Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

In the office where I work, there is a below-street-level bar just across the road, where my colleagues and I frequently congregate to talk about how much fun it is to work for a major IT service provider. As the pub is so convenient, I suggested to a friend in IT Service Delivery that we petition them to install WiFi so that we can "work" remotely and in comfort.

Her response:

"But it won't work that far underground!"

We have door entry pads that work with either punching in four numbers and a password, or using your fingerprint. Sometimes the fingerprint misses, so you have to type in your code, which is the last four of your SSN, and the password is the same.

So we have this lady who kept telling me her access wasn't working. I understand the fingerprint craps out, but she said the numbers didn't work either. So I watched her, and she was typing in different numbers from what I had set in the security system. I said, "aren't your last four 1234?" She said, "no, it's 7890". I said, "okay, I'll change it in the system, not sure where I got that from". She went out to try the door again, and came right back and said, "oh yeah, it is 1234, I was giving you the code to my garage door, that's what hasn't been working".

So for a week, she had been trying to type in her garage door code to get into our building. And I have to take time out of my busy day to help her ! aaaggghhhh!

It was my first technical support call. I made assumptions, my first mistake. My second mistake, not being specific in my instructions.

A customer had ordered an update to a program we sold. It was on two 5-1/4" floppy diskettes (Yes it is that long ago). There was an error when she tried to follow the instructions. After describing the procedure several ways and after 15 minutes. I switched gears and asked her more specific questions.

First I asked her to hold the disk and then describe what she saw. Apparently, she was holding the floppy disk upright so that the label was readable. This meant that the disk was backwards, as the label needed to be entered last not first. The slot for reading the disk needed to be inserted first and not last. She had her thumb on that slot in the diskette cover. I made the mistake of asking her to flip it, and that is what she did. She turned it over, rather than twist it around.

This is what I had to say.

"Okay, hold the disk the same way you did before, so that you can read the label and the writing is right side up. Now, twist the diskette like the hand on a clock so that the label is now on the right side of the diskette, but you can still see it and the diskette is still flat on your palm. Now twist it some more until the label is close to you, but you can see it and the writing is upside down. Now the slot in the plastic cover is facing away from you. Your thumb should now be over the label and you can still see the label on the diskette. Now insert the diskette into the disk drive."

This was finally accomplished. Next mistake. The drive onthis computer had a flip handle to close the drive on the diskette. So, I had to get her to turn that handle downward, another five minutes!

FINALLY, got the first disk to run, after explaining that the ket was like the carriage return key on a typewriter, was labeled "ENTER" or "RETURN". Then I was under the impression that she now had the skill to insert the second disketter. This is exactly what she did, without removing the first diskette! Another five minutes. And finally got the new program loaded! Whew!

Love the tales. Got a good one.

Recently turned 30, left all the fancy music business behind me and wanted a career full of admin stuff. Cue a second degree.

I'm doing first of two required internships for my degree. Everything is nice and proper, however, not THAT colleague of mine. Let me describe this poor excuse of a homo sapiens sapiens. He does about a hours worth of work in a eight hour day. Scratches head, digs his nose, arse and eats the gold he finds. In that order. Also the concept of deodorant is just A LITTLE too much to understand.

He is a techy individual when it comes to playing Solitaire and breaking things. Anything else, boils down to the well known epic fail. He and I were to setup a classroom with freshly updated image of XP Pro. His "style" of doing stuff started with Solitaire, mine with booting up a comp with Winternals Admin Pak. About half an hour later, I had five comps running, back in domain and moving on to another set of five.

He had one. Happily playing Solitaire on it. Fill rest of the week with stupid stuff such as not being able to install a network printer using a student account. We both had local admin access which apparently was too bothersome to use (read=username-number, different password).

Then comes the next week. Found a copy of Half-Life with a very common pirated serial in one of the XP images. "Wha? We all do that. You dont?" was his excuse. I do love gaming, started it back in -84 or so. But not at work as that time is strictly business.

To sum it all up: I do my work and around 90% of his. Yet that poor excuse of a human thinks that he has any right to complain when I get all the cheer and bribes (read=chocolate and candy).

Hey, over 4 years have encountered a few classic tales, some tech related and some that just happen to silly people.

I'll start with the old guy that at the start of the call asked if any quality assurance people are listening in, for them to hang up (sounds promising).

After making sure no-one was listening, it became apparent that the elderly gentleman had become adventurous with his surfing and had developed a taste for pictures of animals, not the small, furry cute type, I'm sure you can guess what I mean. Anyhoo, in the middle of his browsing this questionable web site, a popup appeared saying his IP address had been tracked by the CIA and that he was in big trouble.

Immediately on seeing this he ripped the phoneline out of the wall, damaging the socket beyond repair, however this was not his worry. His worry was how much time he had before the CIA arrived. I calmly explained that if the CIA were tracking him and were going to punish him, they would probably not send an announcement and that it could safely be assumed that it was some kind of spyware or phishing scam.

Another elderly guy rang, I did not actually take the call however saw his call notes when he rang back about an unrelated matter.

The notes on the previous call were brief but succinct: "Caller rang to say has received an email saying he has won 2.5 million dollars. Advised was probably spam."

A dear old lady rang once, cannot remember what the issue was, however I could not fix the issue. To see if there was a service disruption in her area I had to ask her what state she was in and she said "I'm beside myself!"

Another time spent 2 hours on the phone with this idiot that said every time he opened the program I was supporting, the whole screen went black. Huh??!! Absolutely know reason why that would happen and we would have to restart the computer each time. Eventually got his wife on the phone and the dear lady (God Bless her!) says a large black window has appeared with the words C:\Windows\System32\Cmd.exe appear. Right, tick "Hide dos prompt on opening" and problem solved. I actually used this as an argument for us to get remote connection software as it would have saved 2 hours, and argument so compelling, got it the next day.

Adrian.

A lady comes in to my shop asking if I can retrieve photos from her

notebook.

I said I would try, but I couldn't promise anything.

She hands me a SODIMM.

Last year my dad, as a long-term subscriber to...let's call them Terrachain...was offered a discount upgrade to DSL from our dialup system. Okay. Best deal we've found in our research. He orders it.

Now, Dad's no caveman, but for that install-uninstall-finicky-temperamental stuff, he calls on me. Me, on a scale of a techie 1-10, I'm maybe a 7. So I wind up having to make my own tech call on occasion. This was one of them.

I went over and over and OVER the hardware/software instructions. (Mail comes at three.) Finally I gave up, went to bed, (11-ish) and call help support the next day.

The first fellow I got had a fairly thick accent, but was apparently aware of this was very careful in his pronunciation. He asked me all kinds of questions and had me do all sorts of stuff, checking which lights were on the DSL unit, et al. No go for three hours. Than my son chased a cat behind me and I dropped the phone.

Calling back, I got a lady with a thinner accent who sounded like she was holding her nose. We went through the whole rigamoral AGAIN, with the addition of the-other-tech-had-me-try-that-already. For ANOTHER hour. Then something clicked in my head.

Of all the messages that popped up, one always repeated: "Network Interface Card" and an X-checked box. I asked the lady what that meant.

She said: "Oh, that means you don't have an NIC card. You need it to run DSL."

Excuse me?

I picked up the wrapper the DSL installation CD came in and looked on the outside, where they list the specs of what you need for this particular product to work. There it was: Needs NIC card. I thanked the lady and hung up.

Running a couple what-hardware/software-do-I-have checks, I confirmed that, indeed, there was no NIC in my dad's 1998 clunker (nor in the 2008 inspiron we have now).

This is why I don't rate more than a tech-7; I never DREAMED something like a NIC card existed, much less was needed for something like DSL. And I had no idea -well, I thought the computer would have had what it needed to run DSL -dial-up worked fine, right?

Now, the initial sales-man who made the pitch to Dad, I don't blame; it's not his job to make sure everyone he's told to call has the proper hardware and all. I should have been more careful when tech-chatting with the guy and NOT jumped to conclusions.

But seriously, I call two different help desk people, talked to both of them at length, and neither thought to ask, at any point, "Do you have all the puzzle pieces you need"?