Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

In high school I took, against my better judgement, a class on computers that turned out to be nothing more than an introduction to MS Office. Not a total loss, as I managed to get my typing speed up quite a bit, but I was utterly amazed at how little the instructor knew about computers.

First day of class we were told to write a document in Word and save it as "test1.abc," where "abc" was our own initials.

You can imagine that the second day led to much confusion as no one except myself could open their saved documents. I waited only a minute or two before explaining to the instructor what file extensions were.

The class pretty much went downhill from there.

Hi,

This is my best tech story from several years ago. At the time I was doing on call tech support for a local ISP, and I received a call that a family needed to connect to our Internet Service. They were also first time users, and had never been online before. I was sent out to their house to get them connected, and right as I walked in the door I had a forboding sense of doom.

The family seems nice enough, a husband, wife in their late 30's or early 40's and then sons there were 12 and 14. I notice that the wife is clearly in charge, she is very large in size, and also in personality. The husband, by contrast was short and slim, with a meek personality.

I still couldn't explain my uneasyness, but I was soon to find out.

They show me their computer, which is a fairly good model Mac, and a new US Robotics modem, top of the line for the time (33.6) that they had purchased. Well, they had all the right stuff so things looked easy enough.

Things are going fine as I'm hooking up the computer in one part of their living room, then I hear them arguing in their kitchen. I look over and notice they are having lunch.

Husband: "You're eating too much fat dear. If you keep eating like that, you're going to get even fatter! You're really going to be a fat pig!"

Wife: "Shut up, I'll eat whatever I want!"

(she throws a few dishes and swears, the kids run out of the kitchen and sit over by me for a while)

This continues for a while, the man and his wife continually bickering, fighting and throwing things around. I'm trying to get my job finished to get the hell out, as 60 dollars an hour hardly seems worth it anymore.

Finally the computer is up on the Internet, and I'm almost done. I have them take a look at some web pages since its their first time online.

The wife starts in:

"Now, I want you to put some kind of lock on this damn internet thing. I don't want my boys here looking at all that porno stuff. Or even naked pictures of Cindy Crawford. That's for perverts."

I can't help but notice the two young boys eyes light up when their mom mentions "naked chics" and "porno." I'm surpressing a fit of laughter, and I take the lady aside for a moment.

"Ma'am, there isn't much you can do about the porn on the internet, but telling your kids not to do it and what is actually there will make them want to do it all the more."

I finish up setting up their email and talked with them a little while afterwards, but after I was done I promised myself I'd never do this again.

When I got back to the office, I told my boss what had happened and he had a good laugh.

Is it no wonder I stopped doing on site tech support soon after this? On the phone is bad enough, but when you're there in person...its a lot worse, especially when dishes are flying around the house!

I'm not really a tech, but I know a lot about computers so I get a lot of questions from friends and family, but this one is probably the strangest yet - but first, some background information.

Semi-Important Piece Of Information #1: All areas on America Online are created using AOL's proprietary programming language, RAINMAN (Remote Automated INformation MANager). Non-Internet areas on AOL show up in GUI windows instead of as HTML content. For awhile AOL was thinking about switching from RAINMAN to HTML, but they integrated a few things and then decided not to.

Semi-Important Piece Of Information #2: AOL is notorious for releasing almost identical (with the exception of a couple bug fixes) pieces of software every other month for Windows, but they haven't released a new Mac version in two years. Thus, AOL on Macs is extremely buggy.

EU has his cookies set on "Ask for every site" and tells me that whenever he visits the AOL News area his computer crashes, and that he thinks that the "cookie for the area" is causing the problems, and he's going to set the system to decline all cookies.

Strange, as AOL News is a RAINMAN area and thus cannot have any cookies, but the EU insisted that it was the problem. Normally I wouldn't care, but the EU was my Dad and that would obviously cause some problems with my cookies for sites like Yahoo that require cookie-based U/Ps and preferences.

I deleted all cookies, set the system to decline all, restarted and visited AOL News again. Same problem, which a quick reinstall fixed. :)

I worked at a computer store that bought used equipment for resale. This was in 1998, so the oldest machines we accepted were slow Pentiums and better. Even then, we paid about ten bucks for something like that.

One day, a guy comes in with this huge, heavy, bulky desktop. He drops it on the counter and wants us to make him an offer.

We inspected the machine for a second, then said "Sir, this is an 8088."

The guy said, "So?"

We very politely explained to him that the machine was very old and it wasn't worth anything because it wouldn't run any software.

The guy persisted, "Well, what will you give me for it? A hundred bucks? Fifty bucks?"

We chuckled to each other and reiterated, "Sir, you don't understand. It's worth literally nothing."

The man then became irate. He stamped his feet and started shouting, "What do you mean it's worth nothing!?! I paid two thousand dollars for this computer just fifteen years ago!!"

ME: [answer phone - it's my mom]

MOM: I can't bring up this website.

ME: What's the address?

MOM: www.blablabla.com

ME: [bring up site] The site works fine for me.

MOM: Let me try it again. [type type type type click] It's

still not coming up.

ME: Mom, aren't you on dial-up?

MOM: Yes, I think that's what it's called.

ME: And don't you only have one phone line?

MOM: That's right.

ME: Well, you're on the phone with ME at the moment!

BTW, she's also been known to take the cordless phone with her on long trips.. you know, in case she gets lost.

My dad couldn't figure out why the CD of MP3 files he had just burned wouldn't play in the car's CD player.

Some people really should not be in the internet.

I'm a tech support supervisor for a big web hosting company. This is an actual call that one of my guys had today.

Customer: I'm having trouble with my database connection to my web page.

Tech: What is your DSN name?

Customer: It's XXXXXXXX

After some troubleshooting, the tech decides that it's something with the code and the customer must contact her developer.

Tech: You will need to ask the developer to take a look at the DSN connection string on the page.

Customer: Ok, I'm emailing him now. How do you spell DSN?

............sighhhhhhhhhhh

I used to work customer service for computer software companies but now work for a bank's vehicle lease maturity. While my main frustration used to be people's inability to read a manual, it's now people who can't read contracts. This call however,brought me right back to the past years of technically deficient customers.

I start to answer the call with my standard greeting, "thank you for calling BAnk.." only to have the customer start entering something on their touch tone phones. "Hello!" I yell. The tones pause and I launch into my greeting again only to have the same thing happen. "Hello!" I yell again. This time someone answers, "hello?"

Me: Thank you for calling Bank Auto Leasing, my name is Jennifer, can I please have your account number.

The touch tones start again, "Hello Ma'am!" I say after they stop, "I need you to read it to me."

Customer: Why? I just entered it in.

Me: (with a straight face) I'll need you to say it, my ears don't recognize your touch tones. (general laughter from my co-workers)

Them: Well what good are you then?

Me: I'm not sure, but I'll need your account number to find out.

Them: Fine! Here it is AGAIN!

I could have told them that I missed my Babel Fish insertion but I doubt they would have understood me.

It was 4:20pm, last Friday. Usually I stop answering calls around then, as it takes me a good ten minutes to straighten things out on the desktops, real and virtual; turn off the desk lamp, lava lamp, two monitors; carry the trash out (we're in a "secured" area, no janitors allowed); try to remember what's at the office that I should schlepp home, etc...

Phone rings. I'm feeling angelic, so I answer it.

OH NO, IT'S HIM AGAIN!

This is a sweet fella, wouldnt hurt a soul, but he yaks, and yaks, and yaks. His problems are usually small, but it takes a good 25 minutes of listening before you get the crux of his problem.

Today he tells me he's on the cell phone, he's walking around Wall-Mart, his car is sick and may not make it. He thinks he has too many files in his home directory.

He has to catch a train in 30 minutes, he's using Procomm, not the latest version, but the one in the brown box. His login script says something about too many parentheses. He can't use zmodem from inside of emacs. He appreciates our help so much. The "find" command I suggested last time is a wonderful command. He's been computing on this 386 for 9 years. He tried Blammity_FTP and it messed up his profile. And then some more irrelevant yakkity-yak. I can't get a word in edgewise.

After about 20 minutes I begin to grasp his problem. I suggest a solution. OF COURSE he has a better idea. More yak. Finally I pass the buck, I tell him I've sent an e-mail to root@that.god.forsaken.place and he should hear back from them. Whew. It's only 4:50 !!

Customer: "I'd like this faxed to 000-555-1234, please. Oh, wait! I need to make a copy first to keep for my records."

I guess it would be cool to live in a world where paper flows thru phone lines... everything must be just... well, magickal!

Our secretary calls me:

- Could you come in here and have a look at why my password doesn't work?

- Okay, I'll be there in a moment.

I enter her room, walk up to her keyboard, press the caps lock key and walk out without a single word.

Some students asked me to tell them about the basics of networking, especially the hardware behind it. So I show them our LAN. "You see, this is Twisted Pair, and this is BNC, it's disadvantage is that unlike twisted pair, when disconnected anywhere over the way like *this*" [I disconnect] it puts all the computers connected to it offline. [I connect again.]

Ten seconds later my boss enters.

"Excuse me, do you know what happened a moment ago? The network didn't work".

"Erm... Yes, we had a small glitch but it should be fixed by now."

BOFH rules. Real text.

"I have some good news for you! After the hard drive crash you're the only person in the department who has the account backed up. We did that experiments with backups half a year ago and picked your account to be backed up."

The students came to the admin of our school's network. They are discussing the (poor) state of the software. One asks:

Stu: Why won't you install Linux on the computers?

Adm: The school can't afford buying enough licenses for that program.

It became our traditional saying when *anything* that's in the admin's scope doesn't work.

I took a call today from an incoming freshman in our summer program. She apparently was having trouble connecting and viewing webpages. She tole me she had used a restore disk because she "had a lot of movies and music files that were taking up her memory" and were slowing her computer down...

The kicker was she lived off campus, and we have over 30 apartment complexes that have some form of ethernet, and each one requires computers to be configured differently. First off, we don't support the apartment complexes, just our on-campus ethernet, and also it's one hell of a hassle to not only get the info for them, but to learn them all as well.

I used to work support for a Finance dept. The clerks always had problems with passwords, such as:

Me: type in a password. It must be 8 characters.

Them: (types) OK.

Me: Now type it in again to verify

Them: I forgot what it was.

Me: type in a password. It must be 8 characters.

Them: (types 5 characters *****) OK.

Me: "Jesus" won't work. Not enough characters.

Them: WELL, DAMN!

I am an IT Manager for a County in Texas.

I had just replaced five new computers in the one of the County offices.

Later that day I get a call from the department head from that office saying,” All of my keyboards are missing!! Even the one on my desk! How can I do any work without my keyboard!!!"

I responded by saying, "OK, slow down. Someone has stolen the keyboards off of your desks?"

She says, "No, just my keyboard and I do not have a keyboard with each computer you uninstalled".

Well, had stacked all the old computers in the room and knew everything was there.

I asked her to count all of her keyboards and tell me how many she is missing. She came back and told me that she had them all. I then asked about the keyboard on the desk and found out the keyboard tray was pushed in.

She pulled out her keyboard tray and presto.... there was a keyboard.

Politicians!!

I used to work in IT for BMC Software in Austin, Texas. Four of us did desktop support and manned the call center on a rotation-basis. One day, a coworker of mine gets a call from a *developer* whose system was down. Well, he happened to be working on a manager's laptop at the time, and she was going to have to wait (we all work from our own queues). When he finally gets there, the user is peeved that he didn't jump up and run up to her office. She'd been sitting there for at least a couple of hours waiting for him to arrive. He walks in, assess the situation, leans down, and powers on the CPU.

I wish I could've seen the look on her face....

A few years ago, I worked for a outsourced call center doing telephone support for GET, which later became Veryzone (you should be able to figure it out).

About a year after I started working, we started supporting DSL, which is a great service, unless you can't get on the internet.

To make a long story short, Veryzone oversold DSL in certain small towns, such as Los Angeles and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. While Veryzone techs were working extremely hard to build the capacity for the system, for some reason Veryzone execs did not stop selling new accounts. And, the sales people were better at adding accounts to the system than the tech people were at building new infrastructure. So, instead of the situation getting any better, it only got worse.

Each supervisor's desk had a call program where you could view the calls that were coming in. Before we received DSL, the main use of that feature was for techs to see where they were in the call que so they could decide if there was enough to time to take an unofficial smoke break or make a quick trip to the bathroom.

If all the techs were busy, we could also see how many calls were holding. However, only 100 customers could be on hold at any one time before customers received busy signals. Before we received DSL, this had never happened.

In April, we receive DSL and everything breaks loose. In a few minutes, there are asterisks in the area that displayed the number of customer's holding. It literally stays like this 24/7 through June -- even in the early hours (2 a.m.-5 a.m.) of night, when most people are asleep. We consider it to be a minor victory if we can get numbers to show in the call holding area.

Understand, we are the third level of support for this company. Understand, we know that we are mainly a public relations ploy for Veryzone, and that our job is mainly to fix the customer's connectivity software (i.e. dialers, reinstalling tcp/ip, etc.); but, not to really fix any problems. In other words, slap the customer on the back and tell him/her what a great job they are doing. But, we have some good techs, who know what they are doing.

When we go to DSL, we are given one tool: recycling the modem. We then collect the information from the customer and send the case to second-level DSL support. That's OK. That lasts until second-level DSL support, who are not outsourced, but are ACTUAL Veryzone employees, are swamped with customers who can't get online because Veryzone has oversold the market.

And, so the word comes down to us that we can no longer contact second level in ANY form, except for the tickets. And, for the second level tech to even review the ticket requires that we power cycle the modem and, for business customers with static IPs, we perform a ping and tracert. And, we are NOT given any more tools to deal with the issue -- all we can still do is recycle the modem.

The good techs start quitting. And newer techs, promoted from Tier 1 and 2, arrive. And, most of the newer techs -- it's like sending a soldier armed with a machete against a machine gun.

Oh, yes, Veryzone won't allow us to declare an outage, nor will they declare an outage. And, how, do you ask, do we know there is an outage when the only tool we have is recycling the modem? It becomes very obvious that there are problems in Dallas when you are talking to your 15th consecutive caller from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and your buddy is talking to his 14th consecutive caller from the area.

I don't know if Veryzone ever got their problem solved. I left there over a year-and-a-half ago.

But, I tell the story to make the point:

1) Techs may know it's an outage -- after all, multiple calls from the same location mean there is an outage -- but are not allowed to say there is an outage.

2) Yes, we know that power cycling the modem is not going to get you on line if you are calling from an area that is out. But, we have to do this or your problem will be ignored.

3) And, we feel your pain. We really do. There is nothing more frustrating to a tech, who is used to SOLVING difficult problems than to be placed in a situation where he is not given the tools to possibly solve the problem, but all the responsibility TO SOLVE the problem.

Sorry for the length. But, great site....

Veto

An end-user called and said, "I don't remember my password because I haven't been at work for three months...I was in a coma." I told her that there are more important things to remember than a password.

ES -- Working At a Help Desk on July 4th

When I worked with a ISP company I heard many stupid but funny stories from the guys that attended the support calls, here is one that whent over the wall !!!

Customer = C

Support = S

S: May I help you?

C: Yes, my computer whent into a cosmos..

S: What do you mean by a cosmos?

c: Well, it does not do nothing and all I see

is a bunch of stars comming at me...

s: Well, dose stars are the screen saver of your computer..

s: Please move your mouse arround so your computer change your display back to your desktop..

c: Ok. But what is de mouse?

s: the little thing that you hold in your hand with two or three buttons and has a cable connected to your big box that is your CPU !!! and please dont ask me what is a CPU!!

c: Ok, I see it..

s: please move it orround...

c: I´m moving it arround but nothing is happening...

s: Are you sure??

c: Of course, do you think I am stupid or what??

S: I better not comment!!

S: Ok then, please press any key on your keyboard..

c: I don´t know how to thank you, I can see my things on the screen again... But when I moved the rat or mouse arround nothing happened, do you think some is wrong with it??

s: Make sure is connected to your big box (CPU)and if it is, I will send some one to check it for you..

c: Well I followed the wire and it looks OK and connected to the big box..

s: Ok, Tomorrow a tech representative will go over to fix the problem...

c: Tanks.

The next day in the afternoon the tech person arrived at the office after visiting our smart customer and he had a very angry look in his face so we asked him what happened.

He told us that a very nice lady opened the door, offered him a coffe or a soda and then he proceed to see what was the problem, so she sat down in front of the computer turned on the monitor and told him, see this is the cosmos but now I know if I press a key I will see my things again but the rat or mouse doesent work.

Ok, I can see the arrow on the screen, please move the mouse arround to see if it moves. To my suprise she picked the mouse up far from the desk and started to move it orround.

But lady you have to put it on the desk for it to work.

Her answer: Really?

Some users !!!!! jajaja

For some background, this story is part of a larger document containing many such plays on one of the products I support. A friend and I passed this doc back and forth adding verses or short stories.

Because it wont be funny unless you know these things I have to tell you this information. PIP is the short name of the program. PIPkill (pip2k1kl.exe) is the utility that we have to rip out the folders and registry keys. Shoebox is the clipart gallery which tends to get corrupted. MSICU is the cleanup utility that removes programs from the windows installer database. And now without further stalling:

On a sunny morning in the land of the System two great armies prepare to face off in battle.

One army, led by the distinguished Kernel32, stands on the side of righteousness,

The other led by the evil General Protection Fault is bent on destabilizing all civilization.

Both leaders ride to the center of Desktop Field, the Kernel on a white horse, General Fault on a mighty black stallion.

GPF: “Surrender Kernel, and we’ll spare your SP’s a headache. I will allow them to go home and forget I ever conquered you.”

Kernel32: “Never, General. I will not bow to any power. My SP’s have over 3 weeks of training. They are ready for battle and they do not fear you!”

GPF: “They will learn to fear me. I have EXCEPTIONAL abilities and my Internet Explorers have scouted the terrain here. I have the advantage.”

Kernel32: “We have MSICU and a secret weapon that you have never encountered before.”

GPF: “You cannot intimidate me.”

Kernel32: “Then we will do battle.”

Both leaders turn and ride back to their armies. Kernel32 speaks to his tech leads.

Kernel32: “Ladies and gentlemen. We must unleash . . . the PIPkill.”

(Hushed murmurs between the tech leads as they share their astonishment)

Kernel32: “Such a terrible weapon I had hoped never to unleash. May User have mercy on our souls.”

On the battlefield a bugle plays reveille and the lines of soldiers stir, ready to surge forward.

At the same moment Kernel32 and General Protection Fault yell, “CHARGE!”

Roiling masses of troops enter into melee combat. Much blood is spilled before the ground begins to shake. Troops on both sides stumble to the ground. A gigantic monster built from possessed shoeboxes rises from the hole and begins squashing Kernel32’s soldiers.

Kernel32 pulls a camouflage net off of a hole dug into the ground and signals two Privates to wheel his secret weapon onto the battlefield. The two burly men strain to roll an immense Canon out of the pit. On the side of the Canon are the characters “PIP2K1KL”

Kernel32 gets behind the Canon and aims it at the terrifying PIP-shoebox creature.

Kernel32: “Merge THIS with your clipart catalog you bastard!”

With a horrible BOOM the Canon discharges a cannonball at the speed of sound. It tears through the creature which explodes and rains shrapnel on the General’s troops killing them all. General Protection Fault is pinned beneath his wounded horse.

Kernel32 approaches and says: “General, you’re finished. Surrender and I will be lenient.”

GPF: “Never!”

Kernel32 removes his service revolver and puts it to the General’s head.

Kernel32: “Then Start ) Shutdown ) Turn off Computer”

The sound of the gunshot rings across the battlefield. Silence reigns for a moment then the survivors begin to cheer over their victory.

My boss' girlfriend (who my boss always had me do some errands for) called me at work one day because she was writing a letter on someone else's computer in Microsoft Word and wanted to know how she could delete the document, since it was private and she had already printed it. I asked her, "Well, where did you save the document to? Just find the document where you saved it to, and delete it from there."

Well, after about 5 minutes of trying to figure it out, it finally occured to me to ask her, "After you wrote the document, did you do 'Save As' or save it in anyway?"

"No," she said.

"So, you didn't save the document?"

"No."

(roll of my eyes and a sigh)"Then just close the document. If its not saved, you don't have to delete it. It will ask you if you want to save the document when you close it, just say no, and nothing will be saved."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes."

And I wondered why everyone thought I was so smart... LOL

Now I realize that computers are nowhere near as serious as a medical problem but would you call your doctor a jerk as he was preparing to perform surgery on you? Probably not so why would you call your technician a geek or a nerd as you're coming to them asking for help with something you can't solve?

This happened to me just a few days ago. A customer comes to me with an error message in our software that is known to be caused by having the original Voodoo 3 drivers installed, you know the ones that came OEM or on the CD in the box. Well, 3dfx is belly-up so there's nobody to support installing the updated drivers which you can only get from a 3rd party site and only in a zip file. You think somebody stupid enough to call his technician a geek can do that on his own? You think I'm going to step outside my support boundaries and do it for him like I would if he was a polite little old lady? The answer (in case you didn't guess) was a resounding H*LL NO!

This problem is not specific to just computer customers either. My friend is a professional body piercer and he has had instances where customers have argued with him or insulted him. Now really folks, somebody who is about to jab a hole in you . . . do you really want to tick them off?

To all those customers out there remember this: I may have to treat you with respect regardless of how you treat me but if you think I'm going to go the extra mile to help you when you insult me you got another thing coming!

Sorry for the dark tale there, but I'm sure we've all had that problem and sometimes it helps to know you're not alone. Fight the good fight!

I provide on-site support for retail equipment for a large corporation. A lot of our business comes from service contracts for national retail stores.

One day I get a service request from a store about a register no powering on. This store in particular had a particularly inept manager. In the past I had to deal with a series of calls from this store, nearly all of which should have been caught before it was necessary to get me involved.

It was an extremely busy day so I decided to call the store to make absolutely sure that the manager had checked the connections and so forth. During the conversation I made it absolutely clear that if I showed up and I had to do something stupid like plugging in the power cord (not covered under the contract), the store would be billed at our standard rates. This seemed to get him a bit upset, surely he had enough common sense to know whether or not the register was plugged in!

So off I go. Luckily the store was directly across the street from their competitor where I was on another service call. I walked right up to the register, took one look at it, and saw the problem - power cord not plugged in. Low and behold, the register boots right up and is ready to go.

After I finished the paperwork I called the manager over to explain how I fixed the problem and to give him a bill of about $1000. I've never seen anyone turn so red!

I work for a large Bank, and we use a ticketing system to track our problems, this ticket system also receives automated tickets from our scanning software that routinely checks all our servers (8000+) by pinging them.

So one day there is a Ticket with the standard "SERVER abc, IP:xyz NO PING". The Customer Care Center sends it to the regional office that is responsibile for the server to have them check it out.

The ticket returns to CC after a couple of hours, with the proposed reason why the server was not reachable.

"Storage room where Server resides, filled with about 3 feet of water"

Apparently the server was placed on the floor and was now 3 feet under water, no wonder they couldn't ping it.

This ticket is way old (1998), but for some reason it is still to be found in the archive of our ticketing system.

I work for a local ISP in the Pittsburgh area. I do tech support and sales and the like. Normally, we don't appreciate people calling in with general support questions, as we are an INTERNET service provider and provide support for the INTERNET. However, I try to be helpful when I can.

I get a call one Monday morning from a hysterical young woman. "Sir, you've got to help me. My husband is out of town on business and my computer is frozen. I need to use it for email. Please help me!!!!"

I politely explained that nothing can be done once a computer locks up and a simple restart will solve the problem. Her answer to that is as follows: "I know that. I've done that already and it didn't work. It came right back to the same page it was frozen on!!!"

Rather confused at this point, I told her that it simply was not possible for that to happen and to try again. She did, and responded a minute later that the same thing had happened. She was almost in tears and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

I then kindly proceded to ask her which button she was pressing, the one on the monitor or the one on the PC. She stumbled a little bit and didnt answer. I asked again. "I pressed the one on the tv," is her answer. I smiled at that and responded that she needed to hit the power button on the PC, not the "tv." She didn't know what her PC was, so I told her to hit the power button on the tower. Again, no response. I told her to hit the big button on the tall skinny thing on the ground next to her.

Finally she found it and hit it. I was ready to hang up, knowing the "problem" had been solved. She begged and pleaded with me to hang on the line to make sure it worked. So, I obliged. After waiting for a minute or so, she started screaming into my ear "IT WORKED, IT WORKED." I said, "How about that, have a nice day maam..." She then continued screaming...."OMG, OMG, Thank You so much, you're my hero. They need to give you a raise or a management position or something. You're so smart, I love you. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU."

I guess that goes to show you, some people just shouldn't own a computer, period.

Ok so I did tech support for a while for this little local ISP, and in the midst had some interesting encouters. The one that tops them all goes like this:

I was helping this lady set up her computer for dialup for the first time, and usually this goes pretty smoothly.

me: Ok, now put the area code in, and then the phone number

her: I put the area code in

me: ok go to the next box and put the rest of the # in

*seconds of silence*

her: how do i get over to the next box?

me: *about to throw phone across the room* the tab key

her: *sounds of her searching for the tab key over the phone for the next few seconds*

her: it worked!

of course there was the lady who used to call up with rap music blasting in the background and have all of her 16 children screaming into the phone while I tried to help her

her: i can't onto the internet *WAHHHHHHH MOM JOHNNY HIT ME BLAH BLAH BLAH*

me: excuse me?

her: *shuffles phone* i can't get onto the internet *dmx blasting in the background*

me: ok - are you at your computer now?

her: no *kids crying in background*

me: can you go to it?

her: no, it takes over a half hour to boot up

hate to tell ya lady, but if your comptuer takes a half hour to boot up, then you've got more problems than getting onto the internet :)

I once worked a helpdesk job.

I got this call a man told me he was drunk and looking at porn. On his brothers computer and It kept bring a webpage up. That he did not want. I heard the phone drop. Here I am thinking well he just drop the phone or he fell down He started screaming a lot of four letter word, and I heard some crashes and Things breaking. Then he got back on the phone and said he fixed it, When I ask him how he did it. He told me he smashed with a baseball bat. When I ask him about what his brother was going to do. He said I think he is going to be Mad, I don't know I won't be here.

The crying man

Same call center The servers was down on the east coast. For about an hour or so. When this Happens The call center always was flooded with calls. The standard Reply was well we are sorry the servers are down and we are aware of the issues and we are working on it as we speak. Well I got a call from this man. It started out ok but quickly changed. He started saying you don't know how important my email is to me. He was crying and I was laughing He was screaming its not funny. Which only made me laugh that much harder. Then he started to beg please do something. I told him there was nothing I could do. He was really instance that I do something. So I told him lets reinstall your network settings But That will not change the Fact that the network was down. He told me He did not believe or trust me. At this point I was sick hearing the crying. He was tired of me laughing at him, Then of course he ask to speak to my supervisor. So i transfered him over. Which was sitting right behind me. Listen in on the call he was laughing to.

I worked for a tech support company that did out sourcing for a MAJOR printer manufacturer. The job was a pain and we dealt with every level of experience from novice to net admin. Sadly, they gave us word that they would be laying of our support site in two months. Several of my co-workers reveled in this idea. They sought out to get their revenge on the general public. What’s even more amazing is how well people went along with this sort of thing…

T: Tech

E: unsuspecting EU.. who just spent 3 minutes pushing buttons to get through a computer guided menu

T: Dominoes Pizza, how can I help you?

E: Um… Dominoes.. I though this was ** tech support?

T: No this is Dominoes, we are running a special: buy one large pizza get one free.

E: How did I get a hold of you?

T: I don’t know, maybe you dialed our number and I answered the phone?

E: no.. I Dialed ** tech support and I even entered the numbers in the menu.

T: Ma’am, I don’t have time for prank calls, good day. *click*

Next eu-

T: Yes I have a (insert printer name here) 420 and it is smoking.

E: I have a (insert printer name) 930… are you tech support.

T: Yes, I’m trying to get tech support for my 420. It’s been smoking since the super bowl.

E: That’s odd. I’m trying to get support for my 930!

T: Imagine that, so can you help me with my printer?

E: No.. I’m trying to get help for mine.

T: strange…

E: I wonder how that happened?

T: Maybe your phone operator is experiencing an ID10T error.

E: You sound like you know a lot.

T: Nope… I’m as dumb as you….. B**** *click*

We developed a queue and he got this in genius idea! When you hit ready and you are not in a call you will pick up the next available EU to speak with them, when you press it while on the call it will disconnect your current EU and connect you with the next. Here is what he did:

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

T: Chickedy china, please hold

*hit ready*

Then, the queue was gone.

After the popularity of this caught on, several people came together to play a round robin.

Tx: techs identified by number

E: unsuspecting EU

T1: thank you for calling bla blah blah…. What’s your problem?

E: My printer wont work.

T1: You and everyone else who calls in, I’m going to have to transfer you to the Novice department, please hold

T2: Hello, this is Facetious, director of the novice help how can I help you.

E: Well, my printer wont work.

T2: Printer? I’m going to have to transfer you to the printer novice underling support group please hold

10 minutes later

T3 (in Arabian accent): This is ACHMED… help you? Yes?

E: My printer wont work… can you help me

T3: Help you, I can. Id10t Error, have you?

E: I don’t know what you are sauying.

T3: Hold, you must. English speaker getting you, I am.

T1: thank you for calling bla blah blah…. What’s your problem?

E: Didn’t I talk to you before…

T1: Did we solve you problem?

E: No.

T1: Maybe you did, but you don’t sound attractive.. so I forget these things.

E: How rude!

T1: You want help or not?

E: YES!!!

T1: please hold while I get a manager, you are being very rude.

T4: I’m the manager, what’s the problem here lady?

E: Man you people are rude!

T4: That’s it, I’m terminating this call. we don’t need to be brought down to your level.

The result was a contest to see how long people could keep customers on the phone before they would get angry and hang up. One guy made it an hour… he claimed he had Turret’s syndrome and cussed constantly apologizing and asking the customer not to get angry or ask for his supervisor.

I apologize for the long windedness of the story...

I was the lead Helpdesk muppet for a division of a large telecommunications company a few years back. This division specialized in automated controls for rapid transit systems and ran a very large network consisting of Novell, NT, OS/2 Warp and some SUN Sparc systems. Thank god I wasn't the network admin.

Anyway, my job was to deal with the internal support, maintenance etc of the local workstations, printers and associated hardware. Most of the requests were for RAM upgrades, installing/reinstalling software, configuring network access and email. Consequently I usually ran into problems associated with a typical office environment. Mostly these were because the average employee although experienced in programming, knew very little about hardware troubleshooting.

Anyway, one of the most exasperating moments I had was caused by our Project Manager, who for the purposes of this story, I shall call "Mark" (not his real name.). I should mention that Mark holds a Masters Degree in Engineering.

The upper management collective decided that since they were better than the average plebe, they should receive their own top-of-the-line notebook PCs for business travel and to replace their clumsy desktop units. This is back in 1997 BTW. So, I was asked to research a few brands and make a suggestion. I recommended Dell, but we ended up with Compaqs. This was primarily because one of the senior managers had a friend in Compaq and there was undoubtedly some kickback going on. Okay fine, Compaq was my second recommendation.

Everyone's all happy with their new notebooks when they arrive and just in time too because Mark had an important overseas trip coming up which required use of his new notebook. Good stuff, it's all set up with the latest version of NT, all the software is configured for our WAN, and the projector software's ready to go. He's happy it can play CDs too (sigh). Mark leaves for his business trip and important presentation.

THE VERY NEXT DAY at 8:30 AM just when I get in, I get a phone call, from Mark in the London office. He cannot get his floppy with the presentation files on it to load. I ask what's wrong.

Me: Ok Mark, just keep cool. What happens when you try to open the file?

Mark: The disk drive makes an awful sound and Powerpoint can't load the file!!!

Awful sound? WTF? I just loaded software into that notebook yesterday and the floppy drive was OK...

Me: Mark, did the notebook get dropped or anything like that?

Mark: No, I was very careful with it. I did have some problem getting the disk out of the drive earlier.

Me: Er.. ok, what kind of problem?

Mark: Well, the disk went in OK, but when I pressed the eject button, the disk only came part way out.

Me: Oh, ok sounds like the metal disk cover is slightly misshaped or bent. You should just be able to gently wiggle the disk out.

Mark: I tried that, but it wouldn't go, so I used some needle nosed pliers and pulled the disk out of the drive.

Me: You used WHAT?!??! By any chance, did the disk have the metal cover attached when you removed it?

Mark: Metal cover? You mean that thing that covers the disk surface?

Me: Yeah.

Mark: No, the disk doesn't have that anymore. Is that important.

Me: Well not really, the disk will still work without it. But I think the metal cover is INSIDE the computer's drive which means the drive heads are probably trashed. The drive is incapable of reading disks.

Mark: But I just pulled the disk out with some pliers, I didn't damage anything.

Me: Externally, no, but trust me, if you used any sort of force yanking that disk out, your drive heads are shredded. You didn't try putting the disk back in did you?

Mark: What? I shouldn't do that?

Me: Hang on a sec Mark...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!

Me: Ok Mark, do you have a copy of your presentation on the network somewhere.

Mark: Oh yes, I saved it in my home directory.

(light from heaven shines down on me and angels begin to sing)

Me: Is your notebook connected to the office network there and can you receive email?

Mark: Yes they set me up this morning.

Me: Ok great. Can I have your password so I can get in your home directory? Also the name of the file... I'll have you change the P/W when you get back to town.

Mark: Ok, it's (password) and the file is (filename)

Me: Cool, I've just emailed it to you. You can load it from the attachments folder in your Eudora folder. (I wait a few seconds)

Mark: Great Ed, thanks! It's up now. What about the disk drive.

Me: Don't use it, it's toast we will have to buy a new one once you get back.

Mark: But I need one right away. Do you think Compaq can replace it.

Me: I'll see what I can do and call you back in a few hours.

CLICK.

Oh dear god almighty. So I share this story with the entire Helpdesk team and none of us can ever respect Mark again. How can a MASTERS IN ENGINEERING, Mech-Eng at that be dumb enough to extract a stuck floppy FORCIBLY with pliers?? Oh it doesn't end here... In a brilliant stroke of BS, I call up Compaq tech support (may as well share the misery), and tell them the floppy was DOA and wrecked a couple of diskettes, project manager raining fire and brimstone, etc etc. They OVERNIGHTED a drive to the London office and I had my counterpart there send the trashed unit back to Compaq. All's well that ends well, and I looked like a f**king GOD for saving the Project Manager's butt on his presentation.

And I don't even have a Bachelors Degree... LOL!

Ok I m not a tech agent or anything, but from my experiences w/ most techs from isps etc. they are just plain ole stupid. Heres a example

Me [] Tech = T

Me: Hi i was wondering if you were having problems in my area my area code is ***

T: no sir everythign seems to be fine lets try to troubleshoot this problem

Me:okkkk

T:first please turn your computer off and unplug modem. Wait about 5 seconds turn pc on and than plug cable in

Me:nope still not working.

T: I m going to hve to transfer you to our network staff

Me: on hold for 15 mins now annoyed at the crappy music, so i turn my music on in the background which is LudaCris - "move b*tch get out the way"

Network staff: talks to T for 4 mins

Network: o k sir lets see do u hav 3 solid green lights

Me: yes

Network:ok good sir

Network:in your area we are laying out new lines for better speed and uptimes.

Me:pulling hair out

******still listening to song blasting it heh

Network: sorry for the incovenince

/me crys and crys more for having to stay on the phone for 1 hr 35 mins to get help when they were simply laying lines out.

I appreciate help from tech support agents except those who are jjust plain dumb and get paid to sit on their arse all day.

#windowsxp on efnet ownz j00

I do internal support for a certain Telecommunications Monolith™. Like any corporate helpdesk, we get bombarded with stupidity on a regular basis but sometimes it's a group attack.

Case #1: A couple months ago I got a call and started trying to gather all the required info:

ME: Can I get your Human Resources ID?

Caller: n-nn-na-n-n-nah...(2 minutes later)...n-n-nine...

At this point I realized this call was going to suck. There was another 6 digits to go on this ID and I still had to get his name, phone number, office location, OS, computer model, and connection type before I could even start on his problem. After what seemed like eternity, I had aquired all the info I needed and asked the caller what the problem was (his answers are abridged so as to save you from the hell I had to go thru):

Caller: I can't logon to the network -- it keeps saying the server is unavailable.

ME: Have you checked all your network cables to make sure they were connected tightly?

Caller: I don't think it's my cables -- no one else can logon here either.

ME: How many people are affected?

Caller: Over 300.

Out of 300 people, they pick "Stuttering John" to make the call for support? With logic like that, it's a wonder my phone works at all...

Case #2: Occasionally we get "relay" calls. If you're not familiar with "relay", it's a service for deaf callers. They call a "relay" desk, then the "relay" desk calls you and acts like a translator between you and the caller. A week ago I got a "relay" call from a lady reporting a printer hardware problem for a printer she doesn't even use. Even worse, she doesn't even know what the problem is.

Now, for printer hardware issues we're required to gather all the fun info like serial numbers, the location of the printer, whether it's set up as a local or a network printer, printer name, IP address, etc... This is especially difficult over a "relay" call because the "translators" like to abbreviate questions and responses requiring multiple repeats and generally lengthening the call by about 20 minutes.

While I'm waiting for the caller to make yet another run to the printer for more info I start looking over her ticket history -- she has called in 7 times in the last 2 months to report hardware trouble for just about everyone but herself. So once again, they picked the least efficient communicator in the office to act as spokesperson for the entire group... You would think that with all her previous experience with reporting these kinds of problems she would at least know what kind of info she would need to supply.

Sometimes it's enough to make you want to "accidentally" lose their ticket in an "unexpected" system crash. (Oops. I accidentally slid three feet under my desk and my foot hit the power button on my CPU. And I didn't get a chance to save their ticket either...damn.)

I work in tech support for a cable company in a fairly large town. We get a lot of people calling in who have absoluteley no clue, but this one took the cake. This was back during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It was just another boring Sunday, when this person called, saying that they had a power outage. He said when the power came back on, he had nothing but reruns on his tv. (Just to let you know, power has absolutely NOTHING to do with cable programming). I asked him what channel he had on, which was ABC. He said there is hockey on, and that was what was on yesterday. Now, being a hockey fan, I knew exactly what games were playing, and since this was first round, there was hockey on every day. I could hear his tv in the background, and calmly let him know that it was the playoffs, and hockey was on every day. He said ok and hung up. Now, the question I have is not did he know about hockey, which I could understand, but does he just go to one channel, and since it looks the same, think that every channel is showing reruns?

Okay, I'm not a tech support employee, but I think this story qualifies. I was making Powerpoint presentations for a company a few summers back, and since I was the only moderately computer-literate person in the office, they often asked me to try to fix their computers. I figured that, since it was a slow week and I got paid by the hour, why not? And since they often broke their computers, they needed it.

The company had a bunch of Macs that they only used to type, do taxes and access email, and had recently recieved a PC. They wanted to be able to check email on it too, so it was my job to hook it up.

After setting up all the hardware, and going through the huge manual the ISP had provided for their other computers, I still couldn't log in (this was dial-up). So I call the ISP's help line, which was easy to find considering the number was already highlighted and underlined in the manual I had.

Tech: "Good Morning. (ISP name), how can I help you?"

Me: "Hi, I'm trying to dial up on an existing account but can't log in."

Tech: "Company name and phone number?"

Me: (give info)

Tech: "Let me just pull up your file... *sigh* (sounding suddenly tired) What seems to be the problem?"

Me: "We've just recieved a new PC and my employers would like to be able to access the internet on it. I've installed and connected the modem and configured the settings exactly as your manual says, but when I dial up, the login fails. I was wondering if a setting, the login, or the number dialed for PCs is different from that used with Macs."

Tech: (long pause) (sounding suddenly happier) "You're not the guy who normally calls, are you?"

I was right. It took three minutes to find the setting that needed changing. I've never heard a tech guy sound so relieved.

I've always known that places such as the CLC(computer learning center) weren't the best... but after today.. I am convinced... no WONDER they got out of business... The following is a conversation between a coworker and me today.

her: I graduated computer school and I am a programmer

me: really?? you went to school for computer programming??? i did not know that... what language?

her: yes I don't know what language it is though alot of people ask me that but it's I will explain it to you I got a certificate when I graduated

*ahem* she doesn't know WHAT language it is she learned and graduated from there with... she got a certificate.... good lord... and i used to think these kind of stories were FAKE!! apparently people ARE morons... I'd love to know how you graduate from someplace without knowing the name of WHAT you learned... i mean seriously...

I once had to do tech work for a warehouse that was a repository for both inventory for a manufacturing plant and a storage warehouse for all kinds of raw materials that was shipped to the plant. When I started, we were just replacing some old WANG machines and dumb terminals for brand new 486dx2 machines connected to a database system that worked on X.25 (serial) cables (long story).

Most of the people in this place know nothing, and I mean nothing about how computers work. The smartest of them can tell you they require electricity and are delicate, but that's about it. They hire some of the dumbest slack-jawed locals that can still survive in an urban environment without getting run over by their own forklift (and that's actually happened, we have a worker's comp case where a guy got pinned to a packing crate by his own forklift). Here's some of the reasons why we lose computers:

+ Run into. These computers are on tall desk counters, usually right next to a support column. Sometimes someone in a forklift or a motorcart will turn a corner too tight and just collide into the desks at maybe 20-30mph. The desks are made from particle board, so they just collapse like saltine crackers. Sometimes a forklift prong will catch on a serial cable, and pull down several machines.

+ Water damage. The ceilings in this place leak a lot, and while we try to have a small roof over these counters, it won't stop the cleanup crews from hosing the computers. Literally. With a pressure-washing hose used to clean stubborn stains from the concrete floor. Maybe 250psi of water and degreasers will be blasted into the computer vents by some idiot (usually wearing a Walkman and not even looking at where they point the wand). The degreaser is designed to remove even dried on varnish-like materials, so you can imagine the computer is beyond a total loss.

+ Fried. We lost 16 computers in one blow when someone working on power cables accidentally touched one of the metal plugs of the serial connections. The bazillion volts went right down the line to the hub which got the computers. One of the desks actually caught fire for a bit before it burned itself out.

+ Dust. Oh my God, the dust. It's bad. A few times a year, we open the systems up and blast out the dust with compressed air, and it's okay. The dust comes in pretty colors from whites to blacks to reds, and I wonder how much of this gets in our lungs? The worst case was a few years ago when an unused computer was left near a large vapor reduction fan. These huge things are part of a system that keep the airflow good and vent out the smells, but when you are next to them, they will suck paper out of your hands onto the grill. Well, this system had been sitting there for more than 2 years we figure, and all this time it was sucking dust into the computer case. When we opened it up, it was like emptying a vacuum cleaner bag. t was like wall-to-wall dust, and some of it had hardened like sandstone.

+ Food. We lose more keyboards a year to food. Some of the keyboards have been replaced with those ones with the skin on them? But those don't type very well, and we get a lot of typos and errors from the dock supervisors on those machines.

+ Theft. Self-explanatory. Oddly, monitors are the most often stolen, even though it would be just as easy to also steal the whole system.

+ Vermin. We have rats the size of footballs here. They usually only gnaw on cables, but when you have to reach around the back of a CPU case in the recesses of one of those tall desk counters, you are always scared one will jump out and bite off a finger. Roaches, flies, wasps, and ants are often found dead in the cases when we open them to blow out the dust.

Part of the problem too, is that we can't use mice for obvious reasons, so everything has to be done via a keyboard shortcut (including the Start Menu). This really limits certain software applications and makes working on configuration panels a real bastard. Plus the company will only buy these 486 machines, even though they are very old. They get them from a reseller who is probably charging them far more than they should for these clunkers. But the company only pays me to keep my hands busy and my mouth shut.

As we all know too well, PC consumers come in 3 flavours.

1: Literate

2: Illiterate

3: 2 steps from "RUN FOREST! RUN!"

This one I feel falls into the last catagory, and his refusal to accept the obvious remains one of my favourite stories. For embarrasment's sake I shall refer to the caller as Mr Forrest :D

Phone rings at about 10am

Me: "Hello *** Technical, Can I help you?"

Cust: "Yes, I think you can. My name is Mr Forest and I picked up a PC from your shop yesterday evening"

Me: *Quickly calling up the pc on my screen* "Yes Mr Forrest, how can I help you?"

Cust: "Well for a start I'd like to say I am most disappointed in the level of professionalism within your company. I bought this system from you believing you to be a reputable firm and I can plainly see you've swindled me out of my money"

Me: "I'm sorry you feel that way sir, may I ask what the problem is?"

Cust: "I plainly requested you provide me with Windows 98 loaded on my PC and there has been nothing loaded at all. I did not pay £xxx for a PC just to have to load this bloody disk myself!"

Me: *Thinking customer is talking crap cause I built that PC and loaded 98* "I'm not sure what's happened sir, I built that PC personally and I distinctly remember loading windows on for you. Are you sure it's not loaded?"

Cust: *Very irrate* "OF COURSE I'M SURE! Don't try that with me I'm a programmer and I know what I'm talking about!"

Me: "OK sir, can I just ask what you are getting on screen? Anything that says "insert boot disk" or "Failure to boot fro..."

Cust: "LOOK! THERE'S NOTHING ON THIS F*%K!NG THING! EITHER YOU FIX IT OR I'M RETURNING IT AND DEMANDING MY MONEY BACK!"

ME: "Ok sir, but can you at least tell me what you see on your screen when it's turned on?"

Cust: "I told you! There's nothing, all I get is "My Computer" "My Documents" "Network Neighborhood". Nowhere does it say "Windows"!

Me: *Stunned Silence ... resisting urge to laugh* "Um sir, that IS windows...."

I then spent 10 minutes trying to convince him that Windows was not an icon on his desktop, but the desktop itself... I wonder what he programmed?

At my job, Whenever we get a new hire, I provide detailed instructions, including screenshots, of how to log on to our network and change your password. Since our Internet access is by an external proxy with its own logon procedure, there are at least two logons for every user. In addition, some of our applications require yet another login. One user who had been here about a month called me up stating that they could not log on to "the computer." I tried to narrow this down a little.

Me:"Is it when you start up the machine?"

User:"I Dunno."

Me:"Is it when you try to get on the Internet?"

User:"I Dunno."

Me:"What does the login screen look like?"

User:"I Dunno."

You get the idea. So I come down to take a look, and it turns out that they are unable to login to our LAN. I check, and they never changed their password. So I talked them through the initial login and password change, then asked the User, "Didn't you read the login instructions I gave you when you started here?" The user replied, without missing a beat. "Oh, yeah, I got them, but they looked pretty boring so I chucked them out." At this point, all I could do was walk away!

Normally I regard AOL as a luser's ISP, and anytime I receive a tech support email from an @aol suffix, I know I'm in for the sh*t.

Now, this story does NOT involve an AOL luser. It was a story printed in one of the provincial newspapers about this lady in the interior who had racked up a bill of over $2000 using one of those 540 free hours on AOL cds. Her photo was printed in the paper along with the story, and trust me she looked as dumb as she came across. She felt that she should not owe the phone company $2000 because the AOL cd said her access was free. I guess she missed the part that said the user is responsible for long distance charges. There wasn't a local access number where she lived. What blows me away is that a major newspaper printed her story and had the audacity to imply that AOL was at fault. Now, usually I'll blame AOL for everything from Herpes to El Nino, but this time, it's really not their fault!

-----

Shame on me...

Ok I hate to admit this, but I had a brainfart moment when I switched from a Cable to DSL. I bought the DSL modem on a promotional special, first 3 months at discount, etc etc, and after installing everything AS DESCRIBED IN THE MANUAL, I still couldn't get online. Ok, no biggie, read the manual again, reboot - still no go. F$CK, now I have to call tech support, and as a tech, I DON'T CALL tech support. So feeling sheepish, I talk to this really nice technician and explain my problem to her. She asks me if I have a new account on DSL, or did I take advantage of a promotional *renewal* from Dial-Up.

Alarm bells go off in my head because what she said made me realize I just committed a newbie mistake. I told her not to worry about it, I figured it out and thanked her profusely. What did I not do? I forgot to run IPCONFIG and /renew my IP. DOH!

I currently work as an IT Coordinator at my company in norway and we have system administration for several international company's.

One day I was surprised by one of our customers suddenly hanging out in my office when I came from my lunchbreak.

This was an elderly guy asking me if I could install some databases into Lotus for him. Offcourse I said, I can get my new colleague to do it, then he'll actually learn something as well. The customer thought this as an excellent idea, and I called my colleague.

The old man watched my colleague with interest while he installed the databases.

This part of the installation usually takes a while so my colleague wanted to kill some time chatting to the customer.

Techie : T'was good of you to come in here with your computer, this would be difficult to explain over the phone.

Customer: Well I just came back from the states so this was an excellent opertunity to come by, as I was on my way home from the airport.

Techie : OHH...you've been on vacation, how nice. You know I've always wanted to travel to the US. You know my aunt lives there. She moved over there 4 years ago and she loves it. The climate is much better over there she says....blah...blah....blah ...

- My colleague just can't stop talking. and the customer just looks at him with this weird expression on his face.

Finally my colleague seem to have reached the end of his vocabulary and says as an ending to all the crap.

Techie : So you had a nice vacation then, lots of sun and lots of drinks and nighcaps ?? I bet you had the time of your life over there...

Customer : Uhmm....well.....not exactly...I was over there to fetch the remains and ashes of my late brother which was very close to me.

I know it's not very nice to laugh about dead people and their family's loss. But I just burst into laughter when I saw the expression on my colleagues face.

I'm a network admin for a fairly large state agency. One day we got a call from the commisioner's office that one of their monitors is broken. I went over to check it out (we jump when the commisioner's office calls)and indeed, the monitor was there with purple lines running across it. For a moment I thought I would be bringing up a new monitor until I looked at the PC itself and realized what was going on. I decided to do the radical thing and reach down and turn on the PC. Problem solved.

I work for a very big IT firm and a couple of years ago (when I was still in desktop support) a lady phoned and asked if we shut down Excel cause she can't open it anymore....

This is not from my job, but from my reading of a parenting magazine. It's not about anything more technology advanced than a mirror. If people don't understand how mirrors work, how to we expect people to understand computers?

"Most Entertaining Sky Shows

June 10 [2002]: Check out the annular (ringlike) eclipse of the sun, visible in most of the U.S. Remember the old advice about not looking directly at the sun — UV rays can damage eyes. Instead, stand with your back to the sun and watch the eclipse in a mirror. It will begin around 5 P.M. PST (around sunset on the East Coast) and last for about two hours."

http://www.parenting.com/parenting/article/article_general/0,8266,7305,00.html

I had just started working for a LARGE tech support company that was outsourced to perform support for one of the big computer manufacturers (dude, you're gettin' a...). One of my first calls while training was from a lady, who had already called in with the same issue before. I was interested to see what was actually going on. She basically poo pooed the computer saying it was a piece of crap and that it has never worked. She mentioned that they had already replaced the actual computer (as it was within her 30 days) once. This was now beyond the 30 days, so no replacement was happening today. When I asked her what the actual problem was, she mentioned it was "smoking" and not turning on. This was why the first computer was replaced by the way. I started with the basics: is this plugged into to any kind of surge protector/power strip, what is plugged into from there, any extension cords, etc. She said, "well, there is no surge protector, because I couldn't get that third little prong off of the plug, but I was able to break it off of the power chord, so that is what's plugged into the wall". I asked her why she did that and she replied, "because I live in an old house, and the outlets only have 2 plugs". Need I say more...

I am a technical support associate for a major computer corporation. One day I got a call and the customer was getting a no post no video situation. I ran through all the troubleshooting questions, did you add anything, delete anything, etc. etc. Well it came down to and the system would not turn on for nothing, so we broke open the case to remove the cards and memory. I heard things moving around to easily while my customer was trying to get the case open. I thought, now thats odd. I said, "Sir are you sure you haven't opened the case." And this is the reply I got.

"Well, I did get my shop vac to get the dust and little chips out of the inside." I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter. Much to this customer's dismay he had to replace all the parts himself, warranties don't cover acts of stupidty.

I do tech support for a company installing large computerised storage machines. A PC keeps stores records, the operator types in a part number and the computer starts a *big* three phase electric motor, turning several tons of machinery until the right shelf appears at the front of the machine.

The fault card said "Computer keeps rebooting", and a few minutes with PcAnywhere showed that every time the machine started moving, the computer crashed.

A site visit showed that, on manual operation, the machine worked perfectly. There was also no fault with the computer, but as soon as the PC switched the machine, it crashed. Then I noticed the fat, shiny, black cable running through the equipment tray that housed the uncased computer boards. The electricians has ignored instructions to route the 415v, 800 amp three-phase motor cable *outside* the machine to the contactor, so every time the computer tried to start the machine it received a massive blast of magnetic energy from the cable, completely scrambling its logic.

The good news? The electrician was supplied by the customer!

I got a call from a customer. She stated that her laptop would not power up. Now I know what your thinking, a lame power plug issue. But this one is good. I went on site to fix the problem. Her laptop was in the docking station. You guessed it unplugged. This was odd to me cause the plug was no ware to be found. I asked her where the plug was and she said she must have left it at home. When I asked her why she said that the battery would die after an hour of use. She wanted to plug it in to do her work. I asked why you would need the power plug and not the AC adaptor. Adaptor she asked. What is that? I asked around the department found someone with an AC adaptor and showed her. Oh that she said. I leave that in my desk. I asked if she takes the dock home with her. She wasn’t sure. I found a plug. Plugged it in and undocked the laptop. She freaked out. She said what did you do you broke it. Now how am I going to get any work done? True Story

I do not work for any tech support company or anything, but I'm the tech queen of my block and the next. Usually, I come to the people's houses to, say, help them figure out how to find out how much space they have left on their hard drive, but one day, I got a call.

Man: Hello, I need some help with my Dell Dimension computer.

Me: What's the problem, sir?

Man: Well, I press the on button on the big box next to my monitor-

I have a dimension, so this should be easy.

Me;You mean the CPU?

Man: Yeah,yeah. Whatever. Anyway, I press it, it glows green, i hear noise, but the screen is still black.

Me:And you've turned on the monitor?

Man: Um- what would it look like if I did that?

Me: The light next to the biggest button on your monitor would turn green.

Man: Oops.

(click)

I'm not a tech guy... I'm actually in QA, but since our department knows more about the software than anyone, we end up supporting the field techs. In this instance, one of our field techs, a Pakistani gentleman, was trying to demo our as-of-yet unreleased product for a pharmaceutical company. The story begins as Jim, the director of IT shows up in my cubicle holding his cell phone.

IT: "Curtis, I've got (name-deleted) on the phone here... and he's having a problem over at (company-deleted). Could you help him out?"

Why the director of IT is fielding this call, I have no idea... although this will soon be revealed. Knowing who this field tech is, I roll my eyes, realizing I am going to be on the phone for twenty minutes for god-knows-what problem that I wouldn't know how to fix. He explains to me that the "applet isn't downloading" at the client site. Our software downloads a signed JAR file the first time a particular machine connects. The JAR file contains all of the applet stuff required to make the software work.

I am a little puzzled by this, but knowing this guy, it could be any number of things, so I start asking him questions about the state of the system. Had he logged in before on this machine? Did he change the date and time on the machine (because the check will do a lastmod on the JAR when determining whether to download it or not). Did he click 'No' when IE asked him to download the applet? All of these turn up negative. I have him check the Downloaded Program Files directory, clear the cache, clear the history, all sorts of stuff that really shouldn't make a difference. He's checking the version, I'm logging into the server from my own machine... no trace of the source of the problem can be found. After about fifteen minutes I decide that I need to not be on the phone right now.

I give up, resigning, "Well, I can't really think of any other reason why the Java applet wouldn't download."

FT: "You see the problem is that Java is disabled at the client site..."

Fifteen minutes into the conversation, he tells me that Java is disabled at the client site. Perhaps this has something to do with the Java applet not downloading?

Me: "Wait... did you say Java is disabled at the client site?"

FT: "Yes."

Me: "Well, the applet won't download if Java is disabled at the client site."

FT: "Yes, I know this."

Me: "Then I don't understand. What's the problem."

FT: "The problem is that Java is disabled, so the applet won't download."

Me: "OK, we've established that. Let me rephrase the question. Why are you calling me?"

FT: "I wasn't calling you. I was calling Jim to let him know that there was a problem, but that I figured out what it was."

Me: "Um, OK. Bye."

FT: "Goodbye."

Puzzled, I get up from my desk and return the phone to Jim. Jim asks what the problem was. I told him that there wasn't a problem, or rather that there was, but (name-deleted) figured it out and wanted to call and tell somebody. Jim ended the whole thing with a perfect summation...

"Why the f*ck would I care what he does?"

For Heather, the tech who doesn't believe there is a last page to te internet, and was making fun of someone who came across it, the url is http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html

I came across it through some joke page or another, and found it again by typing last page in yahoo search.

Of course, it's a joke, but maybe techs should check things out before they make fun of the users, especially in a public forum.

I manage a Help Desk for a Defence Organisation in Australia. The funniest complaint I have had thus far is from a Personal Assistant who came to tell me the new colour printers in the Resource Room were not working. After asking for more information I was able to establish that she had sent a document to the printer and it had not printed in colour. I asked to see the document in question at which she handed me a basic black and white minute. I explained to her that the printer couldn't print a document in colour unless it was actually a coloured document!!

I work in an ISP, we dont support computer problems, just internet or email problems, this customer calls me saying, hey my monitor rumbles... I can hear the guy was eating chips, I sayd sir? are you eating chips, he goes, hum yeah ?? so ?? I go, would you be able to stop just for a minute... he goes ok... after 10 seconds he goes.. hey you fixed my screen! how did you do that ? I said, sir eating patato chips makes your eyes rumble, wich makes the refresh rate of the screen rumble to your brain's perspective of view. he goes Oh! I see... and then he goes, can I eat chocolat bars, I said well you go ahead a try it!

I work for a major company that sells laptops, and this was my first call of the day. It made me wonder if I was still asleep.

Caller:What do I do if my cow ate my computer?

Me:What did you say happened to it?

Caller:My cow ate my computer.

Me:How did that happen? (At this point, I'm trying to decide if this is a crank caller or if he's for real.)

Caller:I don't know.

Me:I think you're probably out of luck. There's not much I can do for you.

Caller:I know that, but what about my cow? Can he get sick or something?

Me:Well, there's the battery. I think I'd call a vet.

(click)

This i heard from my friend, happened at his workplace..

There is an old guy almost 50 having a hardtime to learn to use a computer. After a few years, he begin to get used of it. One day, after lunch time he straight goin to use the computer.. but the cursor is not moving. He try to reattach the mouse cable to the serial port and it's still not working. He tried reboot.. yet the cursor is not moving. A crowd is started to gather at the side and watching the poor old Robert meddling around the machine. All of them started giggle and Robert doesnt seem giving up. After half hour, one of the female staff burst into laughter. Apparently she giving everyone a banana she brought. Since Robert is not his place when she is distributing the bananas, she4 left it on his desk. The old guy didnt notice the banana and keep holding the banana which he thought he's holding a mouse all the while. When Robert realise his hand is still gripping the banana, he himself cant stop laughing and blaming his old age.

I work at a help desk in the lab at a small college where it is fashionable to hate computers. Basically, therefore, if something goes wrong, this is representative of all the person's experiences with computers... i.e., "I hate computers, this always happens, they are so useless!" etc. You get the picture. I answer the phone but I also have to watch the lab and help people who are having difficulty there. An additional bit of fun is that the librarians periodically have people who are working there call down to talk to us. One such call:

S: student

M: me

S: Yeah, hi, I'm having a problem and the librarian told me to call you.

M: Okay. What's going on?

S: Well, my computer froze.

M: That's not good. Okay.

S: Yeah, and I was working on this paper and I wrote ten pages. And it froze.

M: Okay. I'm sorry.

S: Yeah. I didn't save it. Was I supposed to save it?

M: Uh. Yeah. That's typically what you should do, because once it's frozen I can't get it back for you, you have to go back to your last save.

S: What?

M: Well you don't have a save, but you would need to go back to your last save?

S: Are you sure? Because that's really bad. Because I didn't save it. And I wrote TEN PAGES. Are you sure?

M: Yeah. I'm sure.

S: Well I don't think that's true because at my last university I think they had a special program that could get the files back.

M: But you didn't save it, so there's no file.

S: But I wrote TEN PAGES.

M: Yes.

S: I don't think you're telling the truth because at my last university they would have been able to fix this!

M: I really don't think so.

S: There's NOTHING you can do? I mean this is really important!

M: I'm really sorry. That's really unfortunate. Next time, remember to save.

S: Oh my god, computers are so horrible, I can't believe this. Okay. Bye.

Scenerio #2 (happens at least one time per each shift I work):

S: I have a really big problem, because I have this paper on a disk and now I can't get it off the disk.

M: Okay. What are you doing?

S: Well it says (insert standard error message that means her 3.5 disk is corrupted)... is that bad?

M: Your disk is probably corrupted.

S: But I can get the file off, right?

M: Probably not. Did you save it anywhere else, like on your hard drive at home?

S: No.

M: Wow. Okay. I'm really sorry, but you probably can't get it back.

S: WHAT?

M: It'd really help if you saved your papers in several places, because floppies can very easily get corrupted.

S: WHAT?

M: It means they get erased.

S: Erased? I worked really hard on this! It was working yesterday.

M: I understand that. But it got corrupted. Look, I can take the floppy and try to run diskfixer and stuff.

S: Okay, that would be really good.

M: *runs scan disk and disk fixer etc* "Uh. I'm sorry. The disk is not salvageable."

S: Uh. I don't think you UNDERSTAND. This is REALLY important. Isn't there ANY other way?

M: No. Really.

S: Oh my god. That's really bad. You don't understand. This paper is really important.

M: Yeah, I'm sorry. That's why you can't trust floppy disks. If you just save on your hard drive...

S: I HEARD THAT, OKAY? I KNOW THAT! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! *starts crying* (This doesn't always happen, but definitely did once.)

Also great was when our color printer, which goes a while without jamming and then jams every five minutes, jammed. It's near the end of my shift, which was a late one on a weekend evening. I'm tired. The printer jams. Someone is printing out black and white photos on the color printer. I don't want to deal with it because the next time she tries to print it will jam again. This is how things go. So I tell her don't touch it. The lab will shortly be closing and I will e-mail my supervisor who can deal with it in the AM. She really doesn't mind. So I tell the girl who's jammed it, "Hey, once it starts jamming, it's REALLY hard to unjam and it's pretty much just going to jam again. It's old, it's decrepit, it's a piece of crap, and I don't generally unjam it because I'll have to be getting up every three seconds in order to unjam it again. Okay?"

She says, "Oh, that's no problem. I think I can fix it."

Me: "Uh. Don't touch that."

She's run across the room by now as I yell "Don't touch that" three more times. I run after her. She's in the back of the printer and has wedged herself in such that I can't get back there at all because she's blocking my path. I'm midway through telling her that she really doesn't know what she's doing and needs to get out of the way when she says, "Oh. Wow. This little piece fell off."

Oh.

"Uh. What?"

"This little piece fell off. I mean I got the paper out but I just yanked this thing and it came out of the back but this little piece came off and fell on the floor. But don't worry because I think it doesn't matter. I think I can put it back in." I already know she can't. Of course the broken piece of the fuser is now uneven, due to the "little piece" falling off. When this is all realized, she runs out of the room.

"Uh, this little piece fell off but I don't think it matters..." Jesus Christ.

The best part of this was that this was not my regular shift. I was filling in for someone else... Man was I pissed off.

Yeah I should have probably dealt more effectively with that, but hey, I'm a disaffected college student dealing with brats who think other schools would be better at rescuing files that have never been saved.

I'm hoping that I won't have to deal with that printer in the fall...though that would be asking too much. ;)

When I used to work for a large computer manufactor as tech support we would get a lot of call pertaining to lost PID numbers for programs that came shipped with their computers. With most of the programs being 3rd party, there were strict guidelines on giving out those generic numbers.

I received this call once:

me - me

eu - customer

ME: Thank you for calling XXXX techincal support, my name is XXX how can I help you?

EU: Yea I need a PID number for MS Word

ME: Can I get the serial number of the computer please?

EU: I don't know it, look, all I need is the number

(i can hear his friend yelling in the background)

I explained the reasons that we need to confirm that he owns one of our computers, that he is the valid owner of the computer, and that the software came with the system package.

I went thru everything and in more or less words, told him that there was nothing I could do for him.

EU: Your a prick.

ME: Is there anything else i can do for you?

EU: (does some more complaining)

ME: ok

EU: Did i mention your a prick?

ME: ok

EU: Don't you hang up on me, i'm gonna hang up on you.

ME: I have no plans on hanging up on you.

)CLICK(

LESSON: If your into piracy, DO NOT ask the OEM for the PID

One of our users is having trouble printing a customer letter from one of the computers. One of the fixes is to install the software again to a different directory. Of course, when I call them, I presume that they'll be AT THE MACHINE HAVING THE PROBLEM.

So we proceed to install the software and try to print from it. It prints fine. So I tell him to go back to the original installation. He then asks me "Should I be doing this from the machine that's having the problem?"

STUPID LUSERS!

People! -- If you have to refer to a floppy disk as "This square plastic thing you sent me", CD's as "This 'record' you sent me" or if you don't know that the "shiny side" goes down, PLEASE, for the sake of us Tech Support Operators, take a basic computer course!

ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I work for an ISP on Technical Support. Now we deal with people who, i'll be honest, are a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, but this guy took the biscuit.

A customer of ours called in and by my luck i was the Tech that received it.

D- Me

C- Customer

D- Thank you for calling blah blah blah, how can i help.

C- I can't get connected

D- OK, what happens when you try?

C- Nothing

D- Do you receive any error messages at all?

C- No

At this stage i get the customer to Dial Up Networking and into the Properties of our connection.

D- OK can you tell me whats the telephone number you have there?

C- There's nothing there

D- OK i think thats your problem, in the telephone number can you put in xxxx xxxxxxxx

At this stage i hear the phone pull away from the customers ear and a beep beep beep down the phone.

C- Nothing happened

D- OK sir can you please use the keys on the keyboard and not the keys on the telephone to enter the telephone number in the connection box.

C- OK

Once again he tries and i get beep beep beep down the phone.

C- Nothing has happened again.

D- No sir, can you please use buttons or keys on the keyboard rather than the buttons on the telephone to put the telephone number you need to dial to the internet.

C- Keyboard ???

D- Yes sir, the keyboard.

C- Oh it's broken

D- The keyboard is broken?

C- Yes i just sent it away for repair.

D- You sent it away for repair

C- Yes.............does this matter.

I can't remember what happened next as i was too busy banging my head against my table

My dad recently bought a computer at an auction, which he managed to set up himself at home. I go a call from him telling me his computer didn't work, and naturally I would have to come over right away and fix it. It only took me about two minuts to come to the conclusion that he didn't have an operating system. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: "You'll need to buy Windows"

Dad: "No, the guy was running it at the auction"

Me: "He must have uninstalled it here and kept it"

Dad: "Why wouldn't he just leave it on here and keep the CD?"

Me: "Because that would be illegal"

I finally convinced him to buy his own Windows, which he did several days later. Anfortunatly, I got another call. Windows would not install. I asked him which Windows he bought, which turned out to be Windows 2000. I asked him to put in the boot disk, which he could not find. I finally broke down and went to his house to help. I wanted to smah my head into the wall when I saw what was printed on the top of his CD:

Microsoft Office 2000!

We had a brief chat about the differences between "Operating Systems" and "Software", and why you need an OS to run software and not the other way around. I left when his eyes started glazing over...

I work for a rather large Health Insurance company as a Field Service tech ie internal tech support. My manager, who is not in IT due to a conflict of interest b/w the network admin and IT manager, just had a laptop docking station set up by our network admin. This week she calls the network admin saying she is "pushing the powerbutton on the station but her monitor/PC isn't turning on." She then asks "if it matters that she left her laptop at home...."The network admin calmly over the phone told her she needs her laptop and to go home and get it. This one is one of those so many comments, so much trouble we could get into. Btw, the network admin nearly fell off his chair laughing so hard.

This happened back in high school (around ’95 or 96’). My buddies and I would sometimes hang out after school in the drafting lab (which we were all 3rd year drafting students and computer geeks) which had around a dozen networked systems. Our teacher was a really cool guy who was a “jack of all trades” from construction/drafting to setting up computer networks/major system repair. One afternoon he was working on a system in a back room, I think it was an old Gateway. I went back to see exactly what he was working on, and come to find out, it was a dead motherboard battery. It looked like it collected some condensation, as there was rust on the terminals, and he was having some trouble removing the part. He decided to call to get help and a replacement, so I left the room to let him make the call. My friend and I heard the one sided conversation, but I decided to add what I think took place on the other end also, it went something like this:

Rep: “Moran Inc, Can I help you?”

Teacher: “Yeah I need to get replacement part number XXXX, and I need help removing this one ”

Rep: “I have that listed as blah blah motherboard battery, what is the problem with the one you have now?”

Teacher: “Well it looks like there was some corrosion on the battery itself which has caused it to be damaged”

Rep: “Corrosion?”

Teacher: “Yeah it looks like some condensation somehow built up on the terminals and caused some corrosion”

Rep: “Condensation? Corrosion?”

Teacher: “Yeah you know...rust?”

Rep: “Rust?”

Teacher: “Yeah, rust”

Rep:”….I don’t get it”

Teacher: “(sigh)….sometimes when water comes in contact with metals….”

The conversation continues like that. I think my teacher ended up giving the guy a chemistry lesson before he was able to order the part.

Quite a while back, someone posted a story about a customer with a smoking power supply. He pushed the customer toward Microsoft when the system couldn't find Nosmoke.Exe. I assumed that was an urban legend until I looked through our (Microsoft's) support database. Just for the record, it was Nosmoke.Sys, not Nosmoke.Exe.

I'm used to the occasional call wherein a user can't get their email, and it turns out that Caps Lock is (accidentally) turned on. Or having to tell the same person

every week or two that when they can't print, they should reboot (works every time in their situation). Luckily most of our users are a bit self-reliant or have a first

line of resource before they call me, but these things still happen. This is one of my favorites. It has happened twice in the past two years with two different users.

user: I haven't gotten any email since you were here two weeks ago.

me: Have you been getting password errors or any other errors?

user: No, just no new emails

me: Hmm. Let me check some things out. (I telneted into the mailhost - plenty of email waiting to be downloaded. Called IS dept. that handles the mailhost and

confirmed the user's account info).

me: Let's double check all in the info in your user profile again and see if there are any prolems (went through the profile configuration, no problems). Well, go

ahead and click on "Get Mail" and tell me what happens now.

user: Oh... I'm supposed to click on "Get Mail"?

The same scenario came up with a different user about two years later. That time I solved the problem a lot faster, with a little chuckle.

I work on an internal helpdesk for a large telecommunication company.

I just received a call from one particular butthead who already had an open trouble ticket. He claimed that he keeps getting the runaround from our support desk and demanded that his issue be escalated. What was his problem? No dialtone when trying to dial into our corporate network.

He had taken the laptop into the office after techs were unable to fix his problem over the phone. The local tech test dialed from the office and was connected without error. He determined that the modem and software must be working fine and ok'd the ticket to be closed as a probable issue with the caller's home phone lines.

I tried to explain this to the caller and he practically exploded. He insisted that Bell South had been out to test his lines and said they were working fine. He also tested it from a neighbor's home with the same "no dialtone" message. He was convinced his modem was broken and would not listen when I tried to explain that, to my knowledge, there is no possible way a modem can break causing it to be unable to dial up from one location while at the same time allowing it to dial from another. He wouldn't have any of that. All of a sudden he accused me of giving him the runaround and demanded my name.

At our helpdesk we are only required to give out our first name -- nothing else. This made him even more irritated so he asked to speak to the supervisor. I work 3rd shift and cannot remember the last time I saw a supervisor -- he accused me of lying to him when I told him there wasn't one available right now.

He then decided I needed a lecture on the proper escalation of a trouble -- like I have no idea how to do my job after 3+ years. I once again tried to explain to him that my supervisor would not be able to "speed" up the process for him as he was a Tier 1 supervisor and the ticket was already at a Tier 2 level. In effect, the caller would be taking a step backward.

Would the caller allow me to troubleshoot his problem? Hell no. Why would it work one place and not another? Well, the only difference between the to attempts is that the one in the office was performed by the tech instead of the caller. Is it possible the caller is connecting to the port? Quite possible since he has an internal modem along with a modem/LAN combo card. No, he had dialed in for the last 9 months without any problems, so it couldn't be a problem on his end...

As far as I'm concerned, this prick can drive to the office everyday. I'm halfway tempted to reset his dial-up password each night when I come in just to piss him off...

Thanks for letting me vent.

This is more a tale of stupid policies than anything else, but still fits here.

On my first day working for IBM (not in tech support), my boss shows me to my office and we discover that there is already computer there, presumably the one used by whoever occupied that office previously. It happened to be an IBM Aptiva. He suggests I just use that one, as it was probably better than the one they were going to assign to me.

So I start getting settled in my new office and begin setting up the computer. I soon discover the hard drive had been wiped. No big deal, I call the IT department and ask them to reload all the software. They ask for the model number, etc. I tell them. They say "I'm sorry, we don't support Aptivas. We don't have a disk image for them."

What??? How can they not support Aptivas? We make them! On that very site, in fact. I ended up having to be assigned a different computer. It took them about a week to get that one configured, too, but that's another story. Overall, I had to go without a working computer at my desk for about 2 weeks. I was really beginning to feel like I was trapped in a Dilbert comic.

I work for a high tech firm, which develops a electronic trading system for stock brokers. (sarcasm)Basically, you would assume sales people would have a pretty good understanding of technology (/sarcasm)! It couldn't be further from the truth. So, one day I get a call from a Salesperson, she is having some troubles getting on the network. So, I ask her the simple questions - is your laptop powered on, did you plug in the network cable, do you have an IP address (I even brought her to the command line and she said she had an IP, though I did not ask her to read it to me, stupid me). So after 10 minutes of this BS, I finally ask her where she is sitting, and I was going to send a friend of mine at that office over to her desk to help her. It surns out she was next to the fax machine, because a friend told her to get on the network she had to hook up to the network port on her modem/NIC combo card. Turns out this idiot actually brought her laptop over to the fax machine and unplugged the phone line from the fax machine and had plugged the fax line into her NIC card. Then I played stupid, and I brought her back to the command line and asked her to read me the IP. What do you think it was? It was that autoconfiguration address you get in Win2K starting with 169.x.x.x. I just laughed to myself and told her to go back to her desk and try 'the blue colored fat phone line' at her desk. After that, no problems. What a joke.

I do 2nd level tech support for a major PC manufacturer. This is taken from our internal database where all the call are logged. I did not take this call.

issue .: VC just got out of the hospital and is completely fried on meds. He spoke of cars he had purchased in the past that had not lived up to his high standards. He swore vengence against all that had wronged him in the past. Tales were told of a wonderous land "California", and how he wished to get off his meds, divorce his wife, and marry & divorce a wealthy woman there so he could live off the alimony payments. He also felt that it was important I know all about how he pees his pants frequently. I believe I tuned out shortly after the topic of conversation turned to his chronic diarrhea...

issue : wants to know what was done to his computer that he had just recieved back, hard drive was making sounds before, now it isn't, i'm gonna guess they replaced it, even though I can't find the case notes among the 500 calls this man has made to us.

resolution .: this guy will not stop talking. I feel bad for him but I can't sit and listen to his problems all day. 65 minutes later --) apparently I can...

I was asked to completely reinstall a computer lab at the school where I work. This isvolved disconnecting the cables and reconnecting them so that things were easier to manage.

I came to a pair of computers which didn;t work after my recabling - they both said they couldn't see the domain. I checked the computer names and the network cards and they all checked out fine. I then thought that the cable was broken so I traced it from the back of the first computer.....into the back of the second!

a quick reconnect and a new cable later and I jad 2 more working PCs.....well even the Pros get it wrong too!

I was working midnights for a cable internet provider and a call came in around 7 am. She had had a tech come out and install the cable modem for her, two days ago. For two days she could not get on her computer. Everytime she booted up her computer, it would give her the error message saying "non-system disk, remove and strike any key when ready." I told her to take that disk out of her floppy drive and hit enter. She started arguing with me that that was her ethernet card in the floppy drive. I told her that it can't be, the ethernet card is installed in the back of her modem. She says every time I take it out, it says easy nic card or something to that effect. After about 5 minutes of arguing with her, and finally convincing her to take it out, and hit the enter key, lo and behold, her system boots up. She starts going on about how smart I am. I told her to keep her "ethernet card" out of her floppy drive and put it AWAY.

I work for "XXX" DSL tech support, and received a call from a customer with Static IP service. She had a Cayman Router with all lights steady on her device except for 1 port light which was blinking.

I had the customer power down her router, then bring it back up. The lights did not change, so I had her re-seat the cable. When she unplugged it from the device, she said, "OH!!". Thinking she had gotten a shock, I asked if she was alright. She said that when she unplugged the Ethernet cable from the port, a SPIDER came out if the socket. She reconnected the cable, and was then able to connect.

This was the first time I ever LITERALLY de-bugged a router.

i remmeber once this customer calls me and this is his problem

my friend stole my proxy and my port

i didn't know what to tell him at first but then i told him

to change his password and i gave him our proxy ip address

My fiancee just sent me this via an instant message.

Him: "can you click on start?" he asks

Her: "yeah...did you want me to click on it?"

'Nuff said.

This happened in the late 80's, in the days of 5.25" floppy drives. At this point a common configuration was to have the A: drive boot up DOS, run applications, etc (all on a 360K disk!) & the B: drive would be used for storing data.

A common resolution to problems caused by this arrangement was to have the user swap the floppy disks around as the disks were removed at night & placed in a safe).

After trying to get the end user to try this method, the PC still was not booting - I then took a drive to the office. On arrival, there was no sign of a floppy disk in either A: or B: drive - the user was convinced that the floppy was in the computer. I then had a closer look - there was the boot disk - it had been inserted in the tiny gap between the two drives! One pair of tweezers & two minutes later, the customer was back up & running again.

A good friend, who's been avoiding buying a computer for years finally bit the bullet and bought himself a nice system. Recently he called me and described his current problems on Windows XP. I asked him what he'd done to cause them, and his response was: "Well, I'm not really sure. I was clicking around trying to figure out what the computer does, and I ended up here."

Fortunately, he takes instructions really well, and, even though he's on the opposite side of the US, we were able to fix his problems (a broken web link and a corrupted theme) rather quickly. I expect to hear from him quite a lot; stay tuned for the next in the saga. ;-)

I work for MS, and I can buy certain MS products for my own use or gifts at a substantial discount. I sent my sister a copy of Office 2000 as a gift, explaining I was able to get a discount on it. She mentioned it to the IT mgr at her place of work. A week later, the manager asked her to have me buy them 16 copies at my discount. I, of course, said "no." It's a violation of company policy to purchase discounted software for business entities. My sister told the manager (who was apparently in her office) what I'd said, and the manager took the phone and spoke to me directly. The conversation went like this:

Her: "We really need 16 copies of Office 2000 Permium. Can you help us out?"

Me: "No. It's against company policy. If you need it for business purposes, you'll have to buy it through normal channels."

Her: "But that's over $400 per copy! We can't afford that."

Me: "I'm sorry, but I can't help you."

Her: "Well, you wouldn't have to tell anyone that you'd sold it to us."

Me: "First off, the software I buy is tracked to me; if a business calls and registers 16 licenses of Office 2000 that I bought, they'll figure it out. Besides, why should I cheat my employer?"

Her: "But we have to have it, and we don't have the budget to buy it."

Me: "Then you need to tell whoever controls the money that you need to have Office 2000 and you need the money to buy it."

Her: "I can't."

Me: "Why not?"

Her: "I just bought general ledger software for the whole department; it's cheaper than anybody else's because it uses MS Office 2000 components. Since your sister said you'd sent her a copy, I went ahead and committed to getting 16 licenses of Office for free."

Me: "I don't get Office for free--I pay a discounted price. I gave it to my sister for free because it was a gift."

Her: "But, if I tell my boss we need to spend over $6,000 more for Office licenses, he'll fire me."

Me: "Sorry. I can't help you."

Her: "What can I do?"

Me: "I don't know."

Her: "If I buy one copy of Office 2000, can't I install it on all the systems?"

Me: "No. One license per machine."

Her: "If we install Office 2000 on the server, can't we run it from all the computers?"

Me: "Not unless you make sure to run only one copy at a time."

Her: "Isn't there a special license code that we can use to bypass that?"

Me: "'bye. [Click]"

I'm a tech for an ISP that I'll just refer to as earthstink. A customer called in and said that she was having major poblems with her internet service. I asked her what kind of problem was she experiencing? She replied "I get this message that says earthsting isn't working right and When I'm using Microsoft word, I can't insert any clip art pictures into the document" I informed her that we only support connection and browsing issues, she became very irate and said that she bought her computer from earthstink and that we should fix all of her problems. I then informed her that we are just an ISP and the computer was manufactured from a different company. She continued with her rah rah rah so I just released the call.

We had this one person in the office who insisted there machine was broken. They said that the floppies were being erased when after being viewed and figured it was the machine. So we go down to check and see if it is hardware, software or operator error. Turns out that they found a new of keeping those floppies filed and off the desk yet easily accessible. They were using small magnets to keep them stuck to the file cabinet and couldn't figure out how that would cause problems.

Many years ago I converted my company from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 on a NetWare network (Hey, I said MANY years ago...). I had logged in as each user to make sure the ID's worked, and also so the ID would be on the PC whe the user came in the next day.

A user calls me and says she can't log in. I tell her to re-enter her user ID (JORDAN in this case, relevance to be seen later) and password in the boxes provided. She said she did and it didn't work. I told her to try it from scratch, re-entering her ID and password. After three tries I ended up going to the user's desk.

The user name as entered in the USER NAME box was JORDANJORDANJORDANJORDAN ....

When I first started working in IT, I was tech support on a college campus. One student brought me a diskette that had caused the computer in the lab to grumble about viruses. Her documents were indeed infected so I ran a virus program on the diskette to remove the viruses. After I was done, I handed her back her diskette and the student asked "if any of her other diskettes could be infected because they had all been stored next to each other; you know, could the virus jump from one diskette to the next by touching each other?"

I used to manage a rural ISP. One day, a really old man came into the store to sign up for our service. One of my techs helped him through the process, got his name, phone number, and address, and helped the customer pick out a username and password. Finally, he got down to one of the last questions on the form:

Tech: OK, what kind of computer do you have?

Customer: Computer? I don't have a computer!

Que? How did he think he was going to access the Internet? (This was before Web TV.) The rest of us scattered to the back of the store to laugh while Nathaniel showed the customer our line of computers.

Working for a large corporation can test your patience with users. We user remote administration or remotely possible when we want to remote a user's machine and see for "ourselves" what is going on. We need the user's IP address so we can remote the machine and ion most cases we need them to enable or launch the program so we can remote it. The worst thing in the world is letting the end user's know we can "remote" their machine. It's scary how often user's call us saying something like...

User: My machine is giving me an error

Tech: What error is it giving you?

User: Can't you see it?

or..

User: Can you help me with this program?

Tech: Which program?

User: See the one i'm clicking on? Duhh

Tech: I need to put you on hold (*sigh.. i need a drink*)

USer: Can you remote my machine, I could really user your help. (assuming this is a company machine)

Tech: Sure. I just need your IP address so i can remote you.

User: Sure what do i need to do?

Tech: I need you to do ( blah blah blah )

USer: I can't do that.

Tech: Why not?

User: I'm at home.

I used to manage a rural ISP not far from Seattle. One day, I got a phone call from one of my customers, who also happened to work for a very large software company. (Guess who!!) She accused us of using her account to access the Internet.

Customer: I know you've been using my account to access the Internet when I'm not using it.

Me: Excuse me? We've been using your account?

Customer: Yes, I know you've been using it. I even asked my coworkers, and they said you must be using it when I'm not because when I go to www.msn.com, some of the links show up red. I've never visited those links, so I know it must have been you.

Me: Umm, that's not quite the way the Internet works. (I try at this point to explain about cookies and web page coding, but she interrupts.)

Customer: It's O.K. I don't mind that you use my account when I'm not. Someone might as well use it, but I just wanted you to know that I know.

Me: Wait! --(click)

Apparently, it never occurred to her that we OWNED our servers, and that if we wanted or needed another Internet account, all we had to do was walk in the back room and CREATE one. The scary thing was, she worked for the largest software company in the world. Perhaps she was a janitor?

I have AOL. I use a dial-up 56k modem and use Automatic AOL - saving my emails until I'm ready to send them. The program dials in, gets my new mails, and sends out what's in my out-box.

Not long after 9-11, I began having difficulties sending out my emails - it would take many minutes more than usual, and then I would get a message - for some of them - saying that "The system has not responded." Those emails would remain in my out-box.

It wasn't long before I discovered that those emails often actually went out, even though I was being told they hadn't. So I began copying myself on them so I would know whether they had gotten sent or not. By snooping around a little, I determined that what was failing was the confirmation from AOL that the emails had been sent.

So I called AOL, wondering whether there was a problem with the system. No way! I had a series of emails and phone conversations with their support desk, usually spending quite some time on hold, being transferred, etc. After one conversation I was sent a long email detailing various things to try with my computer to make it work. (I couldn't talk and follow directions (connected) at the same time because I had only one phone line. Another walked me through changing various settings to my preferences, checking the modem, etc. I knew that wasn't the problem, but my protestations that there might be a problem on their end went unheeded.

After a while I just gave up. Then it dawned on my to try another access number. I did, and have had no problem since.

Why couldn't they have suggested that? It was so simple. Why? Because they were assuming I was the one with the problem. But my problem was their line - it must have gotten damaged or overloaded due to phone lines being destroyed at the Twin Towers.

I probably should have emailed them back with my simple solution, but didn't have any faith it would do any good.

When I used to do Tech Support for a local high speed ISP during the initial test run for their DSL service, I received the following call:

Cust: Hi, is the Internet down?

Me: No, we haven't received any calls. What kind of problem are you having?

Cust: Well, everything was working an hour ago, but now I can't do anything.

Me: Have you tried restarting your computer?

Cust: Yes, and it didn't work.

Me: OK, can you reset your DSL modem.

Cust: My What?

Me: The big beige box that is sitting near your computer. It will say Paradyne on it and have 7 lights on the front of it.

Cust: I don't have one.

Me: You must have one. Is your computer in front of you?

Cust: Yes.

Me: Do you have a desk that the DSL modem may be behind?

Cust: Yes, it is a big desk.

Me: Can you check behind it?

Cust: Ok hold on.........OK, I see the beige box. Now what?

Me: Pull out the small round black cord and wait 10 seconds and then plug it back in.

Cust: I can't find the black cord.

Me: It is on the back on the left.

Cust: I can't see it. It's too dark back there.

Me: Do you have a light that you can turn on? Or a flashlight?

Cust: No flashlight, and the power went out about an hour ago so I can't turn on the light.

Wait for it.......

Me: Why don't you wait until the power comes back on, and try the Internet again then.

Cust: Do you think it will work then.

Me: It should.

I received this e-mail in our helpdesk e-mail account.

"Hi!

I've tried to send this e-mail--they're located in the UK. Does this mean I don't have permission to send e-mail this far or it's just the wrong e-mail address or ..."

As the manager of a small internet service in Nevada, I used to get some amazing calls from people that often had us laughing. I got all the normal ones - people who couldn't double-click, people who hadn't turned on their monitors and wanted to know why their computer wasn't working, people who thought they needed a new mouse, because they were holding it backwards (tail towards them), even people who would send me e-mails asking why they couldn't send e-mails. The funniest call though, was when an obvious first-timer called me up several times asking for information about the internet, finally signing up with us. I sent them instructions and a copy of the latest browser on a CD, just in case they didn't have it already installed (they weren't sure). The instructions were written in plain english, but still, three days later they called me up...

Me: "Company Name", Tim speaking. How can I help you?

Him: I can't get the internet.

Me: What do you mean? Can you log on and just can't go anywhere or are you getting a busy signal?

Him: I don't know. I tried calling that number you gave me and it doesn't work.

Me: Are you sure? Are you calling 775-XXX-XXXX?

Him: Yes. It doesn't work.

Me: Are you getting a busy signal?

Him: No, it just screams at me.

Me: What do you mean, screams at you?

Him: Well, I dial the number and the phone just screams at me. (at this point, I was starting to realize what he was saying, but just couldn't believe it)

Me: You mean the modem makes a funny screeching noise? It's supposed to do that - it's what we call the "handshake" - what does your computer say after that?

Him: The computer doesn't say anything the phone just screams. My wife tried calling the number on the neighbor's phone and it just screams at her too.

Me: You mean to tell me that you're calling the number for the internet on your telephone?! Not using your computer?

Him: Yes! (getting upset) I pick up the phone and call the number and the phone just screams at me - we don't get any internet at all.

It was so sad, and yet funny at the same time. After carefully explaining that it was his computer that had to do the dialing, he cancelled his internet access - he didn't even have a modem in his computer.

Several weeks later, after taking his computer into another town to get a modem installed, he signed back up again and called me up several times

Once he wanted to know how much it cost to send e-mails to his son who lived in Las Vegas, assuming that since it cost more to phone there, it must cost more to e-mail there as well. Prior to that day he had never sent an e-mail to anyone who didn't live within the town limits!

I had another customer who had previously lived in Las Vegas and at that time Las Vegas had the same phone prefix as we did. After signing up for our internet access he went home and logged on, without ever even looking at the instructions we gave him. A month later, he got his phone bill and demanded that we pay him back $1,200.00 in Long Distance fees. He figured the internet was the same everywhere, so it didn't matter as long as he was paying his monthly fee. After I explained to him that every internet company was different, we just allowed access to the internet, through our LOCAL phone lines, he cancelled his service in a huff after calling me names for not telling him he was dialling in long distance and also for not noticing he was not using his internet through us. He later signed back up with us, we were the only internet providers in the entire county! :-)

Got a call from my Mother, said her PC wouldn't turn on. Started with the basics but quickly degenerated down to things like "Is the power cord plugged into the wall?". Anyway, she said that everytime she'd push the power button, the monitor would blink and then turn off. I was banging my head trying to figure out what was wrong. Kept asking her "Are you sure you're pushing the little button with the 0/1 on it?". She assured me she was.

End result - turned out that she was pushing the open/close button for the cdrom, not the power button. All of this after 2 hours on the phone...

Quite a while ago, my boss was out on a sales call and needed to clear a floppy disk. Somehow, he had forgotten how to do it and called for advice.

I told him:

A: (enter)

del /s *.* (enter)

y(enter)

After a long wait, he finally said "It's done."

I asked what he saw and he said "Just the C prompt."

(C Prompt?) When I verified that's what he said, I asked him to read me every line above; he read:

C:\)A;

Bad command or filename

C:\) del /s *.*

and so on. He entered the very first line wrong, so he never switched to the A: drive. He was not amused, but didn't blame me, because he didn't tell me about the error.

I love a good LAN party.

But I'm very VERY wary of giving tech support as you should all know what sort of issue's the ID10T5 come up with.

The last one I went to, was quite succesfull except for one machine. The poor Drone that had decided to nominate himself as official tech supportist had spent about 2 hours racking his brain trying to get this one PC to browse the network (after Pr0n. Eventualy they come to me to fix it..

Sighing I decide I need a break from all the 1 shot kills I'm getting in SOF2 and wander over.

Current issue:

Can get IP from (my) DHCP server.

Can ping any server/PC on the network.

Cannot see any machine on the network, but other machines can see it (but not browse it)

So I ask the first and most important question:

Is he running any firewall software (Although not well versed in WinXP I know it has built in firewalling)

the answer was : No.

So I start to trouble shoot...

It all seems in order, it has the right protocols and is correctly configured, it is on tyhe same work group and has picked up a shiny new DHCP lease from my happy lil server.

hmmm I say very strange.. so I decide to test from the application layer.

I start up SOF2

What do you think pops up?

Yeah thats right Nortons Firewall.

Disable the firewall crud, all is happy.

Dumb bunnies..

I was doing desktop support for a (now defunct) dot com a few years ago. As more and more users were hired, the company finally hired a new tech to assist with desktop support. This new guy was an MCSE and his last job had been providing phone support for a big company with a large pool of notebook computers. Based on what I knew, he seemed like he'd be able to handle desktop support. After about 2 or 3 days on the job, I asked him to install Winzip on a user's PC. I told him to download it from the Internet, and a full license would be purchased later. After about 30 minutes I hadn't heard anything from the guy, so I figured that he had gone on to another task. About that time he appeared in my office and I asked him what he was working on now. He looked at me and, "it's been a while... where do I download Winzip?"

Hi, Im a network Admin / Helpdesk for a company with about 100 users. and some specialized databases that make life miserable. so most of the time all the issues are its fault.. BUT occasionaly we get some smart ones (i've made my own too)

Me - ME! MYSELF, I!

U - User

Me: "Mark Speaking,"

U: "oh, Hi mark, I was wondering, is something wrong with the email server? cause I dont think I got enough email today"

Me: "not that I know of, please hold I will call the ISP and see" put them on hold, and dial the ISP and listen to their automated message, obviously stating nothing is wrong

"W***com is not reporting any errors, if theres someone you know sent an email, try calling them or emailing them"

U: "Oh, I wasnt expecting any, I just thought that 30 was too little, I usually get like 40.."

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHH

Me: "Good Morning, Mark Speaking"

User: "Theres a problem with the email over the weekend, I came in and sent the toronto office an email and it bounced back"

me: "good, it should have"

User: "why? thats not very professional!"

me: "would you mind reading the general service announcement from friday I sent out... you know, the one stating that our office will have it's power shutdown all weekend and our Lotus Server will be down".......

on the same note, that monday morning when I got to work to turn the servers back on, a couple "early" birds where already there trying to call me wondering why they couldnt even log into the network... sometimes you want to shoot people....

a manager phoned me once, and asked for a certain person's e-mail to be secretely forwarded to him... I happily did so as its part of my job... a couple days later the same manager phoned and asked if I was forwarding the proper account, because all he was getting from the forwarded account was porn..... hmmmm I wonder.... (the employee was gone shortly)

I like helping get drunks canned, every single weekend this one a$$ would phone and leave me, and the president a Voice Mail..

User: "THIS DAMN INTERNET ISNT WORKING AGAIN THIS WEEKEND! WHAT IS THIS( YOU CANT GET ANYTHING WORKING RIGHT! NOW BOB CANT DO MY REPORTS AND (BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH)"

what the idiot couldnt figure out week after week was that the internet for their office was dialup, and week after week screwed up the instructions again and again and again. (couldnt double click the button on the desktop labelled "INTERNET") finally the president pulls me into the office and we called the guy on speaker,

USER: "he never gets it right, BOB couldnt do my reports!"

pres: "what does the internet have to do with your financial reports"

USER: "um... nothing"

PRES: "and why are you getting BOB to do your reports?"

USER: "um because..."

PRES: "they are confidential reports you know.. and if he's doing them, why are you even in the office trying to get on the internet?"

thats when I was asked to leave, and the yelling from his office got loud.. I love it

as you can tell, I can go on and on and on about stupidity.... maybe another time

This is the oddest of my arsenal of desktop support tales. I work at a large US research hospital. The user in question is a PhD, an MD, a highly regarded surgeon, and truly he is a damned fine man--he's just not too computer-savvy.

The good doctor has a blue and white Macintosh. Note that the Mac has two USB ports in its keyboard, one right one left, so you can plug your mouse or trackball into either side.

This doctor's office is quite cramped and for years he has used a special extra-small keyboard which has no keypad and no F-keys. He keeps this tiny keyboard in a drawer in his desk. The keyboard is very old, it has turned that yellow-brown shade of ancient polyethylene, and one day the tiny yellow keyboard just gives up and starts typing "YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" without ceasing. The tiny keyboard is dead from old age.

The doctor asks me to get another tiny keyboard to replace it. I check, but his model is no longer manufactured. I take him an iMac keyboard, which is pretty small.

"It's too big," he pronounces, and demonstrates that it will not quite fit in his drawer next to his trackball.

"Take it to BME and have them saw this part off," he says. Bio-Medical Engineering repairs medical and labratory equipment and they have a fairly extensive machine shop. He is pointing to the keypad.

"You can't just saw a keyboard in half," I say confidently, thinking that this goes without saying. He must be joking somehow.

"Sure," he says, "because I can still plug the trackball into *this* side." He points out the left USB port, which I must admit, would still be there if BME runs the keyboard through a bandsaw.

"There is a circuit board in there," I say, tapping the keyboard, clinching the argument. Surely this will get the point across.

The doctor makes careful eye contact and speaks slowly to me, in order to emphasize the fact that I am not too bright and I am MISSING SOMETHING.

"I keep trying to tell you that:

I...d o n ' t ...n e e d...t h e...n u m b e r s!"

I am an accessory to this crime because I actually did cave. The iMac keyboard is pretty sturdy and if you are careful you can actually lop almost a quarter inch off each end with a bandsaw, without cutting anything crucial. I know this now because we did it. It was just enough taken off to wedge that damned keyboard into the desk, and by God if it didn't work, too.

Quite a few years ago I got a call from a sales rep at our company who was trying to use software we had sent him so he could access our mainframe remotely. The call went something like this:

User: Hi, I'm trying to use the software you sent me to log into the system but when I click dial it doesn't do anything.

Me: Do you have 800-xxx-xxxx entered as the phone number?

User: Yes.

Me: Try putting a 1 in front of it and see if that makes any difference.

User: OK.... no, same thing.

Me: Can you hear the modem dialing?

User: No, I don't hear anything.

Me: Check the phone cable going into the modem and make sure it's secure.

User: Yes it's plugged all the way in.

Me: Hmmm... Do you know what com port your modem is on?

User: Com port? um, no.

Me: OK, go to start button, control panel, double-click system, then click the device manager tab. Find the modem icon and expand it by clicking the plus sign next to it.

User: I don't see a modem icon.

Me: It will be a yellow phone icon.

User: Nope, it's not here.

Me: That's bizarre. What kind of modem are you using?

User: It's the one you guys sent me with the software. Supra something. It's brand new.

Me: OK, several people are using those. You're the first one that's had a problem. The fact that it doesn't even show up in the device manager makes me think it might be damaged or defective.

User: Well I have it sitting on a piece of paper so it's not directly on top of my desk. Is that OK?

Me: [Thrown a little off balance by that response, knowing we had only been sending out internal modems] Umm... I'm getting the impression the modem isn't physically connected to your PC.

User: What do you mean?

Me: That's an internal modem. It has to be inserted into a slot inside your PC in order to work.

User: [Now the basic laws of physics understood by most 5-year-olds is starting to sink in] Oh my god. I'm so stupid. Please don't tell anyone about this.

Oh, no... I'll never repeat a word of it :)

This is a story about my co worker, one of the funnist, anti - user sys amins I have ever met.

We worked together for a large computer database company doing tech and sys admin support. He decieded that he hated users and put a big sign on his overhead locker drawer. What was on the sign, in big capital letter? The word NO!

Whenever a user came up and asked him to do something he would point to the sign and then ignore him. If a manager came up he would lie and say that he worked for networks (we sat next to them) and point out the other techies to the manager.

What a GUY!!!!!

I run a network for a company which has a bad power supply and a boss who knows as much about computers as most people know about Dodo herding.

I finally got approval to fit UPSs to all the machines on the network (after two got completely fried by a power surge) and went around installing them.

A couple of days later, the boss called me into his office and was looking like a kid who had lost his toys.

"Why dont I get a UPS?"

"You have a surge protector"

"Yeah but why don't I get a UPS?"

"For your laptop?"

I was second-level support for a large institutional brokerage, and one day I happened to be on the trading floor near the Hell^Hp desk. One of our traders, who must have been having difficulty getting to some web page, said "Hey Kevin, what's going on with the Internet, I can't get to (something).com".

"It's President's day today, the Internet is closed", I said.

He smacked his forehead and said "of course, what was I thinking. Sorry!".

Another time I was on the trading floor when one of the l^husers stood up and shouted "fonts are down!". Still dunno what that was about.

I work for a medium sized company that has offices in 8 states. We have a lot of our paperwork between offices faxed throughout the day. One day, while working the help desk, I got an interesting call. The user wanted to know if she could send me a document requesting a new user. I gave her my fax number so she could send it right over. She replied, "Okay, but you'll have to fax this right back to me, it's my only copy."

I was covering for a friend of mine who was the SA for another department. She left for vacation and told me to only expect support calls from the administrative staff. A couple of days went by before I received my first support call from her department. It was from the front desk receptionist complaining that her printer stopped working. 10 minutes later I show up. I start with the usual questioning.. when did it stop working? what were you working on when you noticed it stop working? etc? I checked the printer spool, settings... all the while she is chattering behind me...until she mentions that she had just finished 'cleaning her desk'. Ah Ha! Did you move the computer or printer around while you were cleaning. Yes she responded. She mentioned that she noticed a 'hose' on her desk that wasn't attached to anything. She shunned it out of site. The hose? Ya, there was this hose thingy and I pushed it behind the desk. Show me the hose. This isn't a hose. This is the printer cable. I reattach the printer cable and the problem was solved.

Perhaps she thought the printer was vacuum operated.... or was just clueless!

-D

Back when I first entered the field of IT and CIS, I had a woman in the office where I worked summon me to the fax machine. She explained that whenever she put a document in the machine and dialed the number, the fax machine would "spit out" the document, and she asked me "How do I know they're getting the form if the fax machine keeps spitting it out?" I suggested she call and ask the person to whom she sent the message... also in the same office: the office administrator asked the mailroom guys what is the best way to send a fax machine to a brance office. The reply: "fax it to them".

While I wasn't at the time doing tech support (I am now), I got a call from my friends mom's office. Seems they turned on one of the systems and nothing was coming up.

Everything I tried on the phone didn't work. The monitor was plugged into the computer, the monitor was on, the computer was on.

So I drove down to the office walked in,sat down, and adjusted the contrast\brightness on the screen and wala we have working monitor again. One free pizza for me.

-Todd

I used to work as a Network Helper for my Halls of residence at university. One night I got a call from a flatmate who was trying to connect onto the university network from her room.

Me: Have you connected the network card into the PC?

Her: Yes, I opened it up and screwed it in tightly.

Me: Have you installed the configuration Software, the cd that came with the card?

Her: Yes of course I have.

Me: Have you followed the instructions provided in the university handbook to connect to the university?

Her: Yes

Me: Hmm, it seems like you've done everything right, I'll come round and take a look.

Her: Yes, but are you sure you can solve this, because it's all done correctly?

Me: Well, you did call for my help..

Her: okay you can try but not sure if you'll get it working, I think it's my socket on the wall.

Me: I'll see what I can do.

I go round and check the connections, I also glanced at the back of her PC to make sure the network card existed, yes it did. Made sure that the network cable was connected okay, yes fine. So I checked the network settings in Control Panel and yes the settings were correct, as specified in the university handbook.

Me: It could be that your network card is faulty, I suggest we take it back to the shop you bought it from.

Her: Well, can you take it out for me, I'm worried about breaking something.

Me: Sure no problem.

So I open up the box to remove the card, and Voila, I find the problem. The dozy woman had screwed the network card to the back panel on the PC but didn't plug it into the motherboard as she said she had. There it was, connected into thin air (Doh!).

In the past I worked as LV 2 tech support for a computer that ships thier computers in black and white boxes :-)

I get a call one day from a frustrated user complaining of a non-functional modem. After going through all the standard steps its time to walk this person through cracking the case and fiddiling with the card itself.

As the case is opened I hear a gasp on the other end of the line and the phone drops. A few seconds later the customer proclaims "I know what the problem is!" being the cyncial tech I awnser "and what do you think it is?"

"There is a dead mouse fused to the modem!"

How the mouse got there I will never know but apperently he was fused so good you could hold the board upside down and the mouse would not fall off.

On explaining the RMA procedure the customer asked if he should remove the mouse before returning the part.

After some thought I replied "Nahh...leave it on there, the boys in recieving will love that one" :-)

I had a lady that was recently hired come to me and complain that she hasn't received any email for a couple of days (since she was hired). I knew that her email was working fine because I had just set it up two days earlier and tested it at that time. So I took a quick peek on the exchange server and sure enough, her account was still there and active. So I told her that I would send her a test email and when she got it, to just go ahead and delete it. Well, she went back to her desk and a few moments later my phone rings and it is her saying that she hasn't got the email yet. I said "OK, I'll be there in a minute."

So, when I arrive at her desk, she is sitting there looking at the phone and says "See, I haven't got it yet." A little puzzeled, I looked at her computer screen and saw that Outlook was not open. I opened it for her and sure enough, 2 days worth of email is sitting in her mailbox.

It turns out that she was waiting for the voice mail message light on her phone to light up telling her she had email. She was let go shortly after.

I worked at a software development company here in canaduh. I got a call from this lady down in the states complaining that program isn't bring up the information shes looking for.

She then says to me "hold on"

So I sat on the phone for 5 mins in silence.

She then says "hello???" as if she was waiting for me.

I'm like "yeah, I'm here."

She goes "So, do you see anything??"

I'm thinking to myself... yeah I can see you're a retard but other than the base of the phone I'm not seeing anything.

What a luser.. how do these people survive?? I mean I always though a brain was part of basic survival skills but I guess not.

As one of my many duties as LAN Admin, I'm also responsible for fax machines, copiers, and yes...even cell phones.

One particular user got us today with quite possibly the dumbest story ever. We got an email from him saying that he lost his cell phone, and the last place he remembered having it was the restroom. Why he remembered to check his cellphone there is beyond me, but at least he had a clue where it was.

Instead of calling his phone, he emails us...and we proceed to call his phone and let his voicemail notification lead us to it.

We hear the beeps and start walking up and down the halls of the office, trying to figure out where the beeps are coming from. Out of PURE CURIOSITY we open the door to his office, where the sound gets much more distinct.

Roaming around his office trying to find it was another story. Until I crawled under his desk to see if maybe he dropped it behind his file cabinet. Sure enough, the sound got louder. I accidentally bumped my head on the latch to his desk drawer (the one just below the keyboard), only to hear the sound get louder than ever before. Low and behold..the phone is sitting in his drawer beeping. Good thing he's at lunch right now...can't wait to confront him on this one. :)

/Al_Rock

I work a seasonal job with a large tax prep firm and in all the offices there is one PC, a P100 running Windows95 (really--no kidding), designated as a Point-of-Sale, a.k.a. POS,....insert your own joke here....

Just a couple of my favorites from the world of local POTS

technical support:

Me:How can I help you today?

Customer: My #@*&#(&@ caller id isn't working! It's NEVER worked!

I want it fix NOW!

Me: Can you explain exactly what you see on the screen when

calls come in?

Customer: It's the same thing everytime! No matter who calls

me, the name and number is always wrong!

Me: What does the name and number say?

Customer: It always says "John Smith 555-555-5555"! I don't

even KNOW a John Smith!

Me: When did you buy the caller id unit?

Customer: About 4 months ago! And it's never worked! You guys

never programmed it! I want a refund!

Me: Did you happen to remove the LCD screen sticker from the

box when you bought it?

Customer: (Long silence) Oh. #@#*@! Nevermind (Click - hung

up phone)

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

Me: Thank you for calling repair, how can I help you today?

Elderly Customer: My phone is broken!

Me: Do you have dial tone?

Elderly Customer: WHAT? Of course I have a dial phone! What kind

of idiot do you think I am!

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

Gotta love the phone company

This can work the other way too, you know.

I once called the computer store where I bought my computer because my monitor was not working. I figured it was the videocard and wanted to make an appointment to bring the computer to them for service.

When I told the technician there was no display on the monitor, he proceeded to tell me to go to Start, Settings, Control Panel....

I told him "but I can't SEE anything on the monitor" to be able to do that.

Techie: "Oh yeah."

I work for a large company which has it's own security office. We have several buildings which the security guards patrol. The security guys run some specialized software, which I maintain for them.

I get a call one day saying they lost there data and can't seem to restore from their backup.

M = Me S = Security Guard

M: So, you're having problems restoring your data? How did you back it up?

S: Well, we'd copy it to a Zip disk every night.

M: Ok. I'd better come over and take a look at it.

*** 10 Minutes later, after driving over to the security building ***

I sit down at the machine and verify that the zip disk they have been backup up to is the one in the drive. I open the disk and don't see anything that looks like a backup of their data. (The software requires that you export the data and save it on a removable disk in order to back it up)

So I ask,

M: Well, this doesn't seem right. Can you show me how you would normally back it up?

The security guard sits down at the pc. He drags the icon for the software that was on the desktop to the zip drive.

S: That's it.

At this point, I had to bite my tounge as I tried to explain that he had only successfully backed up his icon and not any of the real data.

I do tech work for various small companies in my city. I got a call from a customer saying that they moved a workstation to a new location and now it is not backing up. For some history: a server would back up this workstation over the network at night to a tape drive. I verify they are on the network and are logging in. All seems well so I tell them I will have to come onsite to look at it. I arrive there and have full network function. I start the backup job manually and it backs up just fine. A bit puzzled, I ask the person what they do before the end of the day. She looks at the computer and tells me:

"well, I click start, then shutdown. I then turn off my monitor and then the box below." With as straight as a face as I could muster I told her "mam, your computer has to be on to be backed up." I walked outside and laughed hard. I billed them the standard $95 for the call.

I work for a manufacturer in the product support area. We assist customers in installing their cable modems and isdn. I was having a bad day until I received this call.

Me: Thankyou for calling *******, how may I help you?

EU: Yes, I just purchase this cable modem and I have been trying to install it and still cannot get on the internet.

Me: Okay, let me see what we can do to assist you. What OS are you using?

EU: OS, what do you mean?

Me: Are you using Windows 98, 2000, XP, .... ?

EU: I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Me: (Trying to control myself) Do you have the software CD's that you receive with your computer?

EU: I'm not sure what you are asking. I don't own a computer. I just bought this cable modem and have been trying to connect it to my television set and it is really confusing me. Can you help me?

ME: (Uncontrollable Laughter, Thank God for the mute button)

EU: Are you there?

Well, I think that you can figure out how the rest of the call went.

About fifteen years ago, I worked at a large manufacturing facility in the R&D department. One of the warehouse areas was being refitted as a set of test cells, and new wiring was being pulled in. My boss was working with facilities on the wiring, and came into the electronics lab where I was working. He asked me to come with him for a few minutes. The facilities manager, two techs, and my boss were trying to figure out which breakers in a main box (about 200' away) services the outlets in a small office in the warehouse. They'd been trying to find out for about an hour, and were ready to start flipping breakers one at a time (and risk cutting power to God knows where). My boss asked me if I had any suggestions. I sent one of the facilities guys to the breaker box, pulled on my high-voltage gloves, and shorted out the outlet. My boss and the facilities manager jumped at the spark, and I heard a loud "click" from the breaker box. "Jack--which breaker tripped?" I shouted. "Number 25!" he yelled back. I wrapped a label with "25" on the black wire and proceeded to the next outlet. In five minutes we were done.

The next day, my boss asked me where I'd gotten that idea. "From my electronics instructor in high school--he was an electrician for 20 years and said he always checked circuits that way."

I used to be Network Administrator for a large government agency (the one that funded the development of the Internet BTW).

One of the departmental LAN administrators called me to report that her file server was not working.

After a quick diagnosis we determined that it was not connected to the network.

Me: "Is the cable plugged in?"

Her: "Yes"

Me: "Hmm, is there anything around that computer or cable that might be affecting it?"

Her: "No.... Do you think the water might be causing a problem?"

Me: "Water?!??!"

Her: "Yeah, there's some water dripping on the back of the computer."

Condensation from the air conditioning was leaking from the roof onto the file server!! Sheeesh!

I work for a small law firm in New York City. One day, an attorney called and said that the keyboard on his laptop wasn't working. I went over to his office and took a look at the laptop. Keyboard wasn't responding. Restarted. Problem persisted. I took it back to Computer Support. I ejected the PCMCIA network card so I could take the keyboard off the unit. Lo and behold! There was some sort of dark, syrupy substance dripping from the network card. I called up the attorney and asked him if there was anything he left out in his story. He finally admitted that he nodded off and drooled Coca Cola on the laptop. Gross!!!

I'm a consultant for a large North American end-to-end IT service provider. To my family, this means that I "...work with computers..." which obviously means that I'm a support guy. I stopped trying to explain the difference between support and software development/analysis/database design/system architecture/sercurity/etc.

I get calls from everyone in the family who owns a computer, and usually I'm more than happy to help. That is, except for one person: my uncle (actually uncle-in-law). He's owned a PC for a few years, and has some very interesting stories...

I helped him pick out his PC based on his needs at the time (e-mail, word processing, surfing the Net), a nice system that would do fine. It had onboard sound with a very nice set of speakers.

Apparently someone convinced him that he absolutely "needed" to get a sound card with all the bells & whistles. So he forks out over $100 for a new sound card, installs it himself and plugs the speakers into the new card. He can't figure out why the sound isn't working and he gets a lot of error messages when he logs in.

Him: What does irk mean anyways?

Me: irk?

H: Ya, I-R-Q.

M: uhhhh...did you disable the other sound card?

H: No.

M: There's a conflict on your system. You have 2 sound cards and your system can't figure out which one to use. Disable the other sound card through the BIOS and you'll be fine. (I talk him through it)

H: OK.

M: How's that sound now?

H: Same as the old card (!!!)

Then there was the time he wanted to enable the 3rd button on his mouse. He had a very old $4 three-button generic mouse (one that still had the PC-MS switch on the bottom) and he wanted new drivers to enable the middle button.

Of course, he wanted the newest drivers, so he gets his hands on a copy of Windows 98 SE (he was running 98), puts the CD in, and double-clicks setup.exe.

Proceeds to upgrade his entire OS and calls me when it has trouble with his sound card again. 1 hour later the system comes up and guess what, no middle button yet.

I try explaining to him to go out and spend $20 on a "real" mouse from Logitech/Kensington/MS/whatever, but no luck. We finally get the third button working, and have a slight conversation like this:

Me: What do you want the middle button to do?

Him: What can it do?

M: You can use it to double-click...

H: No that's not necessary.

M: You can use it to do something specific, like open Windows Explorer?

H: No, I'll never remember what it does.

M: You can use it for auto scroll?

H: No I don't like that.

M: So what did you intend to do with the middle button?

H: I don't know. I just thought it would be cool. (ugh!)

At the end of it all he explains that computers will never work for the "average" person because it takes over 2 hours to configure a mouse! I have to count to 10 over & over in my head...

Our company likes to promote a process improvement / team building skills competition and part of the promotion for one year's event included magnets with the event embosed on it. One of our users promptly stuck that magnet on the side of the metal casing because she had no other place to put the magnet - besides that, she "loved the design." Shortly after handing out the magnets, she called up to complain that her files were missing or corrupt, but upon telling her not to place the magnet on the case she dismissed each and every one of us and told us it wasn't a big deal. Eventually, we had to reload the entire system because she went through the IS phonebook and called everybody to complain. Nice to see what those engineering degrees get you, ya know?

User decided to clean up his files on his computer. After the clean we received a call that his machine would not boot. After further investagation, the individual created a dll directory and searched then moved all the dll's to the directory. BONE HEAD

I used to work IT at a large parcel delivery service that goes through a lot of brown paint keeping their trucks pretty.

First some background:

This company, because of their size, needs to have standardized configurations to help with the sheer volume of support calls. Dedicated configurations, including specific CPU, memory, and OS are used to monitor stuff such as conveyor belts, package flows, etc.. Usually the software is written with a specific configuration in mind.

My supervisor had been working with another tech for several days to get a PC installed and the software configured. This particular machine would count the number of packages moving on various conveyor belts throughout the

facility. Oddly, he was getting nowhere with the machine. After his boss asked him what was taking so long, the supervisor assigned me to the "project".

First thing I noticed was that the machine he was using was the wrong model. I pointed this fact out to him. A look of realization crossed his face but he managed to cover it up by insisting that this model would work fine. The documentation says that it won't work. Supervisor insists that it will. OK, no problem. Deal with what was given.

Next thing I noticed was that the COM port settings were not being set in the AUTOEXEC file. Point this out to him. He points out a text file with some parameters in it. Yes, um, but that doesn't actually set the COM port, it only

configures the application. At this point I've TYPEd the installation document to the screen. In beautiful white phospors are printed the instructions on what to add to the AUTOEXEC to set the COM port. I don't say a word and edit the AUTOEXEC to add the lines.

Then I notice that the wrong AUTOEXEC is being used. There were several configurations for supporting the various machines. I'm enjoying this now. I point out that the error. He maintains that he had set it correctly before. OK.

We boot the machine. The application launches. Then hangs. Supervisor seems overjoyed that we've actually hit a snag. He has a trouble ticket open with third level support and he wants me to call them immediately to let them know there's something wrong with the installation procedures. Oh, and don't tell them what model we're using.

Supervisor runs off to tell his boss that there was, in fact, something wrong with the installation procedure. I call the 800 number for our third level support. I speak with a guy I've worked with before and know that he's

competent and manage to let him know that my supervisor wants to use an unsupported model. He was too polite to say it outright, but he asked how long my sup had worked with computers. He also asked if any packages had fallen from

one of the overhead belts and smacked the sup a few times. Third level lets me know that the model is unsupported because it doesn't have a standard UART and the driver just will not work. Ahhh.

Well, my sup comes back and decides to pull me off the project. I figure he wants to claim the credit for getting this tricky (yeah) installation to work. I tell him that I've updated our local problem log.

The next day he puts me back on the project. He wants me to ship the PC to our headquarters in Louisville so that the third level tech can do the work himself. And ship it NDA (Next Day Air). Hmmm. NDA is not cheap. Our department

gets charged back for the service. So I guess his boss got pretty pissed and told him to make it work or else.

It was one of those completely absurd moments that always reminds me of that scene in Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ where a warship shoots cannonballs blindly at a coastline. Ship the PC at great cost to a remote facility so that an

expensive third-level support tech can look at the model and ship it back? All because a local sup doesn't want to read an installation document or admit a mistake? Utterly bizarre, utterly absurd.

I had a sommer job writing excel macros and making access databases at a travel agent in town. Being pushed out of the conferance room for a meeting (the only place with a computer fast enough to work on), I had to sit together with the rest of the employees. Five minutes later I was skipping back and forth like a caffeinated puppy with bladder problems to get back into solitary confinement:

One woman (In her 40-50s, they all were) just logged on to find that her desktop background had been set to some colorful abstract pattern (most likely due to someone bringing her kids to work the evening before). Horrified, she ran to get the tech guy. "There's something wrong with my computer" she said, pointing at the screen. (This is drop dead serious:) "Hmm.. Hang on, let me try another monitor." He disconnected and lugged the old one away (five year old CRT of course), and came back a minute later hauling a new one. He connected it, and strangly enough, the background was still there. "Hmm... let me try replacing the box then." He dragged the old P166-or-so computer away, and came back with a new one, connected it, and turned it on. And now the background was gone. "There, good as new!" he exclaimed triumphantly. The woman was smiling happily. "Oh good. Thank you, what would we do without you!"

Oh I don't know, RUN A PROFIT maybe?

The guy was hired because he knew everything, like previous techtales describe. Fortunatly he was fired soon after.

At the place I used to work, we had a guy who had just got his MCSE. However, a couple of days later, he was ringing my colleague asking how to open a PC case....

There's something to be said for experience.

In 96' I was working for company as tech support for PC-s on 286, 386 and 486 junk.

Call: "hello, is this tech support for my system ?"

Me: "Yep. It is me , Bojan. Can I help you ?"

Call: "I can't get 5" floppy from my PC. System is eating them ! I can't do my backup, I am out of floppies !"

Me : "?? (Eating ??) Are you shure ?"

Call: "Yea, shure. I put in already 5 floppies "

Me: "O.K. I will be there in 10 minutes"

10 min later, I walked into office.

Shock.

Man was pushing flopies in the hole BETWEEN two 5" bays.

It was taiwanese PC with two 5" drives and hole was just like hole on 5" drive.

I opened the PC.

5 floppies inside in the mid of wires.

Charged them also cleaning dust and spider net inside.

Keyboard - just for trash but man said:

"Don't do it. All my passwords are writen on it !!"

No comment.

(PS: please correct my spelling, I am from Slovenia)

Working as a network controller I had to contact customers when they had problems with their computers. One of these calls went like this, the kit involved was a ibm cluster controller and dumb terminals;

customer - my terminal is not working

me - is it just yours or are all the terminals affected

customer - all the terminals

me - I would like you to check the controller for me

customer - I cant, he is out for lunch

me (eventually got him to check cluster) I would now like

you to check the modem - is it polling

customer - yes no yes no yes

me -agggh

Another peculiar call was from a lady who wanted a cursor sent to her (I think she meant a template for the keyboard)

Would that be a normal cursor madame or would you like a flashing one !

Gav

The Web-Hosting Company that we used at work made some system changes which ended up hosing our MX record and basically stopped our 99% of our inbound internet emails from being delivered to our Exchange Server. The “best” part was that we were unable to connect to their system and make any changes to the MX record ourselves AND we couldn't get anyone on their end to answer the phone (those damn tech-support people!).

In an attempt to stem the tide of indignant emails which I knew were coming I sent out a few email “updates” letting people know that we were experiencing problems but only with our inbound INTERNET emails (heaven forbid people not get their “Joke of the Day” email every morning, the company might go belly-up). I wrote that as soon as we had any further information, we would be sure to pass it along so as to let everyone know what was going on. I made sure to end every email with a line stating that this problem would NOT affect internal emails sent to other uses on the Corporate email system and all outbound internet emails would be sent out with no problems.

Over the course of the few days that we were having this problem, I, of course, received a flood of calls and emails from EUs asking things like if I could “let them know which emails they hadn’t gotten” (huh????) and telling me that “they just thought I should know that they hadn’t gotten any internet emails for a few days” (gee thanks for the news-flash).

However the best email was from one of our users (and I swear this is what she wrote): “Hi Stephanie: I am not by any means a rocket scientist, but if the network provider is experiencing issues and we cannot access, send or retrieve Emails, then why can YOU send them and we can’t?”

Um, if she thought she couldn’t send an email, why did she write one in the first place? OK, so at least she got the part about her not being a rocket scientist right.

Well, my story begins while i work at a local computer shop in my area. a stupid old beach came to me saying that she wants to buy the newest computer ever. Well, oki doky. i have started to make a price offer for her and she explained that she was going to use it for extremly powerful mathematical calulations. after reaching a 3,500$ price offer she screamed: "WHAT THE F**K ?"... and i said to my self: "SHUT THE F**K UP WOMAN". at the end all she wanted was a fuc**n calculator. 3,500$ ha ?

This happenned in '95. I'ld gotten this new job and we were installing a new remote site and I had to create printer there from the head office. Anyways, I create the new laser printers in mid-morning and everything seems to be fine. I decide to test it to see if the queue will empty itself properly. I'm feeling good so I open-up my word processor, type out and then print the following message in my new queue:

"Water detected in fuser unit, please contact HP technician"

It's a joke, of course. It doesn't even look like a real error message. I mean, how could water be in a brand new laser printer? And if so, how could the printer print?? I'm just about to call my boss, who's at the remote site, to see if the page printed out properly when I get called on another problem.

I finally get back to my boss in the afternoon.

Me: Does the printer work OK?

Boss: No, the technician is looking into it now.

Me: What?

Boss: We had a problem with one of our HP computers and a technician was called in.

Me: Huhh ??

Boss: Well, he was here this morning and I checked the new printer. It had a paper on it saying it had water in it.

Me: (I, bug-eyed, can see him coming but I don't believing it) NO !!

It turns out the HP tech had taken our (then) brand new HP4M+ apart TOTALLY , looking for water!

I only told my boss a few days later, fearing he would fire me!

I supported an extensive AS/400 installation, with remote users all over the state. One of them, 60 miles away, called to say that her terminal was not working.

“Is your power light on?” I asked.

“Yes”

“Is the cooling fan running?”

“Yes”

“And your Brightness and Contrast controls are all the way clockwise?”

“Yes”

“OK. It looks like we’ll have to setup a service call. I’ll let you know when they can make it out there.”

This was a long drive for the service tech, and I didn’t feel really confident about things. So just to make sure, I didn’t call it right in. Instead, 15 minutes later, I called the user back.

“Let’s just verify: your power light is on and the cooling ran is running?

“Yes.”

“And your Brightness and Contrast controls are all the way clockwise?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you try turning them all the way in both directions.”

… brief pause on the line …

“Oops – there it goes.”

Caller hangs up.

A couple of years back I got a call from my cousin explaining that his newly puchased upgrades didn't work very well. After various attempts to determine what the problem was over the phone I gave up and jumped in my car to drive over.

After trying various combinations of his memory and motherboard, graphic card etc. I eventually asked my cousin to lead me step by step on how he had gone about his upgrade. (Yes I know I should have asked that right at the start)

Anyway after he demonstrated how he had put his memory, I had to take a 10 minute break to stop lauging. He'd followed the instructions to the letter and even had put the chips in at the 45 degree angle you were supposed to. However he had put them in at 45 degrees starting at one end of the slot and then had pushed straight down after that. Instead of putting them in at 45 degrees to the mobo. All the little pins that were supposed to touch the contacts on the memory were all pushed down very firmly to the bottom of the mobo.

Since he didn't have much money at the time and that we couldn't tell his wife, I spent most of the next few hours pulling the pins back up with a small set of tweezers. Ohh what fun

I was a field CE and had a service call at a bank's remote branch ofice. I went onsite and the branch manager told me their computer was down. She brought me to the 'computer' but it was remote terminals connected via telco modem to the central site. The problem was no carrier. I politely tried to explain that your equiptment was fine and the problem is actually at the other end of the modem. "This would be your central site's responsibility", I said. She immediatly called my manager to say I would not fix her computer. Somedays, it just doesn't pay to be polite....

Having worked for my company in the support role for over two years now, I was a bit miffed when our FD decided that he knew better than me when it came to backing up the payroll software. Have Brought himself a box of floppy disks, he decided that it was about time to make a backup.

After what I can only assume was a great deal of time I get a very disgruntalled call from him explaining that either his floppy disk drive was shafted, the computer was a P of S ( a brand new fully working machine) or the floppy disks we duff because the backup was not working & it always worked on his old machine.

Having talked to him for around 5mins on the phone, I make the trip down stairs and watch him not make a backup. I asked him if he check the disks were not write protected to which he replied

"I am not bloody stupid"

So I check anyway - low and behold the disk is not even inserted into the drive!! I left him alone to contemplate his stupidity.

The saga continues 24hours later:

He received a demo disk from the bank advertising their latest software. Without first checking that he could insert the disk, loaded the program.

10 mins later I get a call:

FD "I think that you should come and see this error that I have on my machine"

ME "What does it say name?"

FD "It says that I am running out of virtual memory!"

Being concerned I offer to go down stairs and have a look bearing in mind that this machine is only a month old.

Upon inspection I discover that he lost his patience and clicked the run demo button over 50 times, despite the window that said loading please wait on all but 2 of the demos, which had finished loading.....

Having then spent 15 mins closing them all down using task manager (no close option till the last page, he mumbles that he could have done that and why can't every thing be simple.

Just fcuk off you feckin daft prat

For the past several weeks a user kept complaining that she wasn't getting internet e-mail, I'd go over to her w/s, try logging onto outlook and BOOM!! no problem she gets mail.

A few more days go by and again the same user with the same complaint. This time I said stay there and I'll be right over. I have her open outlook and when the loggon screen comes up she clicks "Offline". I stood there in complete amazement and said " You know you have to enter in your password" she replied "oh is that what's that's for?" then she says " What is my password?"

This user has been working here for quite sometime and after talking to some of the other techs I was told that they have spoken and explained this to her many times, she for some reason just does not get it.

Always something new!!!

Running a medium size network with Windows clients, it's not unusual for a system file to become corrupt or the operating system to bog down over time. Sometimes a defrag or a driver reinstall will snap it back, but it's usually quicker to just re-image the drive.

Since re-imaging is the preferred tool, I have reminded our users to save ALL their personal files and folders in a standard location, as I am not a mind reader. I have learned the hard way of users that "hide" files on their local drive.

But I was not prepared for the call I got from a user I re-imaged, calling in a panic that all his most critical files were gone. When asked where he had placed them, he said "The Recycler". I said, "you mean the Recycle Bin?". Turns out he considered this a convenient folder for saving files... well well. Now I've added "are you saving any files in your Recycle Bin?" to a growing list of "cover your buns" questions, as it is never the users fault.

I just got a rather interesting call.

One of our users was getting "modem noises" (static) when she picked up her phone and her phones didn't work. "I've unplugged everything!"

I said it was a qwest problem if her computer was unplugged. She said she called qwest and they said it was us. I told her "Your computer is off. It can't be us for the simple reason that your compuer can't connect to us if it's off."

She demanded that we checked to see if we "put any errors" on her phone line. I looked in our radius server, and sure enough, she wasn't authenticated. I told her " nope, you aren't even connected to us, just like I told you. You can't be connected to us if yor computer is off. Your phone line must be dead."

My problem is not with the customer. My problem is with qwest automatically hearing "internet" or "modem" and saying it's the ISP.

As a middle school librarian, it is my job to find educational web sites for teachers and students. I was showing one of our teachers some web sites that she could use with her students. When we were finished looking at the sites she asked me, "Can I get to these web sites with an Apple?"

Some background: I am the webmaster for "Company ABC." Since it is a small company, I also act as tech support for the staff (as in, "I lost my password," or "Help me set up my e-mail!" or "I'm having trouble logging in."), and they know that they can also call me for computer problems.

I also knew some of the staff members previously from "Company XYZ" but Company XYZ is MUCH bigger, and I did not act for them in the capacity I do for ABC. I was simply an anonymous user there.

It happened on a Sunday.

(Phone ring)

Me: Hello?

User: Hi, this is Travis from Company XYZ.

(Now, I get quiet for a minute because I'm pretty sure I never gave out the phone number or offered tech support at XYZ, and a MILLION people have this guy's name. Pretty sure.)

Me: How did you get this number?

User: You gave it to me.

Me: I wouldn't have done that.

(expand 20 minutes)

User: But the staff directory of ABC lists this as your number.

Me: Oh, in that case, you're Travis. Next time, tell me you're from the company we both work for, eh?

(user apologizes profusely, then gets down to his question)

User: Well, my computer wasn't working.

Me: Can you be more specific?

User: I don't remember. It just wasn't.

(at this point, foreshadowing tells me that he's going to tell me he did something stupid, and I wasn't disappointed)

Me: All right, go on.

User: So I installed Windows 95.

(this was 2001, so...I had to wonder, but hey...whatever floats your boat. I had no prior knowledge of his setup (nor should I have assumed he was already running 95 before he did this), so we'd just take it as it was.)

Me: Okay, so what's the problem now?

User: Well, it's not working.

Me: Okay, be more specific.

(Instead of explaining what problems he was having, he proceeded to tell me what he did. I was starting to feel like a confessional priest.)

User: Well, Windows 98 was having problems.

(oh no...)

User: So I wanted to reinstall it.

(oh...dear...lord)

User: But all I had was the 95 disk.

(and the sound of a car crashing plays in the back of my head)

User: But I didn't remove 98 first.

(nuclear explosion)

Me: (silence)

User: (meekly) I did something stupid, didn't I?

Company ABC is my company. As mentioned previously, I am the webmaster, and provide tech support.

(phone rings)

Me: Hello?

User: Hey Beth, I'm having trouble with my e-mail.

(most common problem staff calls for, easily fixed)

We run through his setup, make sure he's got his servers right, his name and password right, everything is right. He then runs a send/receive again.

User: Nope, still says my username and password aren't correct.

I then set up my client with exactly the same settings. It worked fine. So we try to delete that account and start over. Still, same problem.

Me: I really don't know what to tell you now. Are you absolutely positive you did everything I told you to?

User: Of course!

(And, knowing this user, he had. He was always good at following my directions.)

Me: Hrmph.

User: I don't know why we went through all of my ABC mail settings. It's my @home e-mail that I lost my password for. Do you have it?

WOL: World on-line Helpdesk.

WOL+: World on-line Helpdesk Manager.

Me: Me the internet user.

WOL: Hello, Worldonline helpdesk, how can i help you?

Me: I got a bit of a problem. I have a connection to the internet but i can't surf on the web or use the e-mail. There is no connection to the internet according to the computer.

WOL: Ok, just send us a mail with your problem and we will try to fix it for you.

Me: HELLO!!!, are you there? Are you awake?

WOL: Why?? Just send us an e-mail. and we will fix it.

Me: [Telling the story again]

WOL: like i just said, please mail us you problem.

Me: can i speek to the manager?

WOL+: Hello what is the problem?

Me: [Telling the same story again.....]

WOL+ please sent us a mail with your problem and we will try to fix it for you.

How stupid can you be??? Thanx Worldonline.

Me: you know me.

User: The user in this story.

Me: hello, what seems to be the problem?

User: My computer is giving a lot of errors?

Me: Are you behind your pc?

User: No.

Me: Can you go there for me?

User: Ok [ i hear a lot of **@@** and some strange sounds]

Me: What do you see?

User: A lot of cables.

Why do users don't do the things you do when you ask it but do them if you speak in a metafor?

I work second level tech support; our calls come in through the Help Desk, who answer the phone, note the issue and pass it on to us.

Late one day I worked on one of the PC's in the Help Desk, and is my nature, I turned the PC off when I was done.

The next morning I get this call from the Help Desk staffer that sits in front of the PC I worked on:

HD: My PC is broken.

Me: Really? What is it doing?

HD: It will not stay on! I power it up, the light goes green for a second, then it turns yellow.

Me: It does? The light on the front of the PC turns yellow or amber? On the front of the PC? Really? I did not know they did that.

HD: It is! and I need my PC! Calls are coming in and I can't log them in!

So I walk down to the help desk. The staffer is turning her monitor off and on. Once the monitor figures out that the PC is off, it goes into power save mode. I reach down and power on the PC itself. The light goes green on the monitor and the PC begins to boot up.

HD: What did you just do?

Me: I turned on the PC.

HD: What does this button do then?

Me: That is the monitor power button.

HD: Oh.

To this day, she thinks I go out of my way to make her feel stupid.

Some years ago, I worked tech support for a large regional medical center. We carried pagers, as we were all over campus and impossible to find. One day, I forgot my pager. I was working on a big project, and I had not noticed that my pager was missing. Sure enough, the Help Desk was trying to reach me, to have me work on some urgent issue.

My wife at home finds my pager, and realizes that I probably don't know it is missing. Not knowing any better than anyone else where I am, she calls the Help Desk.

W: My husband forgot his pager at home. When you can reach him, have him come home and get his pager.

HD: Ok, we will page him and tell him.

W: No, you don't understand! I have his pager in my hand. Leave a note on his desk or something and tell him his pager is at home.

HD: Oh, ok.

Three minutes go my and my pager goes off. The Help Desk is paging me, and the display is showing the Help Desk phone number. My wife calls back.

W: You just paged my husband, right? His pager is at home.

HD: Yes, we are trying to tell him where it is.

W: You don't understand! It is in my hand! He needs to come home and get it! When you find him, tell him where it is!

Three more minutes go by, and my pager goes off again. This time, the display is showing my home number. They are trying to tell me to call home instead of calling the help desk.

My wife gives up. That evening, I hear the story and I laugh so hard I cry. Years later, I still laugh.

An actual call I received while working at Best Buy.

Customer: "Uhm, hello, I just bought a computer from your store last week, and now it's seems to be smoking."

Me: "Uhm, smoking sir? Like from a fire?"

Customer: "Yea, it's coming out the vents. Do you know a command or something I should type in to make it stop?"

Our helpdesk had a user ring up wanting a file restored from backup since he'd accidentally deleted one. Helpdesk then called me to get it done. However, upon asking from when he wanted it restored from, it was discovered that he had only created it that morning (and we do not do any backups during the day for that customer).

They seem to get dumber & dumber.

I was called out to a femae user who was having problems with her new laser printer - where all the text was blurred.

Down I go, print a test page, print a 4 page document - all perfect - so I tell her nothing wrong at all, she insists there is and says look I'll show you.

She then sends a document to the printer, when the page is just coming out of the printer she yanks it out and shows it to me and says "see i's all blurry"

Then keeping my cool tell her to let the pages come out on their own.....

I used to provide thankless phone based technical support for a large law firm in New Zealand. One morning, a gentleman of some esteem calls me up and proclaims loudly that his Keyboard is sticky.

"Oh" I reply "is it sticky to the touch or are the keys sticking down?"

"both" comes the curt reply.

"Really, you haven't spilled coffee on your keyboard have you?" I asked Innocently.

At this point the air could be cut with a knife, the users fury was obviously fast approaching critical mass.

"Do you honestly think I am that stupid as to pour coffee all over my Keyboard! You realise I pay more in taxes than you earn in a year!"

Back tracking I respond "I am sorry sir, I have to ask these questions, You see."

There is a moment of silence before he adds "The glass of champagne I spilled in it Friday night wouldn't make a difference would it?"

One evening as I am packing up my gear to leave for the relative sanctity of my home, a user comes up in flurry of arms and sound and says, "User X over there has a dead mouse."

"Oh?" I reply, "Can't this wait until the morning?"

The look on her face was a definite "No"

I walk on over to the users desk and proceed to flip over the mouse and test it, with no fault found.

At this point I turn around and says "What exactly is the problem? This mouse seems fine" Both users look at my strangely for a second and say from their position on the other side of the office "But its not moving!" Again I turn back and have a look and say "Its working fine?!" pointing at the cursor moving around on the screen. At this point they say "No Under the desk" curiously I reply, "why the hell did you put the mouse under your desk?"

The penny dropped 2 seconds latter as I realised, that yes Mickey had indeed digested to much rat poison and all four feet were pointing straight up. Obviously an IT problem.

After a fire in my company, where I was a PC-techie, the offices was temporarily moved to the basement, together with the AS400 server.

The CEO had a meeting with the insurance man, the samme time 2 AS400 consultants was there. A disc was needed and they found one at the IT-directors desk (both he and I was otherplace). The CEO, the insurance-man and the 2 consultants used about a half hour trying to read/write the disc, before the PC was deemed smoke/fire-damaged and we got a new from the insurance.

After that the IT-director and I examined the "damaged" PC for what could be used. Everything worked and we used it for other things.

...

Well since then we have never keept Mac-disc's in anything but boxes with covers.

JRT: County Offline Integrated Last Hope ISP, How may I help you?

PNG: Hi, this is Mr.X of X-surplus we want to buy you !!!

JRT: I think I do not understand you clearly, sir... ???

PNG: My CEO Mr.Y thinks that you would make a good employee...

JRT: Pardon, sir ???

PNG: We would like to offer you a job...

JRT: Work, sir ?

PNG: Nooooo, a job...

JRT: As an COILHISP employee I have no right to take job ofers from strangers ???!!!???

PNG: But we want YOU to work only for US!!!!

JRT: Why, sir ???

PNG: Becouse you helped OUR CEO, when we COULDN'T !!! [anger]

JRT: I am sorry, sir... Could we discuss it afer MY work HOURS are over ???

PNG: Well, WE could !

CONTINUED IN REAL MODE

JRT: Sorry sir, What would I have to do [mute: to talk about work] ???

PNG: Do you know an application called WEBSERVER ???

JRT: Apache? Roxen? IPLANET ? which one ?

PNT: Not A webserver THE WEBSERVER !!!

JRT: Sorry sir, I don't do IIS ;)

PNG: No!!! Not MS !!! IBM !!!

JRT: You mean apache on AIX ??? Can that be done ?

PNG: NO!!! Not Aix, your missing the point...

JRT: The greenone or the redone ?

PNG: Arghhhh !!!!

JRT: Sorry sir... ;)

PNG: ....................... [wipes head]

PNG: Do you know what AS400 is ????

JRT: Is this some kind of a trick question ?

PNG: Noooooo.....

JRT: Sir, Would that be an I-B-M type machine ???

PNG: Close, but no cigar...

JRT: A really old I-B-M machine ???

PNG: Don't piss o... I mean Don't piss me off !!! Steve !!!

STV: What boss ???

PNG: Tell this kid what AS400 is !

STV: oh, that's easy boss, that's a state of the art machine... running OS400

PNG: With RISC inside ???

STV, PNG: NOOOOOO!!!!!!! [hush hush]

PNG: Oh, I get it... It's a Big Blue MoFo ??? Right ???

STV, PNG: Whatttt ???!!!???!!??

PNG: Sorry [blushes], no ! MF - Main Frame ???

STV: YESSSSSSSS!!!!

PNG: He got it !!!

JRT: Is this some kind of system where you have to set a variable to change the path ??? I really liked shells with history, I mean I use the xtended csh but ksh was kinda cool too.

PNG: Argh!!!!! This isn't Un*X !!! This is AS 400 with OS 400!!!!!

JRT: A Question... Is this Warp ?

PNG: NOOOOO!!!!! It's beyond.

JRT: Beyond warp 9 ? You mean you can go back in time ? ;)

PNG: ....... ????

[...one coffee, two hours of explaining later]

JRT: So it's not AIX nor a System V compilant system ????

PNG: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! [Putting down a wipe-board marker...]

JRT: Nice dra.wing :)

PNG: ... You don't want to work for us ???

JRT: YOU told me I was supposed to be "taking care" of a webserver, not running a project on a mainframe machine using

a language I don't understand, putting together pieces of some-dudes-i-dont-even-know code alltogether. USE CVS or RCS or the SC-something thing I never learned!!! damn't IT!!!

I'm not the only pollock that can configure an apple machine goddamit !!! Just as jack ;) And I Still Like MOTOROLA !!!

PNG: There's just no argument with you...

JRT: I like what I do...

PNG: WE Don't like u.... u .... u....

JRT: University ???

PNG: ARGH!!!!

JRT: Un-clever ? United ? What ???!!!!

PNG: YOU!!!! DON'T LET THE DOOR(s) HIT YOU ON THE WAY(s) OUT(s)

JRT: OK, I'm gone... But YOU called ME...

PNG: [sigh]

JRT: Yup! I know... It's hard being single...

PNG: [Throws a nasty look at JRT]

PS: Please Dont Throw Suits at the poor unemployed

Not long ago we received a Helpdesk call to reset a users password because they had forgotten it. This was not an unusual job until the user was contacted. The conversation went like this:-

Me:- "Hi #%#^, I'm calling you in regards to the job you logged about your network password. I have reset it so could you please type in 'computer' in lower case. This will then ask you to change your password."

After a minute had passed the user responds,

#%#^:- "The password has not worked."

Me:- "Ok, I may have typed it in wrong so I'll try it again"

After resetting it again I asked for her to try it again.

#%#^:- "Still doesn't work"

Me:- "Is your keyboard working OK?"

#%#^:- "Yes"

After 15 minutes of resetting her password and testing that the keyboard was working OK I eventually said "Could you please spell exactly what you are typing in for your password"

#%#^:- "c.o.m.p.u.t.e.r.i.n.l.o.w.e.r.c.a.s.e."

Me:- "There is the problem. You only need to type in computer."

I work for a Point Of Sale (cash register) dealer in which I provide 1st & 2nd level support via on-site, phone & remote support. I had a Duhh user call up in a panic that

he had shut his server down accidently (This gets real exciting at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday night as people are getting out of work & going grocery shopping with customers standing in line, registers rebooting & the credit card network is down).

Anyway, I walked the ID10T user through getting the server restarted. He then had to type in his username & password to login into the other Windows NT workstations. We use a software application for Item Maintenance (changing prices, etc.) called S4. The computer name is S4PC. The username is s4user & the password is the same. The password is all lowercase. As I'm telling him the username & password to type in, he sees the lowercase letters and then asks how to type a CAPITAL 4. Huh I say. He says " You know an UPPERCASE 4" Uggh; I ask when have you ever had to write one or a lowercase 4.

I finally got the user straightened out & the system back up.

One of our Senior Field Engineers is married to the Store Director. You should have seen her eyes roll when I explained the situation. She instantly knew who the guy was.

FYI -- ESTO Error (Equipment Superior To Operator)

Thanks for brightening my day. I laughed myself silly

reading these stories. I can easily identify with the

everyone.

Sincerely,

Michael Carroll

Grocery Systems Support

Business Machines Company (BMC)

www.bmc-pos.com

I work for a cable Internet Service provider, doing support email for our customers who have problems with anything from packet loss to web hosting to creating new email accounts.

A while back I received an interesting message from someone who has had intermittent connectivity to our system. He had called us a number of times, and each time we managed to trace the problem to an issue with the inside wiring of the house, and there was nothing we could do.

He was quite irate, and at the end of his tether with the phone support guys, so he emailed me to "fix the problem. now. I don't want you to call me and talk about the problem, or try to locate the problem, or waste my time with supervisors. The last thing I need is for another tech to show up and tell me that it's a problem with the wiring in my house. You people need to get your s*** together."

I couldn't understand what exactly he wanted me to do, because we weren't having any area-wide outages, and his modem was exhibiting all of the characteristic signs of a signal problem in the cable line itself. I sent back a reply telling him this, and he returned his cable modem and disconnected service two days later.

I just took a call from a client who was installing ***** on a new computer..... she called meto say the disc was faulty and would not go into her a: drive.Obviously suspecting the problem, asked her to turn the disc around and put it into the a: drive again. She then turned the disc 90 degrees and began to get irate because the disc would still not go in. Amazingly when she turned the disc another 90 degrees with the disc label facing outwards it went in - Imagine that (and this lady is doing her own install)

I was asked to find out why a multipage scanner wasn't working after it had been move for one computer to another.

When it had been set up the operator had tested it to see if it worked but it didn't.

It was turned on and the drivers had been installed.

I finally asked how they tested it. They answers was, "I putting a "PostIt" note through the document feeder but it didn't come out".

A few years ago now I was working for a fairly prolific mailing operation in the UK. The computer room and print operations (of which I was an operator-donkey) ran 24 hrs for 6 1/2 days a week.

To produce the address files for the mailings was quite an effort as we had to sit on our butts twiddling our thumbs whilst batch jobs ran. Because of this, we also had responsibility for backups and basic housekeeping on the 3 Unix servers that held all the mailing info and database apps that the phone ops used.

It's getting toward 7pm, quite a busy time for the phones as people have gotten home from work and started to call the numbers for the promotions we were doing. It was also the time we had to start backups off on one of the Unix machines as there was so much data, the job took 12 hours to run.

My oppo, Mike goes into the machine room and fires up the console on the server - this was a VT100 style dumb tube with the standard Unixy-type interface... It locked up. A regular occurrence when you don't have the right TERM variable set. He comes in and asks the supervisor what he should do. He gets the reply, just turn it off and on again (the terminal) and it will come back to life.

A couple of minutes later the phone supervisor comes downstairs wondering why no-ones terminals upstairs are working anymore. I drop what I am doing and wander thru to the comp room to see what I can do, and find Mike worrying why all of the logical volumes are erroring as the server reboots........

Twas a couple of years ago when i worked back on a techie helpdesk i got a call through with a very unhappy man who wanted internet access and was determined that i was the one to fix it, after all he'd just spent 20 mins in a queing system.

Me: Hello generic internet tech support pete speaking.

Cst: Hello pete speaking, i have a problem with my pc.

(dont you just hate it when they answer with hello such and such speaking, you bet he has a problem)

me: certainly sir how can i help?

cst: well i cant seem to get internet access.

me: None at all?

cst: nope nothing usualy it goes on right away but its asking me to dial.

Aha me thinks its a dial up problem, so i proceed to check his settings, well they're all ok and he's still complaining about not getting any connection so i check to see what his modems doing.

its not installed.....in fact not in the hardware list at all so no internals there.

me: um.. sir you know you actualy need a modem to connect to the internet dont you?

cst: Modem whats one of them?

me: uh...its usualy a little black box with flashing lights on sir, you do have one dont you?

At this point the entire office has the 1000 yard stare straight at me and they're desperate to laugh.

cst: no i dont have one of them i just have this cable that plugs into the back of my pc, i dont know where the other end goes though.

(thud, thud, thud, thud, thud {this is me banging my head against the desk, which coincidentily uses 150 calories an hour techies get a good workout})

it actualy appears that the gentlemen had a computer from work with a NETWORK card in it but no modem

OY!

I worked for a large multinational on the internal UNIX helpdesk, dealing with allsorts, everything from programmers to temp office staff.

This particular incident happened about 3 years ago (I've loads of stories). Anyway, sitting at my desk I get a report that a new call has been logged and assigned to me. So naturally I run to help out the Luser (say his name was Joe).

I ring Joe.

Me: What's the problem

Joe: I'm out of space, I need more.

Me: We now charge for every 50 Meg of Luser space assigned to "customers", the first 100Meg is "free", but I'll need a PO for an increase.

Joe: from who?

Me: your manager

Joe: Well I'm not using 100 Meg anyway....can you have a look.

Diligent as always I log into his account....and find that he's been checking out any "dodgy" newsgroup around. So I delete all his cache and downloaded news group messages.

Fine. Regained ~70Meg. Closed the call, decided not to let anyone know he's getting his jollies on the company LAN.

I go for lunch. I'm on my way back in and a colleague tells me the boss is looking for me...some real crap from a Luser...and I'm for it :-(

I go back to my desk, find one of the nastiest emails of my life (which had been copied to my boss) on how useless and incompetent I am from Joe. :-)

I look at Joe's are...he's been surfing again and downloaded the entire "dodgy" newsgroup listing....and I'm impressed that one guy can look at so much porn over lunch.

I ring Joe.

me: Hi Joe, got your email, it's a bit on the nasty side!

Joe: well, you're useless, I got an email saying the space was regained and tried saving a file I was working on and it wouldn't let me., so I sent the mail to your boss!

me: right

Joe: there's a bit of trouble, as I've missed my deadline and my boss is hopping mad, he too got onto your boss.

me: I see. You ever heard of news groups?

Joe: what?

me: well I went through your area and found some real good stuff...alt.*******.lesbians, girlfriends, etc.

Joe: oh

me: well I didn't want to cause any trouble....but I'll have to explain to my boss and yours I'm sure what's happened.

Joe: err, well, erm, I was out to lunch and someone could have used my workstation....don't worry I’ll sort it

(click)

I go to my bosses office after telling everyone in the department...basically he got a call telling him that he'd made a mistake (really??) and the work was done and very well too, that he got me mixed up with one of the company's customers............

We never received another call-log form him again!!!

I have been working at three different places, and all the jobs have been as a tech over the phone. Through my four years as a helpdesk tech i have got a lot of strange calls.

The one i remember the most was about six months ago, at my current job on a big helpdesk for a big telecom company. The User calling was most likely a secretary. Not to wise with computers. I guess around 45 years old.

Another thing i might explain is that im not employed with the company i work for. They have outsourced their helpdesk to my company

It goes something like this.

Me: Wellcome to XXXXXXX. My name is XXX XXX.

User: Yeah hi! This is XXXXX XXXX Speaking. I have a question not regarding [the company she works for], but they will just have to pay for the call anyway.

Me: Ummm... okay. Well if...

User: (that broke me of as i was about to tell her that i can't help her if it is a personal matter.) Well, here's the deal. I need to know hot a friend of mine can change the password on her computer.

Me: Is she working for [the same comany as the user?]

User: No, she's not. But i need you to tell me anyway.

Me: Well, it's a bit hard for me to give you a correct answer on this, since i have no clue about what system she might be using. And since this isn't an [Users company] problem i can't help you.

User: Now listen to me. It's very important that she gets to know how to change her password. Someone has found out what she has and has logged on to her computer.

Me: Again (trying my best to still sound like a nice guy), i can't help her. First of all, she is not a user that we support. Because of that i couldn't tell her, even if i wanted to, because i don't know what kind of system they are using.

User: Well, she is working for [company].

Me: I have heard about that company, but i still don't know what kind of system she has. And i realy can't help her. I am sorry. Don't she has any helpdesk at that company that she can call for help?

(here comes the good part)

User: But it was that helpdesk that gave the password to the janitor!!!

Me: *silent for a while, then* Ummmm... ok?

User: Do you understand?! She needs to know how to change the password?!

And the call went on and it took me about three more minutes to get the customer to understand that i COULD NOT help her... *sigh*

Anyways, i thought i was kind of fun. Espechaly her little outburst. ;)

//InFlames

Just another day at the office...

*ring ring*

Customer: Hello, I'm "working" on the Internet but it is all so slow. What can you do about that ?

Me: Well, tell me the site your are trying to visit.

Customer: Well...eehhh...I cannot tell you...ehh....but everything is slow !

Me: Ok, I'll reboot the Internet for you. Ít will be solved in, let's say, 5 minutes. Ok ?

Customer: That is so kind of you, thanks...

Me: *pffff* Ok, welcome !

*click*

For whatever reason I've always been able to pick up on information that makes me computer savvy when it comes to trouble. It's a pity that when your telephone company first gets ADSL, they don't bother to teach anybody the basics...especially the order people!

I was one of the first in my city to get signed up. The local cable company didn't have that neat little service named after a cartoon yet, so ADSL was the way to go, even if not perfect. Of course they have to have a tech check the line first. No problem. The main office was about 10 blocks away. Unfortunately I was told that I would have to remove my PBX system because my line was showing high voltage and some other weird anomoly which I don't remember.

Uh...I am a residence, and would have no use for a PBX!

So the alleged customer service person told me that it might possibly be THEIR problem. DUH! Luckily I got ADSL and it flew!

I moved recently, twice actually, and each time have had nothing but trouble convincing the telephone company I shoudl be able to get service.

In one instance I was told I was too far from the 'central office', and that I was no longer under contract so they would just call it even.

BZZZT! Wrong Answer! Why can't I get ADSL? How far do I need to be to the office again?

The rep rambled on about adding service to my area next year and that I was just too far away from the office at 27th street.

Gee, the new place is a 33rd street and I can look out the front door and see your cell tower at the intersection you just mentioned!!

Oh.....

Finally they decided I could have it, but when I hooked up my router it bawked. I finally called my sisters guyfriend who worked for the phone company, getting the srvice down to immediate, instead of a coupel of weeks (even though I was NOT going to loose millions of dollars from a business I was not running out of my home :) )

The shenanigans went on with the techs all day long. It was a Friday, so I really wanted service for the weekend. Late in the day my telco buddy said, "I give up. why don't you call the help desk!"

I called, explained the situation, and the first thing he asked was "Did you change your phone number change because of the move".

BINGO!! The guy getting paid $6.75/hr knew more than the techs who were getting 3 figure salaries, with big retirement nesteggs waiting. I had the router re programmed. took them a frickin week, but I finally got service.

To make this long story short, when I recently moved again, I was warned I might be out of the range. Yea, I was moving less than a mile away, was still no more than 6 blocks away from the office, and the current residents had ADSL at the time they moved out.

Called my buddy again...had me hooked up and going on a Saturday afternoon even!

anyway, i live in Estonia, thats a little countly in northern Europe. I work in a PC support.

me: how can i help u?

cu: I have trouble getting orgasm!

me: im sorry...what?

cu: I dont get an orgasm!!!

mr: is this a joke?

cu: This is hardware support or not!?

to understand this joke i have to explain what does "hardware support" mean in our language, its written "riistvara tugi" to translate it word by word it means, "DICKproperty support"

me: you are calling on a wrong number, we are not somekind of sex shop

cu: [hangs up]

me: have a nice day.

I do tech support for a medium sized organisation, and generally try to be helpful to the users. I dont know what came over me one day, but I had the follwing conversation when walking past the company's most technically incompetent user :

her : #my name#, I need a floppy disc, can you bring me one next time you are down this way

Me : I dont deliver hardware normally, I tell you what, I will email it to you when I get back to my desk.

her : Thats great, thanks

me : No problem.

My mom just retired as a elementary school computer class teacher. It's bad enough when the state and the school system think that it is a good idea to teach kindergartners how to surf, use a search engine, and prepare Power Point slides, all when they don't even know how to read yet. About five years ago she had a forth-grader that was particularly dense. She was teaching the kids to use a DOS-based program that allowed the kids to perform simple programming. After entering a program, she had the kids start the program by typing 'run'. As she told them this, she turned to the chalk board and wrote 'run' on the board. One of her kids raised his hands and requested her help because his program was not running.

Mom: "Did you type r-u-n?"

Kid: "Yes"

Mom: "Did you press enter?"

Kid: "Yes"

She went to his computer to see that he had typed "are you in".

*****

This same kid had a problem warm-booting his computer. She told the kids to press Control-Alt-Delete simultaneously. This kid raised his hand and said, "I can't reach all of those keys at the same time." My mom went to his computer and he had one hand on the keyboard, attempting to spread his fingers wide-enough to reach all three keys. Exasperated, my mom told him, "Use both hands." The poor kid placed his second hand directly above his first, trying desparately to stretch the fingers of both hands to reach all three keys.

we used to offer a repair service to the general public, we used to have so many it took us 2 working days to get through the queue of pc's for repair.

So we picked up the latest pc and looked at the fault sheet, it said that there was no display but it made all the regular beeps and you could hear the hard drive as it booted up. We hooked it to a monitor swithced it on, hey presto instant display. We tried to replicate the fault but couldnt.

I placed a call to the owner, said we couldn't find anything wrong, she was very happy with not being charged, she collected the tower and went home.

Half an hour later we recieved an irate phone call fom her, saing she had been without her computer for 3 days and we had not fixed it. So i said bring it back in. As soon as she came into the office, i hooked it up to the display monitor in the front and showed it to her working.

With the dragon calmed we went back to important work (lunch)or so we thought.

Her: Its still got the same problem

me: How old is our monitor?

her: six months:

me: when the computer is off, does the power light on the front glow orange?

her: es it does.

me: and when the computer is on does it change to green?

Her: I'll find out.. Yes it does.

me: ok can you bring in both the computer and monitor please.

Her: ok but if you dont fix it i'll find a better company instead.

So the lovely lady brings in both and i take the equipment straight to the workshop. I looked at the bottom of the monitor. A theory popped into my mind, i tested it and was right. I invited her into the workshop to show her something. She asked which idiot had been working on her pc to wit i replied "ME". I powered on her pc, no display on the monitor. she barked out "See theres the problem you allegedly fixed", so i said "watch this" as i turned the contrast dial on her monitor and the display came up.

She turned redder than rudolphs nose and never darkened our doorstep again.

I have been in the IT industry for about 8 years. I have quite a few certifications, all backed by field experience. I certainly don't know everything, but I consider myself pretty good at what I do.

About a year ago I was working on a data imaging project at a hospital. I was in the final stages of getting two new servers set up. I had just rewired the rack, since whoever did it before left it a complete mess. I powered everything back up...only to have the database server tell me it couldn't find the RAID array. This would be the RAID array that contained ALL of the patient account records for the last 5 years. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot. Starting to panic, I called C****q for help. After 1.5 hours on the phone and several tries rebuilding the array, it hit me. I looked in the back of the rack and, surely enough, I had switched the SCSI cables from the DLT drive and the storage array while I was rewiring the rack. I flipped the cables back around and VOILA! The database was back. I apologized profusely to the tech support guy (who knew I was an ASE). I'm sure he and his colleagues got a good laugh out of that one for awhile.

Moral: It's not always the end (l)users who miss the obvious :)

Many years ago I had a user on an IBM PC/XT (that's right XT) who said their machine wouldn't boot. Something about missing operating system...

Well I queried this person what had happened... Well they had to format a floppy disk (5 1/4) and typed in the command FORMAT, when the computer asked if they really wanted to format (all data would be lost) an associate walked by and told them YES, so they pressed the Y key. The rest is history! This person was a Manufacturing Planner for a "mid-sized" company, needless to say we lost alot of important information. Backup, what backup...

Working in an ISP call centre abou two years ago in South Africa.The company

handed setup disks to get connected. A prospective client called saying they had a disk, what must they do? Well place the disk in your stiffy drive? Whats that they said? I explained, it should be in the middle of your computer case, below the cdrom drive. The response was " I dont have a computer". True story

An executive with a large company had a very slow, passive matrix display laptop with numerous problems. We in the tech dept dreaded his calls. So we were very happy when the word came down to replace his computer with a top of the line laptop. I swapped the pc and gave him the new one. Everything was fine.

A week later, he calls in with a new problem: The new PC runs Scandisk every time he boots it up, and it's driving him crazy. But he's far too busy to be there when someone comes up, so my coworker goes to his office and restarts the computer a few times. She does a cold boot also, no scandisk. She leaves him a message telling him everything appears to be fine.

He calls her back, on speakerphone, with several consultants in his office. He restarted the computer to test it because he didn't believe it was fixed.

User: I restarted my pc and it ran Scandisk again! Your message said the problem was fixed but it's not!

Tech: Let's start from the beginning. Let's go to Start, and select Shut Down.

User: What is Start?

Tech: The Start button on your Taskbar, it's on the lower left hand side of the screen.

User: OK (presses Start) Select Shut Down?

Tech: Yes

User: But this isn't how I shut down my computer!

Tech: How do you shut down your computer?

User: Well, there's a power switch on the side. I just press it and the computer turns off.

(insert laughter from consultants in user's office)

Tech: OK we have found the problem. Windows doesn't really like it when we turn the power off....

Epilogue - this problem only came to light with the new computer. If he was simply turning off the pc every day, why didn't the old computer run scandisk also? We speculated that it had just given up.

I used to be a System Administer for a large Hospital in Alabama. Part of my job was to support our connection to the regional Doctors Offices.

One day I visited a Doctor whou was having problems with is PC. I sat down and started doing the standard trouble shooting. All the time the Doc was stanind over my shoulder watching every move I made. After about 30-40 Min the Doctor asked me. "How do you remember all those commands?" I had to sit there for a mionute and control my laughing. I asked him "How do you remember how to make people better with all their different illnesses?"

The Doc soon left the room and decided not to ask anymore questions.

I work as an intern for a small company that provides an IT staff to small companies, and some companies you just know are gonna fail. Its sad, but its inevitable. We also have some bigger clients, and at from one of these, one of the executive secretaries calles me up and leaves a message on my voice-mail at 5 o'clock on friday. Her message reads:

"Hi, its me, I was just wondering if by chance you could tell me how to insert a webpage from my favorites into an email. Its kind of important but you cn hold off until monday morning, that be ok too."

Now, not only did I not know who she was, but when I figured it out, it was evident that she did not know cut and paste commands or that it could even be done. AN EXECUTIVE SECRETARY!! Good god, I wish I could have that job.

A friend of mine used to work (a few years ago) for an ISP on their helpdesk.

She had someone ring up who `had just bought a modem and couldnt get it connected to the internet`

After 20 minutes she asked him to carefully describe what was on his screen.

him: `what screen`

Turns out this guy haddn't got a screen, or anything else. Just a modem (thats what he heard he needed to connect to the internet).

This guy's job - a Doctor.

Frightening eh!

And another quickie....

I was in a room when a friend took a phone call from her mum about some problem she was having with her computer. _25_ minutes we counted, trying this, trying that, clicking here there and everywhere, nothing would work.

It ended up with....

her: `Right mum, tell me one more time, in DETAIL whats on your screen`

mum: `well theres been this box in the middle of the screen for the past 20 minutes that says `Are you you want to shut your machine down?`

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH :)

So I'm a tecaher in a college teaching Excel.

1 day this stident complains that her mouse is behaving as if possessed by a polterghost. Now this is one of my top students, so I expect the mouse just needs cleaning or something. I wander over and try using the mouse - it works fine, I wander away. Shes a little bemused but happy its working. 2 mins later the same thing happens, again when I use the mouse its fine, but when she tries it wanders aimlessly over the screen. Eventually I figure the problem: The mouse casing is made of very thin white plastic and shes using it next to the window in direct sunlight, when I stood there I cast a shadow over the mouse which fixed the problem! Cliff never knew how useful the Shadows could be :-)

I received a call from a user that couldn't get his computer to boot. I started at the beginning and asked him if the computer power was plugged into the wall socket, and he replied that it was. Walked him through checking all of the other cords, etc. and all was as it should be, but still the computer would not turn on.

Had him plug a lamp into the socket and it worked, but when he replugged the original cord the computer would not do anything. No lights, no hum, no nothing. The user didn't have an extra power cord there so I resigned myself to having to visit the site in person.

When I got there I discovered that the user had many wires, etc. in back of his desk. He had somehow plugged his surge protecter into itself, and the power cord to his clock into the wall socket. I plugged the surge protector into his wall socket and guess what? It worked perfectly. Never trust a user to give you the correct information.

You can probably identify with this. Why is it that every time my parents introduce me as a "Computer Person," I get trapped in a lengthy conversation about some critical PC problem? If the problem of the person I'm being introduced to were really that critical, don't you think they'd have spent some cash on real tech support?

Here's how it'd go:

Mom: "I'd like you to meet my daughter, Bridget. She does computer stuff for a living."

Random (l)user: "Hi Bridget. Say, I'm having this really weird problem with my faxmodem. Can you come over and look at it?"

Yeah. I used to explain that I get paid for what I do, but a common denominator of (l)users is their lack of comprehension.. Now that I'm a Certified Solaris Admin, I just feign incompetance. I simply explain that I have no idea about Winderz/Office/or anything remotely PC related.

Finally, my parents have learned that a lot of headache can be avoided by simply introducing me in this way:

"I'd like you to meet my daughter, Bridget. She does computer stuff for a living, but she can't fix yours."

Niiice.. ;)

-Bridget

A while back I was doing phone support for dumb terminals used by banks.

Theres one call I always remembered.

M=Me, U=User, B=Users Boss

M: Hi (company) help Desk, Me speaking

U: Hi my terminals Dead

M: OK how do you mean dead? (theres no lights on those puppies

except on a keyboard so dead covers a lot of ground)

U: Well, its just dead

M: yeah but what bits dead, have you got lights on the keyboard?

Is the screen blank? (sometimes they hang in power save, and the

brightness is really easy to turn down accidently) can you hear

the units fan running?

U: Nope...its dead (I can hear shes having fun with the conversation too)

M: yah, but how do you know its dead? I mean is the screen blank?

is smoke coming out of the side? has it fallen over onto its

exhauust vent clutching a lilly to it's keyboard?

U: (I hear about 2 minutes of laughter followed by a lot of silence)

B: (picking up the phone) She's lost it!, sorry about that

what was she talking to you about and can I help you?

M: Err..well she was telling me how her terminal was dead

and I was trying to get an idea of what was wrong.

B: Oh, light 4 is out

M: Great, theres a coax cable at the back of the units thats probably disconnected

B: See It, Unplugged it, Plugged it in, Lights on

M: Excellent, bye (Click)

(Lucky it was an easy one, I was about to fall out of my chair from laughing at the time)

About a year later someone I worked with came up with

a much more interesting variation...heres how it went

U=user, T=Tech Support

U: Hi my terminals gone

T: Gone? you mean lost? stolen? not working? or abducted

by aliens?

Ahh the good old days

One day one of our sales reps called the support line to report a problem.

She mentioned that her documents were not printing in colour, they were simply coming out black and white.

After out first level support could not understand what she was really talking about I went to see her.

She showed me a pretty (ugly) word document on her laptop that had about 10 different clours of text.

I asked her to show me how she was printing it out. At the point she selected to print and selected the large black and white printer in the mailroom.

We walked over and once I had pulled the document off in disgust I explained to her that in future she may want to send the job to the COLOUR printer.

Her response: But it's in colour on my screen. Why doesn't it know to go to the colour printer?

At that point I walked away without saying another word to her.

Thankfully a couple of months later she was let go. The entire IT department breathed a sigh of relief.

Some years ago, I had a customer send in a monitor. The complaint written on the workorder indicated that the monitor would only display black and white and not color.

I pulled the monitor out of the box, and right on the front was the word "Monochrome".

I phoned the customer and advised him the repair cost was $300, the exact cost of a new color monitor.

He agreed to the repair cost, and we both had a good laugh as I packed the new monitor for shipping.

Background info:

I am a heldesk analyst at a major pharm. co., we provide support for multiplatform, multinational client base of about 25000.

That said:

What makes me want to scream is the following:

#1) Client calls at the last minute and still expects it

to be handled before they leave in 15 mins and it obviously to anyone not retarded that it can not.

#2) Occasionally clients expect us to have access to everything and ability to fix it.

#3) Call us about obvious non-computer related issues as if we are the yellow pages

#4) Unwilling to troubleshoot issue, 'just send someone!'

attitude, as if we are personally dispatching people on their issue right that instant.

#5) Calling up for status on issue they just reported.

#6) Cussing or threating to have their director/VP call if they don't get their way, NOW!

#7) In general treating us like we are worthless scum.

Which is amazing when they pull a #1 or #2 and expect our help with such a crummy attitude. We need a bitchslapping device attached to their phones.

One should not mistreat their in house tech support, when we have access to retaliate. Of course by all means piss us off and expect good support and wonder why one day you have 12 different problems or slow responses to issues.

But I disgress!

#8) The lazy, irresponsible, no patience callers

Here is a recent quote: 'Honey, I don't have time to clean up my mailbox'

#9) The 'help me do my job' callers.

#10) The 'But, I didn't have to do this before' callers

#11) The 'what's the ETA on the network coming back up' repeat every 15 mins callers

#12) The 'I need it yesterday' callers, everyone thinks everything revolves around there work, and that it's a friggin emergency.

#13) The 'I can't remember the password I just changed it to' callers. Please stop testing the drugs during work hours people! 8)

#14) The 'I know more than you' callers, so why did you call us?

#15) The 'I didn't save my work I've been working on all day' callers. No common sense...

#16) The 'I can't reboot right now' callers. I have to say 'Well call us back when you can, this issue is often resolved with a simple reboot.' sir/mame/ID10T.

#17) The 'I can't dial in from [insert 3rd world country here]' callers. No logic chip in these people, that it might just be that the chicken wire they call a phone line might be the problem and fact that there is so much static and that they can barely understand me now doesn't phase them.

#18) Flat out liars trying to scam us for more quota or help.

#19) PDA not working, 'CRISIS!' callers.

Enough for now! 8)

I.W.

I used to work for a company who sold online payment-processing software. The software would only run on the Linux, Solaris, or AIX operating systems.

I had a customer call up saying that he was trying to install the software, but he was having some issues. I asked which OS he was using and he told me Windows NT4 Server.

At this point, I asked the customer if he had read the installation guide carefully. He replied, "No, why?"

Some people...

Since I work on computers for a living, my friends and relatives seem to think I won't mind working on their home computers....yeh, right.

One afternoon I was troubleshooting a problem with a new modem my friend had attempted to install. (I hate having to find out what they've done, and correct it.....I'd prefer he'd have called and asked me to just install the darned thing!) Anyhow, after about a half hour, I determined the modem had to have been bad out of the box.

The instructions with the modem indicated I needed to call their tech support line to get a Return Authorization Number, prior to returning it. This I did, and we proceeded to go thru what I'm sure was their standard problem-resolution matrix, after I reported the modem was dead:

Tech: Ma'am, do you have your computer turned on?

Me: Yes I do. (rolling my eyes...)

Tech: Do you have the telephone line plugged into the modem?

Me: Yes I do. (I just love this....)

Tech: Ma'am, I'm going to need you to get into the modem settings in the Control Panel.

Me: OK. (I then proceed to "My Computer", "Control Panel" and open the modem settings)

Tech: OK, ready?

Me: Ready.

Tech: Click on "Start"....

Me: No....I'm at the modem settings. What do you need me to tell you?

(long pause on the other end of the line....I then hear a muffled exclamation...."OH MY GOD, I HAVE SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING!!!")

At this point I totally lost it and burst into laughter. She came back online and apologized profusely. I told her I hadn't had such a good laugh in a long time, and was sure they dealt with some real winners, because I have clients I would rather slit my wrists than to visit.

She asked me if I was sure the modem was dead. I said yes. She gave me the Return Authorization number.

One of my favorite "pointy haired" boss stories; a recently hired senior manager had his administrative assistant call support in order to find out if there was a way that she could empty his e-mail trash folder from her computer.

Help Desk: No, that has to be done in his e-mail account. he just needs to hit the F9 key and it will empty the trash. Actually, the program prompts him when he closes it to empty the trash, he just needs to click the "Yes" button.

Admin: I know, but he always clicks "No".

Help Desk: But it even defaults to "Yes", he can just hit the "Enter" key.

Admin: I know but he refuses to empty the trash himself. I'll have to into his office and empty it for him.(hangs-up)

All we could deduce from the conversation was that it was beneath a person in his position to "empty the trash". As far as I know, every day his admin has to go into his office and hit the F9 key on order to empty his e-mail trash.

I'm the network administrator for a fairly large school district. Many of our end users are ... shall we say, relatively clueless about computing (some of the elementary school students are helping their teachers use the computers). Most of the time, this is okay; they're teachers, not technogeeks, but there are times...

On this particular occasion, the help desk forwarded me a call (it should have gone to our hardware techs, but I digress). The user couldn't get the computer to power up; the monitor displayed No Signal (it took five minutes to get to that point - she kept telling me she couldn't log on). I asked the user if the monitor was plugged into the computer. She said, yes, it was. I asked if the computer was on. She said there was a green light on the front. I asked her to trace the cable from the back of the monitor to the computer. She said, "it's plugged into the wall." I replied, "No, the second cable on the monitor - it should be plugged into the computer." She replied, "You mean the box thingy? Do I have to have one of those?"

She didn't have a computer. Just a monitor.

(runs shrieking into street)

I work Tech Support for a software company and have a good understanding of computers. So when I talk to other techies for my own computer problems, I try my best to be polite and follow instructions since I hate customers who don't listen.

A few years ago I used to be on Sprint Canada for ISP. I had reformatted my computer and lost the dial-in number. I had everything else that I needed. Userid/password etc. I just needed the darn phone number.

So I called support and asked, "What is the dial-in number for Vancouver, BC?"

The tech support guy began troubleshooting me:

GUY: Could you right-click my computer and go to properties?

ME: UH...I just need the number...(BUT i indulge him and go through all the properties confirming all the settings. This takes about a half hour) I keep repeating my question: What is the dial-up number?

GUY: Are you a Sprint customer?

ME: Yes. What is the phone number that I need to dial?

GUY: What is your Sprint account number?

ME: Its under my mom's name, (blank)

GUY: Hold on a second...sir, I can't find your account in our systems.

ME: (Getting agitated...) I was just on it this morning. I formatted my hard drive and I forgot to write down the Sprint dial-up number. I just need the dial-up phone number. I have everything, it worked a half hour ago so nothing is wrong with my account. What is the number?

GUY: Could you call 1-800-xxxx and setup your account?

ME: WHAT?! dumbass (I hang up)

I call back and get a nice young woman who gives me the phone number right when I ask for it. She laughs at what I went through a minute ago.

When someone calls for the phone number to Pizza Hut, you give it.

Several years ago I worked developing software for a film-developing company. I was moved into an office directly adjacent to the develpment lab floor. When I turned on my monitor, the display started dancing everywhere. I stepped outside my office and noticed that the wall was covered with power distribution boxes and transformers (totalling about 250 KW). I called facilities, and we tried everything, including moving the monitor all over the office, and even putting a copper-plated, grounded, steel plate on the inside wall of my office (it helped, but it didn't eliminate the problem).

I tested a "low-radiaition" monitor (which had additional shielding), and it worked great. I then asked my boss to buy one for me. His response was "that adds about $300 to the cost. I can justify that. Is it really that bad?"

I asked him to try working in my office for one day. Two minutes after he started using my computer, he got up, stalked to his office, signed the purchase request, hand-carried it to purchasing, and left. The next day I had a brand-new monitor. When I asked my boss why he'd left for the day, he responded "I haven't had a migraine that bad in ten years; I'd never be able to come in your office again if you kept that monitor."

I work in the IT dept for a telecom company, one of those that for the last year is nose-diving in the stock market. As I laughed at some of the stories, I though I should contribute.

One would think that in an hitech company you would have computer-literate persons. Believe me, it is far from being the case.

Messing with the OS:

1. One guy discovered that he doesn't have any more space on the C: drive (he had 12G on D: but that was not good enough) so he deleted files from C:\WINNT directories.

2. Another guy, while trying to organize his HDD, he also organized the boot files of the Win2K into a directory called Miscellaneous.

Attitudes

1. After we re-installed her PC, a lady called us saying she doesn't have a printer installed and that she is in a meeting and she needs badly to print a document. I said "Sorry for forgetting this. Not a problem. We can fix it in 2 seconds. Go to Run..."; "As I've told you, I am in a meeting and I don't have time for this now" and she hung up the telephone (If you can make a sense in this call, please let me know).

Addressing issues in a timely manner

10:58- The user sents us an e-mail describing his issue. I log the ticket but as it is not a priority and I am working on something else, I leave it for later.

11:02- The user calls to check the status of the issue. I am telling him that we will be solving in the next half an hour.

11:05 - His manager calls asking us when we are going to take care of the issue. Explain to him that it's going to be done well before noon.

11:09 - The user drops in just as I was working on his problem. When I am telling him that hassling us is not going to bring him anything, he gets all fired up and tells he is going to complain to his manager

11:12 - Fixed his problem.

11:15 - His manager calls the IT to ask why don't we want to check on the user's problem.

(Please keep in mind that we are 2 people for 170 users, 270 computers, hosting all major services, Solaris&Windows)

Question

As I was saying, the fact that a person works for more than 5 years on a computer and for the last 3 years she has been working for an hitech company doesn't make her computer-literate. Here's an example:

A technical writer was having problems on her computer. I go there, there are file corrupted and from one to another I ask her sweet - "Do you shutdown the computer from the button?" and she, encouraged by my tender attitude, says with pride: "Always!". I sigh but I'm swallowing my curses.

Another time, the same person asked me :"Can I use my name from the desktop to connect through the laptop" (mind you - her maternal language is English while mine is not!!!). To my dazzled look she continues: "I know it doesn't makes sense but..." I have to bite my tongue not to yell: "Then, if it doesn't makes any sense why are you saying it???

Of course, I could go on and on and on but I'm going to stop here.

A couple years ago, my folks bought a computer and got signed up for an Internet account. My mom was interested in playing cards with others on the Internet. So I got her to sign up for an account on Yahoo! Games. She decided to try out the Hearts game. When the game was over, I got an e-mail from her asking how to get out of the game. Now, for those of you who haven't used Yahoo! Games, the card game is set up like a virtual room. There are Stand Up and Sit Down buttons to leave or join a game. So anyway, I told my mom that to leave the game she had to "stand up and leave the room." So she did literally that - got up from the computer and left the room, expecting that she would be out of the game when she got back! I still bug my mom about that one.

This is just a misunderstanding, however, it’s misunderstandings like this one that make some of the funniest stories. In my case neither party was frustrated or annoyed at one another and the customer ended up with what they wanted (job well done)! I still think it’s humorous.

Me: Hello, "X" Systems, how may I help you?

User: Hello, I would like to make a request.

Me: Sure, what's your request?

User: Our department would like new screen savers for everybody on our staff.

Me: [???] New... screen savers?

User: Yeah! We'd like to order new screen savers for everyone.

Me: Do you mean you want new monitors?

User: No, the monitors are fine. We just want new screen savers.

Me: I'm not sure why you're calling me about screen savers... you can pick any of the pre-installed screen savers from the display properties menu. Screen savers aren't generally supported as business critical software but I'm sure if you convince your manager to purchase...

User: My manager has already approved! I can have him send you an email. These are too old and some people don't even have one... you can't see the monitor.

Me: You can't see the monitor... and some people don't have any? Wait a minute...

User: Yeah, they're too old and I asked my manager for a new one and he told me to get one for everybody!

Me: But wait, you can't see the monitor? Well, I would expect you to see something with a screen saver... Which one have you selected?

User: I already took mine off my monitor and threw it away but I need to order news once because I'm concerned about my eyes. I don't trust the radiation coming from the screen and my screen saver had something where you have to look directly at the screen in order to see anything... neat huh?

Me: Ah! You mean you want to purchase glare filters! I was beginning to think I was in the Twilight Zone. Screen savers protect your screen from burn in... not your eyes. Unfortunately, we don't have glare filters but you can purchase them from XXXXXX vendor.

When I worked for a large printer manufacturer's support desk I received a call from a "gentleman" that wanted assistance with his printer. So I started the usual name, address, etc., when I got to where I needed the serial number of the printer the customer responds that he cannot give it to me. I ask why and he says the printer is in the back seat of his car! I then ask where he is calling from and he said from his cell phone in his car!

I inform the "customer" that I am unable to assist him until he gets to his destination and attaches the printer to a computer. The "customer" then berates me for not being technically competent enough to answer his questions. To which I reply that I am both Microsoft and Novell certified, and have spent the last four years working with very high-end multimedia and was more than capable of answering his questions, once the printer was hooked up to a computer. I also informed him that if I transfered him to a supervisor, the supervisor would tell him the same thing I had, and that I was documenting the call in the case history so the next person he got to talk to would be fully aware of the previous call.

Once my tirade was over I didn't even give the jerk the opportunity to respond, I thanked him for calling and promptly hung up!

A guy living in Connecticut goes to something called a "Christmas Tree" store. Keep in mind I am from Washington so I'd never heard of it but I assume its something like a liquidation warehouse. He buys a product that is already over 2 years old (version 5) and version 7 is coming out next month.

Buying cheap software is no big deal, I mean he probably only paid $5-10 US for it. Note I specify the US dollar. This store had acquired a whole pallet of this software (its not very popular) but had ignorantly put it out for sale without verifying that it was designed for use in CANADA.

This guy from Connecticut noticed the English/French label, saw plainly that it was use in CANADA ONLY but decided "what the hell, I got Windows 98. Says here on the box it works on 98!" He told me this so I'm not just assuming!

Needless to say installing the French version of IE 5 totally hosed his language settings and now EVERYTHING on his computer is in French. Simple, just change back the regional settings right? Wrong. Something went wrong in the OS (he was transferred to win98 support) and so we could not simply switch him back.

5 days later after being bounced back and forth between win98 and our department (this guy has cost MS over a thousand dollars in support) he demands that we send him a free version of the software, in English. Did the whole part about him doing this to himself somehow slip his tiny mind?

When we first got true PC's at work, in the early 90's, there was no real tech support, so many people came to me for help.

When we were on Windows 3.1, a fellow engineer came to me and complained that he could not do anything on his computer because it said no resources were left. What I found out was that he was opening server software licenses to do work, but not closing them. When he was finished working on a file, he only minimized the software, but never closed it. He was out of resources because he had 10 copies of Excel and 7 copies of Word open.

Later on, this same engineer (who was very smart except where computers were concerned) needed to install a new program, but there was not enough disk space. I told him to delete a directory for a game or program he no longer needed (remember this was Windows 3.1), then install what he needed. He asked 'What is a directory?' - turns out that he installed every program into the root C:\ directory.

Can you say format C:\?

MCSE 4.0 class, day 1: Instructor has us sit down and he reads the chapters we were told to read before class, ohhhh help me.

We get to lab and start up the machines... None of them appear to be working except one. Hmmm, after 5 years of exp it didnt take long for me to figure out every machine was the primary domain controller of the same domain. The 1st machine to log in wins.... I took over the class for the rest of the night and tried unsuccessfully to get a partial refund.

I'm working in tech support of one Moscow ISP.

There was about 4:30 AM, when client from appartment connected to the internet called me. I help him to setup e-mail account, and sent him password to statistic system. He tried this password, it's passed OK, then he said: "Why I get so big traffic?" (theese clients connected by traffic-based tariffs) "May be, You get a lot of music, video, or pictures from I-net?" - I said. "Yeah, I get pictures . Pictures of weapon" . "I think, your traffic is large because of that", and he answers: "But, I get not pictures of artillery and tanks, just pictures of small pistols and rifles! Why my traffic is so big?

... Do you know, why half of users, when they can't connect, calling tech support and say: "Hello, is it internet?"

...Do you know, why they next phrase is "I can't get in" (Or, I don't know how to translate it to English properly, in Russian this phrase has sexual meant)

... In night time, you can call tech support of our company without adding office number, or asking reception to connect to tech support department - all incoming calls reach tech-supporter without filter. So, once my co-worker, night supporter, told me, how someone called him by modem 3 hours every 3 minutes. Every 3 minutes, about 3 hours... Then user called him by voice, and said: "I trying to connect to your dial-up lines, but there isn't connection, and through modem noice I hear like some b@stard answers me: "Tech support, hello" "

We have this luser that is a technical writer.

He knows absolutely nothing about any technology beyond

a light bulb.

When he first started work, I had to show him how to log

on every morning for two weeks straight.

The third week, he calls saying he can't log on. Help.

I walk into his office and see the log on screens shows

the name administrator.

You ain't the administrator jack. Type your f$cking name.

I'm a netadmin/sysadmin at an elementary school. Before I start telling this story, I'd like to say that the teachers who work at the school ALL have Bachelor's Degrees, it is a mandatory requirement in this school system to have such a degree. So this user went to college for 4 years, remember that.

She comes into my office complaning all the time about problems that don't exist, and every time I would tell her the solution, without needing to go to her classroom where the computers were. I would tell her everytime that "If that doesn't work, come back to my office and let me know". She never did come back usually. So she comes in one day with a new problem..

User:"Hey, my computer's all messed up, it's stuck on one screen and nothing happens. If I move the mouse, or press something on the keyboard, nothing happens. It's stuck on MS Word"

Me:"Ok mam, did you try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and then closing the program?"

User:"Yeah, yeah, I tried that, but it still doesn't work, nothing happens!! I mean, I even tried TURNING THE COMPUTER OFF, and still nothing! The same damn screen comes up, stuck"

Me:"Uhm.. that would seem odd, if you turned the computer off and powered it back on, you shouldn't be on a stuck MS Word screen"

User:"Well then, come and take a look if you don't believe me!!!"

Me:"Ok, let's go"

So we go to her classroom. The screen was indeed stuck on MS Word, and pressing the keyboard or moving the mouse would show no signs of life, as she indicated. In front of me, she presses Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and nothing happens. So I tell her "Ok mam, let's go ahead and shut it down, then we'll power it back up". She said "I already tried that!! Watch, I'll show you." So you know what she did? She turns off the monitor. The screen goes black, she waits a few seconds and says "Now watch, the same thing will come up when I turn it back on". As you can immagine, she turns the monitor back on, and yes - surprise surprise - the same screen with MS Word, locked up, shows up.

I couldn't speak. My face turned white, and I couldn't talk for a few seconds.. See, when something is funny, I try to resist laughing.. but this wasn't funny, to me this was horror.. It was beyond my comprehension.

The most common thing I here is about users complaining that Techies are arrogant, and Users shouldn't be expected to know anything about computers.

Ok, Users, I'll give you credit for that one. But if you don't know what the difference between a computer and a monitor are, I wonder if when you go home at night and you want to watch TV, do you know which one is the VCR, and which one is the TV? My friend's 3 year old daughter knows how to press a button on a computer to turn it on, I watch her do it. But a college graduate... does not. Kudos to the U.S. Education System.

Shocked SysAdmin

In 1981 I worked for a copier service company in Wichita Kansas. My very first service call was to a hospital in the area where they were having problems with their copies coming out "dirty" or "smudged".

I went to the hospital and lifted the lid on the copier and there was a gooey substance all over the glass. I cleaned it, printed some test pages and everything was good. I wrote up the ticket and returned to the shop.

The next day, they called in with the same problem. I returned right away, cleaned the goo off the glass once again. Returned to the shop.

The next day, same thing. I went in and looked at the glass and asked a nice nurse near by what the deal was with this goo on the glass. She politely (ignorantly) replied "Oh, that's not us, that's 3rd shift, they were warming their donuts". She didn't think twice about it as if she watched them do it, thinking it was standard.

I smiled, cleaned the glass and left thinking to myself that this is a pretty easy job, being able to bill these people for an half hour a day to drive out there and clean up donuts.

I still have a copy hanging in my office of 4 donuts that were "being warmed by 3rd shift".

-Rick

Just a reminder:

Most of the writers here are frustrated at people who don't understand computer technologies. But, this is precisely what delivers a paycheck to them every month. If technicians don't like helping people, they should not work in this industry. Computers, networks and related technologies are built, programmed, and supported all for the sake of helping people with their business operations, personal enjoyment comes second. Helping humans to do complex or repetitive tasks is the root of the industry.

I might go so far as to say, that if a technician does not understand this, than they do not really understand computers themselves. Perhaps the distinction between them and those they help is quite small after all; the Sophomore.

One could argue that computers were started by electricians with an interest in fun, not business, and that most business users are stupid. But it is the money from business that has grown the industry and accelerated the technology, not hobbying. So next time your playing the latest 3D shooter, remember to thank the business leaders and their IS/IT support staff for delivering your computer to 3D heaven, and a paycheck for your assistance.

Lastly, if one purposely seeks out jobs supporting products or industries that truly help other people, it is easier to be satisfied while helping a technologically illiterate user. And try easing off the caffeine, you'll find it's easier to help people through the painfully simple parts.

Many years ago when i was working in tech support here in Stockholm (Sweden) for a computer company an old lady called in and said her cup holder was broken. I asked her why she called us with this problem and she answered that the cup holder had came with her computer. Slowly i realized what she was talking about so i asked her if there was any text on the "cup holder" the phone line was quiet for about a minute and then she came back and replied "quad speed"

We had a good laugh at the office. It turned out the tray of her cd drive had broken from her placing cups on it!

My funniest story from my help desk days:

User calls up, and is concerned about his PC, every five minutes it keeps beeping at him. Having no idea, I told him I'd be by in a few minutes.

Right as I get to his area, the beep goes off, and I ask him if that was the sound.

It was of course, and I immediately recognized the sound. I asked him if he'd check his pager...

A real idiot.

At this time I was working for a quite big computer company

with tech support to our dealers.

The dealers bye components like Motherboards, CPUs and so on

and build computers with there on brand.

( So they suppose to have some know-how about computers, right ? )

One day a man step in with a burned computer

and was very angry. He hade bought a Hard disk yesterday

and it has burned his computer he said.

He wanted us to pay him a new computer

even then it was another brand.

I open the computer

and yea man it was burned !

It was not easy to see what possibly

could have this disaster.

… I thought.

I looked at the Power supply

course this is the most common thing that burns

in a computer, but it looked OK and worked as well.

But then I saw something strange

the Power cable to the Hard disk was not mounted correctly

it was TWISTED….. Very strange, you are NOT able to

connect this one the wrong way, course in would not FIT

not in any way ! I removed the cable and I hardly believe

what I saw. The plastic end of the cable was deformed

to fit the WRONG way …… I called the customer on the phone

and asked him what he hade done with the cable .

He just scream all that he can in the phone to me

that the damn cable didn’t fit the way it did on the old Hard disk

so he took a file and modify the connection, to fit the “old” way.

I told him that he hade put + to – and short-cut the Hard disk

and that this have coursed the damage on the computer.

The he scream at me to fix the F….. computer no matter what it would cost.

….. It cost him more the to bye a new computer.

This is not a joke !

// Magnus

This was back in the days of dumb tubes....

I was busy (when aren't we?) as the sysad for a public library when the Children's Room called.

THEM: "The terminal at the desk won't work."

ME: "What's on the screen?"

"Nothing. It's black."

"Is the screen saver on?"

"No. We touched a key to make sure."

"What were you doing before this happened?"

"Nothing. We weren't using it at all."

"Is it turned on? That is, is the little green light on in the lower left front of the terminal?"

"Yes, of course. And we checked that all the cables are plugged in tight, too."

(Sigh) "I'll be right up."

At the desk, the first thing I noticed was that the green power light was off. Eureka! I'd solved the problem! So...

ME: "Hmmm...I'm going to try something a little different. Just bear with me, okay?"

I put my hands on each side of the terminal, my right index finger over the power button. I bent my head, and said, "Lord, heal this terminal. It's been a good terminal, doing its duty as best it could. Please bring it back to health."

I pushed the power button, the terminal sprang to life, and I walked away as jaws fell to the floor with clunks.

Okay, I am not a SA, but I play one at work. So, of course, all friends, family, strangers on the street...call ME when something is not right on their PC. Although my sister-in-law calls often, this one takes the cake...

She had recently recieved a "new" computer (hand me down from her mother), but had to use her old moniter. She called me up one evening to tell me she had everything hooked up correctly, but her moniter wasn't working. At 1st I was afraid that the moniter she was using was just too damn old to be recognized by the new PC, but having a history of "tech support" with this woman, I asked all of the standard questions...is the moniter plugged in to the surge protector, is the surge protector plugged into the wall, is the moniter plugged into the back of the PC...you know the drill. Her responses were, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" as she grew increasingly more frustrated and condescending...as if I would ever question her techincal prowress. I was about ready to head over to her apartment to see everything for myself, when I asked one last question...

Me:"So, you everything is plugged in and turned on...you see a green light on the moniter, but it just isn't giving you a picture, right?"

Her: "Yeah...I have a picture."

Huh?

Me:"What do you see?"

Her: "Like, all of this stuff on the screen...My Computer, Recycle Bin..."on and on...

Me: "So what do you mean your moniter is not working?"

Her: "I mean, when I turned it on, there was a pop-up message that my moniter was not recognized. So it doesn't work..."

**20 more minutes trying to explain to her that it does work if you can see stuff, that that model is just not recognized by name...won't make any difference...before I have to divorce my wonderful husband just so I won't have to answer any more stupid questions from her again.

I noticed a few years ago that approx. 30% of all calls to my ISP's local phonenumber (which is nothing more than a forwarding mirror) were sent to the wrong phonenumber, where there just happened to be another modem which allowed PPP-access for 2 minutes, and then hung up.

Fine.

1) I'm a gentle person, they probably want to know about that.

2) I pay per minute AND per call. They are supposed to fix that kind of problem since it will cost me more money each day.

Having previous experience with their techsupport, I decide to call their headquarters listed phonenumber instead of the toll-free number.

After stating my problem, I get to speak to (tadah.) Techsupport.

"I try to dial number XXXXXXX, but I don't always get the 'SunOS, login:'-prompt. The system sometimes presents a 'access restricted'-banner instead, and I cannot log on when it does."

I spent the next two minutes convincing the person by the other end of the line that is had nothing to do with either the DNS-settings or the COM-port.

I was so stunned it did not even occur to me to be angry with the gentle person, but he stated that - no - there was noone else available that could actually help me.

I hung up.

Next step?

I sent an email to root, attaching several timestamped terminal-logs and 25 cutouts from syslog on the machine doing the dialing. The fault ended less than two hours later.

Technical support is not always as good as it should be.

Some years ago, I was working for a large electronics company who had a computer helpdesk for users who purchased their PC's from us. I won't give any names, but it's corporate headquarters are in Richmond, VA.

I knew I should have called for a break, but because I was chained to my desk by my headset and had to call to get unchained from the desk for a 15 minute break, I figured I'll take one more call.

It was a nice lady who was having trouble getting the mouse to work. I tried to have her move it around to see if it moved the windows cursor.

No luck. She said it was moving sporadically.

I had been trying to get this thing working for about half an hour when all of a sudden, it hit me. I asked,"Is the mouse sitting on the desk?"

She follwed that with a "No, I'm holding it in my hand and rolling the little ball around with my finger." I had to hit mute on my phone so I could laugh.

It wouldn't have been so bad, except that the very next call I got was from an older gentleman using his mouse as a foot pedal.

This electronics company no longer offers computer support.

I was a consultant at a nuclear plant a few years back. The utility was in the midst of defending itself against a lawsuit brought by a former employee who had developed some rare form of lukemia, so there were attorneys always poking around asking questions of everyone.

One morning I was in early, and over the cube wall pops the head of one of these lawyers. He explains that he needs leave for court shortly, and can't get some important document to print. Apparently, there is a problem with the printer, and his secretary isn't in. Can I help?

We begin to make our way to the printer corral (a large space that contained 20 or so different printers, from old dot-matrix to laser printers, to some that would print 6-foot wide color sheets) and I asked what the problem was with the printer.

Lawyer: It's out of letters.

Me: Out of letters?

L: Yes, out of letters. I couldn't find where the letters were. I found a cabinet with paper, and there were some jars in it, but they just had powder. No letters.

M: (Still unsure what he's babbling about) What makes you think the printer is out of letters?

L: It says to "load letters" but it doesn't say what letter it's out of.

At this point I'm convinced that he's spent too much time in containment and fried a brain cell or two. We arrive at the printer corral. He points at an HP LaserJet 4000 series printer.

L: (Flustered) See? Load Letter. But it doesn't say which letters it needs. And I couldn't figure out where you're supposed to put the letters. Do you know where they keep the letters? Do you know how to put them in? Do you know how to find out what letters it's out of?

M: (Thinking it's gotta be a joke) You're not serious, are you?

L: (Incredulous) I'm very serious! I need to have this to take to court today!

M: (Holding back tears of laughter, I calmly explain) Um, you don't put letters into a printer. It's not out of letters, it's out of paper. Load letter--letter sized paper. 8.5 X 11 paper. There are no letters to be loaded.

L: (Confused and a little angry) Then how does it print if there are no letters inside?

M: It uses toner. It's like ink. The stuff in the bottles. (I point to the "jars" of powder that he discovered, opened, and partly spilled)

L: Oh.

To this day, I imagine that he was under the impression that a little army of elves, busily typesetting his legal brief, ran out of 12 point Courier "A's" and put that message up on the display, and that somewhere was a box of little letters they needed, with sticky on one side so they would stay on the page...

I had been working for this new company for about 2 months and did not quite know the level of computer savvy that the EU's had - but I found out one night.

I was working the swing shift when I recieved a call from the 24hr restraunt in the casino that the computer had tripped the circuit breaker and all the cookline printers were down. I ran down to the restraunt bringing with me an extra power supply for the PCWS workstation located outside the kitchen door.

I asked the manager what had happened nad she said to ask the Chef in the kitchen he knew.

I asked the Chef and he said it was the computer on the cookline. Which confused me because there were no computers on the cookline only printers. The chef said to ask the cold section chef on the other side of the cookline what had happened.

I went to the other side of the cookline and asked her what had happened and she said the computer had tripped the breaker like it had the last few nights. I asked her to point out the computer that had been the culprit and she promplty pointed one of two microwaves sitting beside her and said "that one". I actually made it back to the computer room before I busted out laughing.

At the previous job I had we had a call come through which we had to share with everyone in our office. It was just too funny. A client called into the helpdesk saying that there was a ghost or something in his computer. He just received a new laptop with a touch pad. He said that everytime he was typing the mouse would just start moving all over the place or windows would start popping up without him even going to them. The helpdesk tried to explain to him what was going on but he insisted that there was something wrong with his laptop. So the helpdesk passed it on to us (I'm sure just so we could all have a good laugh too) So I gave him a call to find out what he had to say and he said that his laptop must be possessed and that he wanted a new one. I explained to him that even if he was close to his touch pad that it would move just like his mouse would and that sometimes when you are typing you thumb will drop and touch it also but he just insisted that there was something wrong. I had to go to his desk and demonstrate just so he would believe me. He still felt there was something wrong. Some people I tell ya, you often wonder what people are thinking sometimes. But at least it gave us a good laugh.

I work phone support for a large university. People can get their passwords changed via a faxed in form, or by coming in.

I recently got a call from someone wanting to know if her password had been changed. "I faxed in my form on Friday, I want to know if it's been changed by now (Monday afternoon)."

Me: "Have you tried logging in with your new password?"

Her: "No... where do I do that?"

AAARGGH!

I was talking a user through reinstalling windows 95 several years ago...(he had 'accidentally' formatted his c: drive)He had gotten as far as installing the cd drivers, and was having trouble accessing the cd. I told him to type in the d: enter, and he kept getting bad command or file name. Turns out, he was typing "d:enter"

This isn't really a tech support story, it's more of a really long 'hacker meets admin' story. However, it's funny on it's own.

I am a teen who is the chief tech officer/software architect/sole net admin for a small software company (actually, it's not even a company). We have over 60 computers networked to each other via wired (i wish it was gigabit) and wireless/802.11b/airport/bluetooth/wifi/whatever ethernet. Except for the four Windows XP PC's that we need for homework/work and for program compatibility (Visual Studio .NET won't work:)), all of the machines are Mac/Linux. One day, something was wrong with our wireless network so I was trying to pinpoint the problem (it was an unplugged AirPort base station ;)), until I noticed someone who wasn't supposed to be on our network trying to use our _slow_ 56k internet connections using a Windows PC. Even though I thinking that this was a hacker out to do some damage, I didn't do anything. After a minute of (watching him) trying to delete in use, read only and restricted system files, he started to send messages using the netsend command in the Command Prompt to others on the network, I got a message from the hacker that went like this:

(A=me, B=hacker)

B: What kind of name is 'Marshall_Flinkman'?

(I was logged in as Marshall_Flinkman, a name that I got because there was a geek named Marshall in my favorite TV show, Alias)

A: What kind of guy would want to hack into our network?

B: Dunno. I did a good job didn't I? I'm a professional hacker. (Like it's hard to hack into a wireless network with the firewalls and stuff down!) I heard that you guys had some really fast internet connection...

(We did have a T1 on our wired network, but nobody in their right mind would let anyone hijack a T1 for free!)

A: And...

B: Well, I was wondering if I could use it...

A: What makes you think you can use an Internet connection for free?

B: Well, if you don't tell your network admin, can't you let me use it?

A: The network administrator?

B: Yeah.

A: Well, I don't know...

B: Come on. I'll even pay you.

A: Um, you do realize that...

(From what I can see so far, he had been sending messages to three other people-basically the ones who have administrator rights and help me do my job when I get stuck.)

B: What?

A: ...hacking is a bad thing and btw did you know that you've been sending messages to the other three ADMINISTRATORS???

B: (Silence)

A: Do you think nobody notices the fact that there are five Windows machines on the network, even though we only have four?

B: So what are you going to do about it...I'll kill you if you tell the admins.

A: (pause) You don't even know who I am.

B: I know that you're not an administrator.

A: I am. I am THE ONLY net admin. But not the only administrator. If you want to share a bunch of 56k dial-ups, fine.

B: But I want the DSL!

(DSL is a really fast internet connection?)

A: If you want to keep talking like that to the network administrator, fine.

B: I WANT THE F***ING DSL!!

A: What if I told you that this is our private wireless network and that we don't have DSL?

B: (pause) What?

A: If you want DSL, go to Verizon and sign up for DSL or something because the only Internet connection we have on this network is a bunch of 56k dial-ups.

B: AARGH!!!!! You know what I'm talking about!!

A: However, if you want to use a T1 illegally, you can try hacking into our wired network. I wouldn't suggest it though. The firewalls are really something...

B: (silence)

A: Goodbye. I enjoyed talking with you.

B: (burst of profanity)

A: Excuse me?

B: (another burst of profanity)

A: (Okay...)

B: Who are you anyway? (Pause) Why are your user accounts, servers and RAIDs named after geeks and companies?

(Wow. He just noticed. Amazing. Like nobody realizes that after taking one look at the network.)

A: (well, we just do that because it's easier to remember who the computers/servers/RAIDs belonged to) None of your business.

B: Well, aren't you guys Microsoft?

A: (laughing really hard) Us? US? we're microsoft? HAHAHAHA!!!

(maybe he was thinking that because one of our server's names is Microsoft)

B: Aren't you? Doesn't Microsoft have DSL for their employees?

A: Yeah, like a bunch of Microsoft employees would have DSL...

B: (completely clueless)

A: Hold on...(I make up something) Hello, you have reached the Microsoft Internet/Intranet Helpdesk, my name is Jane and how can I help you today?

B: Yes, I want to use your blazing fast DSL Internet connection...

(Blazing fast DSL? I doubt it.)

A: Sorry but the system and network administrators cannot let you use our OC-768 Internet connection because there has been a general protection fault in our intranet, causing a denial of service message to pop up on your machine. In addition, the electronic mail servers on the Redmond campus have been found to have a Level 3 advanced transfer cache/BIOS infection with a virus coded with the high-level programming languages C# and Java, cause unknown. Currently the SDE's and SDET's (fyi Software Design Engineers/Software Design Engineers in Training) are coding a patch for this problem, we hope to have it out by the time that PSS (Product Support Services) receives a call from the Chief Software Architect (Bill Gates) authorizing the download of the aforementioned patch from the Windows Update website, which can be reached at windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

B: ???

A: Have a great day sir. Goodbye.

A second or two later, he was off the network, I found the problem with the network, then managed to send the guys on the network a message containing the conversation and my fellow friends were laughing like crazy. Since he left some sort of an e-mail address, I e-mailed him. When I got a reply it seemed as if he was wondering what a general protection fault was.

I work tech support for a software company. Our company integrates Medical Lab equipment with PCs to provide everything in a nice graphical interface. One day I get a phone call from one of our clients. They start with the usual, my server doesn't work. So being the hardware oriented tech I am, I ask; Do you hear any noise. The caller stops for a second, "No, its not making a sound."

I said ok, lets try turning the computer off and turning it back on. He says ok, he turns off the "server" and turns it back on... He says "the little light is Green, now its amber now its green now its amber, now its green."

I let him continue this pattern for a minute or so before I asked the question I already knew the answer to. I said, sir, is that the little green light on your MONITOR? he said yes. I said this time.. i want you to turn the power off to the BOX on the floor and tell me if you hear anything like say a FAN. He turns it on.. he says OH YEAH, its blowin air out of their. I said ok did you hear anything else... he says yes.. a series of beeps. GREAT im thinking, he CAN be of some use. After five minutes of trying to decifer the beep code, i finally ask him to send the server in for bench repair.

You would think this would be the end of the story but no.. it gets better. Two days later a package comes to my office for me from this client, I open the box and what do i find, a 9" monitor....

I worked for a company that supported terminal servers for Unix and Windows OSes. There were two support people in our department so I feel I kind of know what I am doing. We purchased a PC from a leading computer company and I loaded NT on it. It seemd to have a problem that was very strange. This is how my support call went.

Me - Hello I have one of your PCs here and it has NT loaded on it.

(We go through verifying it is there PC and it is under warranty)

I get passed to different people 4 times just to explain what is going on.

Me - I start again. The power LED seems to be flashing a 3-7 error code when I shutdown the PC. When I shutdown the pc by pushing the power button, once to turn the power off and a second time to restart the error flashes again. The only way to get it out of this state is to unplug the power cord, wait for a short while, then plug it back in and that doesn't work every time.

Support - There is no error code used with the power led. Can you reproduce the problem again?

Me - Yes, give me a minute to shutdown and get the PC in that state again.

(Wait about 5 minutes because it does not happen every time)

Me - Ok it flashing 3-7 now.

Support - I am telling you there is no error code on the power led.

Me - Well you walked me through how to get it fail.

Support - That can't happen!

Me - I am sorry "SIR" but it is happening now.

Support - This just can't happen.

Me - but it is.

Support - What was your OS again?

Me - NT

Support - My records show 98 shipped out with that PC

Me - ok? now what.

Support - I am sorry I can't support that PC with NT.

(This PC was on the HCL)

Me - You are telling me you can't support me with this hardware problem?

Support - That is correct sir. If you would like me to send you to our NT support department I'll need a billing address for the call.

Me - You want me to pay for supporting a PC that is under warranty?

Support - Yes sir. Your warranty does not cover NT. We don't know how you installed it or it's configuration. Do you want me to transfer you to our NT department?

Me - (Click)

About two months later I found a firmware upgrade for the mother board and it fixed the problem.

(Not all of the strange people are non-techies.

Yesterday I got a call from a lady with DNS-trouble.

I asked her to right-click the Network icon on the desktop and choose properties.

”Right..cl..click?"

”Yes, click with right mouse button. Longfinger-button if you are righthanded.”

”But I don´t have a mouse.”

”Yes, you do.”

”No?”

”YES YOU DO!”

”You have thing you use to move the arrow on the screen and to click stuff, RIGHT?”

”Err..yeeah?”

”Ok, on that thing there´s two buttons. One right and one left button.

”But I don´t have a mouse..?”

”YEES YOUUU DOOO that THING is the mouse! Now look closely.”

”OH THAT ONE??!! But I never used that one before.”

”Then it´s about time you use it now anyway. Now click with the right one on the icon that´s called Network on the desktop on your screen.”

”Ok.”

It took me 20 minutes to get het to configure the DNS-settings properly.

The names of the people and companies have been changed. The people because I forgot their names and the businesses to protect my job! I have just learned about this web site about a week ago so this story is a few months old. I work for a call center that does internet trouble shooting for a telephone company that covers seven of the southern states, and also provides services as an isp. I am one of the dial-up techs.

M=ME ; SER = TELEPHONE REP ; CUS = CUST

DSL = DSL SUPERVISOR ; REP = TELEPHONE REPAIR TECHNICIAN

M(HI :-) : Thank you for calling *****, my name is george(not my real name) may I have your user name or logon id please?

SER: Yes George this is tom from *** telephone, I have a customer on the line and he is having a problem connecting up to the internet. He needs to go online to download a patch to get his DSL working. I have the cust and will be calling a DSL supervisor back to assist us with this.

M: OK, tom can i have the customers telephone number so that I can pull up his account.

SER: sure I will send the customer over so you can start to trouble shoot the problem.

(this is when i knew it was going to be a long call because you cant transfer someone over keep your self on the line and put me on hold. so i listened to the silence until)

Ser: yes george this is jane from DSL have you been helping mr X.

M : nope! he never came over.

(guess who got disconnected)

Ser: thats ok I have his cell number Ill call him right back.

(everyone goes away again.wish they had hold music)

(now we have supposed 7 min call times by this time I'm at 9 min and havent even spoken to the cust)

(oh yeah the cust is NOT a dsl customer nor has he been)

Ser: George this is mr X.

M : yes mr x how can I help you today

(btw this was in the middle of june)

CUS : yes david I hope that you can help me. I have had a problem connecting up to the internet.

M: Yes sir when was the lasting that you were able to connect to the internet.

CUS: April 7th. The night before there was a large storm and a bright flash outside and I havent been on since. At first the phone wasnt working and then the a repair technician came out and the phone line started working. I have had my modem replace three times so i know that its not the modem and i can take my computer to (large computer store) and they can connect to my account using their phone line and my computer. I can take it to my sons house and can connect there. Why cant I connect at home.

{now everyone out there who has common sense think where would the problem lie? If you said the phone lines you were correct. )

M: (i apologize to the cust and take a breath because i know when i refer him to the tele company he is going to explode)

{wait for it. wait for it.)

CUS: also i know that you have no control over this but i have been having some other issues. I have 3 phone lines. I cant connect using HOL, cant send a fax, and when I try and call one of my phone lines it rings at my neighbors house 3 doors down. Plus my two neighbors across the street cant connect to the internet.

m: (trying not to cry)(and wondering when the dsl supervisor left the convesation) Mr X. I once again apologize for the problems you are having but it appears that their is a problem with some of the routing of your telephone lines, that was probably caused by the electrical storm in April. What you will need to do is have *** send out a repair technician so they can check they area.

CUS: Hold on one moment please there is a repair technician here now.

M: (eeew this is going to be fun.)

REP: This is tom2, are you having a problem with your server mr X cant get connected up.

M: (yes!!! fist pumping this IS going to be fun) Tom2 my name is george with ** internet service department. Mr X's neighbor hood is having some phone line problems.

REP yes they are why cant they connect to the internet .

M: (cracks knuckles) :OK tom2 the problem must be with the telephone lines in the area.

REP: (interupting me) no he cant connect to *** internet service

M: (that does it) if his only problem was not able to connect up to either us of HOL then i could see that the problem could be blamed on his computer. However, not only can MR X. not connect up to hte internet two of his neighbors cant connect to the internet, he cant send a fax one of his phone lines is routed to a house 3 houses away. The problem is with the phone lines in the area. I'm sorry guys but this has gone way beyond our support boundaries so I am going to release this call.

(Now as i am getting ready to release this call I hear the REP talking to the SER "I dont know what were going to do now")

This telephone company has a wonderful reputation with the internet techs for blaming the ISP division whenever the word internet is mentioned so this really shouldnt have susprised me sometimes i just wish they would use common sense!!

This is what happens when tech support gets really, REALLY paranoid:

I'm listkeeper for a discussion email list. Our mail to one of our members started bouncing today because her ISP had decided it's spam. So I write to support at her ISP and politely explain that it's not spam, it's a list she signed up for, and please unblock it.

So what happens? MY email to support gets kicked back as spam because it included these obviously evil spam phrases:

"email address, received this, reply this, subject line, thank you, that you, the subject, this email, your email"

It was also rejected for being 25-50% all caps (which it wasn't) -- and yet the post telling me that my post was rejected was itself more than 1/3 all caps!

What is wrong with this picture???

I had to take a PC away to be upgraded.

As I was walking out with the base unit under my arm, the user called me back.

Looking at the now lifeless monitor left behind on her desk she said, "Will I still be able to work now or will I have to wait for you to bring that bit back?"

I gently explained that the base unit was an important bit of the system and that no, she wouldn't be able to do any more word processing until I returned.

When I got back to the office and told my collegues what had happened, one wag piped up, "you should have said, 'Yes you can, but don't use Tippex on the monitor, love!'"

when i moved to a new town 2 years ago, the isp there had a pretty nice booklet on how to connect to the internet, for windows *and* for linux (which was exceptional in the european backwaters where i come from, let me tell ya!). unluckily, they only showed how to do it in the graphic kde tool (yuk!). well, i just *had* to try and call tech support about why that didn't work (problem was that the kernel version of the distribution i had didn't have the isdn modem driver, i updated the kernel and configured it manually to make it work. it never worked with the kde tool, btw).

me: (explains situation)

tech: yes, we currently don't have a linux expert here, did you follow the instructions in the booklet?

me: yes.

tech: well, what did you configure for ...(goes through every entry in the list, then comes to a dropdown for type of modem)

me: pci card.

them: well, in the instructions it says "modem". why didn't you try that one?

me: *sighs* because I DON'T HAVE an external modem?

(at this point i knew it was hopeless)

them: all right, give us your phone number and email, we'll call you when we got a solution for you.

next day i get an email saying THIS:

"We currently employ nobody for linux support, but please be sure to email us when you have found a solution for your problem."

now... WHY in hell would they bother to set up instructions for linux when they apparently weren't even ABLE to test if it would work?

Last fall I moved into a new apartment, and called to have internet/cable/phone installed. The guy who came to install everything wired my cable wrong and connected my phone to my neighbor's line so she had no phone and I was getting her calls. But those are all other stories...

I thought my cable internet was the only thing that had been successfully installed. But a few months later I started having intermittent outtages. Every so often the cable light on my modem would start blinking and I'd lose my connection. Sometimes I could get it to come back up by resetting my modem, but not always. Being a web developer who works from home, I wasn't pleased.

So I called up tech support and explained the problem. The guy asks me about my system resources.

"Um, they're low, but that's not the problem," I say. Being that I have several IE windows open, Outlook and Adobe GoLive running (GoLive itself sucks up 20-30%), my resources were usually at about 30%.

He proceeded to tell me that if my system resources are low, my internet connection will stop working. I told him that my resources were always low and that wasn't causing a problem before. I also repeated that the cable light on my modem was blinking, and I don't think my system resources being low would do that. He tells me "When your system resources are low, it makes everything go crazy."

He said my resources should be above 90% all the time. Too bad opening one application makes them lower than that.

So, whatever, he transfered me to another tech and she actually sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

So they sent someone to my place and she couldn't find the problem. She told me to keep track of when the problem occured and to test my digital cable at the same time, to see if it was a problem with the cable, or a problem with the modem, or what.

So a week goes by with me tracking this stuff and having frustrating outages, and unplugging my modem and plugging it back in every time it happens (there's no power switch on it). And then one time I unplug and plug back in, and the modem doesn't come back on.

So I call up tech support again, and in the process of explaining the issue I realized that the power adapter for the ISP-supplied modem was not the same brand as the modem. And then realized that it was a 24V adapter on a 12V modem. I had been frying it the whole time.

So the modem got replaced and all has been well since then. Still wish I had the chance to tell that system resources guy he's an idiot...

Ok so I worked in tech support for about a year and a half, and when I tried to think of stories, I didn't really have any GOOD ones - I submitted about two or three, but they were just things that I found amusing. I've been working in a normal office environment for some time now, and today I came across not only one, but TWO computer ID10T errors.....

-----------

--STORY ONE--

We just got this new temp, and she got her own computer today...At around 10 AM, I get this...

Temp: Tim, my keyboard won't work

Me: Ok well let's have a look *do the usual stuff like making sure it's plugged in, seeing if the program we use was frozen as usual, but finding nothing* ok well everything looks fine

Temp: Oh - I can use this *normal keyboard* but this won't work *side numberpad*

Me: *I sigh as I reach over and hit 'Num Lock' and walk back to desk*

needless to say that I couldn't contain my laughter, and even she was grinning when I looked over from my desk

----------

--STORY TWO--

This is yet another story of not being able to use a keyboard - how can people know how to use a computer and not the keyboard!?

So i hear this side conversation of my 2 co-workers, and I am quick to jump in of course...I will simply call them James and Rich, to protect their identities...

J - James

R - Rich

T - Tim (me)

J: Hey what's that thing you press? is it Control Alt Escape, or Control Alt Delete?

R: For what?

J: You know, the task manager thing

R: it's Control Alt Delete

J: *looks* I don't have delete....I only have backspace...

T: *overhears* what?? *slides chair over to James' desk and looks at keyboard*

T: *points to the delete key, which is resting in its usual spot underneath the insert key* it's right there

J: oh...

I laughed to myself this time, as he wasn't all that amused, and proceeded to share my story with several people

that's all folks!

I have these almost daily, but my favorite is a dual story about the same user. We had our Novell 3.12 network up and running for about 9 months when I received a call from this woman.

"This stupid computer won't let me log in!", she frumped.

I wandered over to her desk, sat down at her system and login worked fine. I logged out and asked her to try it. As she typed her login name, I noticed that she was putting space between her first initial and last name. Of course, it failed, and she turned to me and gloated, "See! I told you!"

I pointed out to her that she can't use spaces in Novell logins.

"But I've always logged in that way!"

After three attempts to convince her that it wouldn't have taken her login attempt that way, I had to admit to doing a modification to the system. This satisfied her that it was the system's error, not her's.

The same user, two weeks later calls me with database problems. She's one of those users that caller ID was designed for.

When I arrive at her desk, she describes the problem. "When I hit F9 to save my record, this popped up instead!"

There was a menu on the top of her display. I explained that the menu is supposed to appear whenever the F10 key is depressed. She must have accidentally pressed the wrong key. Bad suggestion. She knew that she had pressed F9, but the system had done something different. No amount of demonstration could change her mind. Again, I gave in and told her it must have been a glitch. Her ego was intact.