Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work at a paging dispatch center in the customer support division. I don't normaly do tech support, but if someone has a problem with our service I try to help them.

One day a reseller was having a problem getting to our website. So I repeated our website address a couple times to make sure that he was typing it in correctaly. I knew our website was up because I could get to it from my computer, so I knew the problem wasn't on our side.

After about 15 min trying to walk him thru the proccess to get to our website, with no success, I wanted to make sure that he was connected to the internet, and that he had everything set up correctaly. So I told him to go to www.yahoo.com to see if it worked.... He told me he was already there.....

That's when I found out he was putting our website address into the yahoo search field!

I work in a tech support area and support many products. One afternoon, I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why this user's form was printing with horizontal lines printing over the text. Eventually, the following conversation took place.

(user)You are gonna kill me.

(me)Why, what did you do?

(user) Well, the first time it printed the lines on the paper, but after that, I have been recycling the paper.

Both of us laughed hysterically and then hung up.

I just love small business customers who have their "MCSE"'s take care of there servers...

Customer: I just installed NT 4 Server and my NT

workstation service is not starting. It's

supposed to start automatically, isn't it?

Me: Yes

Customer: I tried starting it manually and it gives me an

error.

Me: What's the error?

Customer: It says that it can't start because there is

another computer on the network using the

same computer name. What could the problem be?

Me: Uhm... Geez... I don't know... Could it be that there

is another computer on the network using the same name?

Customer: Oh no, there is no other computer using the same

name.

Me: OK, we can check that really easy... Unplug the NIC cord

and try starting the workstation service.

Customer: Uhm... Can't I just rename the computer?

Me: Yes... (I thought you were so sure no other computer

on your network had that same name)

Customer: The service started OK now.

Me (thinking): Surprise, surprise... Should I tell him that

since there was no other computer on the

network with the same NetBIOS name, it must

have just been a voltage fluctuation in the

aeon-flux capacitor...? Surprisingly enough

he didn't ask "So what caused this?"

While working as a sales associate at CompUSA, I had a woman walk up to me with a mousepad in hand. When I asked her if I could help her with anything, she said "I found this (holding up mousepad) and I was wondering if you had one that would work with a Macintosh".

I guess the tale about the 'cupholder being broken on my computer' tech support call could possibly be true after all.

This is a true story.

I work at Staples (The Office Superstore) in the electronics department. I know a lot about computers. I know how to put one together, how to fix them if necessary, and how to add memory, add video cards, etc. So, in a sense, you can call me a techie.

A guy comes in with a laptop. He tells me that he is a computer technician (or so he says). It seems that a customer sent him an IBM laptop because he wanted to remove the supervisor password and he (the customer) doesn’t know how.

The tech calls up IBM, who, for whatever reason, tells him that he needs to go to Staples. He doesn’t know why because he realizes that Staples isn’t an authorized IBM reseller or an authorized service center. So instead of questioning IBM, he blindly follows their advice and goes to Staples.

I asked him whether he has the owner’s manual. He says no. I ask him doesn’t the customer have the owner’s manual? He says no. The blind leading the blind. I asked him whether he contacted his company about that. He says they wouldn’t know. He must be a one-man operation.

I tried to tell him that it’s not our responsibility because we don’t even sell the laptop. He insists on getting help. By this time, I’m exasperated. So I go to the back room, where we have Internet access (luckily), pull up the IBM website and gets the information for him. He doesn’t even thank me. God knows what would’ve happened had I not been there that night.

Excuse me, but if this guy is a tech, he should’ve had a little common sense and do one of two things: 1) Ask the IBM tech with whom he called where he can get that information or 2) Look it up on the Internet.

I should’ve charged him for my services. I wish I had his job and made his kind of money.

I can't resist this one.

My wife is a quality assurance/tech lead for a large national cable ISP. It recently has become MUCH larger. Anyhow, she has a couple years of experience, recently completed her A+ class and has shown that usually she isn't a complete idiot.

Anyhow on a recent Monday (she blames it on this) her monitor showed just the test pattern. She looked at it and couldn't figure out what was wrong. (you can see where this is going) After a few blank stares and fiddling around with the UPS she asks for help from one of the other techs.

This guy who is about to be transfered to field operations comes over. ( I guess they figure he knows what the red and black leads on a multitester are for.) Well supertech takes one look at the screen and says, "Looks like you got a loose monitor cable." He proceeds to wiggle said cable connection and do that techie stuff. After a few moments he says something about the cable might be bad.

Who knows how long this might have gone on if someone (said tech maybe) hadn't happened to notice that the power plug for the pc itself had pulled out of the UPS. Why my wife didn't notice this when she looked before is a mystery. She had to suspect a power problem else why look?

BTW Great site, great stories. Keep them coming even if I don't understand some of the techier ones.

I work Tech support for a major computer manufacturer and we hear fluffs (an answer that is all warm and fuzzy with no substainance) from ISPs all the time. The usual on is "you need 86% or higher resources free to get online."

Well one night a caller tells me that he spoke with his ISP tech support and was told he needs to boost his resources.

So I tell him "No problem sir, lets just check what your current free resources are." He has a Windows 98 as his OS, so I take him into explorer, click Help, and choose About Windows 98.

He says " I've never seen this screen before."

I ask him, "Isn't this where the ISP tech took you to check resources?"

He says "No. The tech took me to a dos prompt and had me type in something. He then told me that the line that says the largest executible block of 572kb was too low and I needed to boost my resources to get online."

After I muted the phone for a moment to laugh, I checked the Windows resources and they were at 88% free. I tested the modem using hyper-terminal and it connected find to our bbs. I explained to him how his Windows controlled resources are fine and that the modem is working. I armed him with a few technical questions and what responses he should look for and suggested calling the ISP back.

The follow notes in my case were that the caller had called back to say that the ISP admitted that the service was down in his area.

After doing tech support for a web development company for only a few months I have learned one thing about tech support, and that is "Customers can be unrelenting".

Often I have requests from customers who have requests so far beyond my role that is merely hilarious.

Example, They want me to teach them how to do things as if I were a professor and I was teaching a course or something.

They want me to change the way the internet works, the way protocols work immediately.

I usually try not to laugh too hard or get too frustrated. I usually like it when customers hold me responsible for things that have nothing to do with me or the situation.

Only a few more months of this S#*! until graduate school.

To all you tech support reps out there...my thoughts are with you.

Elliot

Hiya. I work as tech support for my company. One day we

got a new employee. Let's call him Jake. Well, I haven't

the faintest idea how Jake got hired, but he got hired

anyway, and started making my life miserable by being the

kind of person who ruins a computer just by sitting down

in front of it.

*ring-ring*

- Me: Hello, tech support.

- Jake: Hi, it's me, Jake.

- Me: (yellow alert) Uh-huh. What's wrong, Jake?

- Jake: The computer doesn't accept this CD.

- Me: Right. Is the CD damaged?

- Jake: Nah, it seems fine.

- Me: (orange alert) Have you tried double-clicking the D:

drive in My Computer? Perhaps autorun doesn't work.

- Jake: What doesn't work?

- Me: Never mind. Well, let's try it together. Put the

CD in the drive.

- Jake: ...

- Me: (red alert!) Jake, are you there??

- Jake: You have to put it in?

- Me: (EVERYBODY RUN!!) *screech teeth* Yyyyyyyyeah.

- Jake: Well how was I supposed to know. You're the

expert in this crap, not me. You're supposed to know

stuff like this.

- Me: (My area of expertise is crap. Thaanks.) Yeah,

and stuff like "common sense". Do you know what THAT means?

- Jake: No! I told you I'm no tech!

- Me: Ooookay. Bye Jake.

*click*

I don't think there's anything to add.

I work in tech support for an ISP in southern California and we have a lot of senior citizens as users. Well, one day this 73 year old man calls and says he's having problems connecting to the internet, I go through the settings in DUN, IE, and Outlook Express, even check to make sure his TCP/IP is correct(this takes a very long time because he's hard of hearing). Everything is fine, so I ask him to connect to the internet, he puts down the phone I'm talking with him on and I can hear him pick up another phone and dial the access number, I hear the sound of the computer connection and him hanging up. He comes back and says it's not working because he dialed that number and all he gets is a loud screeching sound. I tell him to have someone else call in for him later.

My mother is a tech writer by trade and I think she is

spending way too much time around technical terms. She

recently purchased a new laptop through me/my company and

I had her call me when it arrived to ensure everything was

there....

MOM: It looks like everything we ordered is here but there

is a second strange box they sent with it.

ME: What's the label.

MOM: Well, it says "UPS Ground," but I don't remember you ordering

an Uninterruptable Power Supply.

ME: I suspect that is actually a reference to how it was

shipped, and not what's inside.

MOM: (Laughter).

After completing yet another training course for the technically challenged , I received a phone call from one of the users who had just been given a nice £4000 top of range laptop with which to type letter's.

Him - I can not dial into the network it keeps disconnecting me after 30 seconds.

Me - Does it give an error code ?

Him - Yes.

Me - Can you tell me what it is ( as my physic powers seem to be failing me) ?

Him - User name or password incorrect.

Me - Ok what username & password are you entering ?

Him - I dont Know they are filled in already.

Me - Well I will give you the correct setting's enter them and just try and dial up again.

Him - Now it's telling me I have incorrect protocols

Me - Ok then just check these setting with me - does the machine have TCPIP installed under the networking options ?

Him - No that's not in the list.

Me - Have you been messing with any of the setting's on the laptop ?

Him - NO I switched it on this morning and it was like this.

Me - Ok when are you next in the office as I need to check the laptop.

Him - I will be in on Thursday.

Solution :-

Unable to dial into the main servers he took it upon himself to re-configure not only his dial-up network setting's but tcpip, his modem/network card and un-install half the software on his laptop.( he only had the laptop three day's )

Users....

A user from our group called the helpdesk:

"Hello, IS"

"Hello it's ***, I've just come in and switched my machine on and nothing is happening"

"Okay, are there any lights on the machine?"

"No"

"Is there a light on the monitor?"

"Yes"

"Can you check the power plug in the back of the machine?"

"Okay (rustling noises)"

"Is it in?"

"Yes"

"Press the power button on the front of the machine.""Oh, It's starting now, Thanks"

Solution: User had left the machine on over the wekennd, and switched it off when she came in on Monday.

I used to be a programmer at a small Mac software company. Our flagship product was a program that would run other OS's, like Windows, or Linux on the Mac. Since we're so small, and we only have 1 tech support guy, programmers occassionally come to the phone and help out complicated tech support cases. I was in the tech support guys office one day, picking up something, when his phone rang. It was a tech support call from a user with a really hillarious problem, the tech guy immdiately gave me the phone...

User: "Hi, I just installed (our product) and I ran the Windows 98 Install and everything was going fine until I got this really weird error"

Our Tech Guy "What was the error?"

User (reading off computer screen) "Windows 98 Setup could not find a keyboard or other input device. Press enter for further instructions."

think about it for a second...

anyway, our tech guy guided him through configuring his keyboard to work with our product and it was fine... but we did call up Microsoft to ask them about it...

We had a printer go "down" years ago - shipped it to the repair place and were anxiously awaiting its return.....

It came back and the delivery man wants me to sign for it so he can GO (they schedule 60-90 seconds "wait" time per house or some such silliness). I can SEE the printer thru a hole in the box - it doesn't look like it will work with the hole going all the way thru to the other side of the box....I'm not signing for a box with a hole in it. He insists the contents of the box will be fine - he's sure nothing actually got damaged when it got "dinged" by the forklift (hmm - that doesn't sound good).....

Brown shirted driver in a BIG hurry to get out of there - I call the DH out of the other room - HE looks at the box and says "That looks like a forklift got it - it'll have to go BACK to the repair shop for them to look at it." UPS insists that we can sign for it, open it, and see if it really got hurt....like I said - hole all the way THRU the middle of the box about where the paper feeds out the top......not looking real good here.

Finally the DH convinces the driver that we are not GONNA SIGN & ACCEPT a printer that has any resemblance to a donut (BIG sorta round hole in the middle) - it came back two weeks later with the repair invoice from the shop - paid by the delivery company. Almost would have been easier to buy a new one.....but the deliver company insisted on repairing that one (shipping it back and forth again, too) instead of cutting us a check to go buy another.

Warning - once you sign that form from the delivery driver - if the box is damaged - it is your money to pay for the repairs.....it has a "release" in it. You can claim "hidden damage" - but face it - a forklift hole thru the middle of the box is NOT very well hidden......

Strictly speaking - this occurred on a computer mailing list for people who like to sew (mostly women - all of us have to have computers to get to the list site).

Newbie sewer comes on with a request for the "secret" to laying out a five piece pattern to get the t-shirts with no side seams like you buy at the stores. List members were sure this was some kind of joke (any topoligists want to explain making a two dimensional fabric into a three dimensional shirt without seams???) - so no one replied.

The L-user came back two days later hopping mad that no one had told her the "secret". Someone came back with "if you are making 10,000 shirts - the fabric mill will MAKE you a tube of fabric to the length that you need for the number of shirts you want to make - no "secret layout" plan".

L-User came flaming back - dismissing us as a bunch of stuck-up experts too involved in ourselves to help a new sewer with the "secrets" of making things look like store bought clothes.

Did not want to believe that you can't make a two dimensional object into a three dimensional object without some method of cutting and joining the pieces to get the shape that you want (welding, solder, screws, glue, or sewing - gotta do something!). This applies to sheet metal for computer cases, laminate for counter tops, or fabric for t-shirts.........

The scary thing - she had a computer - what strange question is she going to ask some other poor soul????

This one happened to me while working at a university helpdesk. A user came into the office and asked if someone could close a window for her. As I was nearest, I said "OK, lets have a look and see whats wrong", thinking some app must have locked up. I followed her into the computer room next door, where she sat down and carried on working.

As everything seemed OK, I asked her what the problem was exactly, to which she pointed at the open window across the room and said "its cold in here".

Completely speechless now, I just made a few stammering noises, and quickly left (without closing the window) before the stammering turned to expletives.

There's one of them at every college. The professor who has a PhD in 'underwater basket weaving' but 'knows' everything about computers. I received a call from this woman who fit this type. She simply wanted to forward her unversity email to her ISP email account. I told her about a university website that has a form for this. Well, she says she already did that, but it wasn't working. She then begins to lecture me on the importance of her email and how it's my fault that it isn't working. Not wanting to argue with a stubborn person, I simply forwarded the information to one of the university's full-time all-knowing techs.

The next day I ran into my supervisor and asked about this case. He told me that he had contacted the professor's ISP and found out that she had set forwarded email from that account to her university account. She had also filled out our forwarding webpage a couple of times. Well, this created a nice looping effect where the email kept getting bounced around. We fixed it for her, but some people don't understand, once is enough sometimes.

I worked the 'Help Desk' for a university. In campus phone books and pamphlets, it's called the "ITSS Help Desk" (Infomation Technology Systems and Service). Anyway, because it's commonly referred to as simply the Help Desk, we would always get phone calls for information not relative to our department. We would simply forward the calls to the 'real' help desk or other departments

One time I got this call from a woman who wanted to register for classes over the phone. I told her the above and gave her the phone number for the Registration office. Five minutes later she calls back and says that the Registration office told her to call the "Help Desk". I immediately saw where this was heading. I told here again our situation and gave her the campus wide information number. About 10 minutes later she calls me back and is surprised to here my voice. It seemed that all the automated forwards gave her back to me. Oh joy. By this time the women was rather beligerant. Not knowing what to do, I simply said to call back tomorrow when someone else could help her.

After coming into work the next day my co-worker told me this exact same story and how she got bitched out before she hung up on her. Oh well.

I worked phone support for a university as an undergrad. I had only been working for maybe a month, so I was still relatively new to the whole 'tech support' senerio. Well, I received this call from a gentleman who said he was trying to look Ham ID's but he couldn't get his cursor to get to the top of the screen. Not being familar with amateur short wave radio lingo, I spent about five minutes trying figure out what he was talking about.

After figuring out what Ham ID's were, I said he should try a search engine. This is where his problem was. He simply couldn't get his cursor to move to the address box of IE or Netscape. So, I started asking him questions about his connections and the such. We talk for another 10 minutes before he tells me that nothing I am suggesting is working and then mentions he is using a voice recognition software (i.e. DragonSpeak.) That made me think that this guy was lazy or something and just didn't like using a mouse. Not big deal. I figured there was something wrong with his software and told him to use his mouse. That's when he tells me he can't because he's BLIND.

'Wow!' I thought. I just wasted 15 minutes trying help this guy and all he had to do was tell me he was blind. Either way, the university didn't really support his voice recognition software, but I still sent the problem on to someone higher up who could look up Hams for him.

I'm in the military, and my last assignment was working in computer security in a joint facility in England (Joint meaning that all branches of the service are there). We had always been 100% Solaris for the longest time, but NT finally caught up with us and was shoved down our throats. Of course, this meant new servers, which came with RAID arrays with hot-swappable drives. One afternoon, our Exchange server crashed. After a while, the story of what happened was circulating to all the folks in the Tech Support Branch, including us: it seems a certain Navy Chief was giving a tour of the facility to some bigwigs. He was bragging about our new server with it's hot swappable drives. He explained how if a drive ever crashed, you could just swap it out and continue on. (Can you see where this is headed?)

To demonstrate, he went to our LIVE, ACTIVE, Exchange server and pulled one of the drives out and put it back in. Needless to say, hot swappable drives work great, provided they're not ACTIVE at the time! He couldn't understand why the whole server crashed when he pulled out that one drive!

This hails back to the late '80s, when I was a computer operator on a Unisys mainframe. Our Field Engineer told me about an incident that had happened to him a couple of years before that.

He was doing preventive maintenance on a high-speed band printer and was doing the alignment test print, which basically just prints a page full of "H"s, since that was the best letter to see if the rows and columns were lined up properly.

The lady in charge of the office came by and asked why he was using all "H"s. He decided to have some fun with her, so he told her that they use that letter because they are the least used letter of the alphabet, so there's always plenty of "H"s in the printer that they can use. She said "OK" and walked away.

About a half hour later, she came back with a stack of print in her hand. She had gone through the printouts and circled every "H". She said, "We seem to use a lot of "H"s here, are you sure we'll have enough left?"

Without missing a beat, the tech answered, "It's ok, I've got a box of them in my car. I'll refill it before I leave."

When he finished working on the printer, he went out to his car, grabbed an empty paper box he had, brought it in and pretended to dump it out inside the printer. Then he closed the printer and told her she should have plenty of "H"s now. She thanked him, and he left!

I was working New Year's Eve and we were discussing what a bust the whole Y2K had turned out to be. I was reminded of the little 'bug' that hit the ISP I was supporting back then..

They had a very detailed internal homepage with several frames containing links to important info. IT had decided to have a little fun and had replaced the center frame (just the center frame, NOT the whole page!) with an old b/w image of a test pattern with "Happy Y2K!" link across the top of it. We all had a good laugh and proceeded to the regular window from there.

I was working the help desk later that day. I started receiving a very high number of calls from new techs complaining about the page. It was just a joke and we couldn't figure out why it was making so many people upset. Finally it dawned on me... Lots of people had been jokingly calling in and asking when the home page would be back. But a few of the new people sounded very distressed. They all wanted to know when things would be working again and couldn't understand why I was laughing. I stood up and looked over the cube wall at the tech I was speaking to.. he look very confused and unhappy. He wanted to know when our internal network would be fixed so he could get back to the page!!

(And we had been worried about what the lusers were going to do!)

I had a coworker who thought that when she was done browsing the Internet, she needed to click the back button until she got all the way back to her home page, before she could close her browser. I imagine she ended up clicking that button dozens of times after browsing for awhile.

This same coworker also thought that the trash bin (on her Mac) emptied itself each time she shut down the computer. She probably had 100 files sitting in there when I checked it.

I always wanted to be able to submit something here.

Now, after this, I'm not so sure...

This is a slightly compressed version of a telephone conversation I had just 20 minutes ago:

Caller: "When I try to save to the C drive, I can't save it as a word document. It only works when I save to my floppy."

Me: "Even when you scroll through the whole list?"

C: "Yes. The only thing in my list is Works 4.0, HTML, Document Template, Rich Text Format, Text Only, and Text Only with Line Breaks."

M: "There HAS to be more to that list. There are scroll bars off to the side..."

C: "I've scrolled down, and there's nothing else."

M: "Word Document should be at the very top of the list."

C: "No, that... oh.... wait a moment... ... Oh, you can scroll UP, too! There. Everything's working now."

This is the point where I set down the phone and quietly cry. The saddest part is that this isn't my job. I don't do telephone tech support, especially for non-employees. But I don't have the option of saying no to the president's wife...

Called customer and I told him that I can ping both sides of the router and also trace route to it just fine. He says they are not having any more problems and OK'd closing the Tckt.

He also asked me if it was possible to shut the music off without shutting down the T-1?????????????????

I wasnt sure if I heard him correctly so I asked him to say that again he said

"Is there a way to shut the music off without shutting down the T-1???????????????"

I was totally confused so I sasked

"Wheres the music coming from...?"

I think he was a little mad cause I didnt know what he was talking about and said "forget about it...." and hung up.

We had a client who had an office in a little room built in the middle of the factory floor. In the space over the top of this office they had a water heater.(p)One weekend, the heater sprang a leak, and soaked the terminal in the office below. THe plant electrician, on Monday decided he could fix this terminal. He opened it up, mopped out the water, and then, for good measure, sprayed it down with WD40. He closed it up, plugged it in, and turned it on.(p)After they put out the fire, they called us and wanted to know if they could get factory warranty service.

This goes back about 10 or 11 years. I was working for a software company that wrote factory management/job shop software. We had a full turnkey system running on SCO Xenix. (Yes, (i)that long ago.(/i)) We had a client about an hour away that had continual problems with a terminal located in a remote part of the shop. It would just flake out. We had several replaced on warranty. I finally went out there, and found that the RS232 cable that the plant electrician had run was 20 feet longer than he needed. Instead of cutting off the excess, he wrapped it neatly around a 4inch conduit running overhead. Of course, this was an elctro-plating shop, and that conduit was carrying 440 AC current. Can you say, 'inductance'? I knew you could. Every time that production line was turned on, they were pumping trash, and a lot of it into the poor little UART.

I work for a bigger tire manufacturer as Lotus Domino Systems admin/second level support so we usually receive calls from the other Domino administrators on our continent.

Once we had this guy who was trying to set up his server but it just wouldn't run (Domino constantly crashed) and so he wanted us to contact Lotus to see how that problem could be fixed. So we asked him to send us all the usual information, such as OS version, Domino version, hardware specs etc, we knew Lotus would ask us anyway as soon as we wanted to open a call. When we received the e-mail with all the infos we saw the source of the problem right away, he was trying to run this production server under ... Windows NT 5 Beta 1!!! Installing NT 4 as was our standard at the time quickly fixed the Domino crashes ;)

I am currently working as Domino Admin for a bigger tire manufacturer and pretty well known for my PC skills here in the office. Anyway, one day this guy comes to see me because his computer doesn't boot any more. So I go to see his machine and sure enough it just hangs during the boot process. (DOS still comes up but Windows 95 doesn't)

A bit later I return with a bootable DOS disk and get ready to inspect the content of his harddrive only to find that practically everything is missing from the C:\WINDOWS directory. (only a few files/DLLs left over) When I ask him what he just did he tells me that he had been 'cleaning up the mess on his harddrive' and erasing a lot of stuff he didn't need. I question whether he actually deleted something called Windows he quickly confirms mentioning that 'I don't need Windows because I never use it'.

Yeah right!

This story is true (the me in there actually refers to myself) OK here it goes

I was at a smaller office (5 PCs) installing their 10Mbit/s Ethernet and fitting the PCs with network interface cards. All went well until I got to the really old 486 which had no disk drive which I would have needed to give Win95 the drivers from the disk. I asked the guys working there whether they had a spare floppy drive I could temporarily hook up to it and they didn't. So we gathered around the machine trying to find a way to get the drivers on there (CD Writers weren't as common at that time and they didn't have any null-modem cables at hand either) when suddently I came up with 'Hey! Why don't we copy them over the network?'

It actually took me about 15 seconds to realize what I just said and blurt out laughing over my own stupidity. (Recently on a LAN party a friend of mine came up with the same idea so I guess I'm not completely insane yet)

Greetings,

Michel

I'm the computer genius in the family, but I really thought the other half had a clue. That is, until tonight....

He decided the best file transfer method was to email the files from the home PC to his own email account, which he can accesse either at work or home, and download the email at work.

Took about 45 mins to send. When the email finally finished sending, he decided to check and see if had any email come in during that time..........

So yeah, this guy calls up and he asks "Why the f*** did you guys turn of my intArnet"

elj3w: "Well sir, you have a $120 balance, you have not paid your bill in 6 months"

customer: "I have not recieved a bill"

elj3w: "Sir, did yo know that our service costs $20 a month?"

customer: "yes"

elj3w: "Then why haven't you paid?"

customer: "I didn't get a bill"

elj3w: "Ok, so why didn't you pay?"

customer: "I thought that since you weren't sending me a bill, that it was free"

elj3w: "are you joking?"

customer: "no, i am serious"

elj3w: "ok, sir you have to pay your bill before your service will be activated"

customer: "then I want my account canceled"

What is wrong with these people?

elj3w

My story is simple and brief, and all too familiar to many of us. When I went to college, I earned a little money working as a computer room assistant. Basically, I sat at the front of a room full of UNIX terminals, and helped people type their own names. Frequently, people would come to me with questions they could easily have answered, if only they would refer to the proper documentation. I got so tired of explaining how to type man (fill in the blank), that I had a friend who worked in a sign shop make me up a 3x8 foot sign with only four letters on it. It read RTFM. When people came to me, holding in thier hands the instructions I had printed on getting manuals and asking me how to (drum roll...) get manuals, I would point to the sign and lead everybody else in the room in a chant: read the f***ing manual, read the f***ing manual...

One of the employees came into my office with a worried look on her face and told me that our boss had a message on his laptop screen telling him that he was about to lose everything. I hurried with her into the bosses office and looked at the laptop. It said his battery was low and the computer was about to shut down. I checked the battery status and the charge was low, but the battery was still good. My boss explained to me that he had kept the laptop plugged in for three days and that it could not be the battery. I looked at the side of the computer and it was plugged in, kind of. The cord went from the wall right into the air intake vent on the side of the laptop, right next to the power plug.

-Hi this is the helpdesk how can I help you ?

*Well my computer is not working !

-So what is the actual problem ?

*The program i wanted to run is not starting and the computer si asking strange questions.

-What is the question miss ?

*Uuuhh press any key to continue... it say's.

-Well miss just press any key and the the computer will go one again.

*But Sir where can I find the ANY key..........

(Solutin provided : created sticker with any on it and sticked it to the space key)

i work as a supervisor for a well known isp. i was having a horrible day when one of our techs called in needing permission to send a truck. at first i thought nothing of it until i asked him why we needed to send the truck. he asked me if i was ready for a good laugh and he told me that the lady had to have her usb device replace because she told him that she had MELTED it with a heat lamp. what on earth was she thinking??? sometimes they really make me wonder...

Not long ago someone I game with online reported that the reason he'd been gone for a solid month was that his small dog had decided exactly why his master wasn't spending time with him, and had dug through all the cables under the guy's desk to find his modem, then pissed on it.

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I have a pizza-box desk computer that I keep on the floor (it's a nice footrest). I figured out a long time ago not to leave the bays uncovered though. I came into the room one day while installing a CD-ROM drive to discover the smaller of my two cats (and by far the less sensible) staring excitedly into the opened bay intently and sticking her paw into it to get at all the pretty blinking lights and wiggly cables inside. I caught her at the rump-wiggling stage.

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The big cat is too big for my lap, but the little one .. I swear she sits on my lap while I type just to enjoy how uncomfortable it makes typing for me (her head's right between my hands, and every few minutes I have to "switch legs" when one falls asleep). She looks way too smug. But she's cute and furry, and oh, the things we put up in order to feel loved...

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I used to have this all in one hutch I kept my Mac in. It had a shelf across the top, with the monitor right below it. The little cat (I did say she wasn't sensible) liked to sleep on that shelf because it was so warm, I guess. But it was too narrow, not by much, but enough. She'd prop herself up with one paw braced against the monitor underneath, which stuck out a couple inches. It was TERRIBLY cute to see her propped up like that, dozing with her head hanging down.

One night I was mudding and she fell fast asleep. Twitching, limp asleep. And she forgot to keep bracing. And she fell off the shelf. Right onto my keyboard, then into my lap. I think she didn't wake up until impact. (See definition: pandemonium) I was in the middle of a big battle online that was kind of dangerous for my character. It took a few secs for her to gather her wits and screech off, and another minute for me to get my session figured out. Turns out she'd hit my recall macro, making my character teleport back home out of mid-fight (WHEW, but a little disconcerting for the other players), then somehow closed my session entirely. Talented cat, eh? I'd love to say it never happened again.. but.. I can't.

Cas

Some little-old-lady calls..

One old lady blew our minds by calling up, getting a brand new tech (first day on the floor!), just to complain that her computer was too fast. From the sound of it, she was incensed. She wanted to know how to slow it down. I think the guy told her to install MS Office. He came over afterward looking dazed.

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Another old lady once called and when I asked how I could help her, said, "If you want me to survive alive till morning, you'll replace my computer now." It transpired that she had bought her computer from (unnamed retail computer store) and they'd finally lost patience with her. She had a legitimate bad system board -- it only took a bit for me to figure that out. But the store she had an onsite warranty through wouldn't replace it till the next business day, and this was 2am on a Saturday night. Needless hysterics ensued, and they finally called us, the manufacturer TS, to see if we could help. When I got the other tech, he apologized profusely. I said, "I don't know how I can help. She's way outside her 3-month onsite warranty with us." But this board had been broken a MONTH. She kept demanding they replace it NOW, they kept saying they couldn't because their techs didn't even work nights, and she'd refuse service when they COULD replace it. Then she'd call back a week later screaming and demanding immediate replacement.

When I got the old lady, she threatened, pleaded, outright lied, screamed, and tried the melodramatics on me, and I kept telling her no. Finally she demanded a supervisor. At the time we did not do supervisor calls on night shift, so I said she'd need to call back at 7am CST when the managers got there. She replied, "No. We'll sit here till 7." I said she had another think coming. She also insisted the president of the company (the manufacturer, not the tech support company) fly out to California next-flight-out with a system board and replace it that night. I laughed so hard.. not on mute either.. and finally I told her that wasn't happening. When it became clear that we weren't getting anywhere (she refused to accept our warranty coverage, and I refused to give in to this cantankerous hag), I asked her to call back when she was willing to listen, and hung up. Then I went on an unscheduled break for an hour, laid down outside, and looked at the stars and detoxed. Good god, what a bitch that was. Maybe she was off her meds, I don't know. I feel sorry for her family.

I looked her up in the database later that week, wondering what had ended up happening with her. Odd thing though. She'd had a dozen cases logged when I'd looked the other night, under 2 different user names. Now she was... gone. Totally gone.

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On nights once, an old woman called to report a problem with her PC. But she wouldn't say what it was. She wanted to tell me the computer's life history with her! I kept asking "Yes, but what's WRONG?" and she'd reply "Just wait, I'm getting to that." First she picked a computer from the selections at Best Fry. Then she picked which box of the three on the shelf she wanted. Then she bought it, using a check mind you, she doesn't like credit cards, no use for them at all, why in her day..

Then she had to decide on warranty coverage. (I'm condensing all this for you, aren't I nice?) Then the nice BB guy loaded it into her car for her. Then she drove it home. Then her next door neighbor unloaded the boxes into her living room. Then she used scissors to open the tape on the boxes. Then she took the stuff out of the boxes. She kept the styrofoam for using later. Then she took out the disks and things and categorized them, putting all the cables together in a pile, then all the...

I exploded about then (I'm the epitome of politeness and patience, but we all have limits), 20 minutes into this monologue, and said flatly, "Look, this is not helpful. What is WRONG?" She got squiffy and demanded a manager, so I transferred her. The manager had to listen to this for a solid 2 hours before she actually told him what was wrong: it was an illegal operation out of the box during boot. It transpires that this was not a brand new computer (and she had no idea this was what was wrong -- the mgr had to draw specific answers out of her for this. None of her monologue earlier, on me or him, was helpful). The Win98 OEM had already been entered, there was a business card stuck inside the computer's floppy drive, and several pages in her user manual were marked up with pencil. That poor guy had to listen to all this garbage first though.. And afterward she wanted to bitch about what a bad tech I was, when usually female techs were "so nice". *laugh*

Yes i know, Im an intern at a small computer company that does research and development for Darpa. I have plenty of years of tech support under my belt, thanks to Mother.

This little tidbit involved a senior software developer and his monitor. I come into work one day, down to my department to see what things i have to do that day. Well it turns out that a monitor is acting up, 'a 21" monitor, that is heavy as sh*t to carry down 3 flights of stairs'. The developer says that his monitor has all kinds of funky colors on it and he cant code with the colors moving around. So i go up and look at his screen and guess what? He hasnt pushed the little button that says 'drum roll please' degauss!!! Thank God that i figured that out before i lugged the damn thing downstairs.

I think degrees are for people who lack common sense...

background info: customer brought in their system with the FAT completely hosed, we fdisked, formatted, and reinstalled the OS. then, a few days later....

caller: hello i had my machine in there a couple days ago and you guys said you reinstalled windows on it.

tech: ahh yes, are you having a problem with it?

caller: yes i cant find windows on it anywhere, ive looked all over and i cant find it.

tech: ok well where are you looking? (im thinking its in c:\windows)

caller: well i click on start, then go to programs and i dont see windows in there anywhere!

A woman once called me because her computer was "growling". I wasn't really very awake, so I said "what?" Yes, she insisted, it growled at her like a dog whenever she clicked on anything. You probably already guessed that her teenaged daughter had played with desktop settings.. but man, this woman was alarmed..

I once talked to a woman with a thick Irish accent who was panicked and in near hysterics. She was having some CD-ROM problems, and the last tech she'd talked to had told her to quickrestore her computer. The problem was mainly that a QR would erase the novel she'd spent 10 years writing, and she'd just signed a publishing contract for it and of course her backup disk was missing. I could see right away that a QR wasn't necessary (and worse, wouldn't have fixed her problem to start with, was just some lazy tech who wanted her off the phone fast), and fixed her problem fairly quickly. She was one happy camper! She said she'd put a dedication in her book to me, so if you see a dedication to Cassidy Walker somewhere, that's me. :)

I've told this story before, but I've seen some distorted accounts of it, so here is the real original: A woman from Hawaii called up real late one night, and told me that a lizard had died in her monitor. I woke up and said "How do you know?" (because sometimes you get surprising answers to this question). She said "Because I see his little tail sticking out of the monitor's vents." I didn't even have time to hit mute before dying laughing. She said, "Bet you thought you'd heard everything, huh?" I said I had to hand it to her -- she'd managed to surprise me. Meanwhile, my fit of laughter had attracted the attention of the rest of night shift, and when I had finished arranging for her to take the monitor to a service center and got off the phone, and told THEM what happened, NOBODY was able to take calls for a while. (See definition: cacophony, pandemonium)

I wish I could make EUs write on the chalkboard sometimes.

* I will not go take a piss while I have a tech on the phone.

* I will do what the nice tech tells me to do and not fib about it. (Yes, it really took you 10 seconds to clear CMOS..)

* I will not run on ahead and click stuff without being told.

* I will not insist that I did nothing to make the computer break. The tech doesn't believe that I sat here like a lump and stared at the computer all day without touching anything.

* I will make sure that whatever the problem child is, that it's plugged in before I call for help.

* Cussing at the nice tech doesn't solve anything.

* If I can't speak English/the language of the tech support center, I will go find someone who can to make the call for me.

* I will not disdain to read user manuals.

* I will not call Manufacturer X's support line for problems with products made by anybody BUT Manufacturer X, even if it's toll free.

Anybody who works in Kansas doing tech support for Compaq will recognize this fellow. We couldn't figure out if he was drunk, stoned, a stroke victim, faking it all, or just stupid. I won't say his name, but I don't need to. This guy had something like 120 cases logged in a 4 month period, under 20 different accounts in our database. He wasn't too quick, and came up with errors we'd never heard of before (case notes also record things like "EU then said he had to burp and did so loudly"). We quickly figured out to just tell him to Quickrestore, which got him off our phones, but if you let him, he'd run away with you. My boyfriend got to spend 2 hours with him one night showing him how to copy files onto a floppy disk, and the next night, he called back with the same question and got my boyfriend again. One morning I was working in a different part of the building, and a tech came in with a glazed look on his face. He was so frustrated and so tired out emotionally.. I could tell he'd gotten off a bad call. When I asked what happened, it turned out that someone had run him through the "my monitor won't come on" urban legend, from start to the grand finish of "because there's no power to my building", and it'd taken a solid two hours to get there. I said, "You got (name deleted), didn't you?" He was new and didn't know about this EU yet. From then on, we literally told this guy either to go learn it himself, or to quickrestore his computer. He never seemed to get the message, though, and kept calling in.

The last tech support place I worked decided to boost company morale, which was only slightly higher than the basement of hell, by putting up new artwork. Of a smiling, android-looking Norwegian type guy with very unnatural looking eyes whom we quickly nicknamed Hans.. supposedly he was the embodiment of all that was this company. (Name slightly altered to protect the innocent and because I no longer remember exactly what German-ish name we called him.) One guy decided that Hans was stalking him. For some reason one of the framed posters kept ending up on his desk, propped up against his computer.. this was a huge 48"x36" poster, and god knows how they got it moved without anybody noticing. It's my understanding that when everybody quit and moved away, someone stole Hans and put him on this guy's car's front seat.

Last week I got a service call for the standard smoking/arcing monitor. When the field tech got there to fix it, to his astonishment, the EU was sitting at the computer with this monitor attached to it still, doing work. I said, "What, was it business critical stuff?" No.. he was entering receipt numbers in or something stupid like that. Apparently blue smoke and arcing electricity on the monitor didn't bother him much. Bothered hell out of the tech, though.

A woman called me to scream in my ear about her modem not working. Seems she was a total internet virgin.. The modem wasn't even giving a dial tone. We quickly discovered that this was because the modem card was entirely missing from her system. She screamed that I better send someone out to fix it. When I pointed out that her computer was well over a year old and that she'd never mentioned a modem missing before, it was officially Not My Problem -- face it, anybody could have taken it out after she'd bought it (she sounded like one of these ghetto empresses, and there were at least a dozen people in the room with her when she called by the voices I heard). I cut off further ranting by asking her that next time she purchases a major piece of equipment, to ensure that all components are present and working immediately, and she decided to hang up, threatening that next time she'd buy a Dell. I don't think her voice ever went below screaming volume level.

A guy sheepishly called me to say that he'd broken his wife's computer for the third time. He'd just lost her desktop pattern somehow, he said, but somehow he'd also erased it. There weren't many options for him. We tried to reinstall it using add/remove programs, but this was a manufacturer-specific pattern, and it wasn't happening. Finally after half an hour I told him it wasn't going to come back without a quickrestore. He began to go into hysterics. Seems his wife had told him that if he EVER caused her to have to QR again, she was removing button privileges FOREVER, and he was sleeping on the couch. I told him to buy her some roses and tell her I said it wasn't his fault (I don't think it really was..).

Raise your hand, who loves talking to people who accidentally put a nude picture on their desktop before the parents/wife gets home?

That's about what I can think of for now. Please don't use my real email, I get spammed enough as it is. Nice site! I'm enjoying it so far.

Cas

I received a call from an end user who said that he wanted to know if the 'system' would be up on the Friday before a holiday weekend, even though he received a memo stating that it wouldn't be available. He said that he plans on driving 80 miles round-trip from his home to the office so that he can log-on to the network. I advised him to call us before he began his journey.

I am non-tech person, with limited computer knowledge..just enough to operate my "puter" with out harming anyone...In the town I was living in at the time..the server crashed quite frequently..there were over 40,000 people using one server..(quess which company!) We constantly got busy signals and error messages. Approx every 3 weeks, I could not get online at all, so I would call tech support.

Let me prepidice this by saying..I had just had my computer rebuilt and a new modem put in about 2 months earlier. I know nothing was wrong with my system because I had the builder check it out (he was a good friend).

I called AOL Tech support and asked if there was something wrong with the server (again) and was informed NO. I asked her to check and she said she was not able to do that, but if there was a problem in my area it would inform her. I told her that I had not been able to get online for over 2 days now, and that I had called about 3 weeks ago about the same thing. She told me I hadnt called their tech support in over a year (I had called 3 times in the last 2 months) She proceeded to go thru the usual procedures, had me check my Connection numbers, reset my modem string, reboot my computer, etc. I told her I had already done all that before I called and she told me it was my modem and that I needed to get it serviced. I informed her that it was new. she told me it was defective (I was highly perturbed by now) then She told me that I needed to uninstall Windows and reinstall that I had system errors. I told her basically that she was nuts!

I asked to speak to her supervisor. He got on the line and fed me the same BS, and told me I needed to take my computer in for service. I told them whatever and hung up the phone. I then tried to get back online..no dice...so I called back Tech support and went thru the initial procedures and asked if the server was down in my area, that guy told me..OH yeah...we have had MAJOR trouble in that area..in fact we are adding a new number as we speak!

I asked him to call that other supervisor and inform him of this info!

(just wanted to let you know that it is not always the customer...lol)

This was posted to a Usenet group I was reading. I have read this message several times and cannot make head or tail of it.

--

I have my e-mail addresses set up but I also keep receiving a cable internet mail e-mail. It keeps crashing, I delete it but when I reload my computer cable internet fixes an error and the cable internet mailer returns.

Help

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I think she does need help!

Cheers,

Graham W. Boyes

I have been a sys-admin for a global computer-company for about 8 months. During that time, I had to take care of all servers, but also of every single user-problem.

Tale 1:

*note: I sent out three virus-warnings by email three days ago to all users in my building AND I put up the same warnings near the entrance, the toilets and the canteen*

User calling in: My computer isn't working anymore.

Me: What's wrong with it?

User: I cannot get onto the intranet and internet anymore.

Me: I'll be right there to check something out.

While walking downstairs, I prepare to enter some proxy-settings and be on my way in 10 seconds; how wrong could I have been. The computer behaved EXACTLY as several of the virus-warnings have predicted. I immediately disconnected the PC from the network, shut down Windows and took the computer to my office. Using a virus-scanner, every single .EXE was infected this very morning.

Me calling user: Euh... At what time did you get in this morning?

User: Somewhat earlier, as I came across a nice site last night and wanted to download the programs at work to have a fast connection.

Me: Do you still know the names of those programs?

User starts to sum up a list of programs; the same from the virus-warning.

End of tale 1: User was fired for deliberately infecting computers; computer was sent back to the factory.

Tale 2:

Several users complained that their laptops were running slowly and asked me to come up with a solution. I went to my manager and explained the situation. After some meetings, we agreed on NOT letting the users install software on their laptops and sent out a SLA, which was to be enforced on the edge.

Week later; user walks in with laptop.

User: My laptop is really bugging me; it's tooo slow.

Me: Do you have any software installed that wasn't provided by [company]?

User: No way, who do you think I am? How dare you accuse me of that? I'll talk to your manager about it, while you fix my PC.

Me: Before you do, do you agree with me copying the hard-drive first?

User: Whatever you like, I'm off to have you fired...

I take the laptop, plug it into a wall-outlet and make a connection to a cloning-server and start to clone the HDD. First thing I notice is that 7.4Gb out of 8.1Gb had been used, while our Windows-installation takes under 300Mb. After cloning, I boot into Windows and start to examine all software.

- Registry contained 152 keys of different software-manufacturers.

- 67 programs were still installed.

- Most programs had been registered to [insert nick-names of cracking/hacking-groups here].

- Complete network-directory had been copied locally, for work on the road.

- The kids had set up multiple internet-accounts.

- A search on GIF/JPG/BMP revealed about 4000 pictures of pr0n, blood&guts, accidents and other "adult" material.

By that time, user returned to collect his laptop. I told him that I couldn't find anything weird about it, and kindly asked him to take it to my manager.

End of tale 2: user was fired on the stand, not before being forwarded to BSA for all software on his laptop. He tried formatting it himself at some point, but I still had his drive-image.

One day I get a call from a guy I've previously talked to

a couple of times, and he seemed quite comp-competent.

So I was quite surprised when he said what the problem

was: he was trying to rename a .mp3 file, but windows

wouldn't let him. I actually heard the file playing in the

background ("Come on over" by Christina Aguilera) so I

told him that it was because the file was currently in use.

After about ten seconds of complete silence I heard the

sound of a forehead being banged to a desk three times.

Then he says:

"No need for the mute button. You're gonna submit this

to TechTales, aren't you?"

We both had a good laugh.

I worked for a company that held two separate divisions in different cities. I worked for division "A". Division "B" had a tech support person named Troy. How he got hired is still a mystery. Anyway, on this occasion, we had sent a piece of software developed internally to Division "B" for troy to install on several machines. Straight forward install, just use the defaults. The call came the day he received it:

T=Troy

J=Me

T: I'm having problems getting this thing to install.

J: Whats the problem?

T: The computer keeps saying I gotta have windows running to install it.

J: (he's using the command prompt)...OK Then start Windows.

T: How?

J: WHAT?!?

T: How?

J: Take the disk out and restart the computer.

T: ok...

J: (hearing the post then key presses) What are you doing?

T: Well, I hit F8 then "command line"

J: Don't do that...restart it again.

T: OK

J: Don't hit anything, just let it start.

T: OK

(again hearing the post)

J: (after a couple of minutes of silence) Troy?

T: Yeah

J: Whats going on?

T: Well I got this green screen with some pictures on it and a gray bar at the bottom with a button that says "Start". Is that Windows?

J: Troy, there's not a lot I can do to help you right now...I'll be coming down with ***IS Manager's name*** later this week. We'll do it then.

(As for the F8 restart he did, the guy that hired him hated Windows and did everything from the DOS prompt which was OK because our DB at the time was a DOS package anyway; Troy picked up the reboot from him.)

About a month later, the company had to relocate the operations of Div "B" to our location. Most employees were offered the option of relocating. Troy wasn't.

I'd love to say this is one of mine, but it was a cow-orker who took it (we work at a cable TV/phone company)

C= Customer F= Fred (name changed to protect innocent)

C: I'm going to sue your company!

F: What seems to be the problem, sir?

C: You've cut off my phone!

F: Well, if you could just give me your account number, I'll have a look at that for you now.

C: OK, it's xxxxxxxxxx

F: OK then, sir, it seems that your phone has been disconnected for non-payment.

C: Yes, that's fair enough, but you've disconnected my fridge too!

To this day, I still wonder how this guy thought we could turn his fridge off from the phone exchange.

One thing I have found doing tech support for around 7 years in the UK is the number of users that call and give false answers to my questions, examples:

User phones up: My monitor is not working!

me: OK, it powered up?

user: yes

me: have you moved it recently?

user no:

me: ok, i'll come up

I go up one floor, find the user at a different desk with the monitor with no lights on it! I grab the now dropped power cable throw it across the table, tell him "There you go!" and leave!

User calls with generic mail problem:

me: what do you see on your screen?

user: nothing!

me: nothing at all? Can you see where to click file! at the top left of the screen!

user: oh yes!

Surely if these people expect support they should be able of communicating what their eyes see.

I thought I had heard it all until today...

This guy calls up, and asks me (this is a direct quote, with the ISP name changed of course)

"Why does it automatically connect when I click on my 'Connect to MyISP' icon?"

What did he expect it to do? Make coffee for him?

I work on an internet help desk - we have to save answered messages to archives - and every so often we have to save the archives to diskette to make room for NEW messages in the mailbox.

There are two departments working off of a shared system - one "mailbox" is visible to BOTH buildings/departments. The other location got a "full mailbox" message so they started "cleaning" things out.......saved them to a hard drive that I don't have access to (and I have to run a "search" for past contacts). So I ask the guy to restore things to the mailbox and I will archive to diskette (he gets paid more - but the diskettes are stored at my desk).

He sends over 13 (thirteen) diskettes with six weeks of messages on them - in WORD each message is shown once in HTML, once in clear text, and a third time in some other gobbledygook.....

My supervisor has to sign on to my computer to give me access to the A drive (I don't have the "authority") so I can move the contents of these 13 diskettes back into the mailbox - then save to diskette the way they have been saved the last few months (until "Whosit" got helpful).

Saved "properly" - I got all six weeks onto ONE diskette (with room left over) and sent his "personal" diskettes back.........too bad I am only part-time right now - I want to apply for HIS job!!!!

I work in technical support for a major monitor manufacturer. A women called expressing that he monitor has just preformed an illegal operation. I explained to her that it was impossible. She insisted "but it says it right on it!"

When I worked tech support for an anonymous video game system. 2 Jamaican fellows from New York called in to report problems with their System. After troubleshooting I gave them the address as to where they can have their system sent to to have it repaired. The address is in pennsylvania. After stating that, the customers on the started talking to each other in a very bothered tone then started yelling at me that theres no such state as Pennsylvania. At first I thought it was a prank call but after the amount of time and effort the customers took to try and convince me. I came to the conclusion that:

A: THey were on serious amounts of mind altering drugs, and were on some colonial disorganization trip.

B: Were from another country and had not studied their American geography very well before coming here. (Don't you at least have to know the names of states before you become a citizen)

C: Were mentally disturbed. C'mon man, they lived at most 100 miles from the damn state and they didn't want to admit it's existence. Wow, and I thought I had problems sometimes.

As the unofficial tech-support guy in my department, I get the calls that are "too urgent" for the official support team to handle.

Yesterday, a cow-orker complained that herdektop inkjet printer wasn't working - it would start to feed the sheet, then stop and all the panel lights would flash. She tried everything she knew, and my standard "reboot and retry" solution was no help.

I checked her cables, uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers, and looked inside the machine to make sure nothing was jammed. The she said, "It hasn't worked since I changed the ink cartridge yesterday."

Open the printer, remove the cartridge ... and instruct user that the little plastic protective strip must be removed before installing the new cartridge.

sigh.

Working on a radio station, as a sound technician, I work a lot on computers. Some of our female-journalists are very skilled at their jobs, but not that computer-experienced.

Normally Im pretty helpfull, and understanding, but once in a while...

-One day one of the ladies started complaining about "not being able to se anything on the computer"

Having installed win-98, and activated the classic power-down-screensaver, I wasn't surprised, but got a funny idea.

Me: What is it that yo cant se?

Her: The computer! (pointing at the screen)

Me: Ohh, the desktop.

Her: Yes, thats the thing (she had heard the name before.)

Me: Well, some times computers stall a bir, its just like their are falling asleep.

her: asleep? -then what do I do?

Me: Well you have to wake it up ofcourse!

Her: oh, i see.

Me: You know that its called a desktop, because it stands on the desktop right?

Her: Yes, ofcause (not knowing any better)

Me: So you actually have to wake the entire desktop up, by lifting, shaking or banging it violently, while you try to get its attention.

Her: Oh, i do?

Me: yes, let me show you (I then lifted one end of the entire desktop, shaked the table a bit and asked it to wake up, before putting it down, the mouse moved from the shakings, and voila, the "desktop awoke".)

Her: Nice, (confused, but not admitting it) well it makes sense, thanks for your help.

-It took a couple of days, with her shaking and swearing at the desktop, to get the computer to "wake up", and the rest of the office trying to hide their amusement, before of her collegues, showed her "another" way to wake her desktop up.

-She never got the joke....

-Vn Knut

Hi, I do Major OEM desktop support and one day i get this call from this poor confused woman who has just installed the worlds worst virus on her computer A*l 5.0

the call went something like this

M=me

C=caller

Me "thank you for calling De*l technical support can i have your tag number please"

C "Uh what is that?"

m " It is a number describing your De*l computer

C " where would i find it?

Well i try to help her find the tag number and well to no avail cannot find it, I asked her did we ever replace her HDD or format this one. She was not sure. Fiannly I dont know why i dint ask her this in the first place but, it just came to me

M " Mam, Do you have a De*l computer?

C " No! I have a packerd bell.

M "Mam What can i do for you today at De*l technical support? ( say with emphasis on the word De*l)

C " well I just installed a*l 5.0 and now I cant get into windows and i called A*l and they told me to call you?

( I so lost it after this one but muted the customer)

I again explained that she was at de*l tech support and she would need to call packard bell.

Her reply was "OH!"

I can understand how maybe just maybe A*l could have misunderstood and heard De*l not Packard Bell but for the customer to sit on hold as long as she did listening to our on hold ad's to this day behooves me.

I was looking over someone's shoulder as they browsed the web. They asked me, "To see the most recent version of the page I click the 'Refurbish' button, right?"

Me: "Um...um...yeah!"

I just _have_ to tell you this one. When I really got

fed up with one of my former classmates being a complete

1d10t, dumb@$$ and stuff (this wouldn't have really been

a problem... if he hadn't kept calling ME, that is), I

whipped up a brand new active desktop for him. Just a plain,

single-coloured background and a bit of JavaScript (I

applied it when I was installing his new video card, so

I had to fiddle in the screen setup anyway).

The JavaScript code displayed an alert box "WARNING! Dumb

user located in front of computer. This message will be

constantly displayed to annoy the heck out of you"

...every second!

I work desktop support for a local hospital, and I was recently moved to a new office due to construction. Whilst printing out a trouble ticket, I noticed the paper tray in the office printer was empty. No problem, I think, and ask a nearby coworker where they kept their printer paper. The woman looked at me soberly and replied, "In the printer, of course."

AS/400 Tech Support, may I help you?

Yeah, I called you last week before I moved my system and you made me label all the cables and terminals and write down your instructions of what to do before and after I moved it.

OK, I remember. What happened?

It took forever, following your instructions, but I did it just the way you said and now one of the terminals won't come up.

Is the system itself up?

Yes. All the other terminals are working fine.

OK, it's probably an address problem. Turn the terminal that isn't working off, hold down the space bar and keep it down and turn on the terminal.

Uh,....Well I can't do that.

Why not?

Well, I lost the power cord in the move. Is that important?

I used to work on the helpdesk for a large tax firm, and we received calls from tax offices all over the country. One day (April 15) I get a call from a guy who insists that when he turns the DOS machine off, his network goes down. At that time, I instruct him to leave the machine on, as it is the last day of tax season and I don't want the office to be down. I also instructed him to call back at a later time so that I could fix the problem somewhat at leasure. He agreed and hung up. Several weeks later, he called back again with the same problem (it had never been fixed). I have to say that I really did not know what it was. After asking him some questions (more like trying to buy time while I tried to figure out what to do next) I asked him how he was turning off this DOS machine. Turns out that the machine was connected to a powre strip. When I asked him what else was connected to the strip, he informed me that the hub was also connected to the same strip. I then instructed him to use the powre switch on the front of the computer to turn off the DOS machine. Special note: to understand this setup, you need to get the picture that each tax office has its own LAN, not connected in any way to HQ. They did not have cable installers come in because most of these offices are temporary and so they just run the network cable along the walls. I have heard of stories where people go into offices to find hundreds of feed of network cable coiled and thrown in a corner or on the floor. Can we say crosstalk?

I work for a company who doesn't sell software, but rather gives it away in order for companies to use it and make us money.

ANYWAY, I work as a level 2 technician on the help desk that supports our software.

I was working with a middle aged woman in Georgia, and I needed to check her software version:

Me: Ok, click on help, then about, and read me the version number.

Her: It says 1.17

Me: Ok, your software is 4 versions older than current, and we'll need to install from disk. Do you have any of our CD's?

Her: Yes.

Me: What's the date on the most current one you have?

Her: 8-23-00

Me: Ok, let me take a look what versions are on that CD (I began looking in our database to see what software versions were on her disk)

Her: Is this better?

Me: ?? Is what better?

Her: Can you see it now?

Me: Hoping that it's not so, but beginning to realize that she actually thought I meant I wanted to see HER disk, I dared... (and hoped not to get busted) and said, Yes, that's a little better.

Her: Is this the one you need?

Me: Can you please turn it over? (absolutely pissing myself)

Her: Ok, there ya' go.

Me(Seriously about to die from holding in the laughter): That one is is still 2 versions behind, I'll have to send you a new one.

Her: Ok, thank you.

One of my clients had a severe problem that necessatated reformatting. The hard drive was less then 2gb so this was a good opprotunity to upgrade the hard drive also.

The new hard drive was formatted, Windows 98, the latest IE and their application suite installed.

Windows recognised the video and sound card automaticly, but not the modem.

The client had all the disks and certificate numbers.....except for the modem.

We still had some cheap modems left over from Christmas, so I used one of those. The modem's system requirement was Pentium at 150mhz or better. I couldn't find the CPU speed on the PC but it seemed to work. (It's hard to be sure with the crappy phone lines in the shop!) It worked well enough to download the printer driver from HP.

I show the client that she can download a word document as an attachment to her Yahoo emails and print the document from Word without getting a "the PC is too busy" error.

The client calls later that day. She can't maintain a connection. %$#@ cheap modem! I order one that doesn't depend on the processor so much. She brings in her PC after it arrives the following day. I install it right away. The self test is ok, the dialing is ok, but I have to run the Wizard twice to get IE to launch the dialer automatically. Opening IE dials the ISP, but the page comes up "This page can't be displayed". I remove and reinstall the network settings. "This page can't be displayed" still comes up. It's in the address line as "\\c: something-or-other page can't be displayed yada yada yada" You know the URL. But I notice that the message comes up instantly. Shouldn't it try first then say the page can't be displayed?

I check the options and check the home page setting. I had set it to www.msn.com. The homepage is now \\c: something or other page can't be displayed yada yada yada.

I know Ctrl D adds a bookmark, is there a keystroke to reset your homepage? I set it to yahoo.com and billed her the price difference between the cheap modem and the better one.

http://www.pioneeris.net/jsl151

{In my last submission I distictly requested you speel check the document. Please speel check this document and omit the text in brackets.}

I'm not paid tech support, but since I'm a student of computer science, I am usually the first who's called for free help.

One night I was phoning home and my dad wanted to talk to me about something. He's fairly computer literate, but since he's got me he sometimes tends to ask first and think later. Now this call went as follows:

Dad: Hi, daughter.

Me: Hi, dad.

Dad: You know my computer in my office?

Me: Yes, dad.

Dad: Can you image how it looks from the rear?

Me: Yes, dad.

Dad: That slot card with all those 3.5mm jacks is the soundcard, isn't it?

Me: Yes, dad.

Dad: and the innermost jack is the speaker out, right?

Me: Yes, dad.

Dad: There's a big jack, almost like a VGA port right next to it.

Me: Yes, dad.

Dad: What the hell is that for?

Me: Joystick, dad.

Dad: Silly me!

Me: ... Yes, dad....

One of our new employees was complaining about the age of his computer. When he requested an upgraded machine, he was told that he wouldn't be getting one until his old one died.

Thinking he could help speed up the process, he took the HDD out of the case and cooked it in the microwave, then reinstalled the HDD and closed the case.

Having gone through all that simply to kill his machine, you'd think he'd be satisfied. However, when tech support showed up to work on his machine and asked what was wrong, the guy actually told the tech he'd nuked the HDD.

He was dismissed for damaging State property. Go figure.

This was in a post on a "computer newbies" board that I read(and post occasional advice to).

The guy was asking about adding more RAM to his machine and wanted to know how to install it.

*ahem*

"Do you just install memory like a program or do you have to open the harddrive and put the memory in

there?"

The vision of this guy going at his poor HDD with a screwdriver and looking for a place to put the RAM is just...horrifyingly funny.

Just got back from a trip to the local Best Buys. I didn't

really need anything, but it's always fun to go in and

drool.

I was actually considering the purchase of a digital camera

when the salesperson walked up and asked if he could help

me. I explained that I'd wanted a one for a while but

wasn't really sure if I was ready to buy.

Him: We have a special offer for $400 off the purchase of

any item in the store.

Me (smirking): Yeah, if you sign up for several years of

service with MSN. We have a cable modem at home, so we have

no use for another ISP.

Him: Oh. But you don't have to sign up for it yourself.

Someone else could use it.

Me: As I just said, we have no use for it. Everyone who

lives in our house uses the cable modem.

Him: Well, you could talk someone else into signing up for

it and still get the $400.

Me: Sorry, I don't dislike any of my friends that much.

If he had so much as cracked a smile when I said that,

he might not have lost the sale.

I support internal employees at a large telecommunications company. One day I was helping a guy get a license key to install some software, and I was telling him to go to our intranet's Desktop Technology and Management page:

me: "OK, in your browser, go to D.T.M., that's David Thomas Mary..."

him: "You don't have to call me Mary."

me: "What?"

him: "My name is David Thomas."

me: "Oh!" (I checked, and it was)

him: "It's going to www.dtm.com, and it wants to sell me Viagra. Another blow to my masculinity."

both: "ha ha ha!"

I work for a small ISP (about 7,000 users). We provide service for teachers throught the area. I got a call one afternoon from an older lady that could hardly speak english. We basically had to start from scratch. So I told her to grab the mouse and and ... blah blah blah..After I said the word, "mouse" I could hear her get upset. She immediatly exclaimed, "mouse?...there are no mouse in my house...I have a very clean house!"...It was a long call.

This isn't really a TechTale, but it's kinda amusing. I work in customer services for a large UK cable TV/phone/internet company. One day, fairly late at night, I get a call:

M=Me C=Caller

M: Good evening, you're through to Huw at xxxxxx, can I take your name, please?

C: Is that Dave?

M: No, my name's Huw.

C: Are you a plasterer?

M: No. We are one of the largest communications companies in the UK. I can get you a new phone line if you like!

C: Oh. So I got the wrong number, then?

M: Yup.

Now we were quiet that night so she didn't have to spend loads of time on hold, but did she really expect to get through to "Dave's Plastering and Artexing services" and be presented with "If you have a sales enquiry, press 1, if you have a problem with your bill..."?

I had a physicist call me one time (I work for a radiation oncology software company), and he needed to move the mouse arrow to the far left of the screen for some reason, however he had reached the edge of the mouse pad and the mouse arrow wasn't far enough over. He wanted to know if he needed to buy a larger mouse pad, or was there anything else he could do to get the mouse where it needed to be.

""customer

no'"' me

"i can't extract my system report to excel"

ok, what happens when you try?

"it gives an error"

what does the error say?

"hold on a sec i'm going to run the extraction again"

ok

"where do i save this?"

?????

"it gives the option of C:, A:....."

ok where do you want to save it?

"i don't know"

?????

ok let me use pcanywhere to see what you are doing.

"ok"

ok your doing a pc analyst report?

"no it's a system report"

where are you getting this from?

"4th item on the bottom"

reflection?

"yeah that's it"

ok that's not our product. we don't support it. call them

"are you sure?"

yes.

"who do i call?"

reflection

"oh OK, so it's not your product?"

no

"but it say's the dialer name at the top of the report"

Yes, that's because that's what you named it and also it is the name of the dialer you are connected t.

"are you sure?"

yes.

"ok, thank you."

close case.

This story demonstrates that even the people who help the people who ignore the obvious sometimes tend to overlook the obvious themselves.

---------------------------------

I was talking to someone who had just moved to another location, and after setting up the computer, they noticed they had no sound.

"A piece of cake," I thought.

Sure enough I found right away the person didn't have the power to their amplified speakers plugged in. We plugged them in and low and behold... we had sound.

Naturally, the person felt kind of stupid. I put them at ease saying something like "happens to the best of us".

After I hung up, however, I must have railed on for 15 minutes that people shouldn't get computers if they were going to do stupid things with them.

I would have railed on forever but the maintenance man walked up to change my light bulb. I'd emailed him earlier, that my light bulb was out in my cubicle, and I needed a new one. By some ironic twist of fate, our company does not make light bulbs available to the average person. Maintenence has to come and install them. So here he is. He changes the bulb, and still nothing. Then he follows the cord down to the mass of cables plugging into the recepticles in the cube. He plugs it in.

"Happens the the best of us," he says

Caller (c), Hotliner (h)

-----------

H: Hello, IT_Hotline, may I help you?

c: Yes, your programm tells me, that there's not enough memory on my harddisc

h: Then you have to remove some software from drive c: which is not from our company

c: OK, I will move some files to drive d: (click)

-----------

one hour later

-----------

H: Hello, IT_Hotline, may I help you?

c: yes, I called one hour ago and you told me to move some files to drive d:

H: yes, I remember, what's wrong?

c: My computer don't want to boot.

H: What did you move to drive d: ?

c: All directories from drive c: !

------------

Notice:

He moved all directories including the windows-directory ?!?!?!?!?!

In 1995 when the Internet was just starting to catch on as a commercial enterprise I was doing tech support for the town's only commercial ISP. At the time there was a product on the market called "Internet in a Box" which had Trumpet Winsock (needed to connect to the internet in Windows 3.1), Netscape and a few other internet utilities.

A lady called up. The conversation went as follows:

"I have the internet. What do you want for it?"

"Excuse me?"

"I said I have the internet. I just bought it."

"You just *bought* the internet?"

"Yes. And I'm willing to sell it since you need it."

"You just bought the internet and now you want to sell it to me."

"You can't do your business without the internet, can you? No. You're an internet business."

"May I ask where you bought the internet?"

"Yes, I bought it at the store today. Internet in a Box. It's sitting right here on my desk."

I was shocked. This lady was serious.

"Well, I think we'll have to take our chances then. Thank you for calling, though. Have a nice day."

My uncle wishes for me to purchase him a CD burner. So I go, and we check several different stores. I'd heard about one that eliminates the risk of buffer underruns but couldn't remember which one it was so I asked the salesguy. His reply: (And this guy spoke English perfectly well,)

"Yes, sir, it has a two megabyte buffer underrun."

We did not purchase that particular model, or from that store!!

Cheers, and thanks so much for TechTales. Each month I anxiously await the new tales!

This is an actual call from our college help desk database...

User:

"help, when I turn the computer on it 'beeps agrily' at me.",

Tech:

"I moved her text book off the keyboard, all was well"

A few months ago, my mom was complaining that her WebTV was too slow. Being the kind person (idiot) I am, I decided out of the goodness of my heart (gave me an excuse to upgrade) to make her a gift my old computer for Christmas. I figured if she could learn WebTV, she could learn to use Windows, right?

It might be easy to blame her lack of attention to my instructions on advancing age, but the simple fact is that she has *always* had a short attention span. She made absolutely no effort to either remember what I had showed her 5 minutes ago or to look at the instruction sheet I had printed for her. Since I was sitting right next to her, it was much easier to ask me to repeat everything infinitely. She would ask me questions, but when I explained in the simplest terms possible, that "deer-in-the-headlights" look would cross her face within seconds. By the time my vacation was over, she had learned to play Solitaire fairly well.

Once I returned home, I got an email saying she had made an appointment with a local computer geek to come over and give her lessons. He convinced her to leave the computer on unless it became necessary to reboot, as it would make things easier for her. During my stay, I had edited logow.sys so it displayed a starfield rather than the standard Windows logon screen and she was rather fond of it. She insisted that the next time he came, she was going to have him "change the settings" so she would be able to "see my pretty universe" again. I have no idea which settings she thought he was going to change to accomplish this! Oh well, if nothing else at least I was able to convince her that A*L sucks.

Word of advice to those who might be considering teaching a woman in her late 70s to use a computer (for less than $500 an hour): DON'T!

At the place of my work, a medium sized Internet Software startup company, I am the Internal Systems Administrator. I basically fix any problems with any computers we have.

One day, our internet access decided to stop working. We have a cable modem connected to a RedHat Linux box that uses IPChains to route for the rest of the network. Our ISP Telstra Bigpond does not support this operating system. Only Windows 9x! Anyway, I call up and state my problem. After waiting in the queue for about 15 minutes I eventually get to talk to someone. They tell me that where their servers are locaetd there has been a blackout and they are unsure of when the Internet will be back again. Fair enough, I figure Power is out of their hands, I'll wait and call later.

I call back the next day, wait about 30 minutes this time. I get a different support person this time. They tell me that I am unable to browse web pages because "The Enhanced Feature" on my account has not been enabled. I thought to myself, the primary reason for our company having internet access is to browse web pages. But I let it slide. The support person tells me it will be enabled and I will be contacted.

The next day, still no contact so I call again. About 20 minutes this time....

Diffrent Support person yet again. I tell them the problem, and they tell me their authintication server has changed IP address. I figure all I have to do is modify the script, 2 second job, and re-run it. I ask them to hold while I do this and I am surfing again. YAY!

I un-knidly tell the support person of the last two calls and how pathetic there support team is. This is about the time they ask me nicely to hang up the phone.

My name is Jon and I tutor Computer Science and Logic at Spokane Community College. The other day I had a student come in that was getting rather upset. I asked if I could help and she proceeded to tell me that ever since school started, she had been having trouble with her machine at home. "That damn machine ate my friggin homework again", she says. When I asked her to be more specific, she told me that she does her homework on her computer at home and brings it to school on a disk. In an attempt to help I recommended that she try a different brand of disk seeing as she was using a generic brand. Then earlier today, she said that she had tried my suggestion, however she was still having trouble. I then asked her if maybe she was exposing her disk to extreme temperatures, as in leaving it in the car in the sun or something, and she replied "I don't expose it to extreme temperatures. As a matter of fact the only chance it would have of that happening is when I take it off the fridge in the morning before I go to school, but I wouldn't think it would get THAT cold. God, its that damn machine I have at home, I just know it!!!" This made things very clear and I proceeded to explain to her why we can't use a magnet to tack floppy disks to the reefer. I have to say that the entire year I have been at that school this is the best one I have had yet and I just had to share it with those who I know would enjoy it as much as I did!!!!!!!!!!.

Jon Reitmeyer,

Liber Arts Center

Spokane Community College

I work for an Internet Provider in the UK in the billing department. We quite often get customers calling in who have been cut off cause their credit card has reached it's limit. Fair enough, happens to us all.

One customer we had on, was so determined to get his internet access back, that he actually called his credit card company and asked them to up his spending limit so that we could take the payment he had missed and he could get on. Wouldn't be so bad but he called us back after 11pm at night to get us to take the payment.

Oh dear.

This is one of the most FAMOUS calls at my call center. people on every shift have heard this one. once again, anything in ( ) is my own 2 cents

Me: Thank you for calling ISP tech how can I help you?

Him: Yes, I can't get connected to the internet and I need to see my stock quotes (here we go again, day trader* #6)

Me: Ok sir, let me get a little bit of information from you. What Operating System are you using?

Him: Windows (I would later find out which version)

Me: Ok and what version of our software are you using?

Him: The new one with the ******** icon

Me: Ok, and what screen are you looking at right now?

Him: My Network adapters (one point for him knowing what a network adapter listing looks like)

Me: what entries do you have (trying to limit my call from harm)

Him: Client for Microsoft Networks, Client for Netware Networks, NDIS Adapter, Microsoft Family Logon, HP En 10/100 fast etherlink adapter, "Generic Company" Lan/Wan adapter...

Me: Ok sir, are you using this on a Network?

Him: Yes I am (Striek 1)

Me: What version of windows were you using again?

Him: Windows NT (Strike 2)

Me: Sir Im sorry you're going to have to call your Sys Admin or Windows NT for this. We can't help you out with this

Him: No you dont understand, YOUR name is on this and I need it to get my stock quotes. Im using this for business and Im loosing thousands of dollars.

Me: Im sorry sir, but I can't help you out with this. our software is not support on a LAN OR Windows NT

---bantering goes on like this for a minute or so---

Me: Sir can you hold on for one moment please?

Him: Yes

Me: *places him on hold and says: Time to play hardball*

Me: Im sorry about that sir. let me see if I understand your problem ok?

Him: Sure

Me: You're willingly telling me you're tripple violated your End User Liscence Agreement and it's ok with you if I contact my supervisor and have him call our customer service to cancel your account until the end of time right? (this is actually true - we dont support NT, Lan/Wan OR it being used for business)

Him: aaaaah... mmmmmm.... oooo..... ummmmmm ....

Me: Is that what you're telling me? You know that screen that comes up and says I accept that most people just hit accept on?

Him: Yes that's what I did

Him: What do I have to do?

Me: Call your sys admin or win nt for this

Him: Im NOT paying for that phone call.

Me: Im sorry sir, but you're going to have to.

--- end of phone call after giving him the phone number ---

*We have a lot of day traders who use 3rd party programs on their computer that we are not allowed to help out with

M = Me

U = User

M - Do you have Netscape on the screen?

U - Yes.

M - Can you click on Edit and go to Preferences please?

U - Uh, one second, I have to bring it up on the screen.

*shudder*

Well I've been working for ISP and had gotten QUITE a few phones calls from people who really didn't know anything. THIS one however takes the cake. Anytime you see the words little boys running, say them in your mind with the most annoying "granny" voice you can. Anything in ( ) is my own 2 cents

Me: Hello, thank you for calling ISP Tech Support can I help you?

Her: Yes Im having quite a few problems. I cant get online, can't get email, and I need to remove these 3 little boys running from across my screen.

Me: Ok ma'am, let's deal with this one at a time. What's the error message you're getting?

Her: The username or password is incorrect or something along those lines

Me: Ok, well what icon are you clicking on?

Her: The one that says ISP

Me: What does it say for your username & password?

Her: Mrs Barker (made up name)

Me: ok, do you know what your username & password are?

Her: Username is XXXXXXXX password is XXXXXXX

Me: Type it in and hit connect

Her: Great it worked! I see those two little computer terminlas by my three little boys running. now you HAVE to help me remove that

Me: Let's deal with the email issue now

Her: Oh, I got that while I was talking to you. now help me remove my little boys running

Me: Im sorry ma'am I can't help you with that. That program is from another software company

Her: I dont care you're my ISP and I want you to help me remove it

Me: Ma'am Im sorry. Due to the Monopoly Trial with microsoft our company made a policy stating that we can NOT remove competitors' software

Her: I dont care, remove it for me

Me: Ma'am you're gonna have to call AOL's tech Support for this

Her: NO YOU'RE my ISP and YOU'RE going to fix it

Me: Ma'am Im sorry but I am not allowed to do that

lather rinse repeat the last few lines for 4 minutes or so

I have read many of the tales on this site and I gotta admit that some of them seemed a little far fetched. Well, I'm on my knees asking forgiveness.

I'm not a tech by trade, although I do have a degree in Computer Sciences. So when a lady I work with was having problems installing a program from her CD, she asked me for help. It seems her computer was telling her that the A:\ drive wasn't ready. Of course, the CD ROM isn't the A:\ drive.

I showed her how to change to the CD-ROM (drive "R" in this case). Surprisingly, the computer now said the R:\ drive wasn't ready. Hmmm, I thought. Heres an intelligent lady who I know has used CD's before. Could it be possible? So I opened her CD-ROM and what do you know. THE CD WAS UPSIDE DOWN. Like I said, I know she's used CD's before so this surprised me.

Again, I grovel at the feet of full-time techs and promise, I shall never doubt the Tech Tales!

I've been a PC tech for 15 years, now with a company that only uses Macs. It's been a learning experience.

Soooo.... I unwrap the brand new Iomega internal Zip250 drive, and prep it to go into the beautiful virgin 500 mhz dual processor G4 Mac tower. No problem, right? I mean, how hard is it to install a drive? Answer: not as easy as installing on a PC-compatible, but not really *that* hard.

We have lotsa papers, serial number and lots and lots of instructions. Ignore the instructions. Probably not needed. Ignore the papers. Always a waste of time.

Speaking of which, the time consumed figuring out the screwy way the internal mounting fit in and the cables were attached: about 5 minutes. Getting it mounted: 10 minutes. (Freakin' slot has more moveable parts and doors and hinges than anything I've ever seen before.) On a PC this would hve been a 3 minute job tops.

No problem.

Now we plug in the registration software which REQUIRES THE DRIVE TO BE INSTALLED BEFORE IT WILL RUN. (this still makes me wanna smack something)

Program asks the usual, including serial number which the folks at Iomega oh so helpfully printed for us. It then asks for the drive identification number, which is apparently different than the serial number supplied on that little piece of paper.

Where is this number? (The program refuses to continue without it, making one sorely yearn for a large hammer or powerful decompiler.) On the $@#^! drive in the friggin tower.

Checked the written instructions carefully. (Who knows, maybe I shoulda (perish the thought,) read the (gasp) instructions.) No dice. No indication this would be needed. Fine.

Leave the machine on... take the tower apart. ID number is on bottom of drive (of course.) Unhook drive, check number, write down, replug drive, leave tower open, type in number.

Nothing. More nothing. (Tried a good dozen times, nothing.)

I Curse. A lot. Question the drive's dubious heritage. Get more coffee. Call Iomega. 39 minutes on hold. Tech dude thinks I'm an I-D-10-T, but humors me. Read him the serial number. The number is incomplete. Turns out the label was misprinted.

His suggestion: Get another one from the supplier. (MacWarehouse). Mine: Assign me a random ID number, or just give me one that works. His answer: We can't do that. I ask for a supervisor, he gives me an argument, then gets me his manager. No dice.

Fine. Call MacWarehouse. Corporate sales person gives me tech support. Raise hell. THEY call Iomega. Iomega tells them the same thing. They call me back: "We're sending you another one."

"New" drive arrives damaged the next day. If you shake it it sounds like a baby's rattle. (But it has a working serial number.)

Keep my old drive, send back the damaged one, plug in the number and all is right with the world.

Two days later, my boss inserts an old zip disk into the drive, and it gets stuck. Uses a screwdriver and a pair of pliers(!!!) to remove disk from the drive and totally destroys both disk and drive.

I'd love to see 'going postal' statistics for this business.

I was working as a tech in the military and one of my bosses had just had his computer moved. Since he wasn't capable of setting his computer back up I did it for him. He was up and running when I left. A little while later he called me because he couldn't find some of his files. I went up to his office because knowing he wasn't the most computer literate person I figured it was OE (Operator Error). I barely get into his office when he tells me he knows what the problem is. Some of the files must have fallen out of his computer in the move. It was all I could do not to laugh right then. I thought about having him help me look around the room and under the desk for bytes that fell out but I thought the best of it. I had him show me what he was trying to do. Problem solved he was trying to open an Excel spread sheet using word and since the extensions were not right he couldn't see the files. I left quickly so I could finally laugh...I couldn't get the image out of my mind how he saw computer operations.

I build computers from time to time, about a month ago an old women asked me to make one and install it. When i was done and gone home, she called me and asked what that noise was that came out of the big white box. She had just turned off her screen.

I used to work for a big company that has offices all over the UK. I worked at a remote site where the companies backup servers was situated, part of the staff were moving to another location and it was going to be our job to perform the backup every day. The secritary that was already in charge of it was supposed to give us instructions.

She said "oh we have never bothered, we had a problem with it once and it had crashed so we never did it again"

This company thought it had backups but it never had been done, who knows what would of happened if they actually had of needed them one day!!!

This is just a quick story and actually happened.

I am a computer engineer and one day a customer told me about something that he had done.

He told me that he had been looking at some adult web sites and this window had poped up saying illegal operation, he quickly turned off his computer and spent 2 weeks worrying about it expecting a call from the police about his illegal activities.

I had to explain to him that the illegal operation was just windows crashing and he should stop worrying as the police would not be coming round, he eventually belived me.

Ok, if we could do this, it would help. Escape clause rule for techs to use: If, during the course of the call, a tech must explain to an Eu where the 'enter' key is located on their keyboard, the tech is allowed to tell the Eu to put the computer back in the box and send it back. I can understand not knowing where a function key, the delete key, even the Esc key, but the 'enter' key? Even after explaining it is like the 'return' on a typewriter, Eu still did not know what I was talking about. Forget registering someone who wants to buy a gun, how about a seven day waiting period and background check for the purchase of a new PC?

Love the site, it keeps me from banging my head on the desk as much:)

I work as a tech support agent for a major corporation that

provides a line of home PC's and I recieved a call from

a woman who was having difficulty sending faxes with the

fax software that was included on her system, and as we support

all the software that comes packaged on the system I went on

to troubleshoot to determine what the problem was.

Well I get out of her that she was able to compose a document

with the fax software, and was able to fax it, but when she

attempted to send the document that she had previously made up

it would not go through.

I started to educated the user as to how to send the document

using ms works whe finally out of the blue she tells me that

the document she was trying to send was in fact on a piece of

paper that she was shoving into her printer.

A woman called our tech support number to complain that the software supplied with her new computer wasn't working properly.

"Can you describe the problem?" we asked her. She went on to describe the problem. Basically the disk supplied with her computer wouldn't work properly. We probed further to discover that the disk didn't seem to fit properly in the disk drive. This raised some eyebrows with us.

"How so?" we asked. She replied that the disk was very difficult to place in the drive. She was really annoyed with us and started to complain about all of the excess packaging.

"On the product?" we asked.

"No," she replied "I had to finally get out my scissors to get the disk out of all of that unnessecary packaging."

"But ma'am, the disk is shipped in just a paper envelope inside the computer box..."

"Not mine," she retorted. "MINE was sent in a paper envelope, and then inside the envelope was a black plastic envelope.

Apparently she'd taken scissors to the floppy disk to get off the plastic, leaving her with just the flimsy inner magnetic media which she was then having difficulty getting her computer to read. Go figure!

I had a customer with a pretty thick accent (probably spanish) call in and complain that his printer was not being seen on the network, and he could not configure it or print to it, it must be a broken network card! Here is how the conversation went:

(and my god this is all true, I got this call two months ago)

Me: "Okay, what kind of network do you have?"

Him: "I don't know."

Me: "What protocol are you using to try and communicate to the printer (TCP/IP etc.)?"

Him: "I don't know."

Me: "Well, how many PC's do you have on your network?"

Him: "One."

Me: "One? Do you have the printer connected to a hub, or directly to your computer?"

Him: "I don't know."

Me: "Okay sir, take a look at the printer, at the back of the printer, there will be two cables, one for the power and the other is for communication, what does the other one look like, describe it to me."

"Does it look sort of like a phone cabe (RJ45 ethernet), or does it have a 2 inch interface with metal pins (a parallel cable)?"

Him: "This, phone cable, yes, look like phone cable, for network."

Me: "Okay now follow that cable, after it comes out of the printer, where does it go, does it plug into a little box / a hub, or to the back of your PC."

Him: "It goes to di world and back to my PC."

Me: "What?"

Him: "It goes to di world and back to my PC."

Me: "Umm what do you mean, where does the cable plug into, do you have a wall jack, or a hub, I don't understand."

Him: (getting a little impatient) "It goes to di world and back to my PC!"

Me: "Okay sir, you have the world's system administrator call me with your network information and I will see what I can do!"

Had a good one waiting for me this morning. My DBA partner

was paged early this morning, a tape backup had failed.

Seems the backup process encountered considerable difficulty

when trying to write to... a cleaning tape! D'oh!

I’m not a tech support guy, nor is this even directly about tech support, but it’s along those lines. I’m a professional ASP/SQL web developer, and I’ve been working on a website for a friend of mine (no he’s not paying for it). It’s a website for a Counter-Strike clan. I’ve just talked to one of the clan members on AIM (I had just figured out the connection string for a database connection), and I’m amazed, to say the least. Here’s the chat transcript.

Note: Everybody in the clan (and I mean EVERYBODY) knows that I’m the one making the new site.

-----

Me: aha!

Loser: ok...

Me: I figured out how to use an MS Access DB on [host]

Me: so that means update module

Me: hehehe

Loser: what...

Loser: what r u talkin about...

Me: it means if you're an admin you just go to the admin page and have instant access to all the sections

Me: so you can say, add a news post

Loser: what?

Me: just enter your name, the title, and the main text of the news post and it's added to the site

Loser: can i do that in c-s?

Me: nonono the website foo

Me: I'm not making a CS server hehe

Loser: so i could update the web site?

Me: yeah if you're admin

Me: or if you have admin access

Loser: im not admin, and 4 what site?

Me: [address to the clan’s site]

Me: the new site

Loser: and...

Loser: what do i do there?

Me: ?

Me: that's the new [clan] site fool

Me: that's the one that the update module will be updating

Loser: ok

Loser: well, if its not a server that i dont have rcon to i dont care!

Loser: I WANT RCON!!!!

Loser: do u know how to get rcon on any server?

Me: no

Me: you don't have rcon to a website

Loser: ok... i lost intrist

Me (getting a little mad): wow and I bet you think you're computer literate

Loser: what?

Me: ...

Me: nevermind

Loser: my comp literates?

Loser: what...

Me (amazed that someone could be so stupid): I bet you think that you are computer literate

Loser: ok... reed what u rote..... you think that you are computer literate? is there suppose to be and s after the last word?

Me: no

Me: do you know what "literate" means?

Loser: no

Loser: i guess not

Me: it means you can read and write

Loser: oh, i know

Me (about to bang my head on the keyboard): when someone says they're "computer literate" they mean they mean they know about computers

Loser: ok

Loser: well

Loser: ok

Me: ...

Loser: thanx 4 that reedme..

Me: *shuts down AIM*

-----

...

I'm an IS tech, A+ and MSIE certifried (as I like to put it). I administer 20 some odd Novell servers, scads of NT servers and do helpdesk and etc. around our shop. I typically know what I am talking about and usually fess up when I get a stumper and try to wade through it - I detest getting BS'd and refuse to do it to others. I do however surprise myself sometimes by following hunches and typically get the matter resolved - usually learning something in the process

I've been calling the TV cable company for more than a year about cable modems, seems the company just started providing the service and needed a lot of infrastructure work to get them all setup in the various nodes around town. Hook up in my area started at "next month" then stretched to "next quarter" then to "next year" then simply moved to "any day now". I called before Christmas 2000 and asked again if cable modem service was available yet in my area. I nearly sh*t my drawers when they said it WAS. Yea-haw, I had a week of vacation betwixt Christmas and New Years, what better way to spend it then cruising around the web at high speed, dl'ing all kinds of por…er…programs.

I flew over to the cable office, asked them to verify I was good to go on my segment and got all the gizmos to hook it all up. I went home at lunch and hooked it all up . . . nothing. No connect lite or anything, the modem simply sat there blinking searching for a signal. Deep in my heart I knew what the matter was - I HAD NO signal, I KNEW they DIDN'T have me hooked up yet. I got cable TV signal but the higher frequency cable modem signal just wasn't there. I went back to work and decided to take care of it after work.

When I got home I looked through the docs and found the tech support number. I called and waded through the morass of voice menu options (none of which quite fit) and eventually got a hold of a real live technician - at least I ASSUME he was alive. This dude just sounded, well, there's no other way to put it - STUPID. His voice dripped with condescension. He sounded like he had been flipping burgers just last week, I expected to ask me if "I wanted fries with that" at any moment.

Well this doofus listens to my plight, never asked a dang question and states matter-of-factly that "it take up to 6 HOURS for the cable modem to connect". I just lost what the little tiny sliver of respect I had for this dude, I had hooked up at least 3 of these modems for friends and co-workers and it never took more than SECONDS to connect. I asked him what it was doing, and he mumbled some BS about the "modem initializing and registering itself with the lines". I was getting pissed. I asked him if he thought it would do this EVERY time I disconnected or power went out, he said NO just the first time. I lost my cool and told him I thought his "technical opinion" was frankly BULLSHI*T. He got mad and said he didn't appreciate my calling his "diagnosis" that. He could offer no hint of a clue as to why the lites simply flashed in sequence - which meant that the modem was searching for a signal. There was another set of lites and colors that meant the modem was initializing. He still stuck by his story and insisted it would take "6 hours" - even though it had been 5 ½ hours since connection didn't seem to make a difference. I told him I KNEW I didn't even HAVE a signal. He insisted that there was no-way no-how they would give me a modem without the service being available.

I called the main office and complained, ½ hour later a nice pleasant lady called. We attempted to go through some diagnostics (unplug the modem, plug it back in, disconnect the coax, take the splitter out, etc.) - no go, NO signal. She promised a cable tech would be out the following day.

Well to cut the story short the guy showed up, checked the tap - NO MODEM SIGNAL, checked the junction box - NO MODEM SIGNAL, checked the drop box in the yard - NO MODEM SIGNAL. He called for the team that was doing the changes that needed to be made to activate the service, they came over and they decided that I was right THERE WAS NO MODEM SIGNAL. Seems they goofed and said my area was done and it wasn't.

SO I guess the moral learned from talking to the tech goof is to be careful - you just might have someone on the line that actually knows what is going on better than you do.

I'd just started as a tecnician on a radiostation in Denmark.

-A real serious bussinness-radio, with a lot of importent people working and so on.

Getting to know the computer were broadcasting with, I rummaged around, checking installed programs and such.

And suddently, i came to my attention, a directoryname I hadden't seen before..... "c:\windows\system32\importantfiles do not delete!"

Triggering my curiosity, i checked it out, just to find 200 mb of "jpb" files! -Well, jpb I thouht, it reminds me of something, but no program was associated with the extension... -Big surprise.

Well of we go to internet exploder, open the files and what do i get: big-vaselinecovered-butplugs-in-dirty-hary-asses -pictures.

Well, just started on the job, I didn't wan't to ask questions, just to find a technician smart enough to rename files, but not make them "hidden".

Another experience was with a company ordering a interview on a audio file, to put on their webpage.

When recieving a rm file, the webmaster send a complaint about:

1. the volume was to low

2. the quality was not as good as a wav-file

I ansvered him promptly that he could try and turn the volume up, and the quality of the rm format was a nessesary evil, if you would use sound on your webpage.

After receiving another complaint, with some cursing about "I should not try to teach him about his job", i promply sent him the 15 minutes interview in 44 kh, stereo wav. -150 mb

-I'd like to se him try and download that with his crappy 46 kb modem, much les putting it on a webpage.

-Von Knut

I am part of one of those families that haven't quite warmed up to the computer age yet. (yes, they do exist) And being in the computer industry I felt it was my duty to supply my parents with a computer. (Little did I know, I would become the 24/7 tech support for them) My dad, being a naturally curious guy, likes to play around on the internet, without of course knowing what a browser is or anything! Anyways, he starts downloading files and one day he calls me, furious.

"This computer doesn't work!"

I take a deep breath, patience is required when dealing with parents and computers.

"What is wrong now?"

"Well, I've downloaded a bunch of things off the internet, but none of them work!"

Now this I thought might have to do with the way he downloaded, the connection, or a corrupt file... so we check everything. Finally, I have him go through his process step by step...

"... I click, then I save it to that folder you made, a box pops up, but no program!"

"ummm, dad? Do you go back to the file and install it?"

"What? How do you install? Isn't that what the computer does when it downloads?"

"Oh Brother!!!!"

a few years ago i did support for laserjet printers. someone a few cublicles down recieved a pretty discusting call. this woman said that there was a horrible smell coming from her printer, and that no amount of air freshner would make the stench go away. she was told to open the printer, and lo and behold, there was a rotting mouse inside of the printer!

I am not a tech supporter, I am a 12 year 0ld, However, As I'm usually the mos computer litterate person in my class, I help some people with computers

This story involves a neigbor who lives not far down the street

He had some pictures scanned onto disk, and was wondering why they were opening with a whole lot of ascii charecters

Turns out he was opening them in word, and since they came up in the preview window, he thought he could open them.

So I showed him the process of opening them in paint, Copying and Pasteing

I work as an Network Administrator for a mid sized company. User support is part of my job. I've gotten all kinds of crazy calls but this one made me chuckel for days.

Phone Rings

Me: This is Peter.

Her: My computer won't work it just keeps comming up with a blue screen. I've rebooted it 6 times and it still has a blue screen.

Me: What does the blue screen say?

Her: I don't know.

Now I'm thinking she is turning the monitor on and off thinking she is rebooting the computer.

Me: Ok I'll be right over.

I get to her office and look at the screen as she turns on the computer.

Her: See! I just keeps comming up with this blue screen!

Me: Now read what the screen says to me.

Her: Windows did not properly shut down. Press any key to run scandisk.

Me: Yes, and...

Her: Should I reboot?

Me: Nooo, press a key!

Some people can't follow directions even when they have them right in front of them!

I used to work as a contractor, and this was when JavaScript was still pretty new. There were several of us working on this one "free" site, and I say "free" because while the service was free, you had to look at banner ads on everything.

Well, the guy who ran this had bought it from another guy for a large sum of money. This new owner knew nothing about computers or the Internet except for the fact that he was told he could make money with banner ads on a "free" site. So he did the next best thing, he hired contractors. But he wasn't a very nice person, and that's putting it lightly. He yelled, screamed, had an unpredictable temper, changed what he wanted frequently, and would make impossible demands like "less servers for more customers" and demand complex programming and graphics to be done by tomorrow with no notice and so on. He would be nice to you when you were new for a few months, but then his ugly side would show, and it was obvious he was a bit of a drinker, too.

I was a late part of a "third wave" of employees. The first and second waves had quit in disgust after this owner either stopped paying them, or the abuse became too much for the pay scale (which admittedly, was fairly good for the time). Well, the rest of the third wave was about to quit, and they advised me to do the same. I really needed the money for school, so I said I'd work until I stopped getting paid.

About ten weeks into the job, I get a call from this guy, furious that we had posted his home telephone number on the site. Now, none of us had done so (and he called all of us), and we quickly figured out that someone had hacked the site, probably a previous contractor. How did we guess? Well, the hacker knew the guy's name, address, and home phone numbers (including the cell number, which back then you paid per call). The hacker also changed all the pages so that a looping popup banner came up on every page that said, "We are taking a survey. If you find banners like these annoying, please call XXX-XXX-XXXX and ask for Mr. So-and-so." We scanned the pages to find out where this popup was coming from, and even uploaded new ones on the site, but the popup would STILL keep coming. It took us days to figure out that the person very cleverly hid it among the JavaScript Banner programming. But by that time, the site was rendered useless, and the mailbox was full of hate mail, and the boss had to have his phones disconnected.

He went out of business the following week, and said he was going to sue all of us. But we never heard from him again.

About two years later, I was applying for a job in a new startup. I had lunch with my interviewer in one of those casual extended interviews, and this story came up when he asked about negative experiences I had had in the industry. He started to act funny and asked me a lot of questions about how we solved the problem. I finally guessed what was going on when he started to smirk and chuckle. It turns out, HE WAS THE GUY who hacked the system. He even told me how he thought of it, and why he did it (long story, but I am sure you can guess the motivation). But he became odd afterwards, and I never got called back.

A friend of mine used to work for a company that would sell Internet service in shopping malls. They would either have a cart, or sometimes abandoned store space.

Well, having Netscape running on systems invites a lot of hackers who try and change the home page, leave up raunchy sites, and so on. Sometimes they screw up the computer so badly that they have to have a tech come up and reinstall software. A lot of drinks get spilled on keyboards and trackballs, too. But the worst one was when they set up in an abandoned store.

When they have a cart, the monitor and keyboard are fairly sturdily attached to the cart. But in a store display, they are on these retro-futuristic pedestals that are bolted to the floor. Or, should we say, SHOULD be bolted to the floor. Now imagine putting a 55-pound set up on top of a 30 pound fiberboard pedestal. Very top heavy. Now, when they are bolted to the floor, this isn't a problem. But in this case, the old floor was made of wooden planks (it used to be one of those rugged outdoor camping gear kind of stores), and the people who set it up used ordinary drywall screws. Needless to say, this was a disaster waiting to happen.

This was one of those dying malls on the edge of a bad neighborhood, so there were a lot of problems one sees with such areas. My friend had to witness drug deals, hookers, bored and angry youth, and lots of crime. A few days into the Christmas season, some unattended kids were running around the store, which is usually a wide open space with these brightly colored pedestals here and there, so it looks like a playground to kids. While playing hide and seek, one of the bigger kids pushed over one of the systems, and the monitor struck some other kid on the head and knocked him out cold. Of course, no parents were to be found, and the other kids playing with him ran away. The manager had to call an ambulance, and while this chaos was going on, someone else stole another entire system, pedestal and all. They never saw who, but when the store closed, one near the front was missing. The mall closed the store down for good. But oddly enough, neither the company or mall were sued or even contacted over the incident.

See Rant 1 if you want to know where I'm coming from...

Why do users feel that, if their work is on a computer, tech support is responsible for everything they can't do right away?

-------------

Situation 1:

I get a call from a user who wants to alter a PowerPoint template. I switch on remote desktop access and show her how to access the template and make changes. I ask her what she wants changed and I start to show her by example how to make changes. She interrupts me then and says: "I need to hang up because I'm expecting a call. Just finish making the changes."

GRRRRRRR!

--------------

Situation 2:

A user (not the one above) sends me an Excel Workbook in the mail with the message: "please format this workbook so I can print it." I write back and politely write that I don't have time to do it (stupid me - although I really didn't have the time, I should have wrote that it's not my bloody job!).

She proceeds to page me without mercy over the building's loudspeaker system. Finally, a colleague who has some time to spare calls her and tries to how her how to format the workbook. She wants to lay down the phone and let him do the work while she does something else! When he stops her, she says: "but I'm too busy to do that!"

My colleague replies in the best way I can think of: "Well, when we're too busy, do we ask you to come down and install a computer for us?"

Nuff said...

Again, thanks for letting me rant!

On 12/23/2000 I got a call from a cable ISP customer. The nature of most cable ISPs when anything is wrong for a customer, including problems such as a downed server, they send everyone to us.

The ISP happens to be giving out ISA versions of our NIC to everyone whether they have a new computer or not. This customer had received an ISA card, and the computer was not detecting it.

Me: "Good afternoon and thank you for calling Network Interface support, my name is Andrea."

Customer: "Yeah I just got this Card from R***** ** **** I installed it and it's not working."

Me: "What kind of card Ma'am?"

Customer: "3XxxxX"

Me: "Probably a dumb question, but what color was the slot that you put the card in."

Customer: "I don't know."

Me: "Let's open the case and find out."

Customer: "I'm really proud of myself. I made it fit all by myself, without anyone elses help"

Me: *thinking hhhhmmmm made it FIT?????????* "Ma'am what OS are you running?"

Customer: "Windows ME.I just bought this computer new from Dell."

Me: "It's a New computer?" *beginning to think PCI slots only.*

Customer: "I had to cut the card some to get it to fit but it's in a white slot."

Me: "Cut the card?" *this is really strange.*

Customer: "It wouldn't fit, so I took my sewing scissors and cut it, they were the only things sharp enough to work. I cut it to fit in the slot."

I told her to go back to the cable ISP and ask for a PCI card. Where do these people come from and can I put them back?

I hope you'll excuse me for this. It isn't funny - it's just a bit of a rant.

I work for a large worldwide audit/tax company which is highly IT integrated, but where we IT professionals are still trying to dig ourselves out of the dregs. This is mostly because we spend money instead of making money for the firm (although I'd like to see how much money they'd make if we all took a month's vacation at once!).

Ayway, this story goes back to when we still had Windows 95 as an OS on all the workstations (lots of mobile users with notebooks) which you know is pretty much wide open for a user to install any software they feel like. Our users are given a loadset with standard software and our security policies (which the users read and sign off on) make very clear that they are not authorized to install any software on their computer. We were usually pretty lax on this policy; actually, we only enforced it when a user brought their computer in with problems that caused a lot of support time. Then, we would reinstall the computer with a new loadset and all "non-standard" software was lost.

A user came to me about two years ago with a notebook that had to be reinstalled (that took quite a bit of time, since she had a lot of data to back up). I noticed she had installed (among other things) Netscape on her computer (our standard is Internet Explorer). I informed her that Netscape was not standard software and was not to be installed. She replied with a dismissive "I know," and I left it at that. I saw there was no point arguing with her and decided to keep a watch on her, in case her computer showed up again.

About a week after I reinstalled her notebook, she wrote me a mail and asked for our proxy settings for Netscape (!). I wrote back and informed her again (with quotes directly from our security policies) that Netscape was non-standard software, was not to be installed by her, and that we could not support it. She replied, telling me it was senseless to refuse support for any software (although she had no business having the software on her notebook in the first place) and stating that the rules, that may apply to other departments, certainly did not apply to HER.

Well, my blood pressure went to near-heart-attack levels at that, and my colleague (God bless him) called her and gracefully declined support. Later, I got a mail back from her, where she listed the proxy settings to me, as if I were an idiot (I'd still like to know where she got them). I became supervisor last year, but she has landed on the black list of every other supporter in the department!

Thanks for this site and for letting me rant!

Another hot one.. had a lady call in bec she was having a pretty common error with our software (xxxxx.dll is linked to missing export mfc42.dll).. simple enough to fix, copy the file from our cd to the desktop, then to the appropriate folder, then reboot, done.. UNTIL..

Me: Now, I want you to drag and drop the file to the desktop.

Her: What do you mean by 'drag'?

(After briefly explaining the logistics involved in dragging and dropping, and using moving files to the recycle bin as an example, I repeat my request)

Me: Now, I want you to drag and drop the file to the desktop.

Her: What do you mean by 'desktop'?

(Sound of repeated banging of head on desk)

I recently had an elderly gentleman call in because he was having trouble opening an attachment he had gotten using (Proprietary Software.. rhymes with Earthstink 5).. now we tech knew that there were troubles opening attachments with this particular program, and knew how to fix it, but this one was particularly vexing.. I was trying to get the exact error message (there were a couple of different causes for this trouble), but the member kept clicking "ok" before I could get him to read it to me.. *every time* he got the error, he clicked ok.. even when I told him not to. Well, he had 2 phone lines, so I had him send the attachment to my corp account, and I tried to open it myself.. Error: This is a PowerPoint attachment. You must have MS Powerpoint installed to run it. Sheesh. So I explain to this fogey that he can't open the program without having ppt installed.. what does he say next? "Can I fix that with WinZip?"

Send out the sterilization crew.. we have a hot one!

I once worked for a boss who had no idea how files worked. Once I sent him a document that needed revisions. He made them, printed them out, and handed them back to me on paper. I told him I needed the electronic copy to complete the revisions, and he said that I couldn't because it was on his computer. I told him to mail it back to me, and he mailed me a link to his hard drive (not shared). I had to show him how attachments worked in Outlook, and he still sent items with link on them, like the phrase "C:\My Documents\Spreadsheets\blahblah.xls"

I had to use a floppy. He was really resistant to this because he was afraid of viruses. I told him my floppy was clean, and he then said he disabled his floppy in the BIOS and said there was nothing he could do. So I went on his machine, and his floppy worked fine (I mean, come on, how could someone who couldn't attach a file know how to disable a floppy in BIOS?).

I went to another department and ironically shortly thereafter he got fired for releasing a virus on the LAN.

I am currently talking with a guy who is having trouble with his DSL connection. Connects, can't browse. So, I'm assuming he's the network admin, and I ask, quite innocently, "So, can you ping?"

His reply, you ask?

Giggling, "Um... I don't know what that is.. I mean, I'm the network admin, but that's over my head..."

I'm this close to asking how much he makes... maybe it'd be worth my while to re-locate and take his job.

Hi,

I work as a web/database guy for a financial software company in Toronto. I have never regretted leaving the helpdesk end of the business and every time I read this page, I know I made the right move. However, life as a data mule is not without its woes.

Anyways, one day, our corporate attorney comes into our IT department asking how to delete duplicate messages in Outlook. Well, our Exchange admin guys assure her that there is no button for this, thus it is impossible. Since miscellaneous impossible tasks often become my problem, my boss brings her to me with a mixture of pity and sinister glee at my misfortune.

Our lawyer has a project folder which contains every email message ever sent to anyone regarding this project, so there are a lot of redundant messages. This seems pretty straight forward. I’ll just cook up a VB script to clean out the duplicates. The catch is that there are over 40000 [yes, forty thousand!] messages in the folder. So, I started the script running on the folder while it was still on the server. It ran for 4 days and then quit due to a network snag with no significant progress.

The next step was to get a box that would exist only to sort these messages. I grabbed a 733 and installed the basics before copying the folder to this box [named PCLAWYER lest we should forget]. Of course, Exchange craps out folder copy jobs after about 16000 messages so I start splitting folders up and copying them. The whole process takes just about 2 days. Now, we’re 6 days into this project with no duplicates deleted yet.

Finally, I have all the messages in 5 different local folders. I create 5 copies of the script and start them all running in parallel on November 14, 2000. Today is January 3, 2001. The CPU has been running at about 90% continuously the whole time and 14587 messages have been deleted. I think it will be finished this week.

Beware the whims of corporate lawyers.

GrooveDaddy

Several years ago I ran across this problem:

In the afternoon the PHB's PA called me because her mouse is not responding. Reset doesn't help. Keyboard works fine so I decide to check the mouse. I pinch the mouse from PHB's machine (on holiday) but this also has the same problem.

I bring in a serial test kit the next day to test the port, but the mouse is now working fine! Confusion starts to grow!

That afternoon the problem starts again. Check the port and it seems to be OK.

Anyone figured it out yet? Clue: This was in the era when mice were just changing from using pententiometers to being opti-mechanical.

After trying to use the mouse for several minutes, with the problem being intermittent, I noticed that the mouse worked fine whenever a cloud covered the sun!

Yes, the mice concerned were mechanical mice with opti-mechanical innards. The plastic shell wasn't thick enough to stop bright sunlight from swamping the optical sensors to the point where they were blinded.

Swapped the mice with two others that lived in cubicles that were never in danger of seeing the sun and the problem was solved.

Has anyone else run across the problem of photophobic mice?

I'm a test technician that works for a Fortune 100 company. When our lab's equipment calibration retired his replacement was new employee, Bill. Bill would take a meter or power supply & return in a couple hours to ask if I REALLY needed that piece of equipment & if I didn't, he would be happy to take it off the active list. I would always tell him YES, I DO need that equipment. He would leave & in a couple of hours would bring it back with a calibration sticker. After about the fifth time we repeated this routine(I'm dense), I began to wonder if Bill was just letting the equipment sit on his bench for a few hours before slapping a calibration sticker on it. This seemed to be confirmed when he took our 1970's era German industrial db meter. Bill & I did our song-&-dance when he veered from the routine & asked if I had ever calibrated it & would I 'help' him. I told him to just give it to the tech that calibrated it last year. "That would be me," he mumbled while walking away. Sure enough, the db meter showed up in the lab a couple hours later with a calibration sticker.

Bill was laid-off a few months later when the company out-sourced its calibration, so beware.

A few years ago I was working part-time with a buddy of mine building and supporting PCs for the local fire department and it's employees. Most of our business was upgrades. One of the fire department members had an old Packard Bell computer with the On-board video. He wanted to upgrade his video card to take advantage of the newer games. Since our business was billed as mobile tech support and upgrades we arrived on site and disabled the old on-board video and installed his new card. We tested everything and the customer was very happy.

A few days later we get this call from our customer complaining that we should have told him that the new video card would blow up his monitor. He said he didn't mind because he wanted one of the new 19" monitors and now he had an excuse to buy one. He asked us our price and decided to opt for buying one at a major computer superstore.

About 8 hours after the first call we received another call from him saying that the upgrade we did kept blowing up monitors and that we now owed him $700 for his new 19" (his third since he returned 2 previously as defective to the superstore) as well as for his 17" that was dead (he got so mad at it he through it in the dumpster). Having heard that he had gone through 4 monitors in a day we got worried. Did we not set up the new card right? We hurried over to the customer's house and noticed that he had moved the system from the time we had originally done the install. Sure enough from it appreared that the monitor was dead. Closer inspection though, revealed the true culprit. The customer had put the video cable on the disabled video port. A quick switching of the ports and his new 19" was working like a charm. It was at this time that he realized that his 17" probably WAS, before the dumpster toss, a good monitor. Needless to say we felt bad and did not charge him for the service call....

I work for a large Hotel/Casino in the I.S. department. One Saturday afternoon, I received a call from someone in the Marketing Department. She had come in on her day off to finish up some special stuff for presentation on Monday, and when she wanted to go to the computer to check her e-mail, it wouldn't work. She called and demanded that I come fix it right away. I went downstairs to see what the problem was. I complimented her on her choice of radio stations, and after I unplugged her radio and plugged in her computer again, it seemed to work just fine!

I work in the help desk of a well known ISP. One slow night, I my friend in the next cube motioned me over to hear his call. He was obviously having a hard time keeping a strait face, and I soon found out why. He put the call on speaker phone as a crowd of us gathered round. The customer on the phone was taking shots of tequila while he was on the phone with us. He was already beligerent and there was no sense in trying to tech out this call if the customer kept on drinking, so my friend asked the customer to put the bottle behind the computer. He continued talking to the guy for a few more minutes, then, seeing that it was going no where, told the guy that he would have to call back in the morning. Without further explanation from the tech, the guy just said "ok" and got off the phone. We were all in hysterics by the end of the call. Then about five minutes later, I get the guy on the phone. All he wants to know this time is where he put his tequila. I remind him of where the previous tech had instructed him to put the bottle. He just said "oh great! there it is! Thanks!" and hung up.

One of my former students came to my New Year's Eve party. He's been working for an ISP doing tech support for a while.

The music was loud so I only caught the first part of his story. He received a call from a woman having problems with her PC. He told the woman to close all her windows. There was a pause, and a couple of minutes later...the woman returned informing him that she had gone and shut all the windows in her house and was ready to proceed...heheh...that's all I got from the story...he did however have to put her on hold to laugh his butt off...but needless to say, as an instructor, this is exactly what I teach my students to be prepared for...I am going to definitely follow up with him to get the rest of the story...

Got a call for a lady stating that her computer no longer works. Had her check the connections and she said everything was ok. So i went down to her desk. I asked he if anything had changed since she was last logged on and she said she got a fan. Bingo. I looked under the desk and the power strip had been plugged into itself. It seems she unplugged it so she could put her fan in and plugged the strip into the closest outlet. Needless to say she bribed me with food to never tell.

Here is the latest story from the workday involving "Bob" the nervous sysadmin. (The other one appeared here on 11/99 post when he got locked in the back room and server rooms)

Well it's upgrade time for the network department folks...

Now out new PC's are fairly nice clone systems...nothing odd, except for the occasional bad power supply or hard drive.

I had decided to just give the PC to "Bob", because he wanted to install Windows2000 on it. OK...I figure that should be pretty safe. The PC was all plugged in and setup after a processor swap (another dept recieved their machines after we got ours...and the prices dropped. So they got PIII-800 machines while we had PIII-650's...so I swapped processors on theirs and installed them in ours.)

Bob stopped me, and asked for help with his PC...not an unusual request, since I generally know more about hardware than he does. I turn the PC on, and it does nothing. "OK/ I know what this is", I say to myself. Another PC I had done a processor swap on had the same issue earlier because I forgot to plug in the ATX connector on the motherboard while rushing around doing a few other things simultaneously. I cracked the PC, and sure enough, I found the ATX unplugged.

I popped it back on, and then plugged the PC back in. I turned it on, and all of a sudden I smelled the stink of burning silicone. I quickly turned off the PC, and put my nose to the power supply exaust. Yep...thats where the small was coming from. My first idea (after doing a quick check for loose peripheral cards) was that the power supply was bad...not unheard of. I got a new supply, and tossed the other one to "Bob" and asked him to dump it on my desk with a couple other pieces of equiptment going back to our clone supplier. He did so, and I swapped out the supply, but when I fired it up it STILL didn't work. I began yanking out the peripherals to see which one could be bad that was causing the PC to not fire up. After yanking everything but the video card, I looked behind a nest of cabling and saw an extra DIMM in the PC. I examined it closer, and saw it was in BACKWARDS so that only one edge would go into the slot at a time (DIMM memory is keyed to only go in the correct way). I made sure the PC was unplugged and went to pull the memory out...and nearly burned my fingers on the chip that must have been at least 150 degrees! I managed to pull the DIMM out (by the edges) and set it on the desk. "Bob" wandered over, picked up the DIMM and yelled at the heat dropping it. (You could clearly see a burned connector that was all the way though both sides of the DIMM.)

It turned out that "Bob" had recieved some extra RAM for his system from the boss, and wanted to install it. (If I had known, I would have assumed he knew how to install a DIMM)

Luckily the motherboard is still good (Including the memory slot!) and the DIMM is under warranty....

I shudder to think what could happen if "Bob" was called in on a weekend for a hardware failure for one of the servers..

--Fat Monkey

I'm Canadian. Most of my tech support calls are from Americans. Here's my favourite.

A woman called saying she couldn't connect to the internet. She was out of warranty for about 8 months. Fine, no problem, if she will pay $19.95 US funds (she's american), then I could help her. She refused to pay. She

paid for tech support 2 weeks ago, which was for a lack of ability to boot the computer, the tech agent fixed it quickly (too quickly apparently), and the user felt ripped off. Now, she can't connect to the internet.

Different problem, so must be charged the cost again. Refused to pay. So, I'm about to end the call, and the woman passes the phone to her husband.

Now, he is right pissed. He starts off swearing and yelling, saying how he was charged for no reason 2 weeks ago, and wants this fixed for free. I explain that the warranty ended about 8 months ago, and that for tech

support, he would have to pay the $19.95 per issue (no sound? that's an issue. can't boot? that's an issue. can't connect? that's an issue). New issue, so another $19.95 for the tech support. He flipped. He was saying how much he wished he was with one of us tech support agents so he could rip off our balls, and all that fun stuff. I was holding in the laughter, and waiting for him to bust a blood vessel. I kept telling him that if he would not pay for the tech support, then I could not help him, and he kept insisting that he would not pay, and that I would help him. I continued to refuse unless he paid, he refused to pay. Eventually, I said, in an attempt to end the call, "and is there anything else I can help you

with". He said, "hmmm, let me think about that, for the next 6 hours!".

Obviously he's not about to end this call anytime soon. I tell him ok, not a problem... inside I'm laughing my head off... this guy says that he will stay on the phone with me all night long, keeping the lines tied up, so nobody else can get tech support. There is at this time about 150 techs on this one queue alone. I have no problem with laughing at this guy for the next few hours if he wants me to do so. After about a minute or so of mostly silence, he asks how many people are in the call centre with me. I

tell him there are about 150 tech on this queue alone. He asks if there are any supervisors or managers around. I tell him that yes, there are supervisors (also known as Customer Relations, their job is to calm down callers) available. He immediately asks to be transferred to a supervisor. I say "sure, no problem, I'll transfer you now". Immediately press the transfer button, which puts him on hold, and dial up customer relations.

Apparently CR is busy, I'm on hold waiting for them for about 4 minutes. Just before CR answers, the caller hangs up. I then type in to the notes "caller hung up while I was on hold waiting for customer relations", and the CR tech answers. I explain what happened, and almost aughing, tell her that she doesn't have to take the call. After ending that call, I had to go for a break to laugh at the guy.

About an hour later, I did a search for the callers phone number, and found a new case. The caller called back, tried to get tech support, and failed to get any useful support from anyone. I made a follow-up on the new case

saying "warranty expired, bill the caller".

I hope I get lots more calls from people like this... I was laughing for the rest of the day.

Made for a great New Year's Eve.

Tech support... 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Got no life? Call tech support on New Year's Eve, be a knob, and make a tech agents day.