workers that was following this conversation for his own amusement, and said, M'am you need a modem if you want to dial up to the internet. At that point i had to mute the phone for a good 40 seconds before i could resume the conversation.

This is a great story, I'm sure by now that we have all heard of wireless technology, well so had this lady she just hadn't quite grasped the concept.

ME: hello and thenk you for calling ** my name is ** how can I help you today

EU: i cannot connect to my wireless router

ME: ok well is the wireless light on, on the notebook

EU: yes

ME: ok thats good lets check the drivers

*the drivers are fine*reinstalled them anyway*

*we reset the router and the notbook, checked everything*

ME: I finally asked her when and where she got the router and also what kind of router it was.

*she gave me the model # and I looked it up*

*and guess what, it wasn't even a wireless router, but of course when i asked her at the beginnin of the call, she said she did have a wireless router.*

i eventually found out that she cut the wire off of the router in order to make it wireless. and thats enough said.

Quite a while back, I worked in a retail store as an electronics stocker. One day a lady came in to return a printer she had purchased, and per routine, I had to make sure all the parts were in the box and find out what was wrong with the product. I questioned the lady and she said that it just didn't work. I asked if she wanted me to take a look at it, and she rudely replied "My husband is a computer expert. He knows what he is doing, and he said printer doesn't work!" (she was kinda a bitch) Well just to humor myself, I opened the printer lid and pulled the cartridges out to examine them. I turned to the lady and said "Ma'am did your husband know that you have to pull these little tabs off of the cartridges before you can use them?" Needless to say she was pissed, and I was feeling good! HA! HA! Some F***ing expert! I bet he caught an earfull that night!

Not a computer story but I thought you might appreciate the level of stupidity it shows.

Many years ago I was stuck in a line up of cars waiting to get to the toll booth, where is irrelevant, what matters is we have been in this line up slowly creeping forward for almost half an hour, it was hot and I didn't have air conditioning.

I was slumped in the car not getting excited, it was too hot, but the dude in front, he was waving his hands and thumping on the dash, you get the picture.

Finally, he reaches the toll booth......and starts searching for change!!!!

At that moment I knew what it meant to see red. Fortunately for him by the time I could see again and unclamp my hands from the death grip on the steering wheel, he had paid and driven off. If it had taken him any longer the line would have been there a lot longer, he wouldn't have been able to drive very far with his throat torn out.

Ok. Sometime last year I bought a HP Notebook. About a few months ago I had a problem with the PCM card. I called HP Support to see if I could get it fixed. They did some trouble shooting. It still didn't work. "Sir, are you using a wireless router?" "Yes, but it also has Cat 5 cable hookups and that is the card that I am trying to fix so I can use my Notebook at work." "What are Cat 5 cables, sir?" Needless to say I didn't call HP Support again.

Ok. Sometime last year I bought a HP Notebook. About a few months ago I had a problem with the PCM card. I called HP Support to see if I could get it fixed. They did some trouble shooting. It still didn't work. "Sir, are you using a wireless router?" "Yes, but it also has Cat 5 cable hookups and that is the card that I am trying to fix so I can use my Notebook at work." "What are Cat 5 cables, sir?" Needless to say I didn't call HP Support again.

I used to work as a bench tech for a chain computer store in New Jersey. We were in a fairly upscale neighborhood and sold custom built PCs along with mostly Compaqs. We often dealt with irate customers with this or that breaking on the cheaper models they bought.

One day, an elderly man who bought a $999 special (this was in 2000) Celeron 500Mhz with 64MB RAM, CDRW drive and 2X DVD ROM Compaq Presario. We had a few of them have problems from the get go and thought this might be one of those.

The man, however started screaming from the moment he was in the door. He yelled that he was going to go to the better business bureau etc etc and that we were crooks and liars.

When we got him to calm down a little he finally told us why he was mad, still yelling that he had his DVD ROM but no "SEE DEE Read Wrigt drive" and that we must have taken it out. The box was sealed when he bought it but he insisted that we stole it from him and that he was going to make life very difficult for us.

We finally got him to bring his Compaq Presario in and put it on our counter. I pushed the little pressure button to pop the bezel door out to display that there were, in fact, a DVD ROM and CDRW drive, and he had this astonished look on his face and shouted "There's a DOOR there?!!!!"

I calmly asked if there was anything else we could do for him. He apologized and left. Boy, what an ass eh?

They:

- Sold me a computer with the diskette drive fastened to the frame with 1 screws.

- Replaced the video card when I brought the computer in to get the grinding noise from the processor fan fixed.

- Scratched and ruined the cdrom that was in the drive when I brought it back in again to replace said processor fan.

- Replaced the power supply for free, because they somehow managed to blow it up while replacing said processor fan.

- Also reinstalled Windows for some reason, and ignored unimportant details such as video card drivers.

- Condescendingly told me I was supposed to connect the cables to make my cd writer work, while the reason I had disconnected it in the first place was that at random intervals the drawer would spontaneously open, make a loud crunch sound and lock up the whole system, which was btw exactly what I said when I brought it in.

- Were about to replace the ram to fix the freezes they experienced after reconnecting said cd writer. I happened to call just in time to stop them.

- Also reinstalled Windows for some reason, and told me I had to redownload the video card drivers, which coincidentally were on the cdr labeled 'video & sound drivers' in the cdrom drive. I never saw that cdr again.

Next time something breaks, I am going to buy and install the replacement myself. See if I can do more damage than these computer professionals.

My computer was behaving strangely so I called someone to take a look at it. She arrives and turns on the screen. She sits there for 5 minutes and waits patiently, then turns to me and says "it won't turn on"...

I lean forward and turn on the computer.

Yes, you actually have to turn on the pc too, and not just the screen! *sigh*

Doing tech support for a DSL internet company in USA

EU calls in

cannot get new self install dsl connection to work

verified service is ready to use

had eu tell me light status of modem

hmm ok somethins up

went throug all basic trouble shooting and extended trouble shooting after asking eu if everything was cabled correctly as shown in the instructions ( he said it was )

was befuddled.. and about to put in a trouble ticket

thought to ask eu to trace cables to the ports they were plugged into and tell em exactly what color they were ..

heres his scenario .. i had to laff a little.. the guy had the worst of luck..

dsl needs rj 11 cable connected frm wall to dsl modem .. then rj 45 from modem to ethernet port on computer

eu was in office and had both rj 45 and rj 11 jack side by side on wall and had plugged ethernet cord into wall and phone cord plugged into existing modem on pc.. BASS ACKWARDS

corrected this while eu calls him self dumbass and i swear i heard him smacking himself on the forehead..

hahaha .. got him online pretty easy after that

My friends and I do freelance web programming in our spare time. Today, I got a call from an older woman who has hired us to create a website on which people can view and buy her paintings. We gave her the PHP scripts to upload to her server, about a week ago (she has her own hosting). She was irate, i mean really PISSED OFF. Here's how the call went:

Me: Hello?

Her: This is ******. Please explain to me what you've done to my website?

Me: I haven't changed anything. What seems to be the problem?

Her: My website doesn't work and you put curse words on it!

Me: Curse words??

(At this point I decide to check out the website, figure maybe she's been hit by a hacker or something)

Her: Yes, you put profanity on it and it's broken and you need to take it off!

Me: Okay... when I access the website, I see a MySQL error.

Her: That's right, I told you it's broken!

Me: That is not a problem with our programming, it is a problem with your hosting provider's database software. (I knew this because it was accessing the database fine before)

Her: Don't lie to me! I saw the swear words you put in there.

Me: (?????) ...Swear words? Where did you see these swear words?

Her: I opened up the files, to try to fix it. (Fix it?? Keep in mind she has NO experience in programming of any sort)

The conversation went in circles for a while, and I ended up going over to her house to have a look. I asked her to show me where the "curse words" were, and she pointed at the screen, where she had some of our PHP source displaying. "See? profanity!"

The script we wrote started by initializing two variables, called 'hit' and 'pic'. If you don't know already, the variable-name prefix in PHP is $. So the code looked like:

$hit = 0;

$pic = '/';

She was reading the dollar-signs as letter S... and you can see what she thought it said.

It turned out that her hosting company's MySQL software was temporarily down.

Never mind that she had NO business trying to "fix" any sort of code.

Ugh...

I work for a medium size computer retailer in Australia. I mainly work sales but with my technicial knowledge I'm often called into the service centre. I have hundreds of stories but this one takes the cake.

I was working behind the service desk booking in jobs. A gentleman apporched the desk and told me that his son had told him he needed to flash his BIOS. I explained to him that this was rather a rare problem, but after he told me the faults I agreed that that sounded like the most logical fix and told him to book it in. The customer went out to his car to get his system while I started the job sheet. A couple of minutes later he returned with his keyboard. After arguing with him for 10 minutes that the BIOS is on his motherboard not his keyboard and that his son must have given him the wrong bit, the old guy stormed out of the store yelling that we didn't know what we were doing.

Just cant help some people!

I called tech support for my ISP at home. I just needed the address of their POP and SMTP servers to get my email.

Me: What is the address of your POP server?

Tech: http://mail.(myisp).net

Yes, he actually said H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash.

Alternate title: Monopoly is a better board game than business practice, Verizon.

Didja ever wish you could punch someone through the phone? My knuckles would be broken and bloody by this point if you could, so let's just start at the beginning, hmmmm? Recently moved out of my nice, large, FUNCTIONAL house where I was living with my brother ever since my mother died, into a nice, small but big enough for us, and BROKE appartment. The phone was (supposedly) activated the day BEFORE the moving vans showed up, so we hump everything in, end of the night, "Eh, we're both dead, let's just save it for tomorrow night."

Tomorrow night.....

I get in from work, with a fresh load of boxes from the old house (why did brother never get the MOVERS to bring this? That's a tale for a different website..) and dump off all the stuff. I go to plug in the phone in the living room, huzzah functionality! Go into his bedroom..... No plug..... Okay, the lady we bought it from lied, she gets a smacking later. Go over into MY room... And the fun starts. No dialtone. Odd. Put in the DSL filter, maybe they already activated it? Nnnnnope, nuthin. Go back out to the living room, yep yep there it is. Unplug THAT phone bring it into MY room, yuh huh still no dialtone. So, we call tech support, tech support can help us right? :D

..... When the "smart-system" fucks up your number when you TYPE IT IN, you know it's not going to end well. It didn't START well either, as before I even *talked* to a person, the automated nitwittitude jerked me back and forth between 3 numbers. Then I finally get hold of someone..

"Well if you unplug the cordless phone from the other line..."

Okay. First off, it wasn't cordless, I don't care what your system is saying. Secondly, I already tried that. If it's saying there's excessive interference, it's on YOUR end. Buuuut she doesn't listen to me, and without even asking transfers me over to the other group. Growl. THIS nimrod does the same thing, but actually listens when I say no there's no second line, but for some reason says that by this point the repair center is closed for the night.... When I'm looking at the card and it says 24 hours.

"Oh no, that's a different line. You need to call the new-accounts services." But I don't want a new account... I want THIS account, *FIXED*. "Well because it's a new account, you need to schedule the repair through them." FINE whatever i just want this FIXED.

The NEXT next day.....

I call the number. Get bounced not once, not twice, but a grand total of SIX TIMES. Each time having to spend a good minute to three minutes explaining the situation, and that there ISN'T a second line in the apartment. Some thirty five (!?) minutes later I get put BACK on the line with ANOTHER automated system... Which ends up.... Scheduling, a technician to come out, TUEEEESDAY!!!

Was that SO freaking hard to do the FIRST TIME!?

A number of my tasks in my present job require me to serve as a point of contact for people whose information we have in databases. While I have developed a nice calm telephone manner, I often get very ticked off with some of the less intelligent people I have to deal with, and this has become something of a standing joke in the office. (Mind you, I'm not the only one by a long shot.)

On this particular day I'd had several difficult callers. On three separate occasions someone had asked me "Is there anyone else I could speak to?" after not liking my answer or the wait while their file came up. A gentleman had subjected me to a ten-minute tirade about why I didn't know something he hadn't told me. And let's not forget the numerous people who had received an information CD in the post: "The CD doesn't work/got trodden on/has this big coffee ring on it/and it makes a really crap frisbee, too!"

One of those days.

Anyway, since I had some spare time that afternoon my boss suggested I go and work with one of my co-workers, who had just started training with the IT department so as to be our office techie. She was shadowing an IT technician for the day, and the first job we came up against was a man in HR who had jammed a floppy disk into his zip drive.

The technician went in with his tools while we watched, all the while giving the man a running commentary on which disks go in which drive. The man nodded enthusiastically at everything that was said.

Drive fixed, my co-worker and I turned to leave.

SMACK!!!

We spun back round to see a shell-shocked HR man holding his red-knuckled hand, which contained a floppy, and to hear our goggle-eyed technician screaming "THAT'S THE ZIP DRIVE!!! Do you THINK I'm going to go through all that AGAIN?!"

My co-worker and I decided to leave the scene at that point.

We no longer have that tech on board, but I now realise that whatever I have to go through with idiot callers, it's nothing compared to the suffering of a tech.

Not really tech support, but I'll tell it anyway.

Being somewhat proficient with computers when I went to high school, I found the basic IT education rather dull and tedious.

To teach us how to use word processors, we were given a book that told us how to do various things, and there was a section on text formatting, which involved typing out a paragraph of text, printing it, then repeating with different formatting. The guide book said that the task should take about 3 hours to do. (We had IT once a week, so it should have been 3 weeks work.)

After I printed the first page and cleared the text I noticed that the text in the second formatting was the same, so I clicked on "Undo", and applied the formatting to the text. After about 20 minutes, I had completed 3 afternoons work. When I showed the completed work to the teacher, she started to suggest that I had accessed the "Teachers' files" and just printed them out and gave me detention. I started laughing at the thought of the teachers having several saved copies of the same text with different formatting, and after I explained what I had done I was still on detention for laughing at a teacher.

Working for a wireless ISP (phone support),

I was asked this question by a lady who was inquiring about switching to the wireless service:

"Now, with this wireless connection, is it still possible to get viruses ?"

I suppose her question had to do something with the fact that HIV viruses die in contact with air.

This happened last summer, while I was in Rome. Poor street vendors are common there, and they sell everything imaginable, including computer hardware. Sometimes they are not the most honest salesmen.

My uncle called me to help him set up the new wireless mouse he just bought from a street vendor. I asked him if he had tried changing or charging the batteries. He said there wasn't a battery in the wireless mouse. (!) I'm thinking, is it solar-powered or something?? So I went over to his apartment and he showed me the mouse. Indeed, there was no trace of a battery compartment. I also noticed that on the front of the mouse, there was a little plastic stub with bits of bare wire visible.

The street vendor had cut the USB cable off a normal mouse, and sold it to my uncle as "wireless". (I guess that's technically true...) He never did get his money back.

Got a help ticket from a user just given a new system because she could not burn CDs with the system due to no disk being present when she inserted a blank CD. The only issue was the new systems the company bought did not have CD burners, just DVD drives.

The kicker to the whole thing was having to explain the difference between a floppy disk and drive and a CD disk and drive for over 10 minutes.

Got to love/hate our users, it keeps me employed.

Got a call from an irate VP at the company I work for, stating his computer was completely fried. I sit down at his desk, and sure enough, both the monitor and computer won't turn on. Under the desk, I noticed that there were 3 cords plugged into the powerstrip. Hmmm....ther's only 1 computer and 1 monitor. Yup... that's right, he had the powerstrip was plugged into itself.