Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

My brother told me a story of an experience that happened to one of his friends. I believe this story is perhaps the worst nightmare of most people who are new to computers. But it's hella funny to people who are computer-saavy like myself. Although I still find it sort of distressing that this happened to a brand new system.

My brother's friend did tech support for something-or-another company. A guy who just bought a brand NEW [Will become extremely meaningful in a few minutes] computer calls in complaining that his system wasn't working at all. I'm sure most of you know these kind of people, you know, the kind that always swear they didn't do anything to the system. The kind where it could fall down a set of stairs and they would still swear nothing happened to it. Anyway, he went through the usual procedure of asking the guy to check power, etc.. all the while the guy swears it was working yesterday and he did nothing to it.

Well, after a very long time, the techie was getting more and more agitated and still not knowing what is wrong. Then, the conversation turned to this:

Tech: Well, I can't figure out what is wrong, looks like it's a hardware problem. Call up XXXXX and see if you can get it repaired or get some parts replaced

Cus: Darn, and I was just about to see if my optimizations worked.

Tech: What "optimizations"?

Cus: Oh, nothing special. The computer was making this funny sound [hard drive accessing] whenever it started-up and accessing and stuff so I opened it up and found this little box where the noise was coming from. I just opened the box up and sprayed some WD-40 on it. I'm sure it helped a lot since there was no oil in it in the first place.

Tech: [Flabbergasted/shocked] Wait a minute. You sprayed WD-40 all over the hard drive?

Cus: What's a hard drive?

Tech: Nevermind... I thought you said that you didn't do anything to the system

Cus: I didn't. I just lubricated some parts, that's not important.

Tech: Do you even realize what you have done?

The Tech finally saw the system some hours later in person and then realized the problem was bigger than he thought. The man didn't put the cover back on the hard drive when he lubricated it. When the hard drive spun up, the centrifugal force threw the oil ALL over the inside of the system. This stuff was all over the CPU, motherboard, expansion cards, EVERYWHERE, hence making it all un-usuable. This guy had managed to bring his brand-spanking NEW [I told you it would have a lot of meaning here] $3500 system to a 50 pound paper-weight. I kinda felt sorry for him. I mean, if you are new to computers and if the hard drive is loud enough, it can sound like it's broken/not lubricated. But I really felt for this guy, he had wasted $3500 on a system that he ruined. The company wouldn't replace any parts or give him a cash refund. So he was stuck in the mud. Sometimes I still wonder why on earth he didn't think opening up the computer wouldn't be considered "Doing anything to it". *Shrug*

I do tech support for a major computer company's big accounts division.

Most of the calls I take are from system admins and other versed computer users.

Though, on occasion, I'll get the temp secretary in the office.

Still, usually knowledgable enough use the system. This guy just took the cake one day...

Tech: Thanks for calling (XXX). How can I help you?

User: My comapny headquarters just sent me this disk with quotes on it for my spreadsheets and gave

directions to access them, but they aren't there.

Tech: Okay, what where the directions?

User: Put in the disk, double click My Computer, double click 3 1/2 Floppy and they should be right there.

Tech: And you don't see anything there, right?

User: Right.

Tech: Okay. Click on Start, then Programs, then MS-DOS Prompt and that should take you to a DOS prompt.

User: Okay, I'm there.

Tech: All right. Now, type A: and hit Enter.

(pause...)

Tech: Are you there?

User: Which one is the colon? The two dots or the dot and squiggly line?

(Not done yet...)

Tech: The two dots.

User: Okay.

(we did a DIR and found files on there. Got back into Win95 and followed his instructions again)

Tech: Okay, now looking at the floppy there, you don't see anything?

User: Nope.

Tech: Do you see a scroll bar there?

User: A scroll bar?

After ten minutes of explaining what a scroll bar is and how to use it, we finally found his missing files.

I wonder sometimes if I shouldn't get the number to these companies' employment office and apply.

I was working doing phone support for a very popular PC game a few years ago.

The expertise of the people who called varied from novice to expert. This called stood out in my mind.

The program was particular about sound drivers. A wife did a favor for her husband by calling us to help with

the sound problem. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone and resolved the problem. When she first heard the sound come blasting

through the speakers she said

"Thanks so much for your help.. You have earned me so much nookie tonight!!!!"

I responded by telling her that her comment made my day.

I didnt have the heart to tell her that since the program is now running with full sound she probably won't be getting any

for a few weeks!!!!!

I thought this was a cute call I received for tech support from a nice lady:

me: thanks for calling tech support.

customer: I have a problem! I open up netscape and it tells me I don't have enough memory.

me: Okay, no problem, do you have any other programs running?

customer: Well, not that I know of. only netscape.

me: (thinking: of course, they usually can't tell) On the bottom of the screen, do you see any boxes that have names in them?

(gotta be simple!)

customer: oh yes, I have about thirty boxes that have "N's" in them.

me: You mean netscape? you have a tons of boxes that say netscape?

customer: Oh no, they just have N's.

me: (thinking something could be wrong with netscape) Okay, ma'am why don't you restart your computer.

customer: (??) How do I do that?

me: click on the start button, click on shutdown, click on restart the computer and click on ok or yes.

customer: (pauses while she clicks and clicks) okay, it's restarting. what do you think could be the problem?

me: could be a number of problems ma'am, when it restarts, everything should be just fine.

customer: okay, that's good, I wasn't sure what ... (pauses, while I hear a numerous amount of beeps in the background.)

Oh my gosh! (panicked) the computers beeping at me!

me: (laughing while the mute button is on) Okay, maam, is your enter key stuck?

customer: enter key? well, it looks like it's wedged in, yes, so i guess it's stuck.

me: go ahead and fix that, the computer should be okay now.

(laughing)

customer: oh, could that have been the problem??

me: oh yes, i'm sure it was.

It was a good laugh, she was so sweet too.

I was teaching in Internet Workshop and giving a hands-on lesson with web browsers. At one point I told everyone

to go to a previous site using their BACK button.

After a bit I noticed one of the students with her hand raised, so asked her what was wrong.

She said I pushed the BACK button and the computer crashed. I walked over and notied the computer was powered off.

I asked what she did again, and she said she pushed the button on the BACK of the computer.

After pushing the POWER button on again, I explained she pushed the power button and that the BACK button was in the toolbar

of the Browser.

I used to work in a Regional Sales Office where we sold

several proprietary software packages. Our customer base

was about 50% est. businesses, the remainder individuals

who were starting a new business with our equipment and

software. I started wearing the software support hat as

our tech dept was swamped and customers wanted help NOW.

It was sometimes rather amusing to observe the paranoia

some of the individuals felt. Because they didn't want to

get "ripped off" by purchasing the PC we sold - which was

pre-loaded with our software and guaranteed to work, but

cost about $500 more than a (major PC vendor) - they would insist

on using their existing PC, or go to a stuporstore to

purchase one. (Our PC requirements plainly stated - NO BRAND

NAMES - have one built to specs if you don't use ours! But

they'd buy them anyways!)

Numerous users would call up, attempting to sound well versed

in "Techie Talk." My most memorable was the older lady who said,

"I'm a computer pro. I built my own PC with my own hands. I

don't need your help. I have quite enough memory - 16 Microbits...

no, I mean Microhertz. At any rate, I don't need YOUR help!"

What could I do except agree with her? I couldn't help THAT.

The only thing I could do is contain the laughter until

we hung up.

Quite enough memory eh? Perhaps you should check into an

upgrade for yourself - so you can at least remember the right

terms to use when you are trying to outsmart a tech! ;D

A user had locked up her machine, beyond any hope of revival.

When she had called for help, I told her to just go ahead and hit

the reset button.... after about 45 seconds she asked me if it was

on the number pad. I said no its not on the keyboard its to the left

of the power button. She finally understood. :)

I think the reset button is located right next to the any key. :)

This really happened to me about 3 years ago when I was

working a telephone tech support job for an online service

AT&T was beta testing called "Interchange".

The beta product "sometimes" required a bit of "ini" editing.

I was guiding an older gentleman thru the process of editing

an "ini" file with notepad and when we were finished I told

him to

1. Save the ini file

2. Close all windows

3 and reboot the computer

Honest to God I heard the man put down the telephone and

he started closing the windows in the room that he was sitting

in. I never forgot that.

Working on a phone support help desk is may times the way you describe it -Laugh -Scream - Cry

and Pulling your hair (this will help you avoid putting your fist thru the telephone)

We're an ISP and I was setting up a customer to get connected

to the net.

tech "OK we want to set up you're connection. Double click on "My Computer"

customer "How can I click on your computer?"

I do tech support at a Isp in South Africa called Mweb, who are part of a group who also are cable TV providers.

Anyway we get a call from a subscriber....he's just bought the BIG BLACK BOX, which supplies him with a 56k modem

and all the software needed to get on the 'net. He's called SALES, who gave him a username and password, he's ready to go,

but cannot figure out how to proceed. he tells me that he's really a techno-wiz,

he did his own satellite-dish installation, configured his decoder and receiver, so I just KNOW he's a genius.

I ask him does he need me to start configuring a diallup for him. He says yes. Right away I realize techno-wiz HASN'T read the

instruction manual, as the step-by step procedure should be clear enough for him. I ask him to open dial-up networking..several

clicking sounds are heard.....No, he can't do it. I start at the beginning, click on start button......go to programs.....accessories...

more clicking noises......no, he gets start and programs, but not accessories......does the dish need accessories????

He thought it came with everything........

THE LIGHT DAWNS...........as gently as I can I ask the fatal question.......DO YOU HAVE A COMPUTER, SIR?

SILENCE

No, comes the surprised answer.....do I need one??????

The techno-weenie was pointing his remote at the satellite receiver and clicking away merrily.......

(HIT MUTE BUTTON.........GIGGLE........SERIOUS MODE)

Yes sir.

Ok thanks.....silence......I'm not so clever as I thought I was, he says. Don't worry,sez I, anyone

could have made that mistake, call us when you are ready to connect.

(CLICK)

By the way, another subscriber called to ask how the *&%&$#@

you plug the modem into the decoder. he's tried for 3 days now and he wants his email!!!!!!!!!

Not a computing tale, but a good one. My dad got a remote controlled garage door opener installed, and my sister

(23, not a kid!) was asking about how it worked.

"Well, it's really cool", says Dad, "It's voice controlled!"

Sister: "Wow, that's amazing, go on, show me!"

D: "Door OPEN!"

.. and the door cranks up

D: "Door CLOSED!"

... and down it comes again.

Sister is now seriously impressed, so she wants to try.

S: "Door OPEN!"

Nothing happens.

S (louder): "DOOR OPEN!!!!"

Nada.

S (now really worked up): "DOOR OPEEENNNN!!!"

Still zip. Then..

D (quietly): "Door open"

And up it comes. Sister now totally baffled, goes back into the house. Dad tells me that of course he had the

ultrasonic remote control unit in his pocket and was just hitting the button every time....

We had just spent the weekend moving folks from one building to another. In most cases, we had put the systems back together,

powered them up, and logged into the network, so our confidence level in keeping these important Company programmers productive,

was very high.

There were about 1/2 dozen of the nearly 100 folks who had packed their keyboards, mice or power cords into boxes, so our work

in ensuring productivity continued into Monday with our addressing these few systems, as well as the hand holding that goes with

PC support.

Around noon time, one of the programmers finally caught my attention. He didn't want to bother us, but he had not been able to

work all morning. Seems he was getting a "keyboard error, Press F1 to Continue" message. I guess it didn't matter that we had been up

and down the aisles all morning, this contracter making $$$ per hour had been sitting idle, just because of this error message.

I walked over to the customer's PC and told him I'd like to press F1 to continue, but it seems there is no keyboard connected

to the system! The red faced customer powered down the system, unpacked and plugged in they keyboard, repowered the PC and began

to earn those big bucks, using the keyboard to write code all afternoon.

I was doing end user support for home pc's when i got a

call from a cust who was unable to access his cdrom.

He had called before so I was going to escalate him to our

level 2 support. According to the call record, his duaghter

was using the computer and decided to reassign his cdrom

drive to letter c.

I don't know how she did it but it worked and his computer

was never the same since.

I used to do end user support for a large company that just

came out with a new line of pc's. They also had a toll free

number for anyone who bought one that was having problems.

One day a co-worker of mine took a call from a man who was

having trouble installing a game he had purchased on cdrom.

She had went through the normal steps, is the disc clean, is

the drive clean, etc.

Finally, after abut 10 minutes of futility, and frustration

she had him describe the process he was going through. He

was going through the correct steps except instead of

inserting the cd into the drive he was holding it up to

the monitor.

I think I hurt myself when I fell from my chair laughing!!

We work for a payroll software company in the tech support department. One of the techs was on a rather long call

with a user late at night. While trying to troubleshoot a problem she asked the user to get out of our software

and go to her Explorer. The user was not happy with this request. She said that it was raining outside and her

"Explorer" was at the other end of the parking lot.

User: I need to know how to get the accent mark over the word's that I am trying to write.

Me: Okay to do this we will need to change the keyboard to reflect that language that you are writing in.

Which language are you trying to write in sir?

User: New Times Roman.

1) Tech: OK sir, where are you right now?

Caller: Tampa.

I think: All right, I need you to click on Miami and then drag it onto Daytona Beach.

2) Tech: Are you at the computer now, sir?

Caller: No, but I'm right next to it.

I think: Yeah, well, move three feet to your right and call us back.

I was working at a school in KS it was K-8th grade. One of

the teachers asked me to look at one of the 2nd grade printers

it was a mac 2400 color ink jet that one of the 2nd graders

had dropped. When I got there the printer was dead and

rattled if you moved it. I was just checking something on

the mac when ont of the little brats told me to get of the

computer as it was his turn. I hate working with 2nd

graders. Not long after that one of them ran passed the ohp

in the lab triping over a power cord of a color lcd ohp

panel, seending the )$1000 panel flying across the room.

NEVER WORK WITH 2ND GRADERS.

Also we had fun with the 8th graders hacking the security

system for the computers instead of doing their work.

I do tech support for an Isp, One day a woman calls trying to tell me that we sent her the wrong sized installation cd,

the call proceeded as such.....

Me: hello tech support, how can I help you?

Customer: Yes I just recived your cd in the mail, and it isnt the correct size for my computer, Can you send me a smaller one?

Me: do you mean you need the floppy disks instead of the cd?

Customer: No, I need the round cd but the one you sent me doesnt fit all the way in the drive, it only go's about half way in and then gets stuck.

Me:You mean the tray doesnt go all the way back in?

Customer: Tray?..there is no tray I just stuck it in the big slot on the front of my computer!

Me:(at this point I relized what was going on, she didn't have a cd rom drive at all, she was trying to force

the cd into a 5.25" floppy drive.)

One of the nice things about supporting UNIX products

is that a lot of the commands you tell people to type

are 2 letters long (like ls, cd, mv, and rm). Most of these

2 letter commands are also unpronounceable, so you have to

spell them out for people ("Type cee-dee bin"). One time

a colleague on a field support call had the following

exchange:

SUPPORT: OK, can you type "ell-ess" (ls) at your prompt?

CUSTOMER: Sure, OK, no problem. "ell-ess." Can you

spell that?

Working in a computer store, you hear many interesting things.

A gentleman came in upset one day and said "I may not know much about computers, but this memory does NOT look like EDO".

I wish I had his talent!

The server at work went down hard a few weeks ago, prompting

total replacement. It was decided to upgrade Operating Systems

at the same time, meaning several computers had to have hardware

upgrades, as well. After about 15 complete overhauls, two weeks

of late nights, and endless software installations, we had the

system back up, working fairly well. One of the secretaries from

the admin department called and said she couldn't connect to

the network. After 30 minutes of trying to handle this over the

phone, I decided to help her on-site. Upon checking the network

properties, I found that she had replaced the computer name with

"Lori's Computer", and the workgroup name with "Admin".

A few years ago I had to install a windows based application replacing the old DOS version.

Software and hardware in place I attempted to instruct the Office Manager on the functions of pull down menus on windows, etc.

She told me that she didn't want the mouse, I told her using the mouse would make her life easier.

We went back and forth on use the mouse vs. I don't want the mouse. Finally, her boss came from down the hall to

see what all the ruckus was about.

I said that I wanted her to use the mouse. She said she doesn't want the mouse. Using his bossly authority,

he tells her that she should use the mouse.

She then replies "o.k. I'll keep the mouse...but your not taking my keyboard"!!

On the phone as tech support for a medium isp I received a

call asking what are the settings for this modem

me "what kind of modem"

customer "home made"

after a lengthly discusion I determine that the modem

in question came from a friend of theirs they swore to the

end that it was a homemade modem I then ask them

"can you contact the person who made the modem"

they do so call me back and say its a college project

and they no longer remember the details on the modem

at this point I advized them that to get support

from us on the issue they would have to get a real

manufactured modem shortly after this I hear a loud

crash I ask them what has happened aparently in

anoyance they have thrown the system viontly on the floor

at this point they hang up

We recieved our "tickets" via an online tool at this

particular internal helpdesk.

One particular ticket that cracked me up contained

only the following clue.

Ispilledcoffeeonmykeyboardandnowmyspacebardoesn'twork.

I work for a hotel company, and one of our technicians told me a rather good story.

One of the bosses had just got him self a new computer, this was at the time when the mouse was'nt standard equipment.

The boss contacted the technician and explained that there was a problem with the mouse, he couldent reach the end

of the screen. But no need for alarm, he had solved it on his own, "I bought a bigger table" he proclaimed.

I had a friend that used to work in tech support, and dealt

with lots of computer novices.

As we all know, there are multitudes of callers who's main

problem is that they have neglected to actually turn the

power to their computer on.

Well, my friend began each of the "This person sounds two

two sandwichs short of a picnic" calls with a nice "did you

make sure the computer is on??" A good portion of the time,

that actually was the problem.

However, his supervisor didn't quite like the condesending

tone and blase' attitude, and asked him to please try go

about suggesting that problem/solution in a more technical

way, and to sound at least like the technical professional

that he was.

So from then on out, my friend's first question became "O.K., first...

Did you ensure that your Oh-En-Slash-Oh-Eff-Eff toggle

switch is set to its proper configuration?"

We were upgrading stores that had old Series/1 computers

with 8-inch diskette drives, as well as standard AT

computers. The upgrade went smoothly until we tried to

update the software on the Series/1 which, for some reason,

could not read the diskette. We eventually gave up and

called for hardware maintenance.

When the hardware guys got there, they began replacing the

defective drive. But when they tilted it forward, a 5 1/4

inch diskette slid out which contained a two-year old

upgrade of the AT software. Apparently, someone had

inserted the little disk into the big drive and it had shot

to the back of the drive and stayed there. The person had

been too embarassed to call for technical support on the

problem, so they requested a replacement for the "lost"

disk, which was left in the other machine.

I worked as a salesman/tech at Best Buy for two and a half years, time which spanned the inception of Win95.

In November a lady called up with this problem, "Some store, may I help you?"

"Umm, yeah, I just bought Win95, and it won't read."

"What do you mean it won't read?"

"Well, I put the CD in and it says the disc is unreadable."

"Did you check to see if it's scratched?"

"Yes, it's not."

After a few minutes of this type of troubleshooting...

"OK, ma'am, I'm sorry, but could you start over from the beginning, again?"

"OK, I'm trying to load Win95 onto my Mac Performa 6500..."

I was working the evening shift when the call came through on the Dial-A-Tech line.

The guy was attempting to install a Zip drive on a new computer, and no matter what he did, the computer

would not read any disk put in the drive, despite the fact that the Removable Drive was showing up under My Computer.

So I had him run the install program off the disk. It found the drive and assigned it a letter, but he still couldn't

read a disk off the drive. Then I had him check his BIOS to verify that his printer port was set to EPP mode. No change.

So I had him run a manual install of the drivers through the Add New Hardware icon.

Doing this brought up a fatal device conflict. Then I asked the guy "What model of computer do you have?"

The guy replied (with no small amount of pride), "It's a Compaq 4550, I ought to know, I picked it out myself."

To which I replied, "Sir, open the front panel on the computer." A click. Silence.

Then I hear over the phone,"*&#@(&%#! There's a Zip drive already in this thing!"

At that point, I hung up on the guy and went home for the night.

I am a technical support representative for a large online service.

One day I got a call from a lady who had NEVER turned on her computer. This is how the conversation went:

Me: Thank you for calling *** My name is Steve, what can I help you with tonight.

Lady: I'm trying to get online with you guys and I can't figure it out!!

Me:Okay, where do we start??

Lady: how do i turn it on?

Me: hit the button that says power or I/O

(this took around 10 minutes because I had to explain the difference between hittin the power button on the monitor and

the one on the cpu box...)

Lady: Okay, what now?

Me: Do you have our software installed?

Lady: What's software?

Me: do you have one of our floppy disks??

Lady: I have a hard disk??

Me: ::sigh:: okay....go ahead and put it in the drive, and click on file then run

Lady: ..................(almost crying) I don't see "file"

Me: okay, I want you to double-click on your "main" group

Lady: "Maine???" I live in New York!!!!!!!

Me: (containing laughter)I'll...be...right...back...

(At this point I had to put her on hold for about 3 minutes to collect myself, I was DYING of laughter,

as was the new guy who was paralleling with me at the time, it was the first call he had ever heard and

we both almost threw up from laughing so hard. She hung up before I could get back to her.....)

I work for a local ISP here in Canada, and came across this lady one day.

Me--)Hi, local ISP, Dave speaking, how can I help you?

Client--)Hi, my keyboard doesn't work.....

Me--)OK, have you checked the connection at the back of the PC?

Client--)Yes, I just plugged it back in, it's in there firm and snug.

Me--)Ok......hmmmm.....How old is the system???? Perhaps the keyboard is dust ladden, dirty contacts etc.

Client--)Oh No, I know it's not dirty, I just took it out of the dishwasher..................................

Me--)Ya.

I work as a tech support rep for a fairly large isp. One evening around 10:30pm I received a call from a woman

who sounded completely fed up with her computer. She said she'd been callind all day and trying to get connected since 2pm.

She said this was atleast her 5th or 6th call. After going through all her settings (no doubt for the 5th or 6th time) and

seeing that they were indeed correct I inquired about the proceedure she followed when logging in (the pop she dialed into

required that she use a post dial terminal window to login) and asked if she was typing her username,

pressing enter, then her password, pressing enter, and then clicking continue.

All day long she had just been typing her username and password but not pressing enter or clicking continue.

Needless to say after a couple of minutes the connection would time. Apparently for some people it takes 8 1/2 hours to learn this.

I work as tech support for an isp. I just had a user call up becaues they received a warning message about

multiple logins and they wanted to know what that meant (obviously clueless).

I explained that two different people on seperate computers had been logged in at the same

time and that was against our service agreement. The conversation went as follows:

her: I only have one computer how can that be? (pause) Maybe I should change my e-mail address.

me: Maybe your password would be a better place to start.

her: But how can that help every time I e-mail someone they see that.

me: No that's your e-mail address (which also happens to your username that they see).

her: oh ok.

me: Well what would you like your password changed to? [note: her current password was the name of the town she lived in]

her: Well change it to [the name of the street she lives on].

me: Maybe something a little harder to guess?

her: Um ok how about a color?

me: ok, which color?

her: yellow.

me: Ok thank you for calling your password will be changed within one hour.

her: Wait, does this mean I have a new e-mail address?

me: Uh no, don't worry about it will handle it from this end [hoping when the time comes and it prompts her to

re-enter her password she'll figure out all she has to do is enter the new password].

Yet another argument for computer licensing.

As network administrator for a medium sized (200-user) network, I am also responsible for our Exchange e-mail.

A couple of months ago, I came in on a Monday morning to find that our mail server had shut down its e-mail services.

I checked resources on the machine, and found that the 4 GB drive containing the mail database was completely full!

This puzzled me, since company policy is to keep individual users’ mail in personal folders on their own PC.

About then I got a call from an irate user (also a department head) complaining because he was running out of memory

trying to open any application on his own PC. When I looked at his hard drive, it also was completely full.

This particular user also considers himself to be a PC expert, and had been overjoyed when the company had set

up a firewall and internet connection. Now he could keep in touch with his subordinates through e-mail when

he wasn’t in the office. He had used Microsoft Exchange’s Inbox Assistant feature to forward all of his office

e-mail to his ISP so that he could read it at home.

Well, on Friday he’d turned on the Inbox Assistant, and left at noon. Later in the day one of his subordinates

e-mailed him a draft report written in Word 7.0, containing a lot of graphics images. The final size of the document was about 6MB.

His ISP happens to be AOL, who had put a 3MB limit on inbound messages.

When the Inbox Assistant forwarded the report to his home e-mail address, AOL’s mail server rejected it,

and sent it back to our mail server, complete with the attached document. Our server returned it to his local mailbox,

where the Inbox Assistant happily forwarded it back to his home address,

where AOL again rejected it, attaching the original document, and…so, on and on

By the time I got in on Monday things were grim. The only way to cure the problem was to (1) turn off his Inbox Assistant,

(2) temporarily move what real data there was in the server mail database to a local message file,

(3) delete and recreate an empty server database, move the real message data back to the server,

(5) clean out the users’ local mail file to get back his hard drive space, and (6) answer

100 calls from users wanting to know when the would be able to use e-mail again.

Then I set his mail account so that it wouldn’t forward messages greater then 2MB in size.

He hated this, but refused to change to an ISP which allowed larger message size. He liked AOL (?) and wanted me to

call them and make arrangements so that they would make an exception for him. My manager told him, “No.”

Postscript: A month later he put in a written request for a second 2GB hard drive;

he was almost out of space on his original one. When I checked his disk usage, he had 675MB of old e-mail messages

on his existing drive. This included two years worth of deleted messages, and copies of sent messages.

He wanted to keep then, “just in case…” We refused him this, too, since he wanted the second drive only to store old messages.

He's avoided speaking to me since then.

A couple years back I was working on a new installation. We first stopped by and explained

their hardware options, made a few recommendations and helped them put together the machines and peripherals

they needed. A few days later we delivered their machines and helped to train in their computer-illiterate employees.

Not three days later I get a call. "Now how do I send a fax from this thing?".

I explain politely how, after you complete the document, you simply change the printer driver and enter the contact information.

.. *perplexed customer* .. "But how do I get it in there?" So I continue to explain how open-ended their

system was and that they could use any Windows-based application. ... *again, perplexed* .. "ok, thats fine ..

but how do I get it *IN* there?!?" ... 'mam, what are you trying to do?' .. "Well you told us when we bought it

that we would be able to fax from this HP 4L thing" I proceded to explain to her that a printer was an output device

and had no mechanisms for input. "No, I specifically remember you telling me I would be able to *send* faxes from this printer!!!"

How do you break it to em that no one is lame enough to believe a standalone printer will send faxes?

I work for a major Canadian computer store and get to meet and deal with a wide variety of folks.

I had a customer that had purchased a new computer and several software titles. When he bought the computer I assured him

that the 2.5GB hard drive was sufficient for him.

He returned three days later and said the HDD was out of room and he had only installed six programs

besides what the computer was originally equipped with. Naturally I was very surprised and after going over the list

of software he had installed, I thought there was no way his HDD could be full already, so I decided that since he lived

near my own home, I would drop by that night after work.

Upon arriving at his house, I opened the C: Drive window and realized what the problem was. I had to explain that installing

software did not require copying the entire CD onto the HDD.

Apparently the neighbourhood computer "wiz" had informed him that his HDD was faster than his CDROM and his

software would install faster if he copied the data to the drive and installed from there.

Then I learned that this "wiz" was 14 years old, and did not even own a computer.

This happens a lot..

Me: Thanks for calling (iSP), this is Frank, can I get your user name?

Customer: (xxx)

Me: Alright, and are you having a problem getting your mail, or getting connecting?

Customer: Um..I can't connect.

Me: What kind of error message does it tell you?

Customer: (some error)

Me: Ok, let's go ahead and double-click on My Computer

Customer: (silence)

Me: (waiting for him to open it)

After a couple of seconds...

Customer: Ok.

Me: Alright, let's go ahead and double-click on Dial-Up Networking.

Customer: (silence)

After a couple of seconds...

Customer: Um..ok.

This goes on as we go deeper and deeper into his computer. Finally:

Me: Ok sir, we've reinstalled your modem and you said you had 2 phone lines, so let's go ahead and try to connect.

Customer: Um..Nothing happened.

Me: What do you mean?

Customer: While you were doing all that, my screen stayed the same.

(baffled)

Me: You mean you already tried to connect?

Customer: No, I'm waiting for all those things to happen.

Me: You mean you weren't following me?

Customer: Oh! I thought you were gonna do it all from over there.

Didn't you know? Techs are actually spies!

Working at a major software reseller, I often field calls from customers who don't want to call the technical

support number for the manufacturer and pay the resulting long distance bill. This particular person took the

program home, and it worked no problem. (This was before hard drives were common so she was running it off the disk.)

She used the program for a couple of hours and it worked great. The next day it didn't work.

I figured something must be wrong with the disk. She bought it back to the store and exchanged it for another copy

with the same results. It worked fine the first day, but the next day it wouldn't load.

I tried everything I could think of and after spending an hour or so on the phone with her she mentioned how she stored the disk.

It seemed she had small children and to keep them from getting ahold of the disks and ruining them,

she stuck the disks to her refrigerator with a big magnet.

I had a call from a female who just purchased her computer and wanted help trying to set everything up.

I explained that this company(where I work) was a computer manufacturer company and she should be calling the

dealer or PC company for assistance. She asked me what our company does and I explained, computer monitors.

She asked me very seriously, "whats that?".

For her to understand, I replied, "the thing you look at to get your picture"..oh, ok thanks!" She hung up.

I suppose that the younger owner of the computer went out and left a warning for grandpa not to mess with the machine.

Well....Grandpa did. And after figuring out that the power button was an absolute requirement, he called me because

there was nothing happening that he could see.

I asked him to turn on the monitor.

He swore at me and said he had no intention on watching TV.

I was stunned!!

I again told him that is he wants to see anything he would have to turn the monitor to the ON position.

No Luck.

He said he would "Adjust the ears" and call me back if he needed me.

I happily never heard from him again

Some weeks ago, I could eavesdrop a phone-call from a

colleague with a customer, latter having severe problems

with his Web-publishing software, which he bought some

days ago. He already created the structure of his web-pages

offline, including all pictures, buttons, banners, texts

and links. Then he ran the so-called *publish*-command

(which was intended, to collect all objects on the

harddrive in a specific file-structure, to transmit it

to the provider later by another command-sequence,

according to the manual).

Now, that customer complained, that he asked several friends,

to access his site, but all w/o success! When my colleague

asked him about his provider, then the customer simply

replied: what *is* a provider? Yep, you are guessing right!

The customer neither didn´t have a modem, nor internet-access.

I do computer shows for living, and obviously I have to deal with all sorts of folk

some are computer educated, some on the other hand don't know anything.

Here's something which happened recently:

I had an Ergonomic keyboard on display, saying "Ergo Keyboard $xx"

A gentelman comes up and asks me:

"Does this keyboard work with Internet ?"

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!??!?!?!?

Okay, with all of the stories written in by the techs, I thought maybe I should write one in as a customer.

Let me state in the beginning that I am not an unintelligent person. I have never considered myself computer illiterate,

even having taken a few programming courses in my time. I guess the look of modern technology can get even me, though.

I'm a college student in Florida and had been begging my father for several years for a computer to use for school

(there was no way I could afford a computer on my own). I went to visit him a few years ago for Christmas and

I finally got a nice system. I won't go in to details, but let's just say the printer was a Cannon BJC-210.

I set up the system just fine turned everything on and began exploring the software.

Then I decided to try out this nice, new color printer. One problem, there was no on/off switch.

I looked and looked and couldn't find the switch I was so used to seeing on the back or side of a printer.

I assumed that the computer itself must turn the printer on once it was hooked up.

the computer kept giving an error message when I tried to print something out.

I called the store where the system was bought. They went over the problem with me on the phone and we couldn't

figure out what was wrong. So, they decided I should bring the whole system in that day, before I left for school,

as I lived on the other side of the state from my father. I brought the whole system in, waited on line the day after

Christmas, and finally handed the whole thing over to the tech team. After leaving the system with them for a few and

wandering the store, I returned to check on the progress they were making. They had the printer working fine,

and couldn't figure out what my problem had been. I said, "ok, I must have just hooked something up wrong."

As they were unhooking the system, I noticed on of them press the small, purple, slitlike button on the top of the printer

with the word "power" under it. I had just thought that was there for decoration and was way too embarrassed to tell the

techs just how stupid I truly was. I took the computer back home, set it up, and have been enjoying it ever since.

I work for a nation-wide tech support, and we get them all,

I got a call from a lady who wanted to know why her comp

tied up both lines when she called into the internet, I asked

her to explain and she said she had a phone with two line

capability, but when she dialed the internet, it used them

both. I asked her what her other number was, and if she had the

computer plugged into the right jack, and she said she didn't

have a second number, just two lines.

At this point I asked

her how she knew she had two phone lines, and she said "when

I click on line one, i get a dial tone, and when i click on

line two, i get a dial tone, also". I explained how a two line

phone works when you only have one phone line, and then hung up

and had qutie a good laugh with the other techs who had been

evesdropping on the call in disbelief!

I've worked in field support for a few years, but the best story comes

from my own family. My mother works for a law firm in a small town that believes in having

all the high tech it can get itss hands on and my mom frequently calls to

run their latest software/hardware acquisitions past me. Towards the end of

one converssation, she mentioned that they would be migrating from their

mainframe to desktop PCs, complete with Win95. I told her she sould really enjoy

getting to play with some of the cool stuff that Windows can do. Her reply? "Oh, I

am going to absolutely hate it. I'm left-handed, you know." Mystified,

I asked what that had to do with anything. She said, "Well, do you know where I can

get a left-handed mouse?"

How do you tell your own mom she's worse than your regular users?

I work for a rather large international company, and we've had more than our share of "user" problems,

but one of the funniest I've seen came from with. One of our senior network guys was plugging in a bunch of

new hubs we were hooking up. Well, after putting all 5 hubs neatly on the rack, he proceedes to turn them on.

ALL of them at once. POP. Blows the fuse.

Unfortuantely, this was also the circuit that all of our routers plugged into.

Imagine 1100 users who suddenly can't work at all? As far as I know, that's been the only time when they made

an announcement over the P.A. "The Network is now back up"

This tale may not qualify...though I am indeed a tech.

This tale is about my sister:

I got a call from my sister, using my home computer to

search for information with my Web browser and print them

out. She hadn't been using the Web or computer for long.

"Hi! What's up?"

"Are you busy right now?" (she sounded nervous)

"Nope, is there a problem with the computer?"

"Is it illegal to print out some Web pages?"

"I don't think so...unless somebody plans to sell or promote

the stuff as their own. Why do you ask"

"I was printing, when a message came up saying it was

illegal, so I panic'ed and shut off the computer."

After a long pause, it hit me. I asked if she had seen....

"The program has performed an illegal instruction"

After catching my breath from laughter, I explained that I

was the ONLY "Big Brother" who knew what she'd done, but she

wouldn't talk to me for two days....

I worked as a Federal Contractor for the US Army and worked on a team of programmers writing Oracle Databases

for HP-UX and Access Databases for Windows.

We had one Oracle database that we "inherited" from those who worked before us there.

The problem came that records had gone missing. While there was like 20,000 records at one time, the next day there would only be 20.

The Federal Employees came down on us and yelled at us and called us names, claiming we didn't know what we where doing. We went over each line of code, there was no way that over 19,980 records could have been deleted by mistake.

We finally got the Unix System Administrator to get a log file, because we suspected someone of sabotaging the files, perhaps an outside Hacker or disgruntled employee? We finally got an IP number, and went to the Network Administrator to look up who it was.

Turns out to be one of the Federal Employees that yelled the loudest at us. He claimed he wasn't doing it. Then his boss asked him to show him what he does all day. So he loaded the database form, and hit Keypad 3 which is PageDown on a PC and is DEL on the HP-UX system and it even says so on the online menu status bar (PgDn = Del).

He didn't want to use the search key to locate his record, and would rather hit Kep Pad 3 through enough records until he found the one he wanted, then he would hit Key Pad 3 to delete that record! It didn't seem to bother him that the same key he used for deleting records, he also thought was used to move to the next record!

His boss then decided to take away his PC and give him a "Dumb Terminal" instead, doh! Same problem, same keypad. So we disabled the delete record for that form, and instead made it beep and flash a message to give a call to our extension if they wanted a record deleted.

Since my neighbors know I work with computers, they occasionally

call me up to solve a problem with their PCs.

One day, I got a call from a neighbor lady who had moved her

husband's computer desk to clean the carpet. She was trying to

get it put back together before he returned from a business trip

and couldn't get the computer to power up. So I went up to see

what I could do.

Sure enough the computer wouldn't power up. I swapped the cables

at the back of the computer and monitor and now the monitor

wouldn't come on and the computer powered up. That was easy, and

I went back to my house and grabbed a spare power cord.

I replaced the cord and the monitor still refused to power up.

All the power cables were plugged into a power strip in a jumble

behind the desk. I decided that it would be best to drag is all

out and see what was going on. I found the power strip was plugged

into itself and one of the power cords was plugged into the wall!

Me: Tech support, how may I help you?

Customer: I bought your modem package including the webbrowser to go on the internet, but I have a problem.

Me: Yes, continue ..

Customer: During the installation of the webbrowser that followed with the modem package, I was at no point prompted to select what language I wanted to use. How do I change the language in the browser?

Me: The browser we provided you should be a Danish version, if you want an English version you can download that from microso...

Customer: Yes! I know! But it doesn't work correctly, half the pages I've browsed on the World Wide Web are still in English! How do I get the Danish version of the World Wide Web installed?

Me: DUH!

This morning I get a page: please help user such-and-such

with logging in. I walk over to her desk and ask "What seems

to be the problem?" She looks back at me and says "I

forgot my password to my NT logon." I scratch my head and

ask nicely "Didn't you change this Friday? I was here at

your desk and helped you." "Yes, I did." "Well, if I

remember correctly, I saw you write it down in your

PalmPilot." The user looks at me, with puppy eyes and

slightly blushes "Yes, I thought so too, but I cannot

find it anywhere".

Here I am, envisioning myself setting her passwords on

several servers, her local workstation and G-d knows where

else. So I have a hunch. "Why don't you try this... Click

on that little magnifying glass on your Pilot... Type in

'password'... and click on OK"

The user sees the results coming by and screams "Toine...

YOU'RE THE BEST! I have been looking for an hour for my

password in this darn thing"

Moral of the story: A PDA is a good tool.... if you know how

to use it.. and if you remember where you put your

information!

I understand that people who don't know very much about computers have to call us with stupid questions,

but do they ALWAYS have to be eating potato chips when they call?

While working as a tech for UNT College of Business

Administration we had a rash of Da'Boyz virus in our labs.

One day a woman came in with an infected disk and asked if

it was OK to put her infected disk in the same box with her

other disks or would they get sick too.

I wanted to tell her to make sure it didn't sneeze or cough

on the other disks but my boss was right next to me.

Being in the Computer Industry I have a lot of family

ask me for computer help. One day I got a call from my grandmother who had decided that a computer would be a good idea to keep her busy. I went alojng with her and picked out a nice system that would be addiquate for her. After getting her home and setting up her new computer I went home to relax. A few hours later I got a call that I should come over and pick the computer up and take it back to the store. Puzzled by the phone call I headed over immediatly to find my grandmother wearing a vapour mask along with my younger cousins. The computer was running in another room and she was telling the kids not to go into the room. I asked what was going on and she replied that she called the manufacturer of the computer for information and they informed her that sometimes computers get viruses. She of course didn't want to get sick so she made the kids wear the masks and wanted me to return the computer.

My daughter who is a network engineer, hastily dressed for work with

one black and one blue shoe.

To save any embarrassing questions I told her to just tell everyone she

was running a dual boot.

This story takes place about 6 months ago.

I work at a convenience store that has a POS system installed

on the office computer. This helps us with bookwork, and inventory.

(by the way, this tale is about a tech - not a customer)

The original POS program was starting to fail repeatedly,

and was in need of upgrading. We contacted the company we

got the original software from, and made arrangements for

the delivery and installation of the upgraded version which

even at this point in time was still a DOS program. I

happened to be in the store on one of the two days the tech

was there. She was diligently working away in the office,

and the boss and I were standing near a display discussing

business. The tech came wandering out and seeing us, trotted

over and asked us this:

"How do I get into Windows from DOS?"

(The computer has Win3.11 on it.)

My boss and I looked at each other, then turned to the tech

and we both said,"W - I - N, then hit 'enter'"

I still can't believe that, y' know?

One Saturday moning on a national PC support desk, the cust rings in saying he has a problem with the PC.

JB: What's the problem?

Cust: Yeh, got loads a problems....[short pause].....WAIT, it's gone completely dead!!!!!

JB: [Can hear an unusual noise in the background] Could you check the fuse in the plug for me please?

Cust goes away, in the background I hear....

Cust (in background): You stupid &*#$%, I'm talking to the bloke about the computer, unplug the hoover and put the plug back in NOW!!!

When the Cust returned to the phone....

Cust: Yeh mate, it's um.. come back on, it must be an INTERMITTENT problem!!!!

I got a call suporting a Mac type computer and

this lady said that her new monitor did not work on her

new computer and I asked if it was plugged in, she said yes.

So I had her do several other things and it seemed as if the

computer was booted and I could even restart it with the

keyboard. We were twenty minutes or more into the call and

I asked her to check that the plug on the cpu was in tight,

after a few minutes of struggling with her to get her to

under-stand, I realized that the monitor cable was not

being used at all and the monitor was just sitting on to

of the cpu.

I would say that the cable is a pretty important part.

Over heard a fellow TechSupport agent take this call:

Tech: Thank you for calling Residential ISDN TechSupport,

this is Dan, how may I help you?

Cust: Yes, my computer crashed recently. It's repaired now

but I need your help reconfiguring my internet thing.

- All I have is my password.

Tech: Great! thats a good start (capitalizing on the

positives to 'help' the customer cope w/ loss)

What is your password?

Cust: "Astrisk, Astrisk, Astrisk, Astrisk, Astrisk, Astrisk."

Tech: - pause - eh, Ma'm, that's not your password, it's

just a mask that the computer shows you to keep your

password safe.

- Configured customer, closed issue. took 15 min laugh break

For Several years I worked as a sales/tech person at a small office and computer supply store. Our clients ranged from local commercial businesses to large government installations. One of my favorite accounts was premier research and development military base. Keep in mind I was a lowly 15k/yr tech working with 60k+/yr engineers who design the systems to safeguard our country. One day I received a call from one of those engineers complaining that the photo-copier he had just requisitioned failed to power on. After receiving a lecture on how intelligent he was, and how I need not talk simply to him, I proceeded to try to diagnose the problem. I asked if he had followed the installation manual in setting up the copier and received a very curt "yes".

After a few well placed questioned I discovered my brilliant customer had failed to plug in the power cord. This was listed clearly as step 3 of the 10 step installation pamphlet. The next day I received another call, this time from his secretary. It seemed the engineer still could not get the copier to work. As he was a profitable client, and I wanted to keep him happy, I replaced his copier no-questions-asked.

Upon receiving the returned copier, I wanted to find out what the problem was. Looking at the copier, it seemed to be in good shape. However, the problem quickly showed itself to me when I opened the front door. A huge empty hole existed in the center of the copier - right where the toner cartridge should have been installed. This of course was step 7 of the 10 step installation manual that my customer had "read". I need a raise!

I don't know if you ever heard of this, but it really happened to my colleague this morning.

My friend attended a call that goes something like this....

"Hello, is this IS Technical Support? I have a problem with my printing because the message here says that I need to have the printer attached to this printer port. If you have a spare one, could you sent it over? I really need it fast because my boss wants me to print a few documents urgently. Could you help me on this? Anyway, how much does it cost if I have to buy it?"

I work for a local Isp in my area, and we get tons of calls that could be submitted here, but this one was the most recent.

me: Hello tech support how can I help you?

caller: Yes, I just spoke to a tech there and he had me do a scandisk and a defrag, he told me to call back when it was finished.

me: Ok, is it finished?

caller: I think so.. theres a bunch of fish on my computer screen, that means that the defrag is finished..right?

me: Thats just your screen saver, move your mouse or press your space bar.

caller: what's a screen saver for?..I did'nt put anything like that on here.

me: (sigh......)

A customer was working on their home computer and knew

I would help her out even if it were for home.

She called and the conversation when something like this.

Customer: "Hi there, I was wondering if you could tell

me how to open this MS Word document at home."

Me: "Are you at work?"

Customer: "No, this is a new computer that I just got and

I want to know how I can open this MS Word document from

work so I can work on it at home."

Me: "Have you installed MS Office on your home machine."

Customer: "uh, no, did I need to install it to open the

document."

Me: "Yes, you have to have the program to open the document."

customer: "Oh, never mind. Bye."

I user who could not see anything that they were typing in word.

Other applications worked fine, but nothing would show up in that program.

When I looked at the application it turned out that they had chosen a white font on a white background.

One day at the Product Support desk for a midsized software company an impassioned e-mail came in from our Middle Eastern sales rep. It was regarding our Arabic software. Turns out everytime a user would type in the word "Allah" the software would crash. We of course couldn't contain our laughter but the bug report continued, "you may find this funny, but trust me, my customers don't. Please help me or I'm going to be in big trouble." This sentence saved the submitter endless references to bug number 666 or suggestions they try typing Yahweh instead, but it didn't mean we didn't say them among ourselves. Luckily for our Middle Eastern sales rep it was an easy bug to fix and we saved our sales and maybe a life.

One problem with being in the Computer industry is that family will always call you with problems. I was visiting my mother in another state recently and one of her friends, (an elderly woman) was just given a computer and needed some help.

Now we all know how it feels to do tech work all week long and then have to do it on week ends as well. I figured i could just put her on speaker phone and help her out that way instead of driving clear accross town.

As i was trying to walk her through some things in Windows 3.1, I was asking her to click on certain icons.

In broken European English she kept stating that the mouse was acting up. Having not seen the machine but knowig it was a used machine i figured:

1- the mouse was hold

2- the drivers were getting flakey

3- the cord was not connected tightly

Then in exasperation she screams the the "dumb mouse moves to the right when i push it to the left."

I ask her if she pushes the mouse away from her what direction does the cursor go? "why, down of course!"

I then ask her if the cord from the mouse was coming out of the mouse away from her to toward her.

Seems she had the mouse upside down all this time. i wonder how she was clicking the mouse buttons?

We all laughed the rest of the day about the "stupid mouse"

Yes, it's truly amazing that people will call Kinko's for technical assistance, but they do. I heard one question, asked in complete seriousness, that I would stack against any Henny Youngman-Steven Wright one-liner you can repeat:

Customer on phone: Yeah, I have a 3 1/2 inch disk, and my friend's computer has a 5 1/4 inch drive. Is there an adapter I can buy that will let me just slide my disc in?

It took all my patience to refrain from saying, "Why yes, there's a great little adapter out called 'Jammit'!"

While working in the PC service department at a major medical

center, we received a curious call from our Telecommunications

department.

"We installed the Ethernet card and can't get connected."

Now these are the people who actually install all of our

ethernet cabling, hubs, routers, etc. along with the PBX

system.

So we went through the normal procedure on the phone - is

the cable connected at both ends? Yes. Does Win95 see the

card? No. Is the green light on the back of the card on

or off? Off.

So we went to check it out. Started the computer, forced

Win95 to "see" an ethernet card (this was before PNP had

even started to become "reliable"), swapped the cable. Still

no connection. So we decided to pop the case.

Lo and behold, they had installed an ISA card in a PCI slot.

Despite the fact that the card was not actually making any

physical contact with the computer, they tightened the screw

holding the interface card in place and closed up the case.

When we stopped laughing, we told them we'd need to call in

some additional support, and contacted the rest of the PC

support team to come over an take a look.

I think we made them mad bringing the whole team in to see

if they could figure out this problem.

My tale begins back in the 386 era. I was working for a small computer sales and service center in Dublin (yes, Ireland) that, to help "make the sale" regluarly sold 4 hour on-site warranty for a pittance just to get the business.

Needless to say, the tech support department (one guy) was very busy and always tried to fix problems over the phone. Here is one support call that he related to me that I have repeated and chuckled over many times.

Cust: The floppy drive on this new computer that you sold me doesn't work.

Tech: Have you tried a different diskette?

Cust: I have tried over twenty, it doesn't read any of them.

The support department then walked him through trying another diskette, confirming that the power light lit on the drive but it wouldn't read or format the disk. So he went out on-site.

When he got there, he put his diag disk in the drive and checked it out thoroughly. Everything was fine. So he asked the customer to show him how he used it and when the problem occured.

The customer then produced a pile of black diskettes and put one in the drive producing the required error.

Holding back tears of laughter, the technician explained to the customer that cutting the edges off his old 5.25 inch diskettes and sealing them with electrical tape does not make then compatible with the (then) new 3.5 inch drive.

In the early 1990's I worked for a hosptial which had an EDS

clinical/nursing system, of which I was in the process of replacing

with a networked client/server system. While trouble shooting a

problem with the EDS helpdesk, I was told this story:

There was another client, in the mid '80s, which had the same software

and hardware that my hospital had. The software ran on a Data General Eclipse

C-150 system: the kind that still had rows of switches and 'status'

LED's on the front of the machine.

The client reported that about every two weeks or so, in the middle

of the night, the system would crash and then need to be restarted.

For months they tried to debug the problem remotely, but to no avail.

Eventualy the customer insisted that EDS send an engineer on site to

monitor the system during the night.

So, a person was sent to baby sit the system, on the grave yard shift

until the problem was resolved. After about two weeks of monitoring

the computer, a janitor enters the computer room at around 2:00am, with

a floor buffer. He reaches down and unplugs the Data General C-150 from

the wall. He then plugs the buffer into the now free receptical and

proceeds to buff the floor.

The EDS engineer sits quitely untill he finishes the job. Once the job is done,

the janitor unplugs the buffer, and reconnects the computer to the power.

The computer obligingly re-boots ( with a little assistance from the engineer:

those computers didn't just auto-boot, you had to flip and toggle swithces in

order for them to restart).

The EDS engineer then says, "Excuse me, sir, but how often do you do that?"

"Oh, 'bout every two weeks or so, why?", said the the janitor.

"Just curious", the engineer replied.

I work in a busy retail computer store that sells software, hardware and custom computers. One day a lady came in the store, and the conversation went as follows:

Me: May I help you?

Customer: I want a CD Holder

Me: We have several different kinds on the shelf here, how

many cd's do you want to be able to put in at the same time.

Customer: What do you mean? You can only put one in at a time.

Me: You want a single CD holder? Do you mean a jewell case, you know, the little case that snaps open and you put the CD-In?

Customer (Getting irate now): NO, I want the CD Holder, you know the big box!

Me: The big box? I don't understand you maam. (By now I'm totally at sea as to what this woman wants)

Customer: My brother gave me a drive for Christmas, and I don't have anything to put it in.

I want one of those to install it in (Pointing at our computers for sale).

Me: You mean you have a CD Rom drive and no computer?

Customer: Well, thats what I have been telling you all along!!

Me: you want to buy a computer to put your CD Rom in?

Customer: Yes! Don't you understand plain english?

Me: I suggest you go to Walmart and buy a Packard Bell.

It really happened: this morning.

User: the program you sent me doesn't work.

Me: what happens when you attempt to run it.

User: Nothing: my machine hangs indefinately.

Me: Let me try on my machine.

(Double-click. Works fine. Takes a couple of

seconds to reformat a file)

Me: No tell me what you've done. Is the program file called

tidy.exe in the right directory?

User: It wasn't, but I moved it.

Ten fruitless minutes later.

Me: are you sure you've moved the file to the right directory?

(A better question would be why she put it in the wrong one but

I'd never get an answer to that!)

User: I'm sure - I'm not a bimbo you know!

Me: I'm sorry if I implied you are. How did you move it?

User: I loaded Word 97, opened tidy.exe, then saved it again in

the new directory.

Me: Lady, you've damaged that file beyond repair! Executables don't

like being treated as documents. I'll send you an

undamaged copy

User: I wondered when the file looked funny in Word. But

you know what computers are like!

First off..this guy was sent 3 copies of our software cause

each time he called in he said the disks were "bad" so we

finally had enough and actually had him on the phone when

he went to do it

me: okay sir..you got the software there..take the first

disk and place in in the computer

him: just one second... (could hear something snap)

me: what was that?

him: just following the instructions that came with it the

floppies "remove all plastic covering from floppy"

techie: tech support how can I help you?

caller: Hi is the mail strike expected to be over soon?

techie: pardon me?

caller: I'd like to know if i can still email during the mail strike?

techie: Yes mam the mail strike has nothing to do with emails

I once worked for yet another of those small, area ISPs

that we're all familiar with. I was the lead technician

there and usually didn't handle phone support,

but if we got swamped I'd often help take the extra.

One day a gentleman called in about some miscellanous

problem he was having with our software.

Me: (ISP Name), this is Sean, how may I help you?

Cust: Your software doesn't work, it keeps giving me

(XYZ) error.

Me: OK, what operating system?

Cust: Windows 3.11

Me: OK Sir, do you have your original install disks handy?

We may need them to solve the problem.

Cust: Yes, and don't baby me, I'm an expert in Windows

and Computer stuff

(I start to think, OK fine then let's speed through this..)

Me: OK Sir, them minimize the client window, open file

manager, double-click the install.exe file and tell me what

it does.

Cust: (Long pause) ... umm... hmm... do I have to minimize?

Me: (oooh-k) Well you won't be able to see the install

program if you don't.

Cust: (heavy breathing, mumbling, *clickclick*)

Me: What seems to be the problem, has your machine crashed?

Cust: No

Me: Sir, this should be really simple.. just minimize

the window and double-click the file.

(Multiple mouse clicks heard in the background, soft

cursing ensues)

Cust: (agitated voice) OK, you may be a technician but you

really shouldn't expect customers without your training

to know how to minimize a (*$&$#%!@) window!!

Needless to say that after the call was over I laughed

so hard I had to stop taking calls for the rest of the

afternoon.

I'm glad I'm not an expert!

I work for a library as their computer tech, and often get calls from

various departments for assistance. A recent one that takes the cake

was from one of the branches head librarian.

Librarian: We're having a problem with our Mac. Here's the patron.

(note: She puts the *patron* on to take care of the problem rather

than deal with it hereself!)

Me: What's the problem?

Patron: The computer won't go on.

Me: What's it doing?

Patron: Nothing.

Me: Describe "nothing"

Patron: Well... nothing. I turn on the computer and the screen is blank.

Me: Blank?

Patron: Nothing. It's just black.

Me: (thinking we might have a power supply problem here, or perhaps a

blown monitor). Can you try turning it off and on again?

Patron: Already tried that. It's just black.

Me: Which switch did you press?

Patron. The one on the computer.

Me: Where is it?

Patron: ???

Me: Can you tell me where it is?

Patron: It's on the computer.

Me: Where?

Patron: Under the screen.

Me: (by now getting an idea of what's going on) Is it on the monitor?

Or is it on the box that's under it?

Patron: It's a square button under the screen.

Me: Just under the screen? On that same piece?

Patron: Yes.

Me: Congratulations. You've just turned on the monitor. Now, here's

how to turn on the computer...

One of our newly hired office workers was having trouble with the computer. It seems the computer would respond to keyboard commands, but the mouse would not move.

As I was standing near to her, I noted that she was waving the mouse within inches of the monitor saying to some technician on the phone, "it still is not moving!"

I had to leave the room quickly, the newly hired office worker was my new boss.

Keep in mind, folks, that I'm merely a front-desk clerk, but at 3 am on this campus (name withheld), I'm the closest to tech support in this dorm. Two main occurences come to mind...

PC on the Flying Trapeeze

Anyway, the school server is not what anyone in their right mind would call high-quality. Without saying, it occasionally drops off the map, taking the entire school net with it. So one of the residents came to the desk to get a key for the computer room. I warned him the server is down, but he went in anyway. About five minutes later, I heard a loud crash come from the direction of the computer lab. Out of morbid curiousity, I went to investigate. It seems that the computer, a desk-top case, had fallen off the desk, taking the monitor with it. Upon further prodding, I found out that the reason the assembly fell is because the resident had put the CPU on top of the monitor. Why? "Well, if the server's down, won't raising the case fix it?"

Make it fit...

Most of the computers have both 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives. Whether both work is another matter. Last semester, one of the students in the computer literacy class was using 5.25 disks in one the machines that only had a working 3.5 drive. How'd she do this? Simple - she folded the floppy into quaters and pushed hard. Last I knew, she's taking computer literacy again...

A man calls in says he has just put in a second line for his internet. Every once in a while his phone rings what does he do?

"Is that someone sending me e-mail? what do I do?"

"Answer the phone someone is calling you", I told him.

I was working in the computer lab at my school one morning when someone asked me if I could format his disk. I asked him whether he wanted it formatted as a PC or Mac disk. He said, "Mac.. oh, wait, PC." "OK." Everything was going fine. Ten seconds after I checked the Quick format option and pressed Enter, it was done. I was about to hand him his disk when he said, "Oh, can you send that file to the printer for me?"

Apparently, he had wanted his document converted into a different "format."

In the late 80's I worked as a system engineer for a large automobile firm. I maintained the CAD/CAM system. The system used pens and tablets. The system was very subsceptible to static electricity, and pens were changed on a fairly regular basis. One day, a new designer started, and immediately needed a new pen. I replaced it, and a few hours later, she needed another. For the next week, I replaced pens about twice a day, sprayed with anti-static, and tried everything I could think of to no avail.

Then I noticed that she was wearing a wool skirt. I had to politely ask if she was wearing silk underwear. She was!! Every time she squirmed or moved in her chair, she was generating static electricity. Enough to damage equipment!!

I work for a techincal help desk that supports Fast Food and Quick Service resturantes. Here is a call I had from a manager recently:

HelpDesk: Thank you for calling XXXXX Help Desk this is Desiree.

Client: (frantic voice) My printer isn't working!!!

HelpDesk: Was it working earlier today?

Client: Yes, it was but it isn't working anymore!!

HelpDesk: Does the printer have power?

Client: I dunno, it's plugged in.

HelpDesk: Are any of the lights lit on the outside of the printer?

Client: No, but it is really bright....

HelpDesk: Which light is really bright?

Client: I told you none of the lights are on!!

HelpDesk: *pause* Can you check the cabling for me?

Client: Okay.. *puts phone down* *ouches and cursing are heard* .... *client comes back on line* all the cables are fine.

HelpDesk: Sir, when did your printer stop working?

Client: *pause* ummmmm when it caught on fire....

HelpDesk: Sir? Is your printer still on fire?

Client: Yes, and it isn't working!!!

HelpDesk: *attempting not to break out in tears or laughter* Do you have a fire extiguisher at your site?

Client: Yes, of course.

HelpDesk: Go get the fire extiguisher and put the fire out.

Client: Okay *puts phone down .... long pause ... sounds of the fire extiguisher being used are heard *

HelpDesk: Is the fire out Sir?

Client: Yes, but #$@%&!! the #!@* printer still isn't working!!!

HelpDesk: Sir, we are going to have to dispatch your hardware support to replace the printer.

.... and hardware service was dispatched...

My wife was helping out a user over the phone in our small software

business and the user could not figure out how to change

the colors on his screen. We have an option in one of

our software programs that allows the user to change the

background color and this was not working. After going

around and around trying different color combinations she

finally got the user to admit that he had a monochrome

laptop --- it was incapable of displaying colors! Duh!

A co-worker just spent about 30 minutes on a simple call where

all he had to do was direct a user to install software from

drive A using a standard 3 1/2" diskette.

The user was asked to place diskette 1 into drive A then type in

a:setup. Unfortunately he kept on getting a 'drive not ready' message.

This message was puzzling since we knew that the diskette was

OK. Just to make sure we directed the user to go to a DOS prompt

and type in DIR A:, and sure enough it was able to read the floppy

properly. But when attempting to install from Windows we kept getting

the 'drive not ready' message. We asked the user if the diskette was

still in the drive and of course he answered 'yes'.

After 25 minutes we found out that the user pushed the diskette in

all the way when going to DOS but removed the diskette it so it was only partially

in the drive when going to Windows. He was afraid of ruining the

floppy diskette by keeping it in 'too long'.

Somewhere in the depths of the Microsoft Web site(where else?)

I was confronted with a request to register who I was.

Name, address, e-mail, telephone number, and fax number.

I didn't give it a fax number (I haven't got one at home

and I didn't want my employer's fax machine clogged

up with junk faxes).- I pressed 'submit'.

'Error' - you must give us a fax number!

Back to filling in the form again -'Submit'

'Error' - you MUST give us your fax number so that we can

comply with your wish not to receive unsolicited faxes!

It then crashed and wouldn't let me registed again.

I was on our help desk one day and one of our users called in with a problem. They said their printer wouldn't print...

I asked them if it had been working previously and they said yes. I ran them through all the check all the cables and is it on routine and was really stummped. On a whim I asked them if any of the lights were blinking on the front of the printer (being a Nec printer I knew they should all be steady). He said yes. I asked, "do you have paper in the printer?"

There was a short silence and then he said "I didn't know you had to put paper in the printer" . . .

I build computer systems for installation in Automotive

Aftermarket stores across the nation. I am also one of the

support reps who supports the systems once they are online.

We have a staff of installers who take care of the setup

on site at the customer's location.

It was one of these installer's who called me one morning

with a drastic and fatal error.

I had built this system and I knew it worked when I shipped

it out; so I was shocked that it wouldn't even enter the

operating system after it arrived on site!

She was receiving an "Insert Boot Disk" error message each

time she booted up.

We tried going into the SCSI disk utility and it couldn't

even find the hard disk.

The light to indicate hard disk activity never lit up and

she never heard it power up either.

We had had problems with the ribbon cables coming loose in

shipping on occasion, so I asked her to remove the case and

check that. It was fine she said.

Fearing a fatal crash, I built her a complete new system and

had it sent to her overnite.

She sent the dead system back to me just as she left it.

When it arrived at my desk, I opened it and found the

problem in about 15 seconds. The POWER cable was

disconnected from the hard drive. When I had asked her to

check the ribbon cable, neither one of us thought to check

the power cable.

I plugged it in, closed it up, and turned it on.

Presto. Worked just fine.

I had a problem with my Internet settings, so I called my ISP to get my computer

configured right for their internet service. I am very knowledgable with computer, but I don't know everything.

Well, the ISP tech support person tried to get some information about my computer.

He asked what kind of operating system I had.

I said that I had "Windows 91," not realizing that I had combined Windows 95

and Windows 3.1 into one OS.

What can I say, this gem originates from a local hotel where

I had just installed a new Hotel Managment system...

Customer : My printer won't print and I've got 30 guests waiting

to check out.

Me : You say it won't print.. what exactly is wrong? Is it

feeding the paper?

Customer : Yes, it just won't print.

Me : (thinking easy - empty cartridge -it's a deskjet) I think

you need to change the ink cartridge. Do you know how to do that?

Customer : Yes, I've already tried that. It still won't work.

Me : Would you mind doing it again, just to be sure.

Customer : Ok.. hold on. [sounds of printer cart. being replaced]

Customer : It still won't work...you'll need to help me

Me : [getting worried] Let's try a few things..

- proceed to talk customer through various trouble-shooting methods

all to no avail.

Me : It looks like you have a hardware fault - I'll need to

come out.

Customer : ok - hangs up.

1/2 hour later I arrive on site, complete with spare printer

which I proceed to install. Realising the spare printers

ink is low, I open the 'old' one to swap the cartridges

-- and discover the plastc seal still perfect in all it's parts!

Yes, this customer had in all innocence been replacing the cartridge

without removing the plastic seal over the print nozzles. Take it off

and all the troubles are over!

I really didn't have the heart to charge them!