Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

First of all, I'm a third year computer science student with a 4.0, run Linux, and put together my own computer. Don't mean to brag, but I know a little something about computers. I knew exactly what my problem was. The physical ethernet outlet in the wall was faulty, as I had to jiggle the cable to get it to work. Sometimes it took me half an hour to connect, which was pretty ridiculous. This happened with any machine, any cable, and only on this jack.

Of course, when the cable wasn't making contact, I had absolutely zero connectivity.

So I called tech support to come fix my ethernet jack...

[rough approximation of call)

Me: Hello, I'm blah in room #blah, and my room needs somes service.

Them: What seems to be the problem?

Me: I can't connect to the internet. The ethernet jack in the wall is broken.

Them: Do you have your computer with you?

Me: Yes...

Them: Can you open an Internet Explorer window?

Me: No, I run Linux

Them: Well, can you open any browser window?

Me: *sigh* I can, but I already told you, the problem is at the wall. The connection is really flimsy. I have to jiggle the cable to get any signal at all. Sometimes I sit here jiggling the cable for about 30 mins.

Them: Well, what do you see?

Me: What do you mean?

Them: In the browser window?

Me: *sigh* Could not locate remote server

Them: Hmm, have you paid your monthly internet bill? I see that yours expires today.

Me: How the hell do you want me to pay them, we have to pay online, through this fucking jack. Them: Well, I see some activity, so it might just be your computer.

Me: *sigh* I'm a third year computer science student with a 4 fucking 0 and A+ certification, and I'm telling you, the goddamn ethernet jack in the wall is broken! Get someone to come fix it, now!

Them: I'll request a service request.

Me: Thank you, was that so hard?

Them: Someone will call you in advance, they should be there by thursday.

Of course, nothing happened by Thursday. On Tuesday, I got to my room after class and saw a note on my desk: connection is perfect, must be issues with computer.

Apparently the service dude got past the jiggling of the cable (it only acted up sometimes). After that, there's nothing that would indicate a bad connector.

I moved off-campus this year, definitely a crappy experience.

(for those of you keeping track, yes, I was a Junior living in a dorm, I had just transfered from elsewhere and had no real alternative for the first year.

Setting up an email account:

(Agent)

Okay please type your name where it says 'Your name'

(Pebkac)

Okay... umm.. what is that? I'm not very good with this computer stuff

(Agent)

................. your name?

(Pebkac)

Yeah what do I put there? Sorry you're going to have to go easy on me like I said I'm not computer literate

(Agent)

........... (long silence) .......

I work tech support for a calbe ISP and i got a call one day that a customer coulnd't send e-mail. After some troubleshooting it seams that the customer was trying to sent an e-mail through our server but was not on our network. A little more probing led me to believe that the customer was connected wirelessly to her neighbors hotspot and not her own and when I advised her of this she might as well have called me stupid, heres how:

me: it looks like your laptop is actually not connected to your wireless router and--

cust: Yes it is, i can surf to web pages, im doing it right now!

me: yes i believe that you can which means that you are connected to SOME router, just not yours

cust: but i can surf, it just loaded MSN!

me: it may be possible that you are connected to your neighbors

cust: no thats not possible, that is all the way next door, besides he has BSL or something like that

me: ok but--

cust: I don't know alot about computers

me: well thats fine but i looks like you are connected to your neighbors wireless router

cust: i dont think so

me: ok can we please unplug the power from your router and your cable modem

cust: ok now the lights are off

me: can you surf?

cust: yes

me: please contact linksys for assistance in connecting your laptop to your wireless router

cust: can i have the phone number to the local cable office

me: sure (i am required to)

I checked the customers account 2 days later when i was bored, it was pending disconnect...

One of my wife's cousins needed a computer, and, since she's disabled and on a very limited income, we gave her a fairly nice low-cost computer I picked up at a local dealer's and sent it to her. A few days after she got it, I got a call from her "computer lierate friend" saying the modem wouldn't connect. I had him go into device manager and check the diagnostics and select 'query modem." He got the error "modem not responding." I asked him to look at the modem port settings and he told me it was connected to COM1. That wasn't right because it was an internal PCI modem, so I asked him how the modem was set up. His response was that when they tried to configure the dial-up settings, they got the "cannot detect modem" error, so they just picked a modem at random. Now I need to get the right drivers for the modem so they can install it.

I worked in a helpdesk supporting various government users.

Me" Usual greeting

User: My vacuum cleaner is not working

Me: ???

OK, this story is not mine but my sister's. She used to work for a cable company in customer support.

So one day she gets a call from a customer who is trying to send them a fax.

S: Sister

C: Customer

C: I am trying to send you a fax but it won't go through.

S: What is the phone number that you are trying to send it to

C: (xxx) xxx-xxx.

S; Ok, that is the correct number. Please tell me how you are trying to send the fax.

C: Well, I am taking the paper and putting it behind the wall phone that I am calling you from. (A Regular Phone, not a Fax machine)

i was a DSL tech for VOL, but i go through a different isp. well the other night i actually had to call tech support, and after a nice 45 minutes of sleep enducing music, i finally get to a human (I think they were human).

tech--T

me--M

T- thank u for calling ---, how can i assist u today?

M- yeah, my dsl light is flashing, and i've already gone through most of the no sync ts, so can we skip to the line test, and testing different phone jacks?

T- sir, unless you are a tech, you couldn't have done any ts for a flashing dsl light.

well i procede to verbaly kick the god complex out of this jack ass.

T- i'm sorry sir, but if you do not co-operate i will have to end this call.

M- let me speak to ur supervisor! now!

T- this call has been deemed unproductive, thank you for calling ---, have a nice day.

now durring my rant, i never said one foul word to this half witted moron, so he had no reason to kill the call. so i proceded to call back, wait another 45 minutes, get my sync issue fixed, and then rip into a supervisor. i was a tech for over 2 years, and never did i treat a customer like a moron, no matter how much i wanted to. this tech needs to have his head removed from his arse via pry-bar.

Let me start this out by saying I was the tech calling support for help. I wanted to get a second opinion on a printer issue I was having. The printer was a **4500 made by the #1 maker of printers. They just merged with Compaq, so you can guess who they are.

I call up the Self-maintainer support number, (which I do on occasion) and I get a plesent woman on the line. I get asked a series of questions, (pretty standard so they can track the call) until I get hit with a question that made my eyes roll in the back of my head. It compleatly baffles me that these folks are this ignorant.

Support Person = her

her: What is the Serial number of the unit?

me: xxxxxxxxxxxxx

her: What operating system do you use?

me: Its a network printer. There is no OS.

her: What operating system, Windows or Macintosh?

me: This is a hardware issue for a network printer, there is no OS.

her: I need to know what OS you use for this printer.

me: It connects to a Novell print queue. Novell then.

(At this point I think she is just reading a script, and is not very skilled. I was looking for a 3rd level support person, not a organic answering machine.)

her: Novell is not a operating system.

me: This is a hardware issue, not software. The OS has nothing to do with this problem. Like I keep saying, this is a NETWORK PRINTER.

her: I understand. What operating sytem are you using for this printer?

(didn't we just cover this?)

me: Novell

her: Look, Novell is not a operating system. Do you use Windows or Macintosh for this printer?

At this point, I'm can't believe what I'm hearing. I'm getting angry, and find myself going "ITS HARDWARE, NOT SOFTWARE!!!"

My boss comes over and sees what is happening. She is seeing I'm somewhat upset, but I know she is laughing at the same time.

I had to hang up for the stupidty was just too much. I do hope the call was recorded so the person who took my call gets a lesson in what a OS is.

Not my story but my friends, a SysAdmin for a Public Water Utility...

Had to share it.

He got a call from a user who said she, "thinks her mouse has a virus because the arrow keeps jumping all over the screen and menus keep opening randomly".

After first patiently explaining to her that computers get viruses, not mice, he thought he'd wander down and see what was wrong.

He knew there shouldn't be a problem with the mouse as a few days earlier he had replaced her traditional ball mouse with a brand new optical mouse...

When he finally gets to her desk he sees that she has the mouse upside down and is waving her hand over the optical light (the random menus came up when her hand would rest on the base of the mouse, pressing the buttons)...

He flipped it over - quick training session - all is well

Loved that one...

iD10t error

I work in retailer support for a major hardware manufacturer.

Today a retailer called in to get a service on a printer, which only displayed the same error message ("close cover") no matter what he did. So I started logging a service case on it, and during the course of the logging I asked for the serial number of the printer.

M: What is the serial number on the unit?

R: Hang on, I'll flip it over and read it.

(the s/n is on the underside of the unit, stupid place but there you go)

R: Hey, you know what?

M: What?

R: When I put it back down, it started printing! Doesn't look like I need that service after all.

A short tale here. A guy in my work had not installed his printer correctly so instead of reinstalling the driver he tryed holding his monitor (CRT) at that over the photocopier and pressed copy.

I work as a Tech for a midsize company, and am usually the guy that just happens to be around when things go pear-shaped.

One day last month, i got a call saying that one of the office workers could not get on the internet at all. Just as i hung up the phone, the mailserver started beeping at me, complaining that it could not make contact the the internet either. Hmmmmm...

So i grab a cordless phone, head down to the server room to check the router etc, and am about to phone up the isp to give them grief. When i get to the server room, i am amazed to find a plume of black acrid smoke emerging from the main hardware firewall and the hint of flames emerging from the casing. I hurredly appologize to the tech on the phone, grab a CO2 fire extingusher from the hall and douse the 'raging inferno' before me.

Anyway, i get the backup firewall installed, explain the reasons for the outage to the office, and have a bit of a chuckle about the irony of the whole thing with one of the receptionists over lunch.

Anyway the real kicker comes the next week when the aforementioned receptionist presents me with a set of fire-proof gauntlets. She remarks that i should wear them when i work on the firewall in future, 'just in case the fire in it escapes again'.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry...

Another tale from the control room i was called over the company two way radio i answered and asked what was wrong I was told that a department head by the name of keith couldnt get the photocopier to respond i said wht is showing on screen he says paper low so its low but not empty try requesting 1 copy - no luck- ok try opening the maintainance door and see if theres any paper in there he said ok and signed off Seconds later FIRE ALARM sounds i was curious what could keith of done to this thing i found him standing beside an open alarmed fire exit grinning and said the maintenence door is alarmed I despair..

One of my favourites that actually happened to me personally was a call from a user whilst I was working at a client (I was a contractor doing an audit of a mail system at the time). Apparently the user was having a problem with the keyboard. The keyboard, according to the enlightened user was not working. The local techie was baffled and couldn't locate the fault. He asked me if I would take a quick look since the user in question was the PA to the head of the department and was known to complain loudly to her boss about the incompetence of the tech staff if problems were not resolved instantly for her (I am sure we all know that type of user).

Anyhow, upon arriving on the scene, the first thing I noticed was the garishly coloured desktop. Bright pink windows, neon green menu text and so forth. With a sudden flash of insight, I immediately checked the colour settings on the computer. The user had cleverly set the window background to white, and intelligently set the default text colour to... wait for it... white. Needless to say, I took great pleasure in informing said user of their error.

just the old one of "take a copy of this disk" and the guy puts a floppy disk in the photocopier

This happened to a friend and was told in a forum:

When he (Linux sysadmin) worked on a car rental store, the network never worked well; not even a single printing, he spent a few nights working to fix this but never received anything extra in payment.

He was in the computer room ("CPD" in Portuguese slang), already irritated, trying to solve one of the thousands of problems that this company already had; the printer stayed behind him and a wall separated the computer room from the office. There was a sales manager that was very strict with clients/employees that didn't follow the rules or didn't do their work until the deadline.

He was completely irritated, tired, needing just some silence to work, when she tries to print on custom paper (with the company' logo), the printer wouldn't work. So, the screams started...

- - Damn, nothing on this sh*t works!

- - This shit doesn't print!

And he was on the phone answering support to 2 users..

- - STOP, paying idiots gets you nowhere... - the manager told.

He didn't think twice, because he was already tired; he punched the table and went to talk with this manager, as he had learned in his training course: "sometimes, you have to use the same language that was used to talk to you", so he screamed:

- - WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

- - PLEAAAAASE, WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? I COULDN'T UNDERSTAND!

Everybody gathered to see the sh*t hit the fan...

- - The problem is that this printer won't work, I send the print command and nothing happens!

He opened the tray and there was NO PAPER. NOTHING. ZERO. NADA.

- - Look, where is the DAMNED PAPER?

- - But I just loaded the paper!

- - So, where did the printer shove it, can you explain me?

- - DAMN! Now I have to teach you even this?

- - BUT I LOADED THE DAMNED PAPER NOW!

- - AND HOW THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT TO PRINT WITHOUT PAPER??!!

He loaded the paper and asked her to print again, the printing went ok.

DUH!!!!!!!!!!

He spent the day irritated with this, on the next day she came to tell me

that she was sorry and, to avoid problems, I did the same. I thought that

I would be fired, but no; in fact, the company' owner told me that he had liked

my attitude (!!), because, in his words, "somebody must teach respect to them".

I recieved a helpdesk call from a young lady saying that she was unable to view any files on her pc except for .bmp's everything else has disapeared. This is in the days of windows 3.11 and file manager. I arrived at the user's pc and sure enough their was nothing in her c: drive or any of her other drives except for hundreds of .bmp's. I was able to calm down the user by offering her a cup of tea and explaining that she shouldn't worry she will be able to get all the files back from the backup last night and she would only lose the files on her pc not on the server as everything on the server is backed up. with that she really started to panic as she didn't save any of her work to the network drives as she didn't trust them other people might read them. i explained that there is no way of getting back anything stored on her pc after such a tragic incident as this (after all her files have disapeared into cloud pc land). At that point she broke into tears and I could not carry the joke any further I told her to get up from the pc and go have a break and come back in 15 minutes (I didn't want her to know that I knew all along what she had done wrong) after she left I went into the file manager and I reset the filter to *.* instead of *.bmp and then closed the file manager. On her return I told her I managed to get everything back and she was over the moon bought me a coffee and I went about my marry way. Later that day I seen her again and she smacked *%* out of me. I asked her what the *&*% was that for and she told me that she found out from the person who sat next to her that after she had left her pc for me to fix I had fixed it in a matter of seconds and that I was only winding her up. Moral of Story : Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!!!

Below is an email I got this morning from a customer worried about Hurricane Rita that's about to hit the Texas coast. It's the largest storm to EVER hit us and will cause more than just power outages. Also pay attention to where he is and what he is doing.

Hey, guys: What is your expectation of interruption of service during the incoming storm? I am in Florida, working hurricane claims, and my email and internet is vital to my work. I can get on my company's email system if yours goes down, but I like things the way they are.

I am ashamed to say that I don't know how your service gets to me, except I do know it comes over the buried phone lines when it gets down here. What if a tree falls on my connection into the house, though?

Just trying to plan since that is about all I can do from here.

So, I was helping a so-called "sysadmin" with a Linux machine.

I told him to type 'rm -rf *' and what did he type?

'rm -rf /', thus blasting the entire system to oblivion.

Thankfully, we had backups of everything.

I've been in tech support for quite a while, but have only recently discovered the site. Hence, this story happened quite a while ago, while i was paying my debt to society on the phones of a major dial up ISP.

Nny=me,

id10t=caller

Nny: 3@rth1ink tech support, this is Nny, how can I help you?

id10t: Your service never works right, I can never connect when I want to, I do online trading, and this is costing me a lot of money, I want you to fix this.

Nny: Absolutely sir, and I do apologize for the inconvenience, lets see if we can get this straitened out for you. I just need some basic information from you.

Nny: Your email address please

id10t: blah@he11.com

Nny: And what happens when you try to connect?

id10t: I click on the big blue "e" and I get a file not found error, I want you to fix this for me and get me connected.

Nny: Thats odd, have you recently made any changes to your system, added any programs, deleted anything, at all?

id10t: Well I was getting a lot of error messages regarding [a couple random programs], so I booted into dos and typed deltree program files......

Need I say more?

Thanks,

nny

I was brought in to change over a company's network from Netware to Win2k. I was told they had an IT person who had been in the position for about 2 years and had even been taking night computer classes on the company's dime for the past year. I was told that this person was skilled enough for the job, but could use some networking pointers, if I wouldn't mind teaching as I went along.

The first day I was there, I dove into the Win2k server setup. One of the first things I explained was the DHCP server...

Me: This is called DHCP. Basically, when a workstation boots up, it asks the server for a unique IP address. The server says, "This one's good. Here." and sends the address back to the workstation. Then the DHCP updates the DNS table...

and I continue on for about 5-10 minutes explaining reservations, static IPs, etc. in, what I thought, was a dumbed-down enough way for any IT person to understand. After this lengthy, but complete explanation of this aspect of the server, this person says...

Duh: Ok.. but how does the workstation actually talk to the server? Is it like.. via e-mail?

That was the last lesson I gave. After that question, I quietly finished the network conversion and went away.

We had a power outage in our Michigan office because of thunderstorms last night. Everything is dead, all UPS failed by now, no generator that I know of. We then received this ticket from the helpdesk at a HIGH PRIORITY.

Southfield facility power is out, exchange server down. Attempting to access email via webmail and unable to. Getting HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable message. Everyone else out of the southfield facility attempting to access that I have talked to is also having this problem. Thanks!

This dude must have failed out of kindergarten.

My father told me this about the staff at his surgery. Recently one of the receptionists bought a new optical mouse for their computer (Quite why I'll never know). She was moaning to the other receptionists that said mouse wasn't working properly and kept stuttering over the screen. She said it must be defective and would have to get a new one. My dad being mildly interested in tech things decided to have a quick look at it and soon resolved the problem.

Optical mice and highly reflective silver stripes on black mousemats don't really go together very well...