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Your Favorite Support Anecdote
Most of us have had the unfortunate opportunity to have worked tech support at some point, whether it was for a paycheck or for a relative. The Register has offered up a vote for several of their favorite support stories but I'm sure there are many more out there to be had. My favorite horror story was while working a tech support call for a governmental employee, when asked to take her mouse and click on the "start" button all I could hear over the phone is what I later found out was the user banging her mouse against the monitor. What other horror stories have people seen from the trenches?
A half a year ago, I went home for the holidays and fixed my parent's windows machine for them.
... blast ... worm ... 32.exe or something" but when she clicked on it, the machine started acting funny.
Not more than two weeks later my mom called me up saying it had a blue screen of death whenever it tried to boot up. I asked her what the error said and she started reading to me the hex from the screen.
She said my older sister had been using the computer last so I told her to put her on the line and asked her what had happened. She told me her friend in college had sent her an attachment in an e-mail named "ms
My work here is dung.
I am getting status 41s with my backup and need help.
Okay, will you please email me your bp.conf, bpsched, bpcd logs?
No, I can't.
Okay, why not.
Well, we are having problems with our network. Nothing seems to be working.
What part of NETBACKUP don't you understand?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I was cracking up whilst reading this. Especially at cracks like this:
You should check Computer Stupidities for even more funny stories: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid
This might be the longest /. thread ever.
My step mom, after telling me that she didn't know what my father did to the computer, because he's 'not very good', proceeded to tell me that she was having problems 'downloading the program from the upload on the cd'. She simply couldn't copy her word file.
Suffice to say, aneurisms hurt.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
We had made a fat client app for a company with a metric buttload of regional offices all over Germany. Each office had their own database, and it was replicated daily against the central database. (Short story: each office only needed the data for their region, so it really didn't need the whole central database. And conversely the "mother" corporation didn't need their data immediately either.)
So this woman (afaik, a sorta boss for that particular office too) calls that the application stopped working on her machine. The tech-support guys can't solve it, so they forward the call to us programmers, namely to the guy next to me. Turns out that she had heard about evil hackers and whatnot, and someone recommended that she installs ZoneAlarm and forbid any programs to connect if she doesn't know what they are and what they do. So she installs it on her work computer too. And forbids our application from talking to the database.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"No ma'am. Your mouse is meant for external use only. We do not recommend insertion in bodily orifices." -=|=-
When I worked Telephone Techinical Support for Fifth Generation Systems in the late 80s/early 90s, I had a legal secretary that could not restore her Fastback backups from the 5 1/4" disks she used. As a service, we would have customers in this situation send them in and we would restore the data, reback them up and send them back. We would want copies of the disks to be made and those sent to us. Well she did make copies. I received via overnight FedEx ten 8/12x11" photocopies of her really nicely labeled diskettes. I had a really hard time calling her back and explaining the process of how to copy a floppy.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What you forgot when you screamed at him was that you were probably the first caller in about 100 who knew what an IP address was. I worked support for a while, and the one thing I learned was to never assume that the caller did or knew anything. When I did, a simple problem took forever to troubleshoot - because I failed to ask the obvious question, and assumed the problem was elsewhere.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Working phone support for a large home/garden chain that shall remain nameless. I get a call from a guy requesting that we keep all the lights on in the store late at night cuz they're moving boxes around. I'm left wondering what telephones have to do with the lights.
My favorite though, was working a call routing problem for Vince McMahon's (of WWF/WWE fame) secretary. See, the secretary would call his wife and chat all day, and was now having some sort of problem. It was nice, as I made them give me Vince's home number so I could trace the routing. I was big into wrestling then and it was HARD not to post his number on a message board. But I didn't think it would be honorable.
Customer had been angry from the start. Don't know why. Just was that way. We fixed her computer up nice and new and sent her home. About 30min later she calls. Screaming and yelling. "you broke the computer..".. lots of profanity and swearing. After awhile I got her to say that it wasn't even "booting". I asked if the power LEDs were on. Took another few minutes to get the answer "no" through all the yelling and screaming. They weren't. I asked if she could confirm that it was plugged into the powerstrip, she said "no".. more screaming and yelling at me. At this point every customer in the store is listening on my side of the conversation as they were all hushed and no longer really shopping. I asked why she couldn't check the powerstrip... more swearing.. finally she said something like.."okay whatever..".. and set the phone down. She came back and I asked "was it plugged in okay"... "I don't know I had to get a flashlight.." more yelling and swearing. "Why did you need a flashlight?" "The power is out and I can't see under the desk" She immediatly realized her mistake and hung up. The call lasted about 20minutes and was the most difficult customer I've ever had to help out over the phone. Now we had another guy who was 6 foot 5 and had real anger issues -- threatened to beat me up when I refused to let him return DOS without all the disks. However that was in person, so it isn't on topic..
My favorite support story is the classic Olin Shivers story about a support call to Microsoft.
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 06:03:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Olin Shivers
To: sunday-lunch-list
Subject: Losing $35
Reply-to: shivers@ai.mit.edu
No lunch on Sunday, I am afraid.
Having just concluded a continuous 14-hour conversation with
technical support people at Microsoft, my weekend plans have been
altered to simply sleep.
More...
-- A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. - Paul Erdös
About four months ago, I switched my dad from Netscape 7.2 to Thunderbird and Firefox, after his email got somehow deleted on multiple occasions (email files simply went from giant-sized to empty with no other symptoms). Yesterday he called me for help--now, all the email from March to the present had disappeared. A few VNC-hoop-jumps later, I found the problem:
He had mistakenly opened Netscape, which had been resting peacefully since March. He was much relieved when we opened Thunderbird and all his email was still there.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
...and the support person answers in a very heavy, obviously Indian accent, "Hello, this is...Steve."
"Steve"...right. When will companies stop outsourcing their support? I have never encountered more incompetent, foreign support people in the past year than any time in my life.
What ever happened to competent, helpful support people?
Received in a tech support email:
Internet is connected to phone line #1. It should be connected to #2. How do I change this?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
User: AOL Stole my credit card.
Tech: If you are having a problem cancelling your AOL account, you may need to call them...
User: No! AOL stole my credit card, and I want it back!
Tech: Wait... Tell me exactly what you did...
User: Well, I was installing AOL, and it asked for my credit card number. So I put my card in the ATM slot and now it won't give me my card back.
Yes, the user had stuck her Credit Card in her floppy drive. She had to send the machine back to the manufacturer, who then had to disassemble the floppy to get it out.
This was about a decade ago.
I had given my sister my old 486 as she went off to college (she's older than me). Anyways... a few months or so later I get a phone call "Hey William, the computer won't start." After a bit of chatting on the phone, I get out of here that it gets through POST but won't go into windows. I put my coat on, start up my crappy car, and drive the hour to go see what the problem is.
This is december in northern Wisconsin. As I recall we were having a snowstorm and the drive was definately NOT fun.
I walk into her apartment, look at the machine (which she left on, or had just booted as I walked in the door).
I hit the Turbo button. It boots.
I go home.
Me: Thanks for calling tech support. Him: Hi, I just purchased a CD Writer, and it says I need to open up my computer to install it. Me: Yes, and? Him: I don't have a computer, can I still use it? Me: Can I place you on hold for one moment? Him: Sure Me: Bahahahahahaha!!
We had an email worm sending itself out to a few users on our network recently, aside from the single user who had it, no one else clicked on it. Crisis averted, right? Not so much.
.pif included...
Our head office sent out a warning about this worm that was spreading and instructed users to not click it. The thing about this warning was, the entire message the worm was sending out was included in the notice. The entire message - URL to a nice
But "Bill" from "India-anna" asked me how many baskets the packers had scored in the Stanley Cup.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
1. Talking to a customer who is unable to get her DSL connection to work because she had inserted the network cable in the cd-rom drive. 2. Talking to another customer having the same problem as the one above, but this one has not been able to locate anyplace on his computer where a network cable might fit. When I asked him if he had a network card installed I got the answer (in a very annoyed tone of voice) "Of course I have a network card, do you think I'm an idiot?!? The card is right here in the box from the store." 3. Realizing that this will be a long and very painful day.
However a day or two later the "stuck" modem was fixed and I was able to dial in. I guess they found some cooperative kid with a Packard-Bell who changed his personal modem settings....
Where were you when the voynix came?
I can't tell you how many hours of my life I've wasted trying to get someone on the other end of the phone to type in a-d-m-i-n-i-s-t-r-a-t-o-r.
Finally, my company started installing a-d-m-i-n accounts with admin rights. I suggested a user named simply A, but they thought admin was simple enough.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This was a real support call I once did:
I work for a fairly large hosting company, and we deal with some fairly large customers...but on a daily basis I see them change their server ips to gateway ips, changing all their network interfaces to have an ip of 5 (ifconfig -a 5, if you ever want to), etc. Then they wonder why we are so hesitant to give them root access to these boxes again.
The best antecdote though, was working with a customer, who couldn't figure out why he couldn't reach his server, and was cursing a storm about it, wanting to talk to vps, etc. I can't hit the box either, and no response from the remote console, so I have the data center tech check the box, and it's powered down. I have him power the box back up, and lo and behold, connectivity restored. Customer is livid at the news that the box was down, and wants to know why. I start digging in, and notice that the user was on the box when it when down. I check his history, and sure enough, "shutdown -h now". I brought this information to him, and he hung up on me. I made sure that our trouble ticket was noted with the info, and by the next week, the customer had a new technical contact, who was much nicer.
How Jaded Are You?
You're using her as bait, Master!
I was working internal support for a bank about 10 years ago. One day I got a frantic call from one of the older Vice Prsidents.
"I can't login! I've tried and tried, but the ^%((* thing won't let me in."
No one else had reported a problem, so I went over to his office.
"OK, please restart your computer and login for me."
He dutifully restarted, typed in his login name, and proceeded to type in his all-numeric password on the phone next to his keyboard.
the no
This site is in german, but the pictures speak for themselves. All warranty returns:
http://www.dau-alarm.de/gallery.html
Around my school I get asked all kinds of questions. As I have used linux since '98 and OS X since 2002, and our windows machines at school are locked down, I honestly haven;t used windows since circa Win98. I know very little of XP at all. People assume that since I do alot of development that I'm some computer guru. They are most shocked that I honestly can't answer simple questions about windows. I usually explain that I don't have that problem in linux or OS X. I am polite, but sincere. I explain that what I need to do on a computer is much more difficult (LAMP, java, etc.), or impossible, on windows.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
My computer reboots. This is a true story that happened to a customer who lived in a rural area when I worked for a dialup ISP several years ago. Living in a rural area, the customer got their water from a well, and whenever the toilet would flush, their water reserve would suddenly drop low enough to kick on their water pump, and cause a temporary brown out.
I was serving at a forward deployed location with the US military. Many things were wrong with our technical position, including the fact that our office was NOT being provided the security updates for MS Exchange, due to a typical military SNAFU.
..
.." and have the because be something you recognized you couldn't argue against?
One of the many known and expected email attacks hit us, and crashed our server.
We couldn't get the server back up. Our "home office" back in the US couldn't figure out how to get our server back up. We got permission to pay for the service, and called the MS Service line. After a short discussion, the MS Techs knew exactly what our problem was, and told me to download a 4.2 Meg update. At this point I had to interrupt, and point out that my connection to the world wasn't that stable, and didn't have enough bandwidth to keep that download under 12 hours, if the connection didn't get lost.
The next thing I knew, I had two MS Engineers on the phone, talking to each other while I listened, trying to figure out how to deal with the problem without using the download. That phone call ran nearly 5 hours. It ended with me typing in hex edits to the MS Exchange software . .
EVERYTHING these men suggested short of that I had to refuse, for technical or mission reasons. The direct hex edit was something like the 7th or 8th solution the engineers came up with.
How would YOU like to hear "Yeah, that would probably work, but, I can't do that because . .
is probably one of the stories here. I feel really bad for her. At the same time, during our frequent hour-long conversations about her Win98 machine, I get soooooooooo frustrated. I think one of the most frustrating things is when I ask her to do something, she then proceeds to read EVERYTHING that's on the screen. I don't need to hear that, I know what's on her screen. Ugh. "Right click on the menu bar." "What's a menu bar?" "The grey area above the window." "There's nothing above the window." "Yes mom, I know, I mean above the _inside_ part of the window. The white part." "Nothing happens." Arrrrrrghhh!!!
We come from the button-pushing generation. I often wonder what will be the technology that will confuse me when I'm 60 years old.
I just wish she'd stop asking me "is that 'right' click or 'left' click" whenever I ask her to click on something. Maybe a Mac *would* be easier! Only one button! er, wait, do they have two buttons now? Arrrgh!!!
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
In the late 90's, Packard Bell disappeared. Most people assumed they were finally taken down by their own incompetence, but what really happened was this:
Packard Bell was able to manufacture their systems so cheaply because they had rent-free facilities on a disused airbase in Sacramento, CA. NEC, wishing to enter the end-user/retail sector and covetous of this manufacturing facility, bought 49% of Packard Bell, re-named them to NEC Consumer Systems Division, and put a clause in the contract that allowed them to gain ownership of the other 2% if certain milestones were not reached. Then, NEC seeded the CSD division with internal executives, who made sure those milestones would never be reached. Mission accomplished, NEC now had their manufacturing facilities rent-free, and they shut down the consumer systems division, no longer willing to compete with Dell & Gateway.
I was one of the end-user technical support nerds for NEC-CSD, and wow did we get some crazies. Among my favorites were the black supremacist who refused to speak to me because I sounded white, so I put him on hold and then picked up a few minutes later with a badly faked "black" accent ("Yo what up? This is NEC, I'm Johnson. How can I help you?"). His issue? He'd set all of his Windows desktop color settings to black - backgrounds, borders, buttons, and text - and was calling to complain that his monitor was broken, because all he could see what his mouse cursor (which he was angry at for being white).
Also good was the hung-over stoner who'd woken up to find that he'd thrown up IN his monitor. No, sorry, that's not covered under warranty, but could you tell me how you did it?
But the best call didn't even happen to me, it happened to Chuck. One slow afternoon Chuck came around and motioned for everyone not currently on a call to follow him. We gathered around his cube and he muted the input on his phone, put on his headset, and then piped it to the speaker.
Chuck: "Hello sir, I have my supervisor here with us, could you please repeat for us what you told me?"
Cust: "Well, this laptop is junk, and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, can you talk me through what's wrong?"
Cust: "My modem wouldn't connect, and I got really angry, so I pulled the card out and snapped it in half. Then I threw it across the room."
Chuck: "So your modem is no longer functional?"
Cust: "My computer's busted and I want a new one."
Chuck: "Okay, so how did we go from broken modem card to broken laptop?"
Cust: "So I calm down and I figure I can fix this modem. I got the pieces, and I figured out how they were supposed to go. Then I superglued them together and put them in a vice clamp overnight."
Chuck: "Okay. What happened next?"
Cust: "Well, I put it in my computer and tried to dial out to the internet again, but it still didn't work. Then I tried to pull out the card, but it got stuck. I had to use needle-nose pliers to pull the damn thing out, and I only got half of it. The other half's stuck in there, and now my computer's ruined! Your computer is junk, and I want a new laptop!"
At this point, the twenty or so people gathered around Chuck's cube were in hysterics. Chuck reached over, released the mute so that the man on the other end of the phone could hear us, left it open for a few seconds, and hung up on him.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Once we got a request from one office saying they couldn't access the network.
We went there, checked out the machines wondering why they couldn't access the network. Finally, we saw the culprit: A coffee heater was plugged in the wall socket... in place of the hub.
So in the report we wrote: "We recommend not unplugging the hub next time".
While working as a DSL helpdesk technician, I once recieved a call from a user who told me her internet wasn't working. After having them report the status of the lights on their dsl modem, I determined she had no sync. Since she had already had service up and running, I called the line maintenance department and was informed that the DSL service had been disconnected due to no payment. When I got back to the customer she admitted that her phone was indeed disconnected, but had no idea that the DSL would be shut off too.
I got nuthin
Maybe he just never encountered some pathetic loser who would actually call up his ISP and spend hours requesting a new IP address just to avoid an IP block due to being an asshat on slashdot. Perhaps he assumed that, if you're calling tech support, that something was actually *wrong* with your service. I'll forgive his ignorance in this case.
Anyway, I got my new IP address after escalating it to his manager. And here I am! Yay!
Yeah, we're all better for it.
I replied to the email....
Vote Quimby!
An ISP, mind you, who caters mostly to customers in a rural area. One day, a guy calls up because there was a strange clicking noise coming from inside his computer when he turned it on. I wasn't too busy that day, so I figured I could take a minute to say it was probably his hard drive on the verge of death, and as the conversation proceeded, it just got worse and worse. Him: "Well, I squirted some WD-40 in there, but it didn't help none..." Me: (stunned pause) "You squirted... WD-40 in... where?" Him: "The, er, disk drive... that's what you said it was, right?" Me: (speechless) Him: "Uh-oh, smoke's coming out... better unplug this thing..." Yes, this guy sprayed WD-40 into his floppy drive and set his computer on fire.
An object at rest cannot be stopped.
Once when providing ISP tech support, an out-of-control caller said he wanted to come over and kick my ass. So I gave him the HQ address and invited him to stop in. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were outsourced and in another city. Hope he had a nice visit!
Me: How may I help you?
Customer: Hi, my name is Customer.
Me: Hi, how may I help you today?
C: I just bought a Powerbook G4 and I can't get it connected to the internet. There are no ports at all, no USB, no Ethernet, no modem.
Me: What? Are you sure there are no ports on it?
C: Yes, this is the worst purchase I ever made! Can I bring it to you guys to have a look at it and get ports added?
Me: This is the first time I ever heard of this! You're sure you flipped down the panel in the back?
C: Panel in the back? I don't see a-- I am such an asshole! Thank you so much, I feel so stupid.
Me: It's okay, don't worry. I'm glad I could help.
C: I am sorry for cursing, thank you so much you just saved me so much money.
Me: You're welcome, have a good day.
C: You too!
I used to work for the local Telescom company here in Western Canada doing support for the ADSL help desk. We had just rolled out 2.5 high speed. A customer called into my queue and was complaining about slow speeds. One of the first question we have to ask is "Is the ADSL modem hooked up directly into the computer, or is there a router in between?" Of course, the customer said no, he did not have a router. I saw he was on the new 2.5 program and so we went through about 40 minutes of speed testing. Download rates, TRACRT, Pinging... all of those tests came back with speed equivilant to the 1.5 package. so I excalated to our network support team. Well after about an hours worth of testing, NS asked again if he had a router, he said no again. Finally we were about to dispatch a tech when he said these exact words :Well, let me try bypassing my router and see if that works...." Which of course it did.
So moral of the story? Even though tech support has to aks dumb questions, they would not be there if there was not a reason somewhere down the line.... :)
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
This/these guy(s) has/have some hilarious stories collected.
www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
I was working support for the local cable station, and a guy called in saying that he couldn't get a picture on his TV.
Normally this is due to getting the in/out cables wrong on the VCR, so I asked him to verify that they were correctly plugged in. He then said it was too dark to see, so I suggested moving a lamp over. At that point he mentioned that the lamps weren't working because *the power was out*. Blew my mind.
One a side note, why the heck do VCRs need to be manually switched between cable and antenna? Are the channel frequencies different or something? And why can't they put a 10-cent NVRAM chip in there to remember all the settings during a power outage?
I used to work on the Geek Squad...
Customer: I think I need a monitor cable...
Me: Okay, let me show you them. (I proceed to show her SVGA cables)
Customer: No no.. I have that one, I need the other kind?
Me: The power cable? Ok those are here...
Customer: I have that one too, but it doesn't fit anywhere.
Me: That one plugs into the wall.
Customer: Oh, the monitor has to be plugged into the power thing? Do I have to turn the monitor on too then?
Me: Yes.
I worked phone support for a software company for a while. We get all kinds of calls - anything from how do I login to the app to I don't believe the data your app is showing me to it's just broken. One day, my coworker gets a call from someone who obviously is facing some problem and wants it to be taken care of. After about a 2 minute session of standard Question and Answer, my coworker goes silent, puts the guy on hold for a short time, then continues. When he finally hangs up, I ask him what happened. Here's apparently how the conversation went:
Coworker: tell me what's happening.
Caller: It's broken, I need it fixed.
Coworker: ok, so what is the problem.
Caller: It doesn't matter, just open the ticket.
Coworker: I need to know what's wrong before I can open the ticket.
Caller (screaming now): Do you know what your purpose in life is????
Coworker: Ummmmmmm.....
Caller: Your purpose in life is to open this ticket for me!!
And they say there is no such thing as workplace abuse.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
A few years ago, I had a combined programmer/support job. One day, a colleague called and said that he had an application on his computer he could not close.
;-)
So I went over and indeed, one of our programs was in the middle of his screen and did not react to anything. On a hunch, I checked the dektop settings. Lo and behold:
Somehow the guy had made a screenshot while running the application and used that screenshot as Windows wallpaper. Changing the wallpaper got rid of the phantom application
C - the footgun of programming languages
Me: Seems like your computer is having problems, lets reboot the computer and see if that will fix the problem.
User: Am I allowed to do that?
Me: Sure.
User: Ok then.
Bang, Bang heard in the background on the phone
Me: STOP!!! STOP DOING THAT!!! (Me screaming into phone)
User: Whats wrong, I'm booting the computer. (User was kicking the computer tower that was under the desk.)
The sad part of this story is that it's true.
Probably the one I was relating to coworkers this morning:
Now executive decisions which have gone awry, those are legion. Others may find them funny, but they still give me heartburn.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
At my previous work as a UNIX sysadmin a project manager for a developer team asked me to install IIS on a HP-UX server. I kindly told him that it wasn't possible to install IIS on HP-UX because IIS is Windows-only software. He looked annoyed and asked me WHY I couldn't do it. Once again I told him that IIS is for Windows and this particular server run HP-UX, not windows. He muttered things about me being stupid, then walked to my boss and told him I was useless and stupid and should be fired because I couldn't even install IIS on his HP-UX server...
:)
Luckily my boss was fairly technical minded and was laughing out loud while he told me about the manager.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Back when I was assembling i386 PCs for a small reseller, one of our regular clients walked in the door carrying a machine we had recently sold to his company. He said that it had "just stopped working", and implied that it should be covered under warranty.
When I opened up the machine, I discovered that every screw and stand-off holding the motherboard had been sheared off, and the board was shorting against the case. There was no obvious damage to the case itself. I figured the guy must have dropped the machine and it landed flat on the bottom. Amazingly, after the board was re-mounted, everything seemed to work perfectly.
Of course, we were rather curious about what had happened, so my boss asked the client when he returned. The client sheepishly admitted that they had planned to use the machine for tracking wildlife, running off a generator in the middle of the forest. They flew it to the intended location, and dropped it from the aircraft with a parachute. I turned around and headed back into the shop stifling my laughter while my boss told the client he couldn't justify covering the incident under warranty.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
User: "I have been getting an awful amount of spam lately."
Tech: "Is it coming into your Inbox or into your Junk E-mail folder?"
User: "Junk E-mail folder. Why isn't the Junk E-mail folder filtered like the Inbox?"
Tech: "Are you serious?"
User: "Yes."
Tech: "..."
Let me guess: You were IP-banned for language?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Someone from the call centre downstairs rang my colleague, who promptly put the call on speakerphone. The caller claimed that the login system to the test server (we develop all the call centre software onsite on Unix systems, its terminal based data entry), which was funny because it had worked perfectly fine for 18 months thus far and the test server also served as our development platform. Colleague talked him through the steps, still nothing. Colleague wandered downstairs, stood behind the caller to watch him do it all. Caller brought up Putty, selected the correct address, entered his username, entered the password at the prompt and ... that was it. My colleague leaned over his shoulder and pressed enter - logged him in fine. For some reason, after doing it several times a day for months, the caller had forgotten that he had to press enter.
Of course this caller is the same person that insists we 'fix' software after it goes wrong in such a way that blame for munged jobs gets put on him and his team (hint, we dont, his team just munge the jobs and then blame it on a nonexistant software problem despite the fact we retain keystroke logs for just this purpose).
Last Friday, we recieved a ticker about a customer who wanted thier ID number changed. The reason? Her number has the numerals 666 in it. We had a laugh around the office. I realize people are sensitive about this stuff but people!
Gorkman
I discovered what I call the Rinkworks site a few years ago. It doesn't get updated very often, but because it's edited, the content is usually pretty good.
I love the comment at the top of the "Computer Stupidities" page:"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
I have a good one. I was working the hell that was the IBM CrAptiva support back when it was in the US. I had a woman call me one night telling me that there was a lot of smoke and sparks coming out of her monitor and what she should do. She said that if she looked closely, she could see flames on the inside. I told her to unplug it and dial 911. She still had her computer on and was actively using it.
I worked helpdesk for a few years while in college. The best call I ever took was a lady who bought a modem to get internet access through the university. Unable to figure out how to use it she called the helpdesk. One of the first questions of course was did you install it in your computer? The answer was "Oh I need a computer to use this?"
My Hotmail account works like that: using Microsoft's settings, the spam goes into the inbox while the good stuff goes into the junk folder.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Because there IS a "breasts" option.
A Congressman from my government's House of Representatives was having issues with the Internet just last week. His problem? The "tubes" that made up the internet were "filled."
$ touch
So, I'm in this plant in the middle of the night, no one can figure out how to turn on the lights so we're using our laptops as flashlights, the giant mutant Italian mosquitos are on the hunt, and the debug software won't load (bad checksum). I can't download it since the Italian phone system doesn't use quite the same dial tone and the modem won't let me dial, and of course there's no way to look up the ATX1 command on the net if I can't dial up, and these damn French engineers I'm working with will take a two hour lunch, and a two hour dinner, but won't give up on an obviously hopeless case until 5:30am.
And I did manage to get one of the engineer's cell phones to connect and call the States to talk to my boss, and he chews me out for about five minutes because he's been stuck at home waiting for my call (heaven forfend!). I tell him I'll call him back, hang up, calm down, then call one more time and explain, in detail, exactly what the situation is. I get a grudging sort-of apology. Last time that phone worked from the plant.
So I get back to the hotel and my wife is all dolled up in a very interesting costume (newlyweds by a month), but she's furious that I'm so late and didn't call. Once she calms down enough I manage to explain and then she's okay, but I have two hours to sleep before the Frenchies come back to take me to the plant again.
Of course it's the weekend and no one's around. And we get bounced from hotel to hotel 'cause everything's full (four hotels in five nights). And I finally find a computer shop in town that has an email account (1997, rural Italy) and they let me borrow their account to get the software, and it works, and we can go home.
After that, any support call I get where I'm at my desk is no big deal.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A friend's DSL service seemed to be interfering with his phone service, so after about an hour on the phone with tech support, the ISP agreed to send him a new DSL modem. He assured me that he would be able to hook it all up himself. "After all, I just need to switch boxes, right?" he said.
I got a call today, just a few days after my last visit. Not only did his DSL not work with the new modem, but his phone service had stopped working as well. It turns out he had plugged the telephone line through the router, had the DSL modem connected only to a phone, and the eithernet cable from his computer plugged into the old DSL modem. Apparently, connecting a phone line to a router will disable the phone lines throughout the house. Learn something new every day...
Before I left, his wife asked me to explain which part they had gotten wrong, so that they could fix it themselves next time. "Uh... basically all of it," I replied. I did try to explain it to them, but I'm sure I'll get a call if they ever touch it.
Out of 11 "favorite support anecdotes" two are just low brow female sexual references. Maybe it is only me but its seems a sort of sad comment on the state of gender perception in the industry.
Uh, yah. I used to work at an ISP for support. I would walk people through setting up Trumpet Winsock. Over the phone. Sometimes this would require tweaking the script. I never used analog phone modems again.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I had a remote user sitting in front of an NT3.5 machine, needing to do some work in a FoxPro app. We were having some library problems, etc... but lacking remote desktop tools for that session, I was relying on the user to tell me what she was seeing as she clicked on what I told her to click on. After tracking down the right icon, I asked her to run the app. "Yep," she said, "it's running! Now, how long before I see the program?"
This went on for a long, long time. Finally I asked her how she knew it was running, when, well... it obviously wasn't running. She said, "Well, obviously I can see its legs moving."
Never heard that one before. Long pause.
Ah... remember the animated pointer sets that NT came with? You know, the one where the "busy" mouse pointer (hourglass) could be replaced with an animation of... a running horse? Gaaah!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I still keep in contact with the last company i used to work with. For some reason a user called their IT Helpdesk to report a clogged toilet. The tech logged the ticket and routed it to Global Operation (network ops). Needless to say this has been the laugh of many IT meetings. Here is the actual ticket history: *names have been edited to only first name
03/02/06 16:04:56 US/Mountain (Rory):
I called Megha (Megan) and advised that after review of the issue,despite refferal to SD by manager we need to consult firsthand and find the facilities staff for her location. in order to adress the issue.
03/02/06 16:04:56 (Rory):
[Update by operator] Time Stamp is in US/Mountain
03/02/06 15:56:12 (Rory):
[Update by operator] Time Stamp is in US/Mountain
Sent Team lead CB email with justification for actions as to why I followed HELP FILE, and will follow up regarding the process and handling of this ticket.
03/02/06 17:20:27 (Donald) :
[Update by operator] Time Stamp is in US/Eastern
Global Operations has no authority to plunge toilets.
03/02/06 17:17:55 (Donald):
[Update by operator] Time Stamp is in US/Eastern
work
03/02/06 15:06:44 (Rory):
[Update by operator] Time Stamp is in US/Mountain
Routing to Global Opperatioons for this issue per HF, If this is not correct I appologise.
03/02/06 15:04:28 (Rory):
[Ticket Opened ] Time Stamp is in US/Mountain
P: 7th floor ladies restroom has a clogged toilett. (this is a serious ticket with zero % kidding, matter of fact intended)
S: Offered ticekt number. Being a rare occurance I consulted SR AGT AG, I found in help file that this goes to Global Opperations. After questioning that validity , I was assured that G.O was the correct recipient of the ticket.
Many years ago I called Logitech because I couldn't find the driver disk that came with my trackball and I couldn't find the download on their ftp site.
The tech refused to talk to me until I told him if I was running Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 on my Mac. I think that is my favorite since you would expect a tech to at least know that Macs don't run Windows.
There was also the Dell script monkey who wanted me to reinstall Windows on a machine that locked in BIOS before he would send a repair person out.
I expect users to me ignorant but I (still, don't ask me why) expect a little competence from professionals.
Dan from the "We think so you don't have to" department.
That reminds me SO very much of my "helpdesk" calls to $VERY_BIG_BROADBAND_PROVIDER. From prior experience, troubleshooting, et. al., I know the problem is my modem is no longer "registered" with provider. I called up the help desk, and - surprise, suprise - they ignored my statement that I need to verify my modem is registered properly. I ended up walking $STUPID_HELP_DESK_PERSON though the troubleshooting, analysis and such. I had to explain the results of what we found. So, after 1.5hrs on the phone (+~1hr listening to how I should visit their website if I'm having problems with my connection[!]), we ended up registering the modem. I asked *why* we had to go through all that, and I just got a "Thank you for calling $VERY_BIG_BROADBAND_PROVIDER". I *did* fill out the "customer service survey" that time tho...
Me: Hi, this is Mike. How can I help you?
Customer: I am having trouble conntecting to your FTP site
Me: Okay, are you behind a firewall?
Customer: Well, my desk is next to a window....
Me: *confused silence* Me: I see. I don't mean an ACTUAL firewall. A firewall is a network appliance that... nevermind. Do you have an IT person that works there?
Customer: I am the IT person, I guess.
Me: *rolls eyes*
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Would you work for 10$/hr? The problem here is the people who know what they are doing can make 2-3x as much - if not more - and not have to deal with the public all the time. The stupid ones are the ones that just wanna work with computers and know they can't pass themselves off as real techs.
Reminds me of a situation where the file server was located under a long desk/table. I think it was one of those old AST machines with a huge sensitive reset button on the front. They complained that the server kept resetting. It did not take much looking at the badly scuffed (with lots of black shoe marks) front of the server to find out what users idly swinging their feet did.
Where were you when the voynix came?
An,
Inept co-worker had moved his PC from one side of his office to the other all by himself!
When his computer failed repeatedly to turn on he meticulously checked to confirm the power cord was plugged into the power strip.
Yes, it was plugged in. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!
He called the systems administrator, who walked over, just to find that the co-worker had plugged the computer into the power strip properly.
Unfortunately, he had plugged the power strip into itself......
Caution: Contents under pressure
I remember this one time I got an IP ban here at Slashdot, so I called up my ISP's helpdesk to get a new IP address issued. The guy on the other end kept asking me all sorts of questions. "Have you checked the cables?" "When you click on My Network, does it show you all your NICs?" ad nauseum.
I helped by friend get a new Mac, his old iMac was a bit long of tooth for him and the idea of a laptop appealed to him and his fiancee. They were considering a PC laptop because prices were low, but I warned them switching from Mac to PC would be like opening Pandora's Box and upending it to make sure all the evils possible could get out. No stick with what you know. So I get them a nice powerbook with Tiger and some productivity software, entertainment, iLife, etc. Next we're going to get it on the internet. He's had a static IP address from Pacific Bell since the early days (he used to work for them) and was adamant (i would be too) about keeping it, no DHCP for him.
We can't seem to figure it out, based upon his crabbed scribblings over several sheets of paper, so I call AT&T (Pacbell's new name after SBC) We get some guy with a fixed set of help tips on the line and he's trying to get us to do the steps for non-static IP address. I point out we have a static address we're trying get going on this new Mac. He's befuddled and flustered and trying his best, but always from the direction we don't want to go. In a nutshell support is not geared to anyone with a Static IP address, take care if you have one not to lose it this way. After fiddling with a few things while the support guy is trying to find anything at all helpful I finally get the network connection going and tell him so. He returns to his script and thanks us for choosing AT&T and if there's anything else he can do, etc.
Moral of the story: Figue out how to do it before switching, because support for DSL on a Static IP address is scarce as hen's teeth.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Have pity on him. In the last month, he has only had one post modded up that wasn't "funny". In fact, if you take out the funny mods, he gets modded down a LOT more than he is modded up.
To the grandparent poster: Funny mods don't help your karma.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
While working in notebook support at an Large Computer Manufacturer a few years back, I took a call one night. We handled education accounts at the time and a call came in from one of the large unviversites concerning a notebook belonging to a professor. She opened the call with, "I'm going to need to send in my laptop for servicing." So I proceed to ask the standard opening question, "What seems to be the problem with it? Is it not starting up?" She replies, "I peed in it." My brain tells me that I did not just hear that and I say, "I'm sorry?" She says "I peed in it. If you look at the history on this thing, you'll see that I've had nothing but problems with it over the past several months. I got fed up. I opened it up, I put it in the floor and peed in it. So of course it doesn't work now and I know I'm going to have to send it in to get it fixed." "You do realize this is not going to be covered by your warranty, right?" "Oh I don't care, I feel a lot better. I'll just bill it to my credit card." So I go through all of the process to set it up for depot repair and get her off the line after telling her to seal it in plastic and put biohazard stickers on it. Then there was the process of letting the repair depot know what was coming in. In the end the computer she sent in was junked without ever being touched by the depot and she was charged for a new maachine which was roughly the same cost as the pissed one..
A colleague in my office got a new laptop. Shortly afterwards, it seems to be exhibiting some problems that might be hardware related. Everyone in the office has an EE degree.
Well, after discussing this with him for a while, he mentions that when using the laptop at home, he just uses whatever power adaptor is handy, despite the different (and higher!) voltage outputs.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The IBM Mouse Balls story is one of my favorites. Snopes says it was an internal joke memo. Here is a version from 1989, scroll down for it.
I once read on another source, probably made up, that this WAS in fact a real memo and that the person sending it went to some lengths to bypass the normal internal checks that keep such humor from getting out into the field. Specifically, the person who allegedly wrote the memo declared it a safety emergency memo, which at the time allegedly went through virtually zero in-depth checks from management. I am unable to find this source and I don't give it much credibility.
As for photocopying disks for backup purposes, I do so for insurance purposes. If my house burns down, my "off-site backups" help me file an insurance claim. It works for hard drives too.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is defenitly on of my favorite support stories.
o ryid=127
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?st
I once left a message for a customer to call me back 'regarding his Pagemaker problem'. By the time the message had been written down, placed on his desk (he was out to lunch) and then noticed by someone else, it had morphed into 'your doctor has called - there is a problem with your pacemaker'.
By the time the man had arrived back at work, the entire company was looking for him convinced he was going to keel over any minute gripping his chest (yes, he DID have a pacemaker fitted!). Fortunately, when he saw my name on the note he realised what had happened and was quite alive and cheery when he called me.
AT&ROFLMAO
I was doing tech support for of our sales reps in NY. I sent EXPLICIT instructions to her about saving a file attachment, even taking an hour to write them out and make sure that there was no way of her messing this up. She called me about 2.5hrs after she received the email from me (thank you exchange read receipts). Me: Good after noon Michelle* (name changed to protect the stupid) Michelle: Hello, I have tried to do what you sent me but it doesn't see to be working Me: Ok, double click on MY COMPUTER Michelle: Ok Me: Do you see where it says LOCAL DISK (C:) ? Michelle: No Me: Ok, what do you see there? Michelle: 3 1/2 Floppy drive (A:) Me: Ok, what do you see next? Michelle: Local disk, smiley face Me: Ok, Michelle, have you been instant messaging with some friends? Michelle: yes, why? Me: Can you hold on a second? (put phone on hold, fall out of my chair laughing, initiating an intense session of hiccups) Me: Michelle, I'm back... can you tell me again what you see under 3 1/2 Floppy drive (A:)? Michelle: Local Disk smiley... Oh, nevermind. I get it. Still laugh out loud at that one!
This isn't quite a stupid customer story. I have plenty of those, but I don't remember any of the good ones at the moment, so this one will have to do.
I was (still am, actually) a teenager, and my parents decided to punish me for something unreasonable by unplugging my computer from the Ethernet hub/router for a few hours, so I couldn't use the Internet. I would've accepted it and done something else, but I hadn't done anything wrong, and I don't like unfair punishments. So before they went to disconnect me, I ran to my computer and used the hub's Web-based control panel and set it to deny Internet access to all the entire network.
Unfortunately, my parents were playing a board game with friends, so it took a while for them to notice what I had done. After a while though, I heard my mother shouting up the stairs at me, something along the lines of "My Internet is broken! Help me!" She didn't know I was involved in causing the problem.
I refused to help her (she had just punished me unfairly, why should I have?). I went downstairs, ostensibly for a drink of water, and glanced at the router/hub on the way. My dad was trying to "fix it" -- which is to say, he was unplugging random wires from it in a nonsensical fashion. He asked me if I knew how to fix it, and I told him I probably could fix it, but wouldn't. He started begging me to tell him anything I knew, and I let it slip that the problem was probably caused by a "DNS bitmap issue", and that if it was, I could probably fix it in a minute or two.
Both of my parents started begging me to fix it for them. My mother said she was expecting an important email, and really needed to get it today. She started making wild threats when I again refused to help, like throwing every computer in the house out on the street or calling our ISP for help (when I told her that it was an internal network issue and the ISP had as much to do with it as a grocerry store, she said she would call one of those if any were open).
I kept refusing to help, and my dad decided to try to fix it himself. He got the bright idea of bypassing the router and plugging our DSL modem directly into my mom's computer. I knew this would work, and when a "Windows has detected a new Internet connection, do you want to use it?" dialog box came up ony my mother's computer screen, I was about ready to shout "Game over!" and fix the router for them. Then I got a brilliant idea for trickery, even better than my "DNS bitmap settings" bullshit.
"Mom, don't click 'yes'! You would be connected directly to the Internet without the router's firewall protecting you. Your computer would very likely get a virus within thirty seconds!" This was completely untrue, since she had a virus scanner and a software firewall installed, but she bought it and didn't connect.
Eventually, I got my dad to pay me a couple of bucks to fix the damage he didn't know I had caused. Needless to say, I laughed all the way to the bank.
Back in the days of 5 1/5 floppies we had a computer test which required the user to create a document (in WordPerfect), then mail it back to us so we could mark his/her formatting, bolding etc.
One user did not have a large envelope, so he folded the floppy in half. Of course it would not stay folded, so he stapled it. Several times.
---
Went to a work site which was complaining that there program would not work any more (dual 5 1/4 floppy system). When I pulled out the system disk, the magnetic coating was gone and you could see the mylar. It had never been removed since we had installed it (3 years ago).
---
"How do I get a dollar sign on the screen? All I can get is a 4"
---
My favourite site for these things is Tech Tales
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
The article pointed one thing to me, the Brits aren't as hypersensitive about mainstream sexual humor as the US. If they printed those anecdotes in a US paper or major website they'd get swamped with irate complaints over the "sexist big breast joke" or the "sexist 17 inch monitor joke". Plus there'd be people saying how those in those stories "created a hostile work environment for woman".
I've made a dumb support call myself. I called Verizon about a problem with my new DSL only to realize I'd switched the line in with the line out on my UPS (phone line protection too). I then proceeded to fix it while I was on the phone and disconnected myself. In my defense I was very tired.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I once worked for a small computer OEM that specialized in Linux boxes. For every new system we sent out, we put a sticker directly over the power button that said "The root password is Password" so the new user had to remove the sticker to power the system on.
For about 1 in 10 systems, we still got a call "whats the root password?"
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Everyone knows that All the Good Children get swords from Santa Claus!
Just watch Narnia if you have any doubts!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I can help but crack up every time I think of this poor woman trying to use her regular CRT monitor as a touch screen. Of course, the analyst connected should have informed the store that they were connected....but that just ruins the humour.
got this call one day... i have students who answer our calls, one got really confused and transferred the call to me...
caller: the wireless is down
me: where?
caller: in my dorm room
me: there's no wireless in the dorms
caller: there has been until this point
me: it's not supported by the college, it must have been another resident's that was shut off
caller: no, it was the college's
me (after noticing it was an off-campus call on our caller id): what dorm?
caller: [INSERT UNKNOWN DORM NAME HERE]
me: what college are you at?
caller: brown
me: sorry, you called the wrong school's helpdesk
i got a great laugh after that call... to think you have to be smart to get into an ivy league school...
please me, have no regrets.
Years ago a friend told me his horror story of working tech support. A customer was having problems with their dial-up connection. A troubleshooting method for resetting their model of modem was known as the "jump start". When my friend informed the caller that they would attempt to walk through the procedure, the caller put down the phone and in his thick drawl shouted:
"Honey, bring me the jumper cables! This guys says we gotta give this sucker a jolt!"
DISCLAIMER: Shocking any part of your computer may permanently void your warranty.
I think this one (covered on /. here) is pretty good...
aside from the 4 hour long phone call on printing mailing labels, which I have mostly blocked out...
One interesting set of calls I got was from a University, the student databases were getting corrupted, and there were no known bugs of that nature in the product.
After discussing with the fellow different means to diagnose problems, I let him go investigate while I did some research of possible causes, and I called him back a week later, after he scanned all 3 labs for viruses, and such It turned out that only databases saved in one of the three labs were getting corrupted.
as a last gasp to solve the problem, I recalled that at the time, many PC's had parity ram, while Macintoshes did not.
So I asked if there was anything unusual about the building in which the lab was located, like an MRI machine, lab equipment, tesla coil, whatever might cause a power dip.
Turns out they were doing construction of a new building next door, and the equipment was running off the computer labs power.
One of our customers at a previous job was complaining that his tablet was not controlling the cursor correctly. He said that anytime he moved the pen down, the cursor went up... and any time he moved the pen up, the cursor went down. After asking the customer to turn over the tablet, there was a long silence, and the call dropped.
We had one guy who couldn't get his mouse pointer to move when the instructor said "move the mouse to...". He was moving the mouse in the air, about a foot or so above the mouse pad.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
So I spent 15 minutes on the phone downstairs to walk through his network settings. Everything was configured absolutely perfectly. When finally I decided to go upstairs and see what was going on, I found out: He had inserted the plug of the cable of his laptop modem in the UTP network socket in the wall.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
First Story:
Many moons ago, back in the 80s, I worked for a company that sold and serviced mini and microcomputer systems. We had one company that was complaining and threatening to sue because the "crap" computers we had sold them kept crashing several times per day. So we sent a tech down to check them out. He walked into their brand new, ice cold computer room. Noticing that the room had, like most computer rooms, flourescent lighting, he pointed to a bank of dimmer switches on the wall.
"What are those for?" he asked.
"Oh, they control all the outlets in this room," was the reply.
The tech walked over and spun them all to "max". Problem solved.
Second Story:
Another customer who said our "crap" computers were crashing. I personally flew down to to visit them to see what was going on. As we were discussing the situation, the lights dimmed for a few seconds, came back up, then flashed bright, then went back to normal.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Oh, there's a auto crusher across the street. When the turn on the magnet we get a little brown out, and when they turn it off the lights go up for a moment."
"I here see you opted not to by the uninteruptable power supply, and have not even installed a surge suppressor," I noted. "Do you think that the fact your power is unreliable might have something to do with your problems?"
UPS == End of Story.
Third Story:
Which is not to say our computers weren't crap. Most weren't installed in computer rooms, they were installed in offices, which was kind of a new thing at the time.
We certainly did have a number of strange reset problems, especially in the winter. Then one day we get a technical bulletin entitled, "Static discharge from pantyhose implicated in unexplained system resets." The recommendation: secretaries doing word processing and data entry should stop wearing pantyhose. Now, most of our customers were New England CPAs, and standards for business attire in New England at the time were formal. The secretaries were NOT going to where slacks or skirts without pantyhose.
So one of the techs comes up with a solution. "Hey, isn't fabric softener supposed to stop static cling?" So, the recommendation goes out: avoid pantyhose, but if you must where them, spray Downy brand fabric softener on them several times a day. Naturally, they all opt to go into the ladies room every couple of hours and spray their legs with Downy.
Another problem solved.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Me: Ok, can you right-click on the My Computer icon, please. Clot: OK.... Clot: C... L... I... C... K Me: Er, what's happening? A menu should have popped up. Clot: I've written 'click' on the icon, what next? Me: THWACK (as my head hits the desk) In a travel agency somewhere in the UK, there is still a PC where the My Computer icon actually reads 'click'.
Every time I want to send an E-Mail I have to click on "send." Is there a way I can have this done automatically?
Back when I was in high school I helped out with Network Administration and support.
Somewhere along the line one of the secretaries was asked to send a disk to someone else. The secretary very diligently stapled (through) a 3.25" disk to attach an 8.5x11 page with a note on it.
It was sort of hard to explain to her that she'd have to try again but not staple through the media again. I recommended she try a paperclip instead as they were reusable.
For years I have been assembling all kinds of computers. This happened two years ago. The story happend before my arrival.
One of my neighbours had a very old (must... say.... antique) and she wanted to listen to music. So, she send her dad to buy a sound card. He is an engeneer... electronic engeneer... still he couldn't find the PCI slot the card needed. Needless to say, there was none, but he had ISA. Well, he tried to use it, but the slots are not physically compatible. So he cut the sound card to fit it in the ISA.
Early on in my career while I was still a grunt level tech we had a lady purchase a printer from our store with an onsite service warranty. It was a basic Lexmark color inkjet. A week later she called for warranty service saying it no longer functioned and there was a funny smell. She lived about 2 hours from our store so I loaded up for the trip and brought a replacement just in case it needed more than a simple adjustment. When I arrived I found her house filled with cats. I approached the printer and indeed there was a funny smell... I opened the printer and what do you know, it was filled with cat urine on both the bottom and inside the printer electronics including an especially rank part where it had mixed with the ink on the printheads making a horrid smell. The sad part is she was angry that I wouldn't replace it on warranty. I took photos for "evidence" to show the guys back at the office...
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
Years ago, back a few jobs, I handled internal user support plus the occational escallation from external clients. Such an escallation comes in but not from a client but from our vendor support people. That's strange, I think, I never get calls from them. Anyway, I'm told that the vendor is having problems logging into our web site and checking his payment status. No big deal, really, since most vendors prefered to get that information by phone from the very person who was transfering the call to me. I just assume that he hasn't been set up for on-line access to his account.
... shit. Stop fucking with my stuff." Then he hung up.
I pick up the line while at the same time checking the database for his information. At the very second I find out that he has been set up for on-line access I get an earfull about how "you guys" are fucking everything up and nothing works. "Total fuckups who can't do anything right. This worked before but then you changed something and now nothing fucking works you ass-hole."
Yep, he is swearing. A lot. This goes on with every sentence and he accuses me personally of screwing it up with some mysterious changes to the web site. Never mind that the site had never been updated since the vendor logon was implimented, I was not the one to make those changes.
I sigh, take the abuse, and lead him through the logon "process". "Yes, I have the fucking right page." "I know my fucking ID number." The ID number was four digits long and I checked that he was using the right one. "My fucking password is my last name, goddamnit!" I look that up in the database (nice security, huh?) and that is true. On my machine I log in just fine and he is still complaining that it isn't "fucking working".
I check the web logs. Bad password. He is connecting fine but typing in the wrong password. I try to find some way polite way to ask if he knows his own last name. He does. It was Johnson. OK. I keep having him try the user ID and password. I lead him through the numbers one at a time, although I could see from the web logs that he was getting that right. I finally lead him, letter by letter, through the spelling of his own last name (not case-sensitve). That worked.
"What the fuck did you change! Well
His heartfelt thanks fills me with warming joy to this very day.
Me: Could you please right click on the screen?
Typing noises
Me: What are you doing?
Idiot: Writing "click" on the screen!
Relative had one of those Printers that prints digital photos, it runs on USB and also has the USB slot on the front where you can plug in the actual digital camera and print without even using the computer.
I made a house call cause the printer wasn't working. They had the USB cable coming out of the back of the printer and plugged into the front of the printer! I don't think that's going to work.
Not exactly a tech support issue, but i had a guy walk into our store (Clearly emblazened with the words "PC World" and "The largest computer superstore") and ask where the hoover bags were.
Since this incident the manager has given me permission to be as sarcastic as i like to the customers, as long as i guage and stop before the point they'll complain at.
My roommate was recently banned from an online dating site because she is alleged to have posted pictures that may violate someone's copyright. Whose copyright was violated they could not say but surely such nice photos must have been stolen, eh?
Now, my roomie is a very attractive woman (indeed, a hot babe! -- I am a lucky man to have such an understanding girlfriend ;-) and she has some very fine photographs, some of which have been touched up using Photoshop (not that she needs it but just to add some nice effects or edit the background) so they appear to be of professional quality. Yet, despite her insistence that the pictures of herself are genuine, the site support folks demanded that she provide group photos showing her with family and friends. (Presumably such shots provide evidence of authenticity?) She complied and submitted about a half-dozen photos by email.
Two weeks later, she is still trying to get an answer after dealing with several different support people. The last response suggested that the delay was probably due to the US Postal service since they had been unable to find her photos, despite that her email referred specifically to the attachments previously sent via email. Moreover, as they know from her address on file, we live only five miles away from their offices ... in Canada!
Case 1: Man calls up, angry that his CD burner isn't working (it's an external drive USB). After going through the normal troubleshooting steps (including asking him if it was connected to the computer), we're finally about to throw in the towel and chalk it up to bad hardware. We try one last thing; have him disconnect everything, turn off the drive, turn it back on and reconnect everything. We then here a box opening, plastic crinkling, etc...turns out the guy hadn't take the drive out of the box yet. How he thought that the drive was connected, when the box was still sealed, I don't know.
Case 2: Woman calls up, with a external CD burner (it's a firewire drive). I hear the words "doesn't show up", "cable didn't fit" and "pliers" and I cringed. Of course, she didn't have any firewire ports on her computer, but she did have USB ports...well, at least she used to have USB ports, before Mr. Pliers got involved. The cable "fit", but I wonder why the drive didn't work?
Case 3: Man calls up, irate that his computer reboots everytime he goes to burn some files. After calming him down a bit, we attempt to troubleshoot it. Sure enough, every time we instruct him to click on the "Record" button (in the software, there's a button that says "Record", his computer immediately reboots. We try everything. We even turn off the auto-reboot feature in XP (so that it would, hopefully, blue screen), but that doesn't change a thing. Lucky for us, the man's brother was nearby, as my colleague heard him in the background. What was heard was, "[customer's name], what are you doing, you stupid [some expletive]? Why are you pressing the reset button on the computer?" Why he thought that was the "record" button, I'll never know...maybe I don't want to.
I remember working in tech support and I got this call from someone who wanted a new IP address issued. We don't assign new addresses on a whim, sometimes people use this trick to get around blocks for bad behaviour (e.g., see Wikipedia), and experience has shown that half the time the user calls back with the same problem a day later anyway (e.g., it's not software, it is a hardware problem, or USER ERROR), so we have a bunch of standard questions that are asked before making any kind of switch.
You should have heard this guy! Impatient. Demanding. They went ballistic and started calling me a retard for asking. So sorry, sir. By your command, sir. They pay me $5/hr to serve your every whim, sir. The best part is the reason for wanting the switch: their IP apparently got banned from some on-line forum. Yeah, right. The phrase "Not our problem" comes to mind. It would be like calling the phone company expecting to get a new number because yours got blocked by some other customer for harassing phone calls.
But, they are a paying customer, and the customer is always right, so, I told them that kind of abuse wasn't necessary, and once they calmed down, I guess they called my manager and got what they wanted in the end. Good for them. I just wish they weren't so rude about it. It's not the end of the world if they can't post to an on-line forum for a couple of days.
Sheesh, they do not pay enough for the kind of verbal abuse people sometimes have to put up with in tech support.
I was working at IBM in their Thinkpad support group when Win95 was rolled out. We had a special group created to handle Win95 support calls of techs who had taken training on Win95 on the IBM machines. I remember my first call after getting put on the Win95 support que. At this point in time, IBM had approximately 30 minute wait times to get to a Win95 support rep. After I pick up the phone, a guy tells me hae is having problems with Win95 on his new laptop that he bought. After confirming his serial number I asked him what the problem was. His exact answer:
"Solitaire is dealing me the wrong cards."
The mute button was my friend that day.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Here's a treasure trove of tech support nightmares. http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/
A few months ago, I received a panicked call from an administrative assistant that one of our attending physicians was having technical issues with some of the hardware in our clinic. I informed her that I had just pulled up to the hospital and would be there momentarily to correct the issue. Upon getting into the parking lot (a mere two minutes later), I received another phone call from an equally panicked medical assistant claiming that Dr. ******** said, "One of the head-desks isn't functioning."
My reply, of course, was, "what is a head-desk? Does he mean one of the desktop PCs or the TabletPCs?"
"I don't know; all he said is to get up here because the head-desk isn't working."
Rushing from the parking lot to the clinic, I blow through the door and head straight back to the Triage area of the clinic. Standing in front of the aptly named head-desk (a computer monitor), I see a medical assistant working without any problems. I ask the attending physician (who initiated the calls) which computer had the problem. He points to the functioning devices and I look at him and say, "It's working just fine."
"Well it wasn't."
Apparently, he was just too impatient to check the monitor's power button and move the mouse to bring the desktop PC out of suspend mode.
"In that case, next time--before you make panicked calls to everyone--make sure to check the power button and move the mouse."
"I'm not stupid, I know how to do that!"
I bite my lip, turn for the door, and say to myself, "I think the jury's still out on that one."
I was working the IT help desk at our very large company in 1995 when some guy calls the help desk needing to hook up a Zip-drive to a SCSI connection to review some important files. He had had the Zip-drive shipped along with the disks from the company we were in negotiations with. My response was "What's a Zip-drive?"
Wait, I've got that mixed up. I was the one calling and it was the dork at the help desk who didn't know what a Zip-drive was. The story gets me confused because the engineer was the one who had to explain things to the IT wiz.
"It holds 100 meg." "Cool!"
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Two of the options are just really lame examples of innuendo. What's the tech angle on these? God, I hate the Register. It's nice to be reminded why I stopped reading.
...especially the "17 inch" one. Besides Rinkworks, here's another good site: techcomedy.com. Most everyone there are real tech support workers.
This one happened to me personally. User can't log in to Win2k workstation, has been able to log in every other day for years now. I sit down at the workstation and see that the username field is blank. I ask the user what her username is, and she replies with her password. I say no no thats your password, what's your username? She replies, rather matter-of-factly, "Oh I don't have one, I just type my password." I assured user that she did in fact have a username, and she started to argue that she "most certainly would have noticed this username box before today."
Realizing that this was a major low point in my life (I liken calls like these to wiping someone else's ass for them) I retreated to my office to 'get to the bottom of this', surfed the net for about 2 hours and phoned her back suggesting that she try her first initial and last name in this mysterious username box.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Yeah, she scrolled to the right, and couldn't figure out how to go left. 30-year old woman, reporter, uses computers daily. Mmmkay.
One week ago, I send her a /. story that relates to a piece she's producing. She tells me that she can't read it because the text goes off the bottom of the screen and ends in the middle of a sentence.
sigh.
What are you, 12?
"There's something wrong with the network."
"Okay, what's going on?"
"Well, the machine was all like, bam! bam bam! and that surprised me. Then I tried making it go again. That didn't work, 'cos it just sat there going ghh-ghh-ghh-ghh!"
"What?"
"It's a machine gun sound. Now it's just sitting there, all like, what the fuck?"
"Okay, what does that mean?"
"I said, first the machine was all--"
"Never mind. What were you doing when this happened?"
"I was running a test."
"And then what happened?"
"I started getting NFS errors."
"Aha. What kind of NFS errors?"
"You know, like, the file wasn't there."
"Okay. Then what happened?"
"The machine gun sound. Weren't you listening?"
----------------
"I'm heading out of town next week, and I'm going to need the notebook."
"Okay, when do you need it?"
"Oh, some time next week."
"I can do that. What do you need on it?"
"Foobleymatic 2.5, BarfTastic XP, and Crunchometer 2."
"Okay, that sounds good. How's Tuesday sound for you?"
"Today's Friday, right?"
"Yep. Why?"
"Well, I'm actually heading out of town on Monday."
"Aha. When on Monday?"
"Early."
"Early as in, you won't have time to come in here and pick up the laptop, right?"
"Right."
"I see. So really, then, you need it today, don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess I do."
"I see. Well, thanks for telling me."
"Hey, no problem!"
----------------
"Have we thought about wireless access here?"
"I'm agin it. It's too easy to sniff traffic and there are lots of data ports here."
"Well, has anyone ever sniffed traffic?"
"Absolutely. A guy got convicted in the US for sniffing credit card numbers from a Home Depot. They were using encryption. The FBI recently demonstrated how to crack encryption in about four minutes using off-the-shelf software. It's not hard."
"Well, I don't think we have that many secrets."
"...Email? Our source code? Budgets?"
"Well, I'm only thinking of this as a way of getting the printer closer to my office."
"What, you don't print any secrets?"
"No."
"You've just picked up your printing, right? Look at what you have in your hand: email, budget requests. Programmers print out code all the time. Should we open the window and throw it all into the streets?"
"Well..."
"We have shredders for a reason."
"Well, maybe I should just get a printer and put it by my desk."
----------------
Yesterday:
A: Ever since I moved to Linux, I can't print these PDFs any more. I think it's a font problem, just like B had. Have you fixed that yet?
Me: No, but I don't know that you're having a font problem. There are, like, four programs involved in printing that, and each one of them is different now.
A: No, I think it's a font problem. I hate OpenOffice.
B: Fonts are screwed up in Debian. This never happens to me on my Fedora Core machine at home.
Today:
Me: Well, I printed out seventeen pages from two different machines in eight different ways using the printer on the floor above me, and as you can see the crucial difference is the version of Acrobat Reader used to print them. It's not a font problem. Those big black bars? It's a bug in the latest version of Acrobat Reader.
A: Oh.
Me: Yep, the PDFs generated by OpenOffice were fine. Now, I'm reluctant to install an older version of Acrobat because of security pr--
B (sitting right next to A all this time): Oh, you don't have that problem if you use this PDF reader over here.
A: What?
Me: What?
B: Yep, just use the Gnome PDF reader and it prints just fine.
A: Why didn't you tell me yesterday?
B: You said it was a problem with OpenOffice, not PDFs.
A:
Carousel is a lie!
I remember back in the mid-late 90's (p2-p3 era) my dad giving my grandparents one of my old computers (which was too outdated to play the latest greatest games) so they could check email, surf the web, etc. All the necessary programs needed to do these things were already installed (which made the initial setup a whole lot easier). Unfortunately he listed me as the designated computer guy, so anytime there was a problem, they were instructed to call me and I would figure it out. Most of the time they had trivial issues like trying to figure out which programs did what, getting printers to work right, etc. One particular time, however, my grandmother called me and told me that she couldn't get "the cupholder on the computer to work" anymore.
:(
I couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about for a good 30 minutes, thinking that maybe she put some kind of cupholder attachment onto the case itself. Then I realized that it was, yes, the CD rom drive..
There was a lady who brought her computer to the shop, and said her cd-rom drive wasn't working. I powered on the system, opened the drive, and found a CD inside. Indeed, the drive didn't work right when I checked it. So I shutdown the system, removed the drive, and it rattled. After taking it apart I found pieces of an HP drivers cd. After I took all the pieces out, the drive worked fine.
The interesting part is, not only did a CD explode in the drive, but the customer put in another CD...
When I told her what had happened she said something like: "Yeah I figured that's what happened."
In the heady days of the LaserJet and LaserJet+, the sales team passed me a technical query - a customer wanted to know whether the LaserJet was supported by GRIX. Well, I knew of Unix, AIX, Xenix, but GRIX was a new one on me so I called HP (no Internet yet) and explained the problem. HP promised to find out if there was a driver for GRIX.
.... that's the light in my brain coming on....
A few hours later, HP admitted defeat and could not only not find a driver for GRIX, but no-one knew anything about this strange OS. As the customer was from a university, we concluded it must be an in-house OS.
I called the customer and was soon speaking to an oriental gentleman who indeed confirmed that he was interested in GRIX support for the HP LaserJet as this might mean he would buy a number of printers. After some more discussion, the customer re-iterated that it would be great if the LaserJet did GRIX characters..."you know, printing GRIX - GRIX characters".
BING
The customer wanted to know whether the LaserJet could print Greek characters (he worked in the Maths Department)!
Can't recall whether a sale was made!!
AT&ROFLMAO
I got a call from the CEO's assistant. she said her PC wont turn on. i had her check the connections and everything but is the lap top here in the office?.. lol so once i went up to her office and i looked at the docking station. i asked where is the lap top? she said oh that? it is at home. i thought everthing was stored on that, and she pointed to the docking station. hehehe.
Come on, this isn't flamebait. If it's not insightful, I don't know what is. It's pretty hard to get an IP ban on slashdot, and taking out your frustration by being rude to a tech support rep is a pretty good way to prove that you are a genuine Class A asshat. Showing off about this behavior later only confirms it.
Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department and says "I'm sorry to bother you guys but I really need to get these out!" Talking about her newest pamphlet.
Look you immature arseholes, this is why women hate dealing with IT departments. Why the fuck do you have to compare a perfectly reasonable request to complete and utter idiocy just because the woman happens to have <GASP> boobies!
Yes, I get the double entendre. How fucking hilarious. Obviously the woman needs to be ridiculed for her stupidity. It's not as if "get these out" is an extremely common phrase heard through offices every day, is it?
I'm a bloke and articles like this make me embarrassed to work in the IT field because, quite frankly, the reputation it has as being full of fuckwits with no social skills and a fear of women is well-deserved. Grow the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look like dickheads.
I once asked a user, via email, if the problem she was having occured while the laptop was "Dicked or Undicked".
:-)
Luckily, she had a sense of humor... and I still have my job.
This isn't really a tech support story but it happened on a tech support job. I worked for a company similar to Geek Squad, but much smaller. I was on a standard call for removing spyware, viruses, etc. Meanwhile my client and her 13 year old son were screaming at each other the entire time. She finally gets him to calm down for a little bit. After about 15 minutes I hear her yelling "What are you doing out of your room? Wait! What are you doing with that knife?" The kid pulled a butcher knife on his mom!!
Needless to say, once she did get the knife away from the kid. I packed up my gear, gave her the bill and told her not to expect anyone back from my company to finish fixing the computers.
I once worked at the computer store at a local university. We had licensing with Microsoft for low-cost versions of Office, but to sell them we had to get a copy of a student's class schedule.
I had a customer come in once looking for Office who not only didn't know if she had a Mac or a PC, but needed me to tell her what semester it was.
One of my support staff came to me one day, saying a button absolutely did not work and we had to fix it immediately. I checked our current version and found that it worked. When I approached her again with my results, she insisted and proceeded to show me on her PC. True enough, the screenshot in Word did not respond to a mouse click.
She got promoted to the analysis group, and now requirements are much more clear...
Rinkworks has a great collection of stories. I question the veracity of some of them, but they're still funny. When I first discovered it, I had to stop after a couple pages because I was losing my faith in mankind's ability to not be completely hopeless.
The Register's list has a couple good ones (The hungry floppy drive is my favorite), but some of them seem rather lame given the number of stories out there, and they're written like they were copied and pasted from a chatroom. Example: "Someone telling me their 'broadbean' connection is down." I would even say that my 9 year old can write better than that, except I don't have a 9 year old son.
Also, I'm sorry because I know how important this topic is to Slashdot, but "Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department..." (more spectacular writing) doesn't exactly strike me as a bewildering IT anecdote. It's more like someone got excited about directly interacting with the HR girl and felt a need to share their excitement with the Register.
My first job in nerd purgatory was for a small ISP in the late 90s. I was tech support / systems admin there, and when a customer called I had no idea whether to expect a super-nerd who thought he knew more than me, or grandma having problems with her Mac and System 7.5.3.
My most memorable call was from a new user. She sounded like a middle-aged lady, and she complained that she had signed up for our service but couldn't connect. I tried trouble-shooting the issue from a software side, then started asking her questions about her modem.
"Modem?" she said. "What's a modem?"
She didn't have an internal modem, and she sure didn't have an external modem, either. After explaining the concept of "dialup" to her, she threatened to sue us for fraud. "You never told me I had to have a modem! You're trying to extort more money out of me! I'm paying you for the Internet and I shouldn't have to get anything else!"
I proceeded to help her cancel her account.
I get a call from one of the field techs that I use to support. He was on his cell, hiding in a closet. He wants me to call the number of the house he is at and ask for this guy and tell him that his mother was just in a horrible accident.
Being the manager of this field tech, I had to ask why he wanted me to do this and why he was in the closet. Well... the guy my tech wanted me to call was the husband of the woman who put in the call. Most of us should be able to put 2 and 2 together to figure out why the tech was in the closet. I ask the tech why I shouldn't just call the cops there. He actually tells me that he has a 2 ounces of coke and a joint.
Being the understanding boss that I am, I called the cops.
In God we trust, all others require data.
When I first started working at a local computer store in the "lab" we got one irate lady whose son had really destroyed Windows 95. She had something against my boss, and kept making a big stink about the computer being defective and demanding that we build her a brand new machine, and claiming that I didn't know what I was talking about. She eventually cornered the sales manager and yelled at him for an hour or so, and as soon as she left the store I got called into his office.
The sales manager was upset of course, and started chewing me out, but after about 5 mins he asked me what I had to say about it all.
"There's a difference between bending over backwards for the customer and bending over forwards."
He turned beet red, pointed at the door and I left. I never heard another word about the incident.
Guy buys a computer, brings back the mouse, claiming it's defective.
Rather than haggling with him, we just exchange it with another.
Next day, he comes back, saying this one is dead too. Take him over to a computer, plug his mouse in, and it works perfectly. "It seems to be OK."
He says "yeah, but watch this," then proceeds to wave the mouse in the air. "See - it doesn't work when you lift it off the table."
talked to a very nice older lady... she was having no luck getting her new phone programmed...
she had talked to someone else before and got fustrated and called back
so i tried to walk her thru programming the phone.... which wasn't working at all again.
she kept saying she wasn't hearing any of the system announcements.... etc on the phone.
finally about to give up and figure she had a DOA phone, I asked her to locate the model number... when she said it was an RCA...... it struck me... she was trying to program the remote control for her TV instead of the Phone which was sitting on the table next to her.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
wasn't much of a tech support call so much as it was a marriage support call. This guy calls in, very polite, and wants to know if it's possible other people have used his computer to browse to porn websites. Pretty unlikely. He starts asking more questions and I'm fending him off with "not really, but maybe..." and I ask him if anyone other than him has access to the computer. He says it's just him and his wife and that they're both good Christians and no one else could have gotten to the computer. Uh oh. Well, I ask him if he's really sure, and he's adamant about it. I hear his wife in the background "oh look here's some more from back in October!" (which was a good 6 months old at that point). The guy's voice is wavering, and I'm trying to help him out, so I suggest some wild stuff about a virus that could do stuff, so I try to ask him if he's noticed anything else weird about the computer, but no, nothing else. I thought I did a pretty good job of trying to come up with reasonable (to a non-tech) things that could have caused this, but the guy just refuses to acknowledge anything.
By the end of the call his I heard his wife saying something about divorce and the guy was openly crying on the phone. I was trying not to laugh. Poor guy, I was trying to help him out but he just wouldn't work with me.
"I'd like to move my telephone to the other side of the room. Would you please feed more cable through the wall for me?"
Life is such a sweet insanity. The more you learn, the less you know.
Almost every monday, my boss would come back and tell me his computer "wasn't working...it does nothing". I'd routinely walk up to it, power on the monitor, and walk away. He'd stand in amazement as his computer would 'fade in' to a working state.
This never stopped him from having the EXACT SAME PROBLEM the following week.
--
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
I used to work for a large IT firm doing internal support. On the morning of 9/11/2001 I received a phone call from a manager in the manufacturing division. I was based in NY and he was based in MN. He demanded to know why he had not been able to access his e-mail for the last hour and a half. I explained to him that our mail servers were located in building #2 of the World Trade Center, which no longer existed. He demanded to speak to my supervisor because he could not believe our response time to correct the problem and reboot the mail server was so slow. I pointed out that three targets on American soil had just been attacked, two of them civilian and completely destroyed. He still didn't get it. I pointed out that 3000 people died. He again demanded to speak to my supervisor, screaming about our Service Level Agreements and such. I hung up and walked out.
Funny, I almost never assume that the help desk person on the other line has a clue. I once called to tell my ISP that their DNS servers weren't responding. I said, "I can't resolve anything through DNS. I tried to query your servers with nslookup and got nothing. I tried pinging them and got no response. I tracerouted to them, got responses from your network, but couldn't reach them." The person then asked, "Sir, what browser are you using to ping them?" I said, "Umm...I'm not using my browser to do that." This was followed by me asking, "Do you know a cool trick that I don't?" That's why I never assume tha tthe person answering the phone has a clue.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
So my brother got a PC. It came with XP installed, I thought "fine", installed the drivers for the rest of the hardware, Firefox, MSN Messenger etc and he was on his way.
:)
The thing about MSN Messenger is that whenever someone clicks the Email button to go to Hotmail, or for that matter responds to a new mail notification, it opens in Internet Explorer. And the thing about 14 year olds is that they get sent all kinds of shit in their email. Unlike most people, they also have no judgement. I did tell him, REPEATEDLY, "Do not use Internet Explorer. Go to Hotmail.com in Firefox. Ignore new mail notifications." Didn't work.
This is how I came to be fixing his PC nary a month later. There was spyware on it. Lots and lots of spyware. (Linux fanboys note that I never get any problems with spyware on Windows. It's being silly and using IE that does it.)
Eventually I blew away XP and put Windows 2000 on the thing. It ran faster, it ran better, but little brother hated it. Windows 2000 is teenager poison. There are no cuddly images of fields and clouds and omg ponies on there and MSN Messenger doesn't work properly. I put a trial of WindowBlinds on there, he was happy.
Then the nagging started.
He would find as many flaws in Windows 2000 as it was possible to find. Even flaws that did not actually exist. He would go to painstaking lengths to find things Windows 2000 failed at, and even when I pointed out that he was going hysterical about nothing he would piss and moan about them.
I got the last laugh though. I said I'd reinstall XP on the proviso that he doesn't get any more viruses or spyware, and if he does he'd be straight back to Windows 2000 (or Ubuntu, most likely). No more problems since
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I was out to dinner with a new girlfriend and she was wearing a rather sexy, backless plunging top, which of course meant she wasn't wearing a bra. About midway through dinner she dropped her knife on the floor and when she bent over to pick it up... well...
Let's just say she could have used better support.
paintball
I get a call while working at a college for tech support. Turns out, its the same guy that called right before that, and one of the other techs had tried working with him. The problem stemmed from the fact that this person did not speak English very well at all. He could not log in, he could type in his username, but his mouse was "frozen" at bootup, so he could not click in to type his password. I want to save some time, and make sure this isn't something that can be fixed over the phone. To help him log in I say, as did the previous person on the phone, press the "Tab" key on the keyboard to move the cursor down so you can type in your password. The reply I knew was coming, which key? The tab key, spelled 'T' 'A' 'B'. "'T' 'A' 'B'?" Yes, the tab key. Its a single key on the keyboard labled tab. Its just down and to the left of the 1 key, right above caps lock up and to the left from A. Nothing helps. nothing gets through to this guy. Finially 20+ minutes later, the spyware that was taking all of the processor time finishes up its initialization, and he uses the mouse to click in to enter his password. He goes to hang up and I say wait a second, get VNC setup (we had a menu option to do it), so I remote connect to his machine, run adaware on it....I think it found some 2000 items. This was back in 2001/2002.
Ok I have a few stories from my days in tech support. Now you have to remember, these are the OLD days of computers - DOS and such.
1) I had a guy call and say that his Seagate ST225 20MB MFM drive was acting up. He said he was getting "Massive read errors" but that it used to work fine. I asked him if something changed. He said he wife had cleaned the computer recently, and I started to ask him "Did she bump any cables" when he says "Is there a preferred cleaning fluid for cleaning hard drive platters?" I said "Excuse me?" He said his wife had opened the drive and had cleaned the platters with Windex. I said "Sir, you can't even open the drive unless you're in a cleanroom". His response "Well my wife is pretty throughout usually - it's a pretty clean room". Doh!
2) I had a lady complain that her floppy wouldn't fit in the drive. She said she finally got it to fit but couldn't get it back out again. I asked her to what kind of drive and she says "The little new one". I asked her what she did to get it to actually go in, and she says "Well, the only way I could get it to fit was to fold it in half, but then it seemed to fit fine". She was trying to put a 5 1/4" floppy in a 3 1/2" bay.
3) Once a secreatary had trouble with a CMS tape backup drive. It would backup her computer just fine with no errors, but could never restore - it always said the tape was blank. So we replaced the drive several times with no luck. Finally, we sent her a new larger tape drive and she said "Well now I can't fit it on top of my monitor because there's no room between her monitor and the shelf above it". I said "You store your tape drive on top of your monitor?" She confirmed this. Apparently there was a massive amount of RF coming out of the vents in the top of her monitor, degaussing and erasing her tapes as she recorded them. As soon as she sat it on her desktop next to the computer, it worked fine.
4) I asked a guy once to ship his drive back to us in popcorn. So yes indeed, that's what he did!
5) Once we received a drive back without an RMA number, which normally we would reject. There was one slip of paper with the drive that just said "BAD" in big penciled letters on the paper. So for the heck of it, I had the test people try the drive out. As soon as they plugged in power, the drive started to sputter and jump around on the table like an offset motor. People were jumping out of the way. I said "Ok, so his description is accurate (LOL) and go ahead and replace it without an RMA number".
6) I once got a call that a guy had some trouble with his system. I forget what the problem was, but we corrected it fairly quickly over the phone. He then thanked me and continued that he really liked the system, and his parting words before he hung up were "oh and I really like the cupholder, that was a nice bonus, bye!" and hung up. I can only assume he was talking about the cdrom drive.
7) Once a guy had one of our modem floppies (5 1/4") with the install s/w, and the s/w didn't work and I suspected a virus after he explained what it did/said. So knowing that we give out thousands of these, I wanted to make sure this wasn't on every disc we sent out so I asked him to make a copy of it for me. A week later I got a letter with a photocopy of the disc included.
Oh I am sure there are more, but I have to get back to work.
Ciao!
Bouncing back and fourth tech support stories with an old friend of mine, he topped me with the funniest I've ever heard.
He used to work tech support in an office for the government of Canada.
One day, a woman called asking for help because random characters kept appearing on her screen. Puzzled, and after a half hour on the phone with her, he decided to go and try to fix it onsite.
Unable to find out what the problem was, while trying to fix it onsite, the womans phone rang, so she went to pick it up. Now, this woman was a rather obese, typical government worker, and after grabbing for the phone she exclaimed see there, the characters are on the screen.
It turns out that the womans cleavage/breast fat was smuching onto the keyboard when she went for the phone. My friend really didn't know what to tell the lady, she he just said it straight out.
Ma'am, I think I've found the problem, your boobs are crushing the keyboard.
So i'm working tech support for a company in Massachusetts, 1st job out of college in 96 - it's a small company, and I'm supporting their product...but, that's getting old, so I tell them I'd rather be in IT and if they want to keep me, they should move me sooner rather than later. They agree to move me to IT, but couldn't do it right away. No problem, eventually is better than never.
(on a side note, I'm glad I was there in the days when a college grad with little real world experience could make a play like that and win)
3 months later I'm still not down there - there's a new mgr there who no one likes, so I'm not complaining. One day, one of the guys there, Muz, gives me a call asking me to come down to his new bosses office.
Apparently she came storming into the IT area, grumps her way into her office and, 3 minutes later, comes flying out saying "My f'n laptop doesn't work AGAIN - you told me last time you fixed it that you FIXED IT, and you clearly didn't. I'm going to talk to HR - if you want to save your job, get in there and FIX the laptop, today the mouse doesn't work." Muz pops his head in to her office after she leaves, and immediately calls me. He tells me the story, and pop down aand peek into her office...and duck my head back out, now laughing.
Boss chooses this point to come back, CIO and HR rep in tow. Now in her defense, she wasn't an IT type person - IT needed a manager, and they threw her under the bus....but there are limits.
So, back to her office, she asks what I'm doing there (all irritated) and I let her know I was helping Muz troubleshoot her problem. I asked her to put her laptop back into her bag as if she had just arrived and show me what she did. So she pulls the power out, slams the lid closed, puts it in her laptop bag, walks out. She comes BACK in 2 minutes later (method actor, I guess). Opens laptop bag. Puts laptop on desk. Opens, turns on. Grabs mouse on her desk and moves it...."See! See! This stupid thing just doesn't work, i want that guy (the actualy IT Person) fired immediately!"
I reach over and grab the dangling end of the mouse and show it to her. That's all, didn't say a word, just twisted it back & forth between my fingers while looking at her.
I don't think I've seen that colour of red in a long time. She was totally embarassed and actually apologized to Muz. CEO, HR head ask Muz and I to walk out. 20 minutes later, the mgr walks out. 2 days later, new mgr in IT - sadly, they just shuffled her to another location within the company...
What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.
A local radio station plays a clip (it may be fake, but its convicing) of a guy calling into a help line complaining that he needs to move his pointer left but that the mouse is at the left edge of the mouse pad and he can not go any further.
I got asked "I downloaded a virus writing kit so I could send somebody a virus, but my antivirus says it's infected with a virus, what do I do?". Thankfully, I've never worked in helldesk, this was just a random person that knew I'm "good with computers"
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
Once my mid-age aunt called me, asking what should she do to access the web. I already knew she was very limitted when it calls for IT, so I stood patient. Me: Aunt, is the computer on? Aunt: Yes, it on. The power light is on Me: Is the monitor on? Aunt: Yes, I can see the screen Me: Can you move the cursor and everything? Aunt: Yes, sure. Me: Is the Internet Explorer installed and working? Aunt: Of couse! You are not talking to a beginner. Me: OK then. Is the window open? Aunt: Yes, it is. I can see all the people passing by the street. But what does it has to do with internet? Me: Nevermind.
Working at a language lab makes for some weird stories. It was a lab full of macs (I'm a PC person).
One day, this professor who's always around is showing me her fancy, thin, mac notebook. She's pointing to one of the plugs on the back and is saying it's a USB port. I look at it and say "That's not a USB port." She insists it is. I tell her "I don't know what it is, but it's not a USB port." She tells me she's the technology chair for her department. I tell her I'm a Computer Science major.
Just then my boss comes up and looks at it and says "That's a monitor port." Apparently, because the notebook was so thin (or Apple being different), there was this USB-sized plug for an external monitor.
I worked there for my entire undergrad career. I've got plenty more where this came from.
Sigh...what's really sad about this one is that it went through our Tech Support before getting to system administration. While a customer might not really understand RFC-1918 IP addressing vs. publicly routable IP addresses, tech support really should have known better. I was tempted to comply with her request, but I just couldn't bring myself to be such a BOFH.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
(I didn't answer this call. A friend of mine working at the same company did.) It took a long time to figure out why every set of disks the company sent her were blank when she tried to install our software. The reason? She was using a magnet to attach them to the side of her computer case so she wouldn't "misplace" any of them while working her way through the install.
That's nothing. I spent 45 minutes on the phone trying to convince the woman that the problem was on the Comcast side of the cable connection. She got mad, hanged up the phone on me, and "accidentally" deleted the modem info from the system. Had to wait two weeks for the system to "purge itself" before the modem info could be put back in. That's almost as bad as trying to convince Comcast that another problem was out on the street, and it took two weeks to find out that the previous technician installed something backwards. Gotta love Comcast. I got DSL when I moved into my new place, which I mention every time Comcast wants to offer me a broadband connection.
One is about an incompetant tech from Verizon - I was just getting ISDN installed at home (Yeah - this is THAT long ago). Verizon gave me my SPID numbers - basically your phone number plus 4 digits, in this case 0101. The tech comes out, asks me for the SPIDS, I give him the numbers, but he INSISTS that 0101 was wrong, that they were ALL 0000 - I kept trying to tell him that the tech on the phone said "we changed out SPID scheme last week - make SURE you tell him it's 0101" - 4 hours of trouble shooting later, he got it
The other one was at a company I worked for. One Thursday AM, the big bosses secretary calls me - he computer does not work. Go over there, and figure out, her PC is unplugged - no BIG deal - her desk is in the hall, and the guys vaccuming probably unplugged it. Showed her how to check it, and went on my merry way, after grabbing a cup of Mahogony Row coffee.
Oh, did I mention that this Secretary was hired more for her physical assets than her mental? (Turns out she was sleeping with the EVP)
So, the next Thursday, I get a phone call - "My PC won't turn on" - guess what? Unplugged again - plug in, grab coffee, back to my desk
After the FOURTH Thursday in a row (cleaning crew came Wednesday nights), I gave up trying to teach her. I'd come in my usual time (I come in EARLY), walk all the way across the 2 block long building, plug in her PC, grab a cup of coffee, and head back to my desk, all before she wandered in at 9:00am
End of phone calls, and I got to know the folks up in executive land, which stood me in good sted
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
For three years when I was still in school I worked 2nd shift the help desk in the main lab on campus.
...
...
.ppt to it ....
/Piss/. Needless to say this takes me aback a bit. I was so tempted to just burn the powerpoint and send him on his merry way to turn it in to his teacher, but my professionalism actually kicked in for once and I told him why it might not be such a good idea to turn this in.
...
:)
----
Me: 'Computer Network Services Randy speaking'
Her: "Hello this is Dr. Jane Smith I need to get to the University of Penn"
Me: 'Hmm? It is downtown.'
After about 5 minutes to figure out what in the world she was going on about, she finally conveyed that she wanted to go to a website. Someone apparently wrote down a link for her. After painfully getting her to open IE I managed to guide her to the address bar, and type in the url. Apparently she never did that before and had been navigating the entire web via hyperlinks. English teacher~
----
Students are not generally as bad but
There was this Administrator of Justice Major who had her floppy die on her. This happens a lot so I keep a bunch of recovery tools on my flash drive, and I manage to get (most of) the files off of it and print what she needed. I gave her back the floppie and told her of the wonders of USB drives and to always keep backups of things.
Then 2 days later and her floppy is dead again. She storms out of the lab, calls her boyfriend, and starts crying. About a half an hour later she wanders back. It took me all of 40 seconds to grab a new floppy and dump everything that I was still on my flash drive from 2 days prior.
But here comes the best part
She was using the _same_ floppy as 2 days before!
I took it from her, gave her the new one from the lost pile, and told her to floppies are so fragile that even cell phone radiation can mess with them.
"OH NO!! I STICK MY CELL IN THE SAME POUCH AS MY FLOPPIESSS!"
----
Next one is another student. His professor wanted a powerpoint presentation to be turned on via a CDr.
Alight not problem, I tell him to login, but he doesn't remember his password. This is understandable as he never changed his original password which tends to be very hard to remember. So I run him through the signature station to get his password again and then he logs in. I tell him to save the presentation to desktop and stick the CD-R in. He sticks the cd in upside down. I flip it over and notice that there is something written and crossed off in felt tip marker. Low and behold the cd is not blank. No problem there we can just add the
I notice the name of the CD. It is NEWPORN. Tabbing back to the cd window I see directories such as
He was confused at all of this. Apparently Staples now sells brand new CD-Rs that have been written on with felt tip makers and have porn preinstalled on them. Who could have known. I didn't press the issue as the lab was packed at the time and I was fighting off laughter. I spotted him a CDr and sent him on his way. He gave me a buck for the new CD-r and let me keep the porn filled one
----
There was also the time a student brought a tarantula for show and tell (lol state college) that got into the Oracle Server; the drunk guy who ran out of the lab, fell down the steps, and required hospitalization; and the time I stole Police Service's runabout golf cart by accident.
But those aren't Support stories
I used to work for an company that did outsource tech support for Windows 95. One anecdote that went around the office was how a tech was having a problem he couldn't solve where about the same time each night a machine would reboot. There didn't seem to be any program running that could cause it, but sure enough the machine would reboot.
Finally he recommended to the customer that they physically watch the computer at the time (I think it was 9 or 10pm). Sure enough, about that time, the cleaning person walked in the room, unplugged the machine, plugged in the vacuum, vacuumed the room, and then plugged the machine back in.
Client: "MY PASSWORD ISN'T WORKING"
Reply: "Have you tried turning off the caps lock?"
Client: "that's got it thanks1"
*cry*
"OK, so does the mouse still move?"
"Yes."
"OK, so it can't be completely frozen. Let's go over to the lab and I'll take a look."
footstep footstep footstep Well, it looks to be completely locked. I thought you said the mouse still moved?"
She grabs the mouse and swings it all over the desk, looking at me like, "SEE?"
"Look, if the computer ever locks up so hard that you can't move the mouse on the desk, RUN."
The joke in on tech support in the end in this one, from my first job. George received the call, which went something like this:
Customer: Hello, I'm calling because your CD-ROM makes a buzzing noise during installation.
George: Pardon me, sir—a buzzing noize?
Customer: Yes, it vibrates, making a kind of loud buzzing noise.
George: Are there any errors?
Customer: No, the installation works just fine.
George: And the software works correctly?
Customer: Yes, no problem. But the CD makes a buzzing noise.
George (becoming creative): Hmm... well, sir, there's a lot of information on that CD, and it could be that there's more information on one side of the disc than the other. If it's weighted unevenly, this could make it wobble as it spins, causing it to buzz.
Customer: Oh, that makes sense. Well, no big deal, I guess. Thank you.
It turns out that many other customers called with the same complaint; there was indeed a manufacturing defect with a batch of CDs.
Not really related, except that your mention of IP address reminded me of this one - it's kind of a cute story:
I had a cable modem, probably close to 10 years ago when they were very new, and phoned to ask about how I could get a static IP address (I think Rogers cable in Canada may have been offering them for a few $ a month extra or something like that).
Anyway, after a confusing conversation I was told that I was probably best to just go the the nearest Radio Shack and see if I could pick up a static IP address there.
Back in the early Mac days, there was a naive Mac user whose computer crashed and put up a dialog with the bomb icon, saying "Sorry, a system error has occurred." So of course they jumped up from their seat and ran out of the room in terror, because they thought it meant the computer was about to explode!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I used to work Tech Support for a state agency in California. One of the women who had worked there forever and was in a much higher position than myself yet still considered tech support, asked me for help. One of the VPs had come in with his new laptop and asked us to configre it for him to be able to dial into the network from the road. She had done all the configuration stuff and was trying to test with no success. Everything looked ok config wise so I had it try to dial in. No dial tone. Hhmmm, looks like it's plugged into the modem in the laptop fine. I decide to trace the cable back to the wall to see if it came loose from the wall. Cable runs to the back of her desk, down the wall to the floor, along the floor a couple feet, back up the wall towards the other end of her desk, and into her phone. I was pretty sure we didn't get new wireless phones so I held up the phone and the laptop and smiled at her. About 45 secs later she turned beet-red and started laughing her ass off. I joined her and the rest of the people in the office in having a good laugh. I'll never forget that one.
Here's another e-mail related incident that I experienced a few years ago.
... er ... "repeat customers", screaming that his e-mail wasn't working and that the Commissioner had sent him very important e-mails that he absolutely needed. So, she - me manager - came over, rolling her eyes, and said, "Will you see what he's doing wrong?"
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I installed a small Microsoft Mail post office for our department, a state government agency. My manager got a call one morning from one of our
I went over to his office where he was with some other employee. As soon as he saw me, he started up. "This e-mail sucks! The Commissioner sent me several important e-mails yesterday and I never got them! This is ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with tis thing?!" I calmly wlaked over and stated, "Let me look at it."
After about two seconds of looking at the screen, I calmly stated, "You're not in your Inbox." { click on Inbox }
{ dramatic pause as his stupidity sinks in while the wind howls and a tumbleweed blows by }
"I am so sorry. I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Not a problem. Let me know if you have any other issue with it." as I walked out with no indication of the "You moron!" attitude on my face.
I even had the gratification of hearing, "I feel so stupid" as I walked out the door. Well, who am I to argue with management?
Another customer called up to say "your software package isn't working".
We also got plenty of really irate customers who would refuse to go through any diagnostic steps, and just declare "no, I don't have time, you just fix it"; I then discovered the most annyoing phrase in the universe: "Please sir, you need to help me to help you" - saying this to them just drove them crazy, and I must confess I took a certain pleasure in it.
Having said all that, you do come to realise that everybody in the world just isn't as computer literate as yourself; I'm sure these people all knew about plenty of stuff I know nothing about personally.
A friend of mine called Gateway when the screen of her laptop kept falling down because the hing was faulty. After explaining this they asked her if she had recently installed any software that might have caused the problem. I think this is when she informed them that she was a Ph.D. in CS candidate, and that she didn't believe that this was a software problem
In the waning days of a former dial-up ISP, the technical support team was enjoying an unusually quiet night. Rather, the phones were unusually quiet, the world itself was flooded, thunder rattled the core of the office buildings and quite the light show was available to those working the front desk. It was a monumental storm that had come upon us without warning, and for the most part, our customer base was intelligent enough to unplug their computers.
This leaves the exception of two users. One is a brand new subscriber, being walked through a configuration by a fellow technician. The other is on the phone with me, asking miscellaneous questions.
Suddenly, it sounds as if a revolver had been placed next to my left ear and fired. I heard nothing but a yet-to-be-unparralelled "bang" and nothig but a low ringing out of that ear for the next three hours. Once my fingers relax, I drop my receiver. My co-worker, who had been on a headset, had tossed his away from himself with such force that it broke against the wall.
We wait for our hearts to slow to a comfortable pace before asking what had happened.
The server room, not ten feet and one mere wall behind us, had taken a direct lighting strike. Our phones remained operational, but internet access was not accessible for some time.
Ten minutes later, roughly, I receive my next call. I somehow ended up first in the tech queue when the phones reset themselves, and was not in the mood for a call, but I prepared myself to just address the lightning strike and be done with it. The storm was still quite rabid outside, and I had doubts the call volume would escalate.
The customer, already irate, wants to know what's wrong with his bill. I explain to him that I can not give him that information as our billing system is down. He follows this by asking if he's been deactivated. I remind him that I can not access is records at this time. Again, he asks how much he owes in back fees. I, again, remind him that I can not access his records.
He grows frustrated, saying that he obviously owes us money because he's unable to get online. I, politely, inform him that we have just taken a direct lightning strike and most of our equipment is offline for an undeterminable amount of time.
He wants to know why I won't just tell him how much he owes. Still polite, I inform him again, of the lightning strike. I bat his questions away repeatedly. I can not answer that, I do not have access to that system at this time, we took a direct lightning strike, operations are haulted until repairs are made, etc.
He stops asking. Now, he tells me. "Just look up my account and tell me what I owe." I reply with "Sir..." before he cuts me off and asks to speak with my supervisor.
I inform my supervisor of the situation. My supervisor asks if I had told him about the lightning strike. I had, repeatedly. My supervisor takes the call, and it is, in its entirety, as follows:
"This is John. M-hm. M-hm. No. No. Lightning. Yes. Night."
My supervisor then asks, again, if I had ever told the customer that we had taken a direct lightning strike.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
A late-night help desk shift worker once received a wrong number call from a lady complaining that her dog's testicles were grossly enlarged. Rather than tell her it was a wrong number, he proceeded to give advice over the phone, and logged the call on the incident log, with full details of the advice given, namely wash the dog's testicles in warm soapy water, give it some aspirin and see a vet in the morning! This was the only time in my career in which an incident on the incident log was actually deleted - not until I printed off a copy and emailed it to my friends! - this is clearly a fake Asking a lady to switch her printer off and on again because it wasn't responding at all. Whereupon she said "it's already off, do I need to switch it on before switching it off and on again?" to which I replied, "no switching something on is normally sufficient to allow it to work". This is not made up or anecdotal, I really had that conversation. - I've had compaqs back in the day that you couldn't power on again too fast after powering off - in that same line of thinking, perhaps they wondered if the action of quickly switching off an on from a state where the machine was warm was important End User: "My Rabbit's Dead." Support: "Sorry to hear that sir, how can I help you though?" End User: "No my rabbit's dead, I can't move the pointer about the screen!" Support "You mean your mouse isn't working?" End User: "Yes, I knew it was some sort of animal!" - as if the term mouse isn't ridiculous in its own right. There's a ton of terminology in this world, especially since language is so malleable. This doesn't even vaguely seem mockable, he knew how it worked and what was wrong, and he was in the rodent family. Girl from HR with large chest walks in to department and says "I'm sorry to bother you guys but I really need to get these out!" Talking about her newest pamphlet. - Officially in the frat house now, that's a lame one. I know it's been told many times in the past, but I really have had a user ask me, while doing a tutorial: "Which one is the any key?" In fact, he asked me the same question three times in succession when the prompt came up the next time. - I blame this on bad UI. How many times in the early days would you hit "any key" and it would pop up the same message again? So of course someone would look for another meaning in the word, such as "any". To an uniformed user, what is "alt", "esc", or "tab" supposed to do? Someone telling me their "broadbean" connection may be down." - Hahaha, except how many times is a vague concept or unrelated idiom adopted in tech, like say, a mouse. Plus, there are things called J2EE beans, there is netbeans, etc. Or did they actually mean "broadbeam" and the support person misunderstood them? When we first got the 21" monitors in, and were unpacking them, one of our helpdesk staff (female) was asked to lend a hand, her reply "I can't even handle 17 inches" - at which point there was silence followed by laughter from female/male colleagues and a very embarrassed staff member - her boyfriend worked at the other site and was informed that "he was a very lucky bloke". - now that's how you do a infantile joke. Most support stories are just condescendion by those in the know towards an inevitable percentage that don't know. Especially in computers. And practically all of those suck, like the 5.25 drive story or the off/on story. Then again, most support people are at the bottom of the IT totem pole, and like any good participant in hierarchical power structures, looks to the next level down to make them feel better.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
I work in healthcare IT, and at a previous site supported an application to print "alert" notices to several hospital big-wig printers if a VIP patient was admitted to the hospital. The CEO's assistant, not a very tech-friendly person to begin with, was always certain to point fingers and blow horns and ensure everyone knew when a printout didn't come, it was the INFORMATION SYSTEMS department's fault! One day, after receiving a complaint that she did not receive several printouts when 5 VIP patients had been admitted in the span of 2 days, I started my investigation by visiting all the other printers first, and confirmed they had all received their printouts. When I went to the CEO's office, I checked the print server (yes, we sent it) the queue (yes, the printer says it got it) and the printer (working normally). On my way out of the office, promising to "never let this happen again," I looked at the assistant's desk, and right on top of a stack of paper thick as a ream, were all 5 VIP printouts. I didn't bother arguing this one.
Probably apocrifull, but the story was an M$ support employee took a call from a lady that was having trouble with her footpeddle (mouse on floor, foot on mouse).
My previous employer handled billing for pay site (guess what kind :-D)
I recieved a call from a customer who was having trouble entering their password. He said there were non-standard characters in it, which isn't a big stretch as some of the admins force random passwords on accounts.
I pull up his records and there's a few punctuation marks added in there but nothing too crazy. So I'm waking him through the different shift key combos to get the * and such.
I think I'm all done and then he asks me how to make the upside down exclaimation point. Thankfully he didn't try to fight about it when I told him it was a lowercase "i"
In my current job I've had a woman berate me because our wireless routers still need a power cord attached as "...they should be wireless if you're going to call them that"
I've also had people ask if the reciever for their house arrest ankle bracelet will effect their DSL if they do't filter it. Classic.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Not quite the same, but once I received an error message that simply said:
"An error that should never have occured has occured. The system will now shut down."
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
I had this relative who was doing something really stupid with his/her computer so I said "Hey, stop that" and he/she said "Why?" and I was all like "Ooooo, I'll give you such a pinch!" and they were all like "OK, OK, I'll stop doing that" and I said "Well alright then!" and then they double clicked some malware infested program or something.
My favorite has to be:
- Me: thank you for calling $CO_HEADING_TO_C11 how can I help you today.
- Her: I need you to help me get back online.
- Me: OK, what seems the be the matter.
- Her: The computer keeps saying that it can't find a dialtone.
- Me: OK, have you checked that the phone line is plugged into the back of the computer and the wall.
- Her: [angry]Of course it's plugged in. I caught my son viewing pornography last weekend so I superglued the end of the plug into the back of the computer, and cut off the cord so he can't connect by himself. So I know the jack is plugged in.
- Me: OK, just to verify I understand the problem: You superglued the phone cord jack into the back of your computer and then cut off the cord. Now you want to connect to the internet and the phone cord jack is preventing you from putting in another cord.
- Her: [even angrier]I don't have another cord. I just want to get on the internet, that's what I pay you for, so get me connected.
- Me: Ma'am, I am confused. You have physically modified your computer in order to prevent your son from connecting to the internet, is that correct?
- Her: [furious]I didn't change anything, I just glued the plug in and cut the cord. Now get me connected to the internet or I'm going to cancel my service.
- Me: Ma'am, I cannot get you connected to the internet because you have damaged your computer. In order to get you connected to the internet, you will need to have someone replace the modem in the computer.
- Her: [screaming]I didn't break anything, why won't you help me?!!
It went downhill from there.Some years ago a colleague told me about the strangest support problem he had ever run into: one of their developers could only log in sitting down.
He had recently noticed that if he tried to log in in any other position (eg, still standing and just quickly checking his mail while walking past his desk), his password was always rejected. But as soon as he sat down, he had no problems getting in.
My colleague at first laughed it off, but it was demonstrated to be the case. He spent a long time looking into cabling problems with the keyboard or network, thinking that perhaps there was a loose connection that only worked reliably with the guy's foot on it or similar longshots. Nothing panned out, and they eventually gave up on it as not important enough to dig into further.
Finally, months later, the developer came back to him, doubled over in laughter, having figured out what the problem was. At some point in the process of cleaning his keyboard, he had reassembled it with a couple of keys juxtaposed. Which never cause him problems, because he touch-typed... when he was sitting in a normal position. When he was standing awkwardly, he looked at the keycaps, and typed his password wrong every time.
1. I asked the user to restart their PC. 5-10 secs passed and she said, "OK". I said "it restarted already?". "Yeah." Turns out she had turned off her monitor and then turned it back on. Oddly, the problem persisted. 2. I was roped into fixing a PC for someone. I'll often tell people just to bring me the "tower". That wasn't enough instruction for this person so I told her to bring me the part of the computer she used to turn on the computer. My mistake: it became clear shortly thereafter that she intended to bring me the powerstrip!
Their name was "Customer"? That *is* weird!
too bad it hadn't worked. He could have solved the world's energy problems =)
Yes, the lady was trying to step on the mouse to make her PC go. I guess she was thinking about a sewing machine.
Shaw's Principle: Build a system even a fool could use, and only a fool would want to use it.
That is a classic prank...
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
Here is another site with horror stories. Dive into:c ommand=viewDaily&date=20060705
http://www.computerworld.com/action/sharktank.do?
Computerworld's sharktank and swim for your life.
I worked for about five months at an ISP support. We have received all types of calls: drunk people, lonely ladies looking for fun, angry customers. But one call was special. Look at this guys problem:
... and I can't access the Internet. Is there something wrong with you guys?
Me: Hi, ISP support. How can I help you?
Customer: Hi, I am a customer, my name is
Me: No, everything seems ok. But I may try to help you. What is the error you are facing?
Customer: Well, the computer screen is black, I can't see anything.
Me: Is the monitor cable connected to the computer?
Customer: Yes, it is.
Me: OK. Is the monitor on?
Customer: How am I supposed to see that?
Me: Is there a light on in, blinking?
Customer: No, there isn't
Me: Is the monitor power cable connected to the power line?
Customer: Yes, it is.
Me: Uhn... is your computer on? You may check if there is any light on it.
Customer: Uhn.. no, there isn't.
Me: Sir, do you mind to turn on the light at the room you're at right now?
Customer: No problem
Customer (15 seconds he returns..): I can't turn the light on. Maybe it has the same problem as the computer.
Me: SURE IT HAS. YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD HAD A BLACK-OUT! Have a nice evening!
This goes against the grain of the comments in the thread, but I have to voice gratitude and pleasant surprise at my offsite backup ISP, rsync.net.
I'm not that interesting of a customer - I pay something like $5/months for some offsite storage through them, so I kind of expect to not be a high priority.
However, their customer support philosophy clearly states that there are never "first level" technicians, there is no ticket system, and all support is handled immediately in a normal, sane email conversation.
And it turned out to be true. At 11 pm on a Saturday night (ok, I have no life) I emailed them a fairly technical issue regarding how I was doing ssh key exchange with their system, so I could do automated rsyncs. I got a response two minutes later (!) that not only showed me how to fix the rather obscure permissions issue that was causing the trouble, but also with a full rewrite of the small script I was using to do the rsync and save logs, etc.
So I would say that the kind of support, and the philosophy of not having lame ticket systems and first level junior techs that rsync.net employs is my favorite support anecdote.
A user emailed me and described a problem that he'd been having for a month. He'd tried fixing the problem by reading my site's messageboard and tutorials and watching the demos. He said the demos didn't match the software and he couldn't find the commands mentioned on the site. I took an educated guess and replied with instructions. This didn't resolve the issue so we exchanged several more emails. It turns out he was using a similar product with a similar name, not mine at all!
Dishonorable mentions:
Any time someone sends me an email that simply says "It's not working" or "How do I work this?"
Any time someone not only attacks my software but insults me personally when they don't even know anything about me.
A customer demanded a refund because he claimed he didn't buy the software. RegNow records the IP address of the customer so I looked it up and it matched the IP address in his email headers. I never refuse a refund request so I gave it to him anyway.
Any time someone tries my software free for 30 days, buys it and THEN decides it sucks or doesn't work. This is especially annoying when they buy the software because they think it will fix a problem in the free trial.
Posted anonymously to protect the guilty.
The very next day I get a call - he's at the beach and the powerbook just went dead... black screen. I think he means "at his beach house" so ask about the colour of the ac power cord (amber or green). No, he's _at_ the beach, with no ac power wire. I fuss over sand and water but he assures me it's been kept very clean.
I finally ask "How long were you using it before it went dead?"
"Oh, a few hours..."
I explain that it's prolly just a dead battery, and get back a slightly exasperated "...but you just installed the wireless yesterday! That didn't last very long!" Sigh... just when you think you can send them out on their own...
Then there was the long and very pissed off email on which I was cc'ed, which was sent to "Mailer, Daemon". The writer complained bitterly about how he never responded to her emails, he wasn't listed in the corporate phone directory (in fact, no "Mailer"s in the whole company), he kept sending her all sorts of gibberish crap, he would NOT deliver her email to her sister, etc etc. I was relieved when she was laid off before I had a chance to explain the situation to her.
Who knows if anyone will read this far, this has been a very prolific post for comments! I used to be the computer guru at my Best Buy back in '97-'99, and all the customer issues/tech support would inevitably come to me. My favorite that I remember to this day... Customer: Yeah, I need to bring my computer back that I just got the other day. ME: What seems to be the problem with it, maybe I can help? Customer: I've only had it like three days and the coffee cup holder is already broken. It seems really cheaply made. ME: Wait, the coffee cup holder? Customer: Yeah. ME: On the computer? Customer: Yeah. ME: I... don't think we sell a computer that comes with a coffee cup holder... Customer: Yes you do. I got it at your store. ME: Um... I don't know what to tell you... Coffee cup holder? What does it look like? Customer: You know, you push the button and the cup holder slides out. It hit me that the rest of this conversation was not going to be a pleasant one.
"Even pirates like chocolate chip cookies." www.youtube.com/musecast5
As repeated to me by a colleague of mine:
Caller:I called in my computer problem over TWO HOURS AGO and tech support still hasn't called me back. What am I, black?
Colleague:I don't think that's it. I'm black and I get phone calls from them all the time.
Cue uncomfortable silence and the sound of the caller hanging up in disgrace.
I once got a call from my grandfather who had just recently purchased a computer and was trying to put in a password for one of his account. His problem was the text area for the password asked for 6-12 characters and he said he typed in 6 but it says the password is invalid. Thinking he may have unacceptable characters in his password I asked him what password he was trying to use. He told me MickeyDonaldGoofyDaffyTomJerry, trying to hold back my laughter I corrected him.
Swear to god true story.
woman in the office came and asked us to help her with attaching a document. she had a printout of what she wanted to have attached, a page from a document we have on a network share. so i go with her, and show her where the paperclip is in her outlook message, and she clicks it and says 'now what?' i say 'navigate to the file and select it to attach it to your email.' she says 'all i want is to get this on here,' flicking the paper in her hand. i say 'well, you need to find the file that has that page, and then you can attach it.' she looks confused, and then holds up the paper and shakes it a bit more, and says 'i just want to attach this.' it's about now that i realize she wants me to somehow magically attach the slip of paper in her hand to her email. i didn't know how to respond.
Was almost fired for this:
User deadlocked herself and got into a deadly embrace situation that Sybase did not automaticly resolve, so we killed her.
In God we trust, all others require data.
When I was working as a PC support person, I used to get calls that "My PC won't boot". I got so many of these calls that I would have the work order already written up and ready to sign. When I arived, I would see the usual "no ROM basic" on the screen, eject the floppy, and have the user sign the work order.
Two seconds a call, looks like I get to go home early having met my quota for tickets for the day!
Eagles soar, but Weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
Never worked in support and this isn't a phone support story, but I always crack up when I read this post
Once my mid-age aunt called me, asking what should she do to access the web. I already knew she was very limitted when it is about IT, so I stood patient.
... (hang-up)
Me: Aunt, is the computer on?
Aunt: Yes, it on. The power light is on
Me: Is the monitor on?
Aunt: Yes, I can see the screen
Me: Can you move the cursor and everything?
Aunt: Yes, sure.
Me: Is the Internet Explorer installed and working?
Aunt: Of couse! You are not talking to a beginner.
Me: OK then. Is the window open?
Aunt: Yes, it is. I can see all the people passing by the street. But what does it has to do with internet?
Me:
After explaining how to click "Start > Run" and asking what was in the box (to which they replied, "command"), I told a customer to go ahead an press "Enter". The customer explained to me that they didn't have an "Enter" button, but there was an "OK" button.
I almost fell over.
Ok I have been a programmer for over 20 years, normally there is a help desk in front of me to shield me from the truly stupid but sometime the helpdesk just sends them to me.
Like today this is an actual trouble ticket I recieved:
User is clicking on a bookmark in their browser and is receiving an error from the intranet the error is (PAGE NOT FOUND The Page you requested has either been moved or does not exist on the intranet. Please click here to return to the home page.) Can you restore the link so the user can access it?
However my all time favorite takes a little set up. It was a cold winter morning, about 7:30 am the entire leadership team and myself are sitting in the front conference room that overlooks the parking lot. I am not a morning person mind you as very few programmers are and was just sitting down with my first cup of coffee. We all see probably the second dumbest person I have ever known in my life drive in, late for the morning meeting as usual(remember this it is important).
This lady walks in and someone asks her how her training was, as this lady was sent off site for training in our companies ERP system. She is really enthusiastic and saying training was excellent they gave them admin rights and could see all the screens and they could see how different things worked together and so on. Me I am sitting there just sipping on coffee, minding my own business. Then she looks at me and says out loud in front of the whole leadership team. You know I think we should all have administrative access that would speed up our jobs as we can get more things done. Without skipping a beat I say, you want me to give you full administrative access to the application that runs our entire companies financials, quotes, ordering, scheduling, and maintenance systems? You can't even remember to turn the light off in your car and you think I am going to give you admin access? All eyes look to the parking lot to see the car she drove up in still with the headlights on. She never asked for admin access again.
Back in the old days I had to pay my dues running the tech support centre of a local computer store.
A guy came in with an ink-jet printer that was six months out of warranty, and purchased from one of our competitors.
He argued that it should be fixed by us for free. I said that unfortunately it was going to cost $x and we could not assist him with a free repair.
He paused for a couple of seconds, then he picked up the printer and threw it at me. I dodged and it hit the wall and more or less exploded. He then walked calmly out of the store and we never saw him again.
Sounds like an easy call. Just open a ticket: "Customer wants a ticket opened." Resolution: "I opened this ticket". Close the ticket.
Today, one of my fellow System Analysts put in a Helpless call because his computer would not boot. It got assigned to him to resolve.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Seriously. OP bitches about not immediately getting issued a new IP after his other one gets banned... for being a troll. Then trolls the helpdesk guy trying to *gasp* help him out.
Didn't actually experience this myself, but I heard about it from an old friend that I met at our school's helpdesk when we were catching up a few years later..
A woman calls with some problem she's having with Word.
"OK, here's what I'd like you to do. While you're in Word, right click and tell me what happens."
[Silence]
"Nothing happened."
"OK, that's weird. Try it again.
[Longer Silence]
"OK, I did it two more times and nothing happened. I really need to get this document done."
"OK, I'm not sure what's wrong, I'll come up and see what I can do."
He gets the information about what building she's in and such, and goes over to find her desk to see what's wrong. He finds the woman and sits down at the computer. One of the first things he notices when he sits down is a pad next to the keyboard. It reads:
Click
Click
Click
And let me tell you, after dealing with the same kind of people there, I didn't doubt it for a second. I think she was an older woman, probably an administrative assistant or something, just trying to get something typed out for her boss. I'm not even sure what my friend did when he realized what happened, but whatever he did, I don't blame him.
It seems pretty obvious this wasn't the job of tech support in the first place. Although I can imagine your frustration -- just whose job is it to accept weird requests like that?
Now, when I'm banned from Slashdot, I just get unbanned. If I wanted to change my IP, I'd swap network cards on my router.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Flash back to the days of the Celeron and slot mount CPU's.
I had built a celerom PC for the in-laws across the state and mailed it to them, monitor keyboard and all.
When it arrived they gave me a call saying it wasn't working.
I suspected that the CPU came loose and asked my father-in-law to open up the computer case and look around for a silver heat sink with 2 fans on it..
If it's loose plug it back into the big slot on the motherboard.. It'll only go in one way so don't force it.
He's good with tools so I didn't think I'd have much to worry about.. He said he'd call me back when he got it open.
I get the call about 10 minutes later.
FIL: I got the case open but I dont' see any heatsink with fans..
Me: Ok what do you see in there?
FIL: there's a heatsink with out a fan. lots of wires and a big tube..
Me: A tube?
FIL: yeah, a tube..
Me: Uhh thats the monitor.. Just umm put that back together. You need to open the other case.
FIL: ohh the hard drive?
Me: Uhh yeah.. The big square beige box..
10 minutes later it was working great.
I won't get into his trip to Wal-mart to buy a printer.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
My Favorite became a classic at the WMU help desk where I worked at the time. There was a particularly technically inept professor, who constantly called the help desk with very mundane support requests (like how do I find my cricket scores using gopher -or- where are the cricket usenet groups, how to I clean out my email account, etc). We spent a lot of time dealing with the guy, so we all dreaded getting him on the other end of the phone.
When the University started changing over desktops from DOS to Win95 there was a huge learning curve, and there was a constant flow of support requests coming from the faculty. We were absolutely dreading the day when the upgrades got around to this particular professor's department.
Anyway that day finally came and your truely was on the other end of the phone when he called. The call was about 2 hours just to establish the difference between the virtual "Start" button and a key on the keyboard. Ho did not get the concept of "button" on the screen, and didn't really understand that he needed to "press" them with a mouse... But anyway, we eventually got through the very basics. I was relieved to *finally* get the guy off the phone.
My co-workers were giving me a hard time, thanking their lucky stars that they did not get him...Then the phone rang again... I picked it up, since my stats were going to be low that day I wanted to get another couple of easy calls... Guess whose voice I heard...
His first words were "How do I get these BLOODY QUASARS off my screen!!!", Apparently during his long conversation with me, he did not touch anything for a while and the screen saver came on and freaked him out. He thought I screwed something up on his machine.
Fortunately he was as tired of talking to me as I was of him, and after a simple move of the mouse to turn off the screen saver he was back in business.
To this day, after 12 years of supporting users, I still have not come across another equally silly support call.
-MS2k
It terrifies me that there are people in the world so stupid that the idiots who answer technical support phone lines look down on them.
Worse, that they are allowed to vote, and often do.
I kept a list of the ones i found funny. This won't be funny to everyone, but some should get a laugh.
12-24-2004
We shipped a modem packaged inside a box from a video card. The customer returned it to us claiming that we sent him the wrong part without even opening up the box to check what was inside.
01-03-2005
A customer brought in a system he assembled, on a motherboard he bought from us. The motherboard was screwed directly to the chassis, without the metal spacers, causing a short every time the unit was turned on.
Customer came back again, he assembled another unit, which would not work, he had forgotten to peel the sticker completely from the bottom of the cooling fan.
01-08-2005
We shipped a 1U server to a customer. After they received the server the called us claiming that we forgot to put in the cd-rom drive into the unit, after some period of questions, we realized that the customer was looking at the server from the rear end.
02-02-2005
Customer bought a refurbished DVDRW unit for $64(cheap). The LED on the unit doesn't work. Otherwise the unit works perfectly. Customer is returning the unit for replacement.
02-22-2005
Received hard drive packaged in popcorn, unbuttered, unsalted.
04-07-2005
Customer calls, I can hardly hear him over the phone. After I let him know about the trouble, he says: "Yes I know, my phone is broken".
Not computer support, but whatever, it was funny.
This woman wanted to cancel her cellphone account after a few days from her activation because it was too expensive. She didn't even received the first bill then. I asked her why it was expensive... and she told me " the $/"?" batteries are like $50 each and I already bought 3 of them"; she was NOT charging the batteries, but dropping them in the trash when they were no longer charged.
One man called to tell me he's at his cabin, with his wet suit on and he would appreciate it if I could call his cell phone while he goes under water to retrieve it!
A LOT of women talking about their vibrator (= phone on vibrate)
During the first months that the mobile web browser was offered, one customer used it for more than $8000! I mean, this web thing is like 28kbps... so she would have used it 24/7 for weeks... and could have bought herself a great computer with a few years of high-speed internet instead.
Not funny: the incredible number of people who are in fact unable to read. Not just like they skip the user manual, no, they really CAN'T and when you ask them what phone they have they have to spell the name letter by letter; programming the phone can be long then.
Had a user on the phone for quite a while trying to get the cable modem working. Had her verify all the cables were plugged in, but Windows was not detecting her USB modem. Turned out she was plugging the USB cable into the Ethernet port on her computer. As soon as I hung up I had to try it...a little tight, but, sure enough, fit right in there.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
My favorite support call from years in tech support?
Middle of the night... get a page to call back a client on a critical issue. Call the company operator, and get connected to the client:
Me: So whats the problem sir?
Client: I'm trying to update your software, but the installer keeps failing
Me:Oh - what are you trying to do?
Client:Upgrade to version 6 - but it won't work - I keep getting an error
Me:Oh - OK. What error do you get?
Client:Software is already installed
Me:Huh - thats odd... we usually recognize old software and upgrade it automatically.
Client:Thats why I'm calling you!
Me:OK - so what version do you have installed right now?
Client:version 7.
Me:Uh sir?
Client:yes?
Me:Thats the latest version - our version #'s go up with new releases.
Client:Really? Uh... in that case, I guess we can close the call.
Its conversations like that which convinced me that even a bug free product with a great UI and documentation could still make a bundle of $$$ through tech support.
Sometimes you get an IP block just for having a contrary opinion to the majority of Slashdot viewers. I had the temerity to suggest that freedom of speech might not be a universally desirable thing, and was modded so far down - as "troll" no less - that nobody from my company could post for over a month.
The irony was overwhelming.
Me: CVS update just stopped working last nigt. I updated GCC OK the previous night ... ... ... ... ... ...
ISP: We don't support CVS.
Me: But it's just a protocol over TCP/IP - you support [browser], don't you ?
ISP: Yes, but we don't support CVS.
[long time on my part figuring out what worked - e-mails under 1K]
[flash of insight: set MTU to 256 - bingo, it worked]
Me: I found a work-around for CVS not working anymore. I told my computer to not send out
TCP/IP packets larger than 256 bytes. Please find out on your side what the problem is.
ISP: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot ?
[2 months later]
ISP: Dear Mr. Customer, we've solved the problem you reported to us d.d. YYYY/MM/DD.
Me: [resetting MTU]: OK, it seems to be solved, thanks.
Me: Sigh
These came from my brother-in-law: 1. Customer calls in saying that their computer is acting strangely. Files are going missing and there are frequent BSODs. He heads over to the house and notes as soon as he walks in that the entire tower case is completely covered in fridge magnets... 2. Woman calls up and says there is a problem with her keyboard. Whenever she tries to type loads and loads of characters show up. He heads over to her house and gets her to replicate the problem. She sits in front of the computer, leans forward (eyesight problems) and starts typing. However, when she leans forward, her massive breasts rest directly on the keyboard...
This reminds me... it's not really a support anecdote per se, but I was a college student and my friend asked my advice... so I guess it applies. Dave lived down the hall from me, and one afternoon he stopped by and asked "Do you think disks and a keyboard will dry out?"
That of course piqued my curiosity, so down the hall I went with him. I got into his room and found he had a few clotheslines strung across the room, each threaded with about 20 5-1/4 floppy disks, waving slowly in the breeze from his fan; his keyboard was sitting upside down in the sink, and a pile of damp floppy disk sleeves was on the floor.
Seems he had a huge (stadium beer sized) cup of water on top of his under-loft desk, and for whatever reason it flipped down, landing squarely upside down on his diskette storage box and then keyboard. (At least it was just water!)
Surprisingly, although it cost him a few hours of work, I believe he only lost the data on a few of the floppies, and his keyboard recovered quite nicely.
Of course, he never did live down the new nickname: Disco Dave. Heh.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
A friend of mine who worked at a warehouse got a complaint from a customer that didnt have gsm-coverage where she lived. My friend kindly explained that not all parts of Norway wasnt covered yet... Then she asked if it was possible for her to just call somewhere that was covered, and make a new call out from there....
Back in the late '70s I worked for Philips, servicing P2000 series Word Processors. My territory was Toronto, Canada. A lot of the units were installed in government offices in town.
Back then, typing pools were commonly used. One day (in June 1979), I got a service call for a machine in a govt office. The complaint? "Doubled letters when I type". Diagnostic on the main unit - ok, peripherals - ok. Replaced the keyboard anyway.
A couple of days later, the call repeats. This time, replace the logic unit. Again, two days, and the call repeats. Replace ALL the electronics, AND cabling. Three days, a repeat.
This time, I waited until the typing pool was out for lunch. I physically SWAPPED the word processor with another one in the office.
Two days, repeat call.
This time, I stayed and WATCHED. Indeed, doubled letters. This is using a long-though hall-effect keyboard!
Inspiration strikes! I observe that the operator is a BIG girl. Maybe 280 pounds, or more. BIG fingers. I told her "I think I can solve your problem".
Back at the shop, I disassembled a keyboard. Return springs for each key! I took each return spring and s t r e t c h e d it. Reassemble keyboard. It works, but it now takes a HEAVY POUND to actually activate each key. Installed at the customer.
Result? One very happy operator. No more doubled letters! Thank Crom for service contracts... if they hadn't had the contract, I would never have had the option to pursue the issue to final joy.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Thank god I got out of phone support, but it did get me some laughs from time to time...
User: Hi, I'm a new employee and I'm trying to log in, but I'm not able to type in the password that I need to use.
Me: OK, so you think there's something wrong with your keyboard?
User: No, I don't see the key for this symbol I need to type.
Me: Oh, what symbol do are you looking for?
User: Well, it looks like an upside down, lower-case 'i'.
Me: (Long pause, as I visualize what she is talking about) That symbol wouldn't happen to be an exclamation point would it?
User: Excla- Oh! Yeah that could be. Let me try it. Yup, that worked, thanks!
Similarly, a co-worker had reset a woman's password to a simple word followed by the number 4, and told her that it was all lower case. The phone was silent for 20 seconds before she asked him how to type a lower-case 4. Ah, those were good times.
This happened to a collegue who did field service on DEC PDP and VAX stuff..
;-)
One site had continuous problems with one of their VT100 serial terminals. It generated random characters during normal work, and it had been replaced six times already. The replaced terminal always checked out fine.
So my collegue decides to take an afternoon and observe the terminal in action... He quickly discovered the problem.. The secretary who uses the terminal is kinda 'big'... And she also has bad vision. So every once in a while, she leans over reeeal close to the screen to read it...
Just imagine the hard time my collegue had putting the root cause on his worksheet
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I work for a software company that has a customer with a "Network Admin". This "Network Admin" reports various problems with our system, anything from annoying occurrences to all-out failures. This is my favorite instance
When asked what her IP address was, she responded, "The thing where you do ipconfig, right? I have that memorized. My address is 127.0.0.1." I almost lost it, I was on the floor.
Working for a nationwide ISP (as 90% are now), I was helping a lady from Cave City Ark. ..."
... it involves Radioshack, 500 foot of coax and an irate salesman...
True story I don't care how it reads:
{TS}"... how can I help you?"
{Local User}"The footpedal on my computer won't work."
{TS}"I am sorry ma'am, did you say foot pedal?"
{Local User}"Yes, my footpedal."
{TS}"Ma'am did you have a special device made for you computer?"
{Local User}"No,no it is the one you sold me, nothing special."
{TS}[pause thinking, then despairing] "Ma'am that device for not meant for the floor, it is called a mouse and rests on your desktop
Don't ask what happened when we have to move the satelitte and server
Like many on here I have a domain name that is my last name, and a dedicated machine to serve it. (leased machine from a reputable data center)
I thought it would be nice to offer all my family members email addresses that read exactly like their names. For the most part this has worked well and my family members and relatives are quite happy to have the addresses and know how to use them.
However my father has on at least 3 THREE occasions called me to tell me my server is down, here's the conversation.
Dad: "Hi, your server is down!"
Me: "OK, I'll have a look, gimme a second" (My heart skips a beat and I logon and have a look at the dashboard). "Nope, it's running fine."
Dad: "No really it's down, I can't send email. In fact I haven't gotten email for over 10 days."
Me: "Just a sec, I'm going to send myself an email as you." (it takes me a few seconds, and of course nearly instantly it's in my inbox on my local machine) "OK, I just got that - looks good to me."
Dad: "Huh, I wonder why."
Me: "Me too. (I think about the first rule of support / QA - are the wires connected ) Are you connected to the internet?"
Dad: "No, of course not. Do you want me to dial in now?"
He called me at least 2 more times that I can remember with the same opening line, "Hi, your server is down".
Get your tagline off my lawn.
This story was told to me by a former boss, who had worked as a Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) tech.
A company was having sporadic crashes of a system that they couldn't figure out. They'd always happen in the middle of the night, and when they rebooted in the morning, everything would be fine.
Everything got replaced: power supplies, memory, backplanes, cables, CPUs... remember this was in the good ol' days when a PDP-11 CPU was about the size of a refrigerator, and a 25MB (yes MB) disc drive could be the size of a washing machine. It had gotten quite costly, and still the problems happened every once in a while.
So Digital decided to camp out on site until the problem recurred.
Days went by... nothing... until one night, the third-shift operator came back from his coffee break, and just like every night, he tossed his hat on top of the CPU. This time, though, he missed, and it hit the side of the CPU -- where it stuck! A few magnets in the hat made sure it would never hit the floor when he tossed it. If it landed on the top, the magnets wouldn't disturb anything, but on the side, it would execute the classic HCF.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I worked tech support for several years at Ohio State, which uses a lastname.number system for emails. So common last names, like Smith (or in this case, Miller) would have associated numbers in the thousands. So I got a call one morning from Miller.3. When only one digit was forthcoming, I said, "Wow," to which the user responded, "I am 98 years old today!" I congratulated him, fixed his problem ( 5 minutes, thank you), and sent him happily on his way. One of my favorite memories of tech support, for sure.
I used to be the QA department coordinator for a small software company that made 3D modeling/rendering software. Every once in a while I'd be asked to take some tech support calls. The same week the final candidate build of a program was going through the ringers, one of the tech support guys left early. I wasn't too happy about having to take the calls, considering how much I had to do. After a couple of fairly painless calls, a SCREAMINGLY ANGRY USER phoned in. After a tirade about how bad the software was, how everyone involved was incompetent, et cetera, he finally told me what was wrong:
Him: I've got this goddamn dialog that keeps coming up saying 'the current frame couldn't be written to disk because the disk is full!' What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Me: Well, off the top of my head, I'd say it means that the current frame couldn't be written to disk because the disk is full.
I didn't think it was possible, but the caller got louder and more angry. Admittedly, I was irritable and my response was snarky. The tech support manager took the call from there, so I never found out what he didn't understand. Maybe he was checking the disk space on a different drive, or maybe he didn't know the difference between B, KB and MB.
Another call (before that one; after that I wasn't asked to take many calls) had me step through a process that involved copying files to and from the Desktop. About a half-dozen steps into it, the guy paused to ask what the desktop was. I think that was a language barrier issue, but I would have thought he'd have stopped me at Step #1 when I first mentioned it.
OK. I'm the manager of a computer repair shop at a university near Boston. The computer-IQ of students has been on the rise lately but it's still pretty low. I'm a Dell and Apple-certified tech, but I'm capable of fixing most anything. The reason I got this job, however, is because of my customer-relations skills: I never condescend or judge, regardless of the ridiculousness of the situation. But when I get in conversations with other support people, this is the trump card I use for "stupid user stories":
It's the end of the year, and students are either gearing up to go home or panicking about finals. As you can imagine, this is a busy time for me. A diminutive Asian girl with a sunny disposition comes to my door (it's a half-door, so I can only see her head and shoulders) and the following exchange takes place:
User: "Is this the hardware repair shop?"
Me: "Yes, it is. What can I do for you?"
User: "My computer's broken. Can you fix it?" (typical specific user complaint)
Me: "Probably. What's wrong with it?" (Given enough money, I can probably fix anything)
User: (hauls out machine and puts it on the bench) "I'm not really sure."
At this point, a lesser tech would have broken into hysterics. The machine is a Dell D600 laptop that looks like it was dropped out of a 6th-story dorm window, then run over with a truck. It was physically folded in half. Not a single part of the machine was not broken completely beyond repair.
Me: "...."
User: "Can you fix it?"
Me: "Well, let's see if anything's still intact here." (extracts HD, holds it up, shakes it. It sounds like a maraca) "Your data's definitely gone, sorry about that." (Opens lid. Shattered hinges break off. Several keys fall out. Flips over, opens RAM door.) "Miraculously, the memory seems to be unharmed, but that alone won't help. Let's see whether you're still under warranty." (Checks warranty at Dell. It's under warranty, but not CompleteCare, so she's out of luck.) "Sorry, I think it's time for a new computer. What do you want me to do with this one?"
User: "Oh, I think I'll keep it. Maybe someone else can get it working."
Me: "...." (hands it back to user) "In the future, if you buy another Dell, I'd highly recommend adding the CompleteCare warranty."
User: "OK, thanks! Have a good summer!"
I really wish she'd let me keep it. It would have been a great illustration for something, I'm sure.
Client->Sun "We need a fiber to SCSI bridge for our tape juke"
Sun-> "We don't support that configuration" (What about that is unclear?)
Client->Sun "Well, we own it already, it's brand 'foo'"
Sun-> "Not only won't we support that configuration, that exact model won't even work at all, we've verified this in our lab."
Client hires another vendor, who not only doesn't sell or configure Sun hardware, they also don't sell anything remotely related to the SCSI bridge in question. This vendor unboxes and plugs in the connections for the bridge and bills the client $2500/day for a week in services.
Guess what? The SCSI bridge hasn't worked from day one. The vendor who installed it of course won't support it, Sun won't support it and the manufacturer told the client already that it won't work in their configuration.
Three years...I spent three years in that place. That broken bridge is still in place today.
I could fill an entire book with the quality decisions that were made there.
There's nothing really funny about this, this is typical IT these days. Millions of wasted dollars in hardware that wasn't needed, won't do what was required and managers that continue to purchase in this manner. Still this is more amusing than those lame and unlikely anecdotes from the basement nerds at the register.
A few weeks ago I forgot my password, for the first time in my career. Got the auto-reminder on Friday, changed the password, came in on Monday and couldn't remember it.
I absolutely could not face going to the sysadmin and telling him I'd forgotten my password. Picturing the "I keep hoping it will turn out that someone somewhere is not stupid but I'm always wrong" look that was certain to appear was enough to make me think about quitting rather than admit I'd done something that stupid.
I wound up spending a big chunk of the work day cracking the password from my (personal) laptop, because I would much rather answer "Why the hell are you putzing around with cracking at work?" ("Oh, just working out some security ideas") than "You actually forgot your password? Really?"
Story #1:
I had a rather elderly customer call up and give me his name. I asked him what the trouble was. He repeated his name. "And what's the problem sir." He pronounced his name again. "Okay sir, I have your account up. What can I do for you?" Then he proceeded to spell his full name. This continues down the same route for some time. I try to get some information out of him. "What version of Windows are you running, sir?" - "Microsoft". Oh, yes, there was much banging of my head on the desk and strangling of the air around me. After fifteen minutes of learning his name, I inform him to bring his computer in so we can examine it on our workbench.
The next morning I receive a call from the same gentlemen. "Sir, you were going to bring your computer into us today, were you not?" - "Oh, am I still supposed to do that?" Four hours later, about ten minutes before my shift is over, he comes into the office. He introduces himself. He then drops the lid of a cardboard box on the counter, which is carrying an MSN TV unit.
"Sir, you informed us you had a computer." - "This is a computer." - "No it isn't." I have to explain to him that there is very little we can do with a WebTV/MSN unit, other than set the phone number. He chews me out, possibly spelling his name a few more times, I'm not sure, and storms out. I laugh it off, clock out, grab dinner, and head to my friend's house. My friend is also my co-worker, and I warn him of what possibly awaits him the following day.
Sometime in the afternoon that next day my friend calls me, immediately calling me every name in the book. "He went out to Circuit City and bought a computer! Thanks alot, a**! Do you know how long..." And it pretty much went on like that for a few minutes.
Story #2:
At the same company, the techs (all 2.5 of us) had to call delinquent accouns every month. I call the number on my list, and speak with a nice, humble old lady. "Is mister so-and-so in?" - "What's this regarding?" - "This is Matt with your ISP, I'm calling regarding a balance due on his account." - "Oh, I'm afraid he's pased away." I offer my condolensces and end the call. I end the customer's account, but the software will not let me do that without entering one of several preset conditions. Hmmm.... dislikes service? Nope. Couldn't solve problem? Nope. Ah, expired, here we go.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
This is all back when I was working at a small consulting company.
I had recieved a call from one of our more troublesome customers that they were having problems with the color on a monitor they had purchased from us.
I spent a good 20-30 minutes on the phone trying to work out how they messed up the color on a brand new monitor. After going through all the possibilities of video card and monitor settings myself and the boss could think of, my boss decided to send me on site to work out the details for this unhappy customer.
Needless to say when I got there the monitor was on the floor. I asked why it was on the floor and they told me that they had a worker there who needed to lay on the floor in order to accomplish their work.
Thinking this was wierd I asked them when the problems usually ocurred.
They said it usually happened when they took the monitor from the top of the desk and unplugged it from the computer (while it was still on and running) and placed it on the floor and plugged it back in.
What was really surprising is that the monitor's cable had pins so bent that they were touching each other. I then spent 20 minutes carefully unbending the pins to get the monitor to plug into the computer correctly.
I informed them that moving the monitor in this was will not only hurt the monitor but could most likely fry their PC.
And of course they were never happy with the bill for 2 hours work.
I was working for a local ISP in the 90's and a woman called up to get connected to the Internet. She had just opened her new PC, and I attempted to guide her through attaching the phone cord to the PC.
Me: OK. Take the phone cord that came with your PC, and connect it to the phone jack on the back of your PC. (there were no standard ethernet cards then, so no confusion there).
Her: It won't fit. I can't get it to go in. It doesn't look like it will fit here.
Me: Hmm. Are you sure that is a standard phone cord?
Her: Yes..it looks like the one that I have on my phone.
Me: OK, see if you can find a different cord. Maybe you can take the one off a different phone than the one you're on just to make sure its a standard phone cord.
Her: OK...hang on.
10 minutes pass
Her: This one won't fit either. I can't get it to go in there.
20 minutes of waiting while she attempts and suggesting different things like "Make sure its lined up" etc.
Finally...
Her: AH HAH! I GOT IT. OK it's in there now. Now what?
Me: What was wrong?
Her: Oh...I was trying to put it in there sideways.
??? The shapes matching game is mastered in Kindergarten...or so I thought.
-JWR
-JWR
Lab users, you say?
The stories aren't that funny. They're more... unsettling. At our University's computer labs, back before everyone was wireless and anyone used such things, we got well more than our share of people who just plain had no sense of public vs. private spaces.
The lab had a policy that said it was for academic use only. Okay, sit and chat with your friends, we understand. Just don't make too big a deal of it, or don't conspicuously do so when people are waiting to write their semester's last big paper, you know? But they were far beyond that point.
I understand looking at images over the Web. Why a person would want to not only view said pictures amid the rows of co-eds around him, but also to print out those images on a black-and-white laser printer, I do not know. We got more than a few people doing just that. They'd leave the printouts stacking up on the shared printer, and then go over after they'd run off ten or twenty to collect them from amid the History essays.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my computer. I'm running windows ME..."
*click*
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I worked for a major 3rd party DSL provider a few years ago and I heard this one from a VP in the smoking area (in the parking garage next to peachtree...)
,install, we sent out the kit and he was running at good DSL speeds. No problems.
They have this strange situation with a DSL customer.
It was your basic off the web order
He calls in about 4 weeks later and reports his DSL has stopped working. We have him check the NID and he doesn't have any sync which means he's not even getting a signal from the Central Office. So we roll out a telco truck and they find that his cable was pulled from the DSLAM box and they just pop it back into his copper line.
A week later he calls in the same problem. We have him check his DSL at the NID again and no sync. We call the teclo company again and they send a truck out to the central office box and check the DSLAM, find it was disconnected again, and pop the cable back in again for the DSL.
Then it happens a again... They send out another truck... Fix it... A few days latter... It happens again... And they keep sending the trucks to fix it...
Finally after several weeks of this... The VP gets a call from the teclo... Who has the FBI on the phone asking us to stop fixing the DSL because its disconnecting their wiretap!
So the VP has a CS rep call the guy and politley explain that DSL isn't possible at his location and refunds his money.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
While performing maintenance on our VMS system, I discovered that a number of users where using the DECnet software to store personal files on the server. So I sent a politely worded email to the entire user base (100 or so users). I noted that the personal use of the server resources was not allowed and asked everyone to kindly remove their files from my server. At the end of the message I volunteered that anyone who was having problems with not having enough personal disc space should contact me personally for assistance. Unfortunately, I misspelled the word "disc", replacing it instead with the word "D!@k". The first call I recieved was from the general manager of the company...
Just ask the good Jedi how they feel about "Balance" now...
As I recall, NT4 was dependent on the c:\DOS directory. The manager of the CAD department complained that his computer was acting funny. After a little bit of snooping, I asked him if he'd deleted some files. It turns out he'd gotten rid of the "do's" directory, and was a little puzzled why he hadn't found the "don'ts" directory.
I worked support for PPI (a defunct modem company) One of our rules was that when external modems didn't work we would make up some garbage about the hot and neutral legs of the transformer being sensitive to which way you plug it in, so we would have them turn the transformer around. 95% of the times they would come back and say "Yep, that seems to have done it." That way was way better than the old way "Did you plug it in, moron?"
My first tech job was for an application that ran for multiple clients. Each had their own url at our domain name. To protect the guilty here, let's refer to the company as ScholarApp.com.
URLs included APS.ScholarApp.com, ACM.ScholarApp.com, and IEEE.ScholarApp.com.
We regularly got calls from users who had received the URL by mail or in the appropriate medical journal who just couldn't get the page up.
"What URL are you typing in?" I would ask.
"I'm typing www.aps.scholarapp.com."
We'd never thought of adding extra DNS entries for the URLs with www prepended! So I'd ask them, "Please try it again without the double-u, double-u, double-u."
"No double-u, double-u, double-u?" ALWAYS. They ALWAYS asked this. "Yes," I would think, "there is such a thing as a web page with no www on it."
"No," I had to clarify again and again, "no double-u, double-u, double-u."
Sometimes this would be repeated 3 or 4 times a call. It didn't take long for "www" to start sounding like complete alien gibberish in my ears.
My first job out of college involved supporting some users of an insurance application.
One of the first calls involved a user who just couldn't get his application to run correctly. After hours of step-by-step hand holding, looking at logs and saying "are you sure that is what you are typing?", I finally said "what does the semi-colon look like?" to which he said "it looks like to periods stacked on top of each other."
Doh!
I can't believe that no one has mentioned clientcopia.com yet ...
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
Me: Now, let's see the whole process -- input, processing and screen output. Please press the "A" key...a aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
User: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Me: LOL
I remember seeing a copy of DOS for dummies many years ago warning users not to put it in the wrong hole. I thought for sure it was a joke until I found 3 or 4 of them in a machine I was working on. Apparantly it is quite the problem.
I was providing phone support for a Win95 user in a remote office. Double clicking the desktop shortcut did not launch the desired application, so I asked the user to Right-Click on the icon (to get to the properties window) so that I could see where the shortcut was pointing. The user stated that the context menu did not come up. I asked, "Did you right click on the icon?" to which she answere yes. Repeating my instructions did not help. Since I was headed out to that office later the same day, told her I would check it out when I arrived. When I got to her desktop, I descovered that the name of the shortcut icon had been changed from it's original name to 'click'. The user had followed my instructions to write 'click' on the icon.
Call I fielded while working at UMass Dartmouth's Library computer help desk in 1987.
Me: Hello, Academic Computer services.
Caller: Um, hello, my computer doesn't work.
Me: Uhh, ok, can you tell me what kind of computer you have? Is it a Mac or a PC?
Caller: Um, I don't know, it's blue.
Me: Well, until I know what kind of computer you have, I really can't help you. Once you find out, you can call back and we'll be glad to help you.
"I don't know. It's blue."
Perfect. I have the manual for all blue computers right here.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I work for a large webhost and one of my co-workers got a call from a customer hosting a porn site on his server and the MySQL server had died. Apparently this customer named all his php variables and sql tables with porn names too. After a few minutes on the phone, the entire room stopped when my co-worker said quite loudly into the phone "Sir, the problem is that you're trying to insert DICK into ASS and it won't work because ASS is corrupted.
"please type the word in this image: quality"
damn straight
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
If you guys are going to tell it, don't pretend it happened to you. No one believes YOU were the one who got that call. They never believed it, and they just shake their head that you have to steal the famous story.
I've had a couple hilarious help desk calls when I worked at Harvard, however that's also part of the reason I left helpdesk jobs, because you realize how little an impact you really are making after a while.
Then again the best feeling in the world is that one call which you troubleshoot with a person for 3-4 hours, you've asked for help from everyone, you call them back, they call you back til you start to hate the problembut then you suddenly get that moment of inspiration and you fix the problem and you can't believe that it was so obvious but that moment when you hang up you feel "today was a good day".
When I was slagging at Convergys on the M$ Win2KPro account I had my most memorable call. I was assigned an open callback. OK no problem. When I finally make contact with this guy, I can barely understand him through his thick, thick, almost too thick seemed like a put on Albanian accent, At least that's where he said he was from. He's getting a stop 7B error inaccessable boot device. We can't get the OS installed. And the entire time I'm continuously using the mute button cause he's saying some of the funniest stuff I've heard from a customer. So of course we need to go into the case (ugh, I hate opening cases with customers over the phone!) and I ask him if he has a screwdriver. He says yes and to hold on, I wait, wait, wait, wait, for a good 7 minutes. He comes back, "I hayve, a uh, how you say, eeelectric, screwdriver." I'm thinking great, so I ask him to go ahead and remove the screws from the back of the case. I hear him put the phone down, and for the next two minutes I hear the sound of a high powered electric drill. WAhhhh WAhhhh Wahhhh Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. This gentlemen gets back on the phone, and says "Ze uh, Su-crewz are, how do you say, Not Responding." Now I'm dying of laughter, with the mute button pressed, tears rolling down my face. He follows this up with, "I think I vill just take this to CompUSA." I was so relieved. Anyway, because I'd been laughing so hard one of the Tech Leads had been listening the after the first ten minutes and recorded the call from that point on. He said it was the funniest call he's ever heard. And me being the worst tech ever story goes like this: Back in 98 I was doing support for Quantex/Cybermax/Pionex and I was on the graveyard shift. Well one night I was really tired and I had taken my phone under the desk to lay down and when it would ring, I would answer and take the call. I woke up to a customer yelling, "Are you OK?!" ...
Me: Uh yeah, I'm fine
Customer: You were snoring...
Me: Sorry about that, can I get your Serial number?
Customer: You already asked for that.
Me: OK. So what's on your screen?
Customer: Standard CMOS Setup, Advanced CMOS Setup,
Me: OK hit F10, Y, and Enter
Customer: Save and exit?
Me: Yeah.
Customer: But we didn't change anything.
Me: Oh sorry, lets just tap F8 as we're booting up.
Customer: HEY!
Me: What? Customer: You were snoring again.
Me: Damn, Sorry, Ok what were we doing?
Customer: Should I just call back and talk to somebody else?
Me: Would you mind?
Customer: No man, no problem, you get some rest. Bye.
Living in a rural area,
;)
Speaking of rural... (Bellsouth country) We had an interesting DSL tech story.
One of customers bought our DSL package, but for some strange reason it would stop working as soon it got dark out. We troubleshooted to see if anything happened at that time such as him turning on 900mhz phones, tvs, halogen lamps, lived near AM radio station etc, but none appeared to be the case.
So one day my supervisor was helping him out since the guy wanted to keep the service because it worked fine during the day and had blazing speeds. So my supervisor is sitting there and asks him to kind of watch what is going on around sundown and not just in the house... The guy looks out his window and sees one of those street lamps turning on near his road and says he noticed lights going on and it turns out his phone line ran directly under that line.
My sup advised him to call the powercompany if they could do something about it
The guy sad... "Hold on...." And about 5 minutes of silence my supervisor hears a loud bang and the guy comes back and says his DSL is working fine now.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I did tech. support for an ISP back in '97-98... once we had a lady call in who couldn't connect. She was pretty sure what was wrong... before I could start troubleshooting, she wanted to know if the internet was closed for Memorial Day...
I was asked one day to help a friend find out what was wrong with her DVD-edition of a game she just bought.
We attempted going through a variety of troubleshoots and I figured the drive was dying, since we reinstalled drivers and it still was unable to read the disk.
At the last minute before I was about to say "Screw it", she happens to mention that she doesn't have a DVD-ROM drive... only a CD-ROM drive - it almost made me want to slam my head into the desk.
She then had the mind to ask me how she could upgrade her CD-ROM drive into a DVD-ROM drive... making me weep to myself. I assisted her in finding a new DVD-ROM drive and told her to have a nearby friend install it.
I thought Darwinism was supposed to fix most of these problems.
I was first officer on a shakedown cruise of a vessel in a certain large exploration fleet. We encountered a wormhole with a big asteroid in it when our engines went into antimatter imbalance. The Captain was a real know-it-all, and wanted to blow up the asteroid using phasers. I had to belay his order and insist on using photon torpedoes instead (the idiot didn't even realize that the phasers were routed through the main engines, and were therefore put offline when the engines went into imbalance.) This was a guy with, like, 15 years senority on me. Not only that, he had to haul me into his quarters and dress me down about it. Petulant jerk.
i've had a bunch of fun ones. a recent one that stands out involves the laptop we just got my parents. my mom can handle herself for e-mail and internet and basic publisher stuff for her work newsletter, but that's about it. so i constantly get called in to help any time there's something she doesn't know how to do. show her where the clip art is, explain what a pdf is, tell her the shortcuts for copying and pasting, basic stuff really. then i get a call that the mouse is acting up; not going the right way, not clicking when she hits the buttn, it's just all wrong. it's one of the little wireless laptop mice with the usb dongle so i tell her to disconnect it and plug it in again, if that doesn't work just restart. i'm on the phone for another five minutes just chatting while she does this then she's just about to start bitching again when i hear a little gasp, then an "oh, nevermind." i have no idea what she means so i ask what happened and she tells me she had the mouse backwards. and strugled through getting it restarted the whole time, obviously letting go of it at some point and then picking it up the wrong way again. all of a sudden she realized that the scroll wheel and buttons were on the wrong side. that thought had honestly not even crossed my mind.
No, a classic prank is mapping the HD icon on a Mac to the Shutdown menu option :)
I've been doing customer support for 'nigh on 22 years now. The best story I can recall involves a co-worker, so unfortunately I never did get both sides of the conversation.
We were doing telephone support for a database product, and the coworker fielded this particular call. Most support calls averaged about 15 minutes, but this one just went on and on and on. 45 minutes later, I could see the coworker getting a little flustered, and was repeating 'patience, patience' into the phone. After she rang off, I asked what the problem had been, and was told that the customer had basically painted themselves into a corner with ill-advised programming practices, and didn't want to listen to the proper way to accomplish the task.
After a while the customer began to get huffy, and started demanding the coworker's name so 'he could report her to management'. Every time she gave her name, he'd just get angrier and angrier.
As you may have guessed by now, my coworker had an old-fashioned 'virtue' name - her name is 'Patience'. When she was giving her name, the customer thought she was trying to calm him down, and went off again...
It's not what you Warg, it's how you Snarf
Though I ran the company, I'd take tech support calls for a few hours once a week to get an idea of what problems customers were having with our products.
We had a client who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimers. He'd call, ask for help, we'd get him going and the next day, he'd call again with the same problem. This went on for several days until we ended up writing a set of instructions that were exactly tailored for him and mailed them via snail mail to his wife so she could take over.
That took care of the problem (at least from our end) until they lost the instructions. It took me a while to catch on that his wife was probably using us to keep her husband harmlessly busy. So, for about 6 months, we'd get a call from the guy, tell him we'd mail him another set of instructions, mail him another packet and then not hear from him for a week or two. Since the illness killed my grandfather and aunt I figured it was the least we could do for his wife.
We had another customer who was an absolute pita. He was unique in that he was the only customer whom I explicitly told the tech support staff to hang up on. The guy was out and out abusive. From the moment you picked up the call, he was yelling. I offered to refund his money and he refused - for whatever reason he seemed to derive pleasure from being a complete jerk. You've heard of firing a customer - he was definitely one who deserved it.
So what your saying is - I'm an asshole and when I am punished I am even more of an asshole?
you could have just used an onion router...
Me: Hello, this is Scott, can I have your membership ID # please?
Customer: *beep boop bop boop* (touchtone sounds)
Me: Hello, this is Scott, can you tell me your ID #?
Customer: *beep boop bop boop*
Me: Hello? I'm not a machine, I'm a person. You can read your ID# out to me.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Okay - older situation - but still my funniest personal experience.
Got a call from a client who bought one of our computers - she was trying to install a new program that she hadn't bought from us, but could I please help.
As evidence of how long ago it was - this was acceptable to my boss - so I tried to help.
I asked her to relate what was wrong.
The instructions had told her to insert the first disk and type a command at the prompt.
She said she did and it worked fine.
The screen prompted her to insert the second disk and press the enter key.
She said she did, it ran but said there was a read error - skip, retry, or cancel.
She said she pressed retry and it worked. It prompted her several more times like that with her pressing retry each time until it worked.
I mentioned that the install might not be successful with a disk having that many errors - and I asked her how I could help.
She said, "well my problem is that it is asking for disk three - but there isn't any more room!"
Hope you get as much enjoyment from this event as I did [Grin].
Lee
After spending 30 minutes on the phone with a lady that says PageMaker is hung and she can't get it to work, she casually mentions, "Could it be I spilled a glass of water on the keyboard?".
1:
Complaint- User says screen is flashing and couldn't do anything
Solution- Keyboard on tray under desk had F5 key depressed
Complaint2- Same user, next day, same problem
Solution- Keyboard on try under desk pressing F5 again, instructed user (who did not remember the previous day) to be careful of the keyboard tray
2:
Complaint- Every time I try to open something it flashes real quick and closes
Solution - remove glow-stick jammed into the gap around the escape key holding it down
3:
Complaint- I put cd in the drive and it wouldn't play my music and now my cd is gone!!
Solution- note: this is not really stupid user, more stupid design - On the Dell small formfactor optiplex, they use a 'snap' type cd tray like laptops, if you happen to push down on the CD as you are pushing the tray in, the other end tips up and goes ABOVE the cd tray. when you open the CD tray again the cd is gone.
that has happened to 4 of my users now, its funny how freaked out they are because they KNOW they put a cd in! haha
Customer rang in, complaining that her mouse pointer kept disappearing.
;)
After discounting the usual problems, I was temporarily at a loss for what to try next... Until the customer said: "My arm hurts!" "Why?" I asked thinking perhaps it was because she was holding the telephone or something. Hah, I wish!
Turns out the reason her arm hurt was because she was holding the mouse against the screen of her Performa 5200. After I explained that you were supposed to put the mouse on the desk to use it both problems neatly resolved themselves - and all within the 9 minutes I was allocated
I worked at a university some time back, in desktop support.
At the time we had "work orders" that had to be filled out with the problem, solution, etc.
One day I got a call about a dead monitor. I phoned her up and asked the basic, "Is it plugged in? The LED on?"
Yes and yes. Hrmmm. Maybe you hit the dials turning the contrast/brightness down? Nope, turning them doesn't work.
Are you sure? Turn them both ways, to the middle and so on. Doesn't work.
So I go on down to take a look. I get there and she goes off to do something. I turn the dials, and boom! It
all comes back! So I sit a few minutes and she comes back.
I pretend to be doing stuff, and she says, "Oh! You got it to work! What did you do?" "Nothing," I reply innocently.
"You must have done something? How does it work?" Well, this goes on for a few minutes, then I let her off the hook.
I pull out the work order and she sees that I have to fill in the "Solution:" section. She now pleads that I don't
do this, as it's so stupid, and she doesn't want to be embarrassed.
This is what I learned. Blackmail can get you fed. I asked for homemade cookies in return for no "Solution:"
Next morning, I come into work, and there's a box of cookies. She must have made them the previous night.
From that point on, if someone did something stupid that made me cross the campus (especially in a -35C winter),
I pulled out the work order, and made mention that I liked cookies, cakes, anything else that you can bake.
I got fed lots.
Vip
Years ago while in college and working with the phone and data networks, one of the PC technicians escorted a terrified sophomore into the PBX room. He explained that he had downloaded a software firewall program (this was in the Win98 days), and it was showing him a bunch of packets that many other computers were sending to his computer, "A-R-P packets". This was on the grossly overloaded 10Base-T hub-based dorm network, and he had worked himself into a tizzy fit about how everybody was trying to attack him. I calmly explained ARP to him, but finally gave up when he kept asking me what he could do to stop it. I know I pondered telling him to unplug the cable.
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
Working in the south, we get some gems for customers. The tech bench I ran for a couple of years consisted of 4 guys above 6 feet tall and one 5' 2" woman. The woman was our best tech, but we had many customers not take her seriously. Some guys where hassling her, vulgarly. She calls for the guys out the back room, and we step out, the tallest having to duck under the door. Best deer in the headlights look ever. She then clearly asks, "Ok, one last time, what did you say to me?"
Funny side part to the story is that we went to the same Martial Arts school and our female tech could wipe the floor with the rest of the tech bench.
In God we trust, all others require data.
This is one from my days in the comp lab at college. Guy comes into the office complaining that his mouse only goes up. So I go out to the machine to see what the problem is. Mouse seems to be working for me, so I ask him to show me the problem. Turns out that he's trying to "drive" the mouse - move up, rotate mouse 90 degrees, move left - so forth and so on.
SYS 64738
One of my users called and told me that he needed a replacement for his coffee/cup holder. I ask him why he needed technical support for that. He later replied his PC came with a retractable coffee holder. When I went to the user's desk, I found out that the "retractable coffee/cup holder" was the DVD drive...
I used to do IT support for a business of less than 200 users. One of our beautiful-but-dimwitted salesgirls asked if I could hook her PDA up for her. When I got down there, I discovered she didn't have the cable for it, and seemed rather perplexed by the idea that she would need one. (This was before bluetooth or anything of the sort) I told her to try and find it and let me know.
A couple of weeks later, a get an excited phone call saying that she'd found it, so I make my way down there. Upon arriving, I see that she has a cell phone car charger in her hand, and she's trying to shove the big end, the one you stick in your car's cigarette lighter, into the side of the PDA. I somehow keep my composure and gently suggest that perhaps it's not the correct cable for the application. "Oh", she says, "then I guess it's this other one". She picks up a telephone cord and offers it to me. Oh dear.
While I was working at the helpdesk of the local fire station, we got a call that some fireman's document wouldn't print. Well, that was pretty much routine, since printer queues would get stuck from time to time and you had to restart the spooler service to get them going again.
Except that no member of the fire crew had bothered to inform us before that the printer wouldn't go. When we looked at the queue, we saw that the earliest document in it was dated one and a half months ago. So for 1.5 months everyone who wanted to print something had gone "Nah, someone else probably has called tech support."
I was called into a First Trust Alarm office that had tried to set their own network up (part wireless part wired). None of them could figure out how to fix it. It turns out that their network cards were all disabled.
I had a customer on the phone while working for Circuit City that was asking questions about the Athlon 64 chip featured in one of our ad computers. One of the features listed was Enhanced Virus Protection and it was all that I could do to stop from laughing out loud when he asked me what "Enchanted Virus Protection" was. I almost told him that a legion of gnomes and fairies emerged lived inside the computer to protect him from the evil virii.
I think it must be a golden rule - everyone has to work on a helpdesk at least once, right?
:)
:)
All time favourite is the guy who thought he had a slot loading dvd drive (needless to say he didn't), poor guy was wedging the discs through a tiny gap in the case. Fair enough he knew he'd been a bit silly, he was really apologetic on the phone and was only calling because "I really do need my disc back now I'm afraid..."
Then there was the woman who called up outraged because she'd been on holiday and returned to find that someone had stolen her mouse... local support went out to have a look and found it had fallen off the side of the desk... it was still plugged in too!
And then there are the people who equate restarting the pc with switching the monitor off and on.... love 'em
I think half the problem is that people have an ingrained culture of fear when it comes to computer equipment that is not their own. Some blindingly obvious things like checking the keyboard is plugged in properly they won't even attempt beacause they've either been told not to are are too scared of making it worse. And then at the other end are the people who willfully dive right in and invariably make it worse
Of course, it did have problems with the database corrupting, on occasion, as using Access in a multi-user application is not something you should do. What can I say, I inherited a nightmare (by the time I left, we had migrated it to Access 2003, which behaved better, and I had also went a long way towards getting it communicating and working well with PostgreSQL). At any rate, under Access 97, one of the more heavily accessed tables would - every once in a while - get a corrupted row. This wasn't much of an issue, unless you tried to access such a row, say by doing a search or other table scan function. At that point, the application would crash. I added layers of error checking, which worked OK - at least the app wouldn't crash. Still, it annoyed the users, they would complain via an email to me, and I would have to go in, locate, and remove the offending row in Access.
After doing this a few times, I got tired of it, and realizing that I had a process which worked every time to correct the issue, I proceeded to come up with a solution to automate the task. What I did was create a simple bit of code which would perform the "correction", and randomly pick a user when the started the application to call the routine. When the routine ran, I would write to a config table that it was being performed, so that way other users wouldn't be running the same fix at the same time (to avoid any possible collision issue - though it probably wouldn't have mattered). The users wouldn't even know this was happenning, outside of their session running a little slower, as I did it in such a way (ie, calling DoEvents) so that they could continue using the application as normal.
So, one day after this was put into place, I come in to work and see an email (sent about an hour before I got in) "The database is corrupted again...", immediately followed by another email from the same user (about 5 minutes later - realize, I am still not at work) "Thank you! You fixed it! It is working great now!". The user had no clue that I was never even in the office (most likely, I was in the shower at home, or sleeping, or something). I had successfully automated myself!
I showed the emails to my supervisor, and explained what I had done - he was cool with it, liked that I had taken the initiative to put such a thing in place. We immediately began to think how to correct the issue for good, as well as how to educate the users that the system would automagically fix the problems in the meantime. This led to a redesign of the database communication layer (one of the big things was dropping as much use of VB/Access DB update commands, and using SQL heavily, while switching to Access 2003, both of which dovetailed neatly into using PostgreSQL, ultimately)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Working for a small ISP back in '96 or '97... User calls in, has the typical "I can't connect" problem. Go through the paces with him to make sure the software's installed (Windows 3.1 I think), etc. etc. Nothing working. Finally ask the guy, "Is your modem plugged into the phone jack?"
User: "Modem? What the hell is a modem? I don't need one of those. The Internet is supposed to be on these two floppy disks you mailed me."
Good times.
So what your saying is - I'm an asshole and when I am punished I am even more of an asshole?
Yes. Didn' tyou read it properly? "I was (still am, actually) a teenager..."
New gov't manager, sends email to other Gov't mgr with embedded links. Recipient second manager asks first manager, isn't this a security problem?
They call me, I say, "Send me a copy of the email so I can take a look."
Couple of days later, I get a special, hi-security, for your eyes only envelope.
You got it, they printed out the email, and bound it up in a special envelope so it couldn't leak information in the interoffice mail system, and mailed it to me.
And no one ever asked me what the solution was for the security hole.
No one, not ever.
From my help desk tickets:
1. "Yesterday my mouse wheel made the contents of my email window scroll by. Today it doesn't."
Answer: User had less than on window's worth of email, hence nowhere to scroll. It took a surprisingly long time to get the user to comprehend this.
2. "User's correct password doesn't work. In order to get in, he has to use an incorrect password."
Answer: hmmm...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was helping a pensioners' group get started with computers. One guy asked how he could install some program that came on a CD. Just stick it in the disc drive and Windows autoplay will start the installation. Follow the instructions and it will sort itself out.
Over the next few weeks the answers became more and more complicated as each suggestion totally failed. Finally I asked which way up he had inserted the disc.
The valuable lesson I learned was to assume nothing when dealing with novices.
We had this customer who was irate that his new computer was acting up and it was new I built it myself. No reason for it to be acting so strange. He brought it in we checked it out seemed fine.
He comes back complaining again. We replace the entire PC. He leaves happy for 2 days. Then he comes back demanding a refund.
We tell him if there is something wrong with the PC we will make it right. Leave it with us and we'll throw everything we got at it. He does. His wife comes in an hr later. "Can I see my husbands computer for a minute, I just need to check one thing.?" Sure come on back. She presses Shift Ctrl ScrollLock or something similar & up pops this EVIL unnoticable Screengrabber. She quickly scans through the last 3 days worth of pics. Instant message from her teen daughter, Web surfing of her hubby 3 pics a second. Gobbling up space & cycles. If she doesn't check it daily & dump it fills the harddrive with 1280x1024x32 Pics. I explain to her it is unnecessary to grab so many, 1 every couple of minutes is more than sufficient. She asks me to promise I won't tell her husband. I promise she tips me 50 bucks and promises to bring me a bottle of wine (her Idea).
Later that same day.
The owner (who has dealt with the husband only on more than one occassion since the sale.) checks in with me to see if I found the problem. I calmly explain the situation, and the promise. He asked me "Did she make you promise not to tell me?"
Obviously I can not and did not make that promise.
"Well then, I never promised her shit. But I did promise her husband I would find out what was up & fix it." Cue him Dialing.
Later that same day, Hubby comes in pays us for all our service (3 hrs on site. 3 trips to the shop) and tips me 50 bucks.
Still Later
She comes in like a rocket right passed the counter into the bench area Slams down a shiny bottle of wine & says thanks a fuckin lot.
My boss says thank you come again.
The husband still shops there service & purchase.
Moral of the story: If you are gonna spy on your kids do it with your loved one.
Opened the wine on my wedding day. Wife loved it.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Woman calls in and say the computer is not working. I ask the normal questions. She says the screen is blank. So I ask if the computer make any disk access noises, beeps or anyhting at all when the power is turned on. She says "yes". Sound is normal but the machine is no-responvive. ... We go out and look to find the power switch on the CRT monitor is "off". I did ask about power in a non-insulting way. I asked "can you here the fan running?". After that I learned to ask if there is any heat comming out the top of the CRT
posting anonymously since the guy still works here...
I was talking to our "IT Manager" the other day, and we were discussing adding memory to someone's machine to help with their photoshop problems. I told him to get a quote on a price for more memory, and he told me that we had to be careful that when we added the additional memory that we didn't "use too much power" with the new memory sticks. I think my jaw dropped at that point, while various responses rolled through my head...
It took all of us around the office a while to piece together the full story, but it turned out, it went something like this... The customer called up one day copmlaining their computer had stoped working. In fact, they noted a sizzling sound had eminated from it at the moment of failure and the smell of something burnt was in the air. The phone tech did just what they should have done and told the customer to box the unit up and send it in for repairs. I worked a few cubicles down from the room where the techs opened these boxes. It was a fairly booring day until I heard the bloodcurdling scream. Half the office jumps up and runs over to see what's the matter, and I'll never forget the sight. Coachroaches. The tech, once he'd removed the side of the unit, had exposed them to the light and they were trying to find a new place to hide. There must have been a hundred in there. Craziest thing I ever saw.
Not exactly a help call, but still entertaining.
I was given an old all-in-one PowerMac by some neighbors, who'd bought a new iMac. See, they wanted to play the newest games, and I wanted to play some really old ones. The only problem was, they'd been having some problems with the monitor, and they'd never actually gotten the ethernet card to work. "OK," I think to myself, "how bad can this really be? I'll pop it open, and see what it looks like inside."
Turns out it worked fine, once I cleaned the spaghetti sauce off the mainboard and the ethernet card. On the other hand, the color was never quite right, since I didn't feel like opening the display and cleaning dried tomato bits out of the tube....
Gee, I can't imagine why you were banned. Next time you want a new IP just change your MAC and reboot, unless that's to stupid for you.
And I think you're the moron for not knowing about the thousands of anonymous proxies you could have used; or more recently about Tor; or about how most residential ISPs will automatically assign you a new dynamic IP if you flip your cable/dsl modem off for the couple hours it takes for your dhcp lease to expire and someone else gets it.
...but that's probably expecting too much from a troll, I know.
Power to the Peaceful
That is a special kind of evil...
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
I worked for an ISP in '95, and answered calls that would make your teeth set on edge. From the guy who couldn't download his email at work (because it was full of porn, something that made me change my policy of testing a customer's email via opening their account in netscape) to the guy who wanted me to read him the contents of artbell.com because he didn't have a computer, they were all... memorable. This is the story of the straw that broke the camel's back.
It was 7:30 PM, and already dark out. I had a half-hour before I left work for the night, and was hoping for it to be quiet for the last few minutes of my shift. This guy called in, let's call him Joe.
Me: Internet of [yourcity], this is [myname], how can I help you?
Joe: I can't get my webpage to upload. Your server's broken.
Me: Ok, what program are you using to upload your web page?
Joe: [ftp program]
Me: Ok, read me the site you're trying to upload to.
Joe: ftp.[yourcity].net
Me: And your username?
Joe: joeblow
Me: And you're sure you have the right password?
Joe: I know my own password!
We go on like this, around and around. Everything looks good on his end, everything works on our end. I reset his password to test it out. I have him email me the web page he built. I upload it using his username and password. I try to have him put the ip into his ftp client instead of the domain name. It works. But he won't leave it that way "because we might change it any day now". So he puts the domain name back in, it stops working.
He gets insanely upset, I offer to send a tech out (I'd send my coworker instead, in the daylight hours), he refuses. He cusses me out. I tell him I'm not going to stand for his abuse, and he needs to calm down. He says I'm only fit for a job where I wear a hair net and ask "do you want fries with that?".
I hang up on him.
He calls back, I let it ring.
He calls back again, 15 minutes later. "I figured it out, I had [yourcity] spelled wrong. Would you check that you can get to my web page?" Ok. I hang up, and click over to "his" site.
"I am a Christian man looking for other like minded..."
[string of expletives]
[forward the phones]
This is, of course, the incident which almost got me fired, but I didn't know until 3 months later when I *demanded* a review. The owner said I needed to work on my "customer service" skills. I told him I'm a human being who deserves at least a modicum of respect, and I don't tolerate being belittled. Especially after I gave fair warning that I wasn't going to take this guy's crap.
I gave my notice the day after the review, after sleeping on it.
It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable. It's a lot wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
I did an information dump explaining the various diagnostic steps that I had taken and related a previous, very similar, problem with an identical machine that was fixed with a motherboard swap. I was told that basically, if the machine worked with the NIC unplugged, then it was fine and doing anything beyond that, like using it, wasn't covered under the warranty.
- Agent: "Based on the information you have provided, this type of issue is not covered by Dell's Harware Warranty Support groups."
- Agent: "Dell has a fee-based telephone support service call Dell On Call. They are specially trained technicians that can help with issues that are not covered by Dell's standard Hardware Warranty."
- Agent: "If you're interested, I can provide you the Dell On Call toll-free number. It will connect you to a sales representative that can discuss pricing options and specific services that can assist you. They will then transfer you to the specific technician gro"
- Me: "Why is it not covered by the warranty?"
- Me: "It is a hardware part (the motherboard) which will not perform as designed (operate at Gbit speeds)."
- Agent: "no, your warranty does not cover advanced configurations such as the 100 Mbit hub to a Dell Gbit being that it was not with the original system purchase..."
- Me: "Pardon? So you are saying that unless I purchase my Dell Gbit switch at the same time as my computer you do not warrent the internal NIC to work?"
- Me: "Plugging a Gbit NIC into a Gbit switch is hardly an "advanced configuration". It is the normal configuration."
- Agent: "The warranty is for original system setup from the factory. you can add hard ware to that warranted list through the customer care department prior to the purchase of new hardware...."
- Me: "I have not added any hardware to the system. I am connecting it through a Cat-5e cable to a Gbit Switch."
- Agent: "As i said this is an advanced configuration problem.. does the system function properly when not connected?"
- Me: "Yes. But it is hardly useful without connecting it to a network."
- Agent: "ok then the system is fine this is a configuration issue or hardware conflict with your Gbit Switch... Your warranty will not cover this problem."
I called back and got another tech to send out a replacement motherboard, which fixed the problem.When I was working at a computer store, a man came in complaining that his keyboard was broke. He set the box on the counter, I opened it, took the keyboard out, and water poured out. He explained that his secretary accidentally spilled a cup of water in it. Yah, right.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
My favorite call I took as a support tech went something like this.
... Excuse me?
Me: ADC Support Center, how can I help you.
Caller: Um... we have feathers falling from the ceiling.
Me:
Caller: Bloody feathers.
Me: There are feathers?
Caller: Ew, and now blood dripped on my desk.
Me: Where are they coming from?
Caller: I think it's coming from the vent.
Me: Ah, well, there's not much I can do for you, but I'll let building maintenance know.
Turns out a pigeon got caught in the air vent fan of the building, and spewed blood and feathers throughout the building.
-AlPhAbEt
Slashdot has never banned for something as harmless as "bad language."
:)
In fact the only time I have ever been banned for using the colorful english language has been on game servers - most recently with BattleField2. Many of them attempt to "protect the chilllldrwen" by use of automated censor filters. A few of them even kickban for the common work-arounds such as "SH1T, FVCK, FCUK, FUK, and 'FU CK'". None have added FRACKING or FRELLING, yet.
Power to the Peaceful
I not joking, this happened. Some years ago, a friend of my mother bought a computer to her. She wanted to use for control finances, to make some researches and something more. I installed her computer and showed some basic operations. In a complicated morning she called me angry because her glass place didnt work anymore. I thought a lot and couldnt imagine what was that glass place. Well she said... I push the button, but that plastic piece cant move. What? Then I realized what about her was talking. The hole in the cd-rom drive was perfect to keep her glass of water safe from accidents.
They don't issue fucking IP bans for goddamned shitcrapping language, do they?
Darn, I bet they do. Shoot.
OK, this one comes from Georgia Tech. It's an oldie, but a goodie.
A tech gets a call from Professor Anders in the statistics department. Anders says that the members of his department are only able to send email 500 miles. The tech gets a strange look on his face, then starts asking questions about the situation. After a lengthy phone discussion, he decides that the fellow who has called him is truly not making this up. After all, this is the statistics department, and they're not prone to pulling figures out of the air.
So, the tech goes over to the statistics department and checks out their server. It's a simple old SPARC running Solaris. He sends out some email to a friend in California. Sure enough, it bounces. He sends an email to a friend in Florida, and it goes through fine. The tech scratches his head.
He asks Anders is anything has changed on this SPARC server recently. Turns out that, yes, the server was recently updated to a newer version of Solaris (Version numbers lost to the fog of history). So the tech takes a look at the server and finds that, despite the newer OS, the older version of SendMail is still on the machine. Anders nods and says that, after the update, they downgraded SendMail to an older, more stable version. Ahah! The tech opened the config file, and sure enough, he found the problem.
The new version of SendMail had created a new Config file. This file had some new format for the "Timeout" entry. When the old version was placed onto the system, it tried to read the new config file, but couldn't interpret it correctly. Thus, it set the "Timeout" to "0." How far can electronic information travel away from the server before the CPU can count to 0? 500 miles.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
The funniest thing that ever happened to me in call center support was when I was working at Onstar. I got a call from a Escalade full of high school boys who thought it would be fun to play with dad's Onstar. Of course, I got the typical comments like "I bet you're hot!" or "You sound cute, do you have a boyfriend?" And then, when they realized I was unflappable, they asked if I could see them. I replied kindly "no" but one of the young gentlemen announced he was mooning me and if I could see his ass.
eveversion4 -- "Eating Ramen that tastes really bad can be kind of fun too." Haruko, FLCL
Ok, got a few to share.
On the family side, I swapped out the keyboard and mouse on my mother's desktop with wireless models. Sister the next day complained that the mouse was broken because there was no wire. Oui vey.
I used to work for an unnamed ISP in New York (that was really shoddily run, but amusing to work at).
1) Customer from unnamed realtor office calls in, having some sort of problem, but unable to find the problem. Customer insists that she doesn't have a keyboard. Tell her to place her hands on the monitor, and let them drop. Where do they land? "Oh, the TYPER THING!"
2) Customer calls up, saying problem with the floppy drive. Go through usual diagnostics, and the story unfolds. Customer gets floppy disk jammed in the drive, so rather then call support, decides to fix it himself. First tries with *butter* to free the jammed disk. No joy, so he uses a knife which then breaks off in the drive as well. Only then, does he try to get support. Even better, he expects support to come out and fix his computer for free. Support asks him to repeat his story for the record one final time just-in-case.
3) Joke played on other tech in office - call in to the main support number pretending to be one of the national Relay Services (you know, for deaf/blind people with TTY/TTD). Support woman asks whats wrong. 'Customer' via translator responds "I'm blind, I'm deaf, and my computer is making funny noises."
4) Customer calls up, demands give her free internet access. She gets really loud and nasty, and finally the reason why is revealed - she had a NetZero disk and didn't bother to actually read the instructions.
5) Customer calls up, is having problems getting on the Internet. After going back and forth for a while, finally find out that he didn't plug in the telephone cord. So tell him to plug it in and he starts getting all huffy and angry.
Him: "I'm not putting that phone cord in my computer. The evil hackers will take over my computer!"
Me: "You need to plug in the phone line or you wont be able to get Internet access."
Him: "I don't care. This is a laptop anyway, why do I need to plug in the phone line anyway? This is completely wireless. I don't even need the power cord plugged in!"
Silence...
Him: "God damn it, now it just turned off again. I keep having to take this thing back to be fixed after an hour and a half."
*bang head on desk to continue*
Brielle
From a colleague at HP printer support, Amsterdam, anno 1998:
Customer calls, his brand new deskjet appears to be DOA. Normal troubleshooting takes place, the printer is indeed stone dead. Customer gets a new printer sent to him, case closed.
A few days later the same customer calls again. The replacement printer appears to be DOA. This is very close to the statistically impossible, so this time some very extensive troubleshooting takes place over the phone. There is no getting around it though, the printer is dead. Yet another order for a replacement unit is put in the system, case closed again.
A few days later... the third printer appears to be DOA. The case is put on super-pedantic mode and the support agent is instructed to spend as many hours on the phone as it takes to figure what the customer is doing wrong. Every single step of the printer installation procedure is gone through, including a full diagnostic of the computer, cables, power outlet, the works. The customer has done nothing wrong, the support agent is desperate. The customer is asked to describe in detail everything he did from the very moment he received the printer. Well, says customer, he followed the instructions. Opened the box, took out the printer, removed the plastic bag, removed the transport tapes and foam paddings, assembled the in and out trays, put them in place, connected parallel and power cables, switched on printer, dead.
Have you figured it yet? If not, you'll never make more than a mediocre support agent. What distinguishes a really good agent is his ability to think as the proverbial bigger idiot who can break anything that's idiot-proof.
- You removed the tapes, you say. Could you please be more specific?
- Well, you know, the orange adhesive tape that holds the cover.
- The one on top?
- Yes. And the one at the back.
- Right.
- And then the big one inside.
- Which one?
- The white one, the one that keeps the cartridge carriage in place during transport.
- You mean the one that's about three centimetres wide, that runs from one end of the printer to the cartridge carriage at the other end?
- Yes, that one.
- How did you remove it?
- It wouldn't come off, so I had to cut it.
- I see. With scissors?
- That's right.
- Thank you sir, I think we found the problem. I'll put an order for a new printer in the system, you should have it in a couple of days. When you get it, please phone us BEFORE you open the box. Ask to speak with me, I'll guide you through the unpacking procedure.
A nice elderly woman contacted the call center I supervised to ask us why "we had called 911 on her." After several minutes of back and forth we determined that the police had shown up at her house because her modem had dialed 911. The agent checked her dialer settings and sure enough, her area code had been changed to "911". Agent: "Ma'am, you computer has been set up to dial 911 as the area code, do you know how that happened?" Customer: "I don't know" Agent: "Ma'am, did someone in your household type it in." Customer: "Well I typed 911 in it." Agent: "Did you type 911 into your computer, or your telephone?" Customer: "My computer." Agent: "So you typed it in?" Customer: "No." Agent: "But you typed 911 into your computer settings." Customer: "Yes." While it was clear that she was wading in the senile end of the pool, it was obvious from listening to the agent walk her through fixing the area code that she clearly knew how to open the dialer settings. He fixed it and ended the call. Two hours later she called back and wanted to know "why we were calling 911 on her again." After more conversation we determined that the 911 operator called her and said that she was dialing 911 with her computer again. The agent checked her dialer settings and sure enough, her area code had been changed to "911" again. Agent: "Ma'am, we fixed this problem a couple of hours ago; do you know how the 911 got placed in your area code?" Customer: "No." Agent: "Did you type 911 in your computer?" Customer: "No." Agent: "Did you change the area code from 608 to 911?" Customer: "Yes." Agent: "Why?" Customer: "I thought that's where it went." Agent: "So you typed 911 into the area code field in your computer?" Customer: "Yes." By that time the poor lady's son had arrived. The agent fixed it and explained the situation to the son. She didn't call back again... ---------- The most entertaining call I ever received, though, was the woman, in reply to my normal "Tech Support" greeting, said in a firm and demanding voice "I'D LIKE TO BE SERVICED!" Another time I enjoyed a call from a genteman who, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable support call, asked me if I was a Catholic. He wanted to know because I might tell the Pope about his Web Opera and he didn't want Henry Kissenger to find out. I thought he was joking until I looked at the past call log and saw that all of his prior calls had been fraught with generally insane questions about religion and Kissenger...
Or it would have become very cold in that room.
http://outcampaign.org/
As said, seems like all IT-ers start out taking calls lol. I'm still a student (networking) and i took calls during 3 years as a weekend job at europes largest isp ( well, used to be,branch in my country got bought and we all got fired) i remember a few stories me : what is your password (need to doublecheck it) cstm = i don't know,my husband handles all that me : well,its a female's name if it can help cstm : ow,ok - she tries some, i reckon herself or whoever - cstm : no,nothing works -she immediately sends the mandatory fax for recovering the password - me: i got your fax, your password is ... (some female name,don't remember )
cstm : WHAT ?! THAT (some insults) *click*
checking the password is smth is did for fun when they when handling the call
you cannot believe some passwords.. sex,racism,hate .. i tell ya, peoples password say a lot about the person
-i also had some of the cliché ones ,like people going to close all the house windows
-When asked what they see on the screen a lot respond the brand,or whatever things like stickers
-A lot of black people think we don't want to give good support cause of their accent/name
-Some people have the worst name :-(
-People crying
-People crying about OTHER things going wrong in their life.
-People demanding troubleshooting for their xbox,playstation or whatever connection
-People personally treatening me :-s
-People who are l33t it-ers that don't want to hear the usual bullshit, but who can't check if the nic recieves an ip
-people recording you
can go on and on lol
it seems i haven't that much funny stories
but working at a callcentre is a great experience in my opinion, for troubleshooting to "social" skills.
For those of you still there, stack up on username/pwd (u'll need them when they shut down ur free internet access), change the limits on ur current subscription,write down serials and for fun,change the cd or file that customers hear when they call :p
I was teaching an introductory computer class to students with no previous exposure to computers in a community college. It was the beginning of the 2nd or 3rd class when a new student turned up, brought in by a college admissions counsellor. This guy had just left the military, an elite front line airborne unit which had recently been disbanded in Canada due to reports of excessive agressiveness / violence. This guy was huge, massively muscular and quiet. I'm sure he was a natural at his last job. I handed out the 3.5" disks which we had been using in the last class to all the students and said something along the lines of "open up the file and we'll carry on from where we were last time". As I was preparing to say the next thing something goes flying by the side of my head. I turnaround towards the direction the object had come from. I saw my new student with the outer case of the 3.5" ripped open with his powerful arms holding the outer casing open, it being the innards of the disk that had flown by my head. He said it a completely matter of fact voice: "You said open it". Clearly, I had taken much for granted. Sadly, the guy left and never came back so I was never able to reveiw the basics.
John M
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's remarkable. I work at a small independent ISP, and just now while checking our support email I got this gem:
Subject: JUST A QUICK QUESTION
HI, I HAVE A QUESTION REGARDING USING A DESKTOP MICROPHONE. I AM
RELATIVELY NEW TO COMPUTER STUFF. I WAS WONDERING IF I WILL BE CHARGED A
LONG DISTANCE PHONE FEE EVERY TIME I USE THE MICROPHONE TO TALK TO MY
SISTERS IN OKLAHOMA.
PLEASE REPLY THROUGH EMAIL.
(bleh, lameness filter doesn't like all caps.)
(bleh, lameness filter doesn't like all caps.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A while back I worked for a virtual company - there was no brick and mortor location - that sold car insurance to high risk people. Brilliant idea if you ask me, no where for anyone to show up with a shotgun and shoot somebody! I think it was American Horizons or something like that. If you bought it, I probably took your call, and I'm sorry!
My best call was from a man who had been on hold for 45 minutes and screaming at me about how he wasn't able to have dinner with his family because he had to stay on the phone. His screaming continued for a good 5 minutes before I was able to say anything. Now I was the last person on the lines until we switched to the evening call center so I was all this guy was going to talk to. So I told him that I was the last person left, all my collegues had gone home to eat dinner with their families and I was left there to listen to him scream at me when I could be at home with my family. There was a lull for a good 30 seconds before I said, "Now what can I do to help you." We had his issue taken care of it a matter of moments. He was very respectful after that.
Another favorite was when a caller got very irrate and asked to speak with the manager I would tell them I was the manager and I was all they were going to get to talk to. It's strange how people suddenly assume that once the manager is on the line everything is going to be fine.
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
This gem isn't tech support precisely but still hillarious. Back in '99 I worked for a Navy contractor as the onsite support for one of the offices that handles all flight training data. At this time the Navy had mandated NT 4 Server and Workstation for all systems. We were brought in to migrate them from Novell 3.11 (not Y2K compliant) and Windows 3.11 on systems where the BIOS was also not Y2K compliant. We went to the big meeting where the Chief of Operations had layed out a nice project plan for us giving exacting timelines that had to be followed with the servers coming last in the migration. One glance at the plan and everyone on my team broke into uncontrolled laughter. The final date for Y2K compliance on this "unbreakable" schedule was...
March 10, 2000.
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
This is my favourite even though I didn't actually handle the call. My old boss, Mr. E, calls and my eleven year old daughter answers.
E "Is your dad there?"
D "No, he'a at work."
E "Well I needed his help with a computer problem. Maybe you can help."
Mr E. goes on to describe the problem to my little girl who he knows is eleven.
D "Did you try rebooting?"
E "No. I'll try that. Hey, it works. Thanks sweety."
This reminds me of a story. I was born in 1978, and I'm guessing I was around 8 or so when I did this, making it somewhere around 1986, give or take a year or so. I went with my step-father into a computer store, looking at C64 games. While browsing, I came across a black & white macintosh computer on display. It had a mouse, a component I'd never seen before. I placed my hand on the mouse because it looked inviting, and I watched the screen. There, I saw an arrow pointer, and by golly, it moved! But...just a smidge! So, naturally, I concentrated harder! Uggghhhh...! Unfortunately, I could never concentrate hard enough to get it to move more than a hair or two every few seconds (I guess I wasn't holding as still as I thought).
And 5 1/4 inch, single side floppies were state of the art, one of our sales reps was installing a software upgrade onto a customer's machine [A Zenith Z89 PC, with an external SASI connected hard disk].
He was prompted to 'insert disk 2' after disk 1 finished, then 'insert disk 3', but couldn't make it fit. Disk's 1 and 2 were all that could fit in the drive and still close the door.
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
The following is the God's honest truth, I am not exaggerating in any way:
OK, so I do work for this auto garage, and the owner is a pretty cool guy, but his 13 year old fat son is strange. He looks exactly like the kid from King of the Hill. He's always watching exactly what I do on the computer, and asking all these really odd questions (Do you know how to hack computers? Because I dropped mine down the stairs once...) (wtf).
Anyway, one day I'm working at the garage, and the owner mentions that something's wrong with his home PC. I've got a slow day, so I offer to ride over there and check it out. "Oh, I'll send my son with you to show you where everything is". SH*T So the kid and I get in the car, and drive over to the house. So we get there, and the computer is full of spyware. But the internet temp files are all full of porn, porn bookmarks, etc. So I think this is because of the spyware, but the kid is standing over my shoulder, and starts going on about how he loves these blowup dolls that are in his bookmarks. So I'm like ok, whatever, I'm deleting these, don't go to them again.
So the kid leaves, and I'm going about cleaning off the PC. I hear a noise behind me, the kid is back, but this time, HE'S WEARING HIS MOM'S LINGERIE. A lacy bra and panties and nothing else! He's got toilet paper stuffed in the bra, and he starts dancing around making noises and talking about blowup dolls. At this point I tell him to put some clothes on, and that I'm leaving now. I start to get up and leave as soon as humanly possible, and he's like "wait, I'll leave". So he runs out of the room.
Against my better judgement I stay to finish the computer (it's almost clean). 3 minutes later I hear the door open again...and it's gotten worse. The kid is NAKED! And he starts singing/screaming and gyrating around, his fat flapping against himself. At this point I leap out of my chair and sprint from the house, as he chases me naked and singing.
Needless to say, I never went back to that house, and I stopped doing the work for the garage.
I was at an in office product training/demo put on by a major manufacturer of securty cameras and networked digital video recorder systems. At one point in the training, the issue of time zones, clock settings and timestamping of recorded video came up. The main user control/access software was running on Windows, so it was an important part of the setup to make sure that the PC had the proper time zone, was set by a time server and all equipment was synced using the correct time for that zone. The rep mentioned that they were looking at some sort of timing system that would allow them to timestamp video independent of timezones, across a network so that the time on a machine in one zone would correspond without translation to the time on a video from another time zone. I looked at him and said "That would be GMT." All I got was 3 second blank look and then a mumble about "something something I guess". This wasn't a salesrobot either. This was a seasoned system installer and former top tech support director. I was slightly floored that he wasn't aware of a solution that militaries all over the world use quite effectively. He made it sound like they were actively re-inventing the wheel on the concept.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
try here: http://thedailywtf.com/
all the anecdotes u'll need plus some
This one is classic.
Back on a university co-op term, I was working tech-support for a stock market trading floor in downtown Toronto.
So one of the traders calls me over in a panic (to these guys, every minute of downtime could be costing them thousands). His monitor is blank. I nudge the mouse. It was his fucking screen saver. *sigh*.
I once explained to my sister how to go about organizing files into folders on her PC. Her desktop was a cluttered mess, so I told her to put all of these files into this folder, and all of those files into that folder, and the files you don't use, just put them in a "Misc" folder. A few hours later, she says her computer doesn't work. I go over and try to turn it on and Windows is complaining about some missing files. I ask her what she was doing before this happened, and she says she was just organizing files like I said to. Of course, it ends up she was organizing files in C:\Windows, and putting all those files she doesn't use into a "Misc" folder.
I was working in support for CableTron, back in the day. The call came in from a manager type and after going over the formalities like support contract and warranty I began to trouble shoot. I asked questions and the customer answered them, but the clues would not fit together again and again I would thing the mystery would be solved by one more question, and again and again my hopes were dashed. All the while the customer is asking for level 2 support, but I could not find anything that would suggest we needed level 2 support. (I was very close to being Level 2 support anyway).
Then I wondered if the customer was really reliable. Was he really telling me what was happening. So I asked, "Is the forth LED from the left (there were 4 LEDs in the upper left corner of the box) flashing red?"
The customer replied "Yes."
And I responded "Well Sir. That is a green LED"
I turned out that the system was in a different building and the customer was just trying to get to level 2 support, because he thought he was to good for level 1 support.
When the customer called back form the location where the system was. I was able to fix the problem in only a few minutes.
I had a co-worker tell me this story about ten years ago. They built a nice top of the line system for the secretary of one their best customers. They wanted to make sure they made this customer happy so they burned the system in for 48 hours and ran every conceivable test. Sent the system to the user and hoped for the best. Sadly they received a tech support call from the customer saying the system was behaving very eratically and running very slowly. They tried their best over the phone but it was determined that they should send the system back. They got it back and tested it but could not find any problems with the system. Again, they sent it back and again the same problems were reported. This time they took it to the client's business and set it up and then watched in horror as the secretary placed several large fridge magnets on the side of the case.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
I had a client who got a new large format printer for her home office. we had to move it and get a longer cable. "I noticed that ever since we moved the printer it takes longer for me to print, if we get a shorter cable will it print faster?".
After working tech support for Hewlett Packard (through a subcontractor, of course) for only about 6 months, I can think of dozens of surreal calls I had. One of the most astounding, though, isn't about clueless customers, but rather clueless coworkers:
I had a customer who called in, because he couldn't type. I check his case, and he's had his computer 'benched' (sent in for service) three times. He just got it back, and lo and behold, it's still busted. In the process, his hard drive has been wiped (which the previous agents had 'forgotten' to mention would happen)
I listen to him rant for a while, then, on a hunch, ask him if he has another computer in the house. Yup, he does. Could he get the keyboard from *that* computer? He grabs it...plugs it in, hits some keys...
Me: "Uhm...did it work?"
Him: "..........Yes."
I sent out another keyboard to him immediately, and got off the phone with him before his shock wore off and he realized he'd lost all his data and spent two months without a computer because of a faulty keyboard.
how about this;
lady says, "my website keeps logging me out right after I log in."
[the site has a 30 min logout feature to close idle terminals.]
her clock ends up being set to 10 PM instead of 10 AM and tripping the 30 min logout. So, We set her clock back to the correct time, problem solved...
until after lunch...
she contacts again, and says "its doing it again"...
I say "doing what? logging you out?"
She replies, "No, the clock says PM again."
I politly replied, "Well, my clock reads 2 PM and its going to switch every 12 hours. "
From a company I used to work for, related to me from the support guys:
:S
Support: "Try making a copy of the diskette."
Customer: "Okay, be right back. [pause...] Okay, but it won't fit in the drive."
Support: "Why not?"
Customer: "I could only get the copier to copy on 8 1/2 x 11 paper."
The other one invovled repeated diskettes sent to a customer, that kept going bad. Turned out they stored the diskettes using fridge magnets on their filing cabinet.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/04/07/77121_15 OPcringely_1.html
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
oooh where to start. I worked for at a cancellation departmen on backshift. we got a caller in one evening who called in and got every agent who was there. All we could gather was that she was in a trailer in the woods and in her bathrobe. she screamed for 8 hours almost solid, I imagine she managed to get some breath in between dialing. then there was the time a woman was asking me where to find black market babys on the internet. the time that a fellow in cape canaveral called to do technical support. He was nervous around computers so he drank a bottle of wine to calm himself. he was on hold for awhile so he cracked out the cheap wine. yeah he must have screamed at like 4 agents before he got me. The guy who was going back in time. neve figured that one out. the people who called from prison, homeless shelters, etc etc. We would get a lot of people trying to troubleshoot in blackouts.. "Sir could you turn your computer on?" "I can't see the button, its dark." "Why is it dark?" "The powers out." DOH! people troubleshooting their home comptuer from a cellphone... on the higway, doing 100, and cursing at other motorists. An indian fellow who was dying for customer service one night. he couldn't watch his beastiality porn and wanted help from his isp (us) so he called. and would get very agitated saying that he couldn't watch his videos of "whores and bitches" (dogs having sex with women, he later explained.) He was furious that no one would touch him with a ten foot pole. the sexual advances... Ahh that is its own special little part of destroying my soul. The political ranting. the religious ranting. The well just plain nastiness and ignorance of people. I've seen it all, and I can't remember off the top of my head some of the more horrific stories. A cusotmer only had a parts replacement warranty from her OEM. So when he brand new computer cought fire and exploded it was replaced... part by part. She called me with an assortment of boxes and a butterknife. Needless to say she was a person whose VCR blinked 12:00. I know of no other place where Tylenol is sold in the vending machines. and constantly sells out. fun quotes... My computer doesnt work, the lightning strike had nothing to do with it! I have the CD, how do i get my sewing machine on the internet? How did I get 2 three year contracts, all I did was make photocopies of my daughters weding invitation.
Just last week, I overheard a co-worker saying that they could not get their laptop (company provided) to work at home through their DSL line. Although they could use their home desktop just fine. I offerred a suggestion and realized that the co-worker did not have a clue about tech, etc.
Come to find out the co-worker had been unplugging the DSL from the the desktop and plugging the laptop INTO the desktop, NOT the DSL. So the connection was laptop to desktop, with the DSL line disconnected from everything.
I'm doing tech support and office networking for a small office of a half a dozen lawyers. They order new PCs from me. I buy parts, assemble, install Win98, run the cable - the works. They are now a nice neat networked office. I test the daylights out of everything, and head home satisfied.
After a few days, one of the lawyers calls me. "I can't get on the network."
So zap, off I go to the office. I boot his machine and sure enough, no net. My first thought is to re-seat the network card. I crawl under his desk and slide the machine out of the cubby. Take the cover off and set that aside. Reseat the card, reboot for a test, and we're back on the net. Put it all back together and make a final test once it's all back where it belongs.
And it's off the net again. I assume I bumped the cord putting the thing back in the cubby and wiggled the card back loose. So I repeat the procedure. Three times.
And each time it repeats. Soon as it's back together in the cubby, no net.
On the fourth pass, I happened to run my hand down the far side of the case cover. I hadn't looked there before. Each time I would take the case cover off, I'd grab it by the front and back and just set it aside. But on that particular try, I felt something there.
He had lined the side of his case in strip refrigerator magnets to hold post-it notes.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
When I worked for Tivoli (some nine years ago now) we saw a lot of transitions, because IBM had just purchased them and not gotten around to fucking them all up yet. One of the new things was the introduction of a Level 1 support structure. When I got there, IBM was just starting to sell Tivoli, so we were just starting to need level 1 support to filter out the idiot calls.
So basically, the person in charge of the hiring for that department (our beloved Katrina, who had brought me in after googling my resume, or for all I know altavista'ing it, had moved up to the main corporate building) hired a bunch of idiots and relatives. Well, there's considerable overlap there... But anyway, these people were exceptional winners who couldn't spell worth a crap and mostly who knew absolutely nothing about computers. I think in about half a year, maybe two people moved up from level 1 to level 2.
There are two misspellings that I will likely remember as long as I live:
DRAGON DROP
and
YOWZIJ
The first one is pretty obvious. The second one? How one of these phone monkeys decided to spell usage.
The only thing more pathetic than the people who call support are the people who work level 1.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One work day, I was happily typing away on a program when I receive a call from our receptionist.
"Wuie?"
"Yeah?"
"I have a question. I'm wondering if it's possible for me to get a faster monitor."
I pause and think for a second.
"Faster monitor?"
"Yeah. Whenever I click on a program or a window or something, it takes forever to load up."
I had to gently break it to her that no matter what monitor we gave her, it'd still take the same amount of time to display on the screen. The baffled look on my boss' face was priceless as well.
My worst phone call came from someone trying to use our software and it was failing oddly. It smelled like a lack of memory problem, but he reassured me three times that he had the minimum 256K necessary to run our software (it was a while back). I start getting deeper and deeper into his machine over the phone (by now I've used up an hour and a half) and things aren't making sense. The machine claims to have 256K, but memory addresses and so on point to the machine having 128K.
Finally I have him run a diagnostic that dumps all its information in hex and have him read the results. Now it's clear. The machine only has 128K, and there must be something wrong with some of the internals making it report it has 256K.
"I'm sorry sir, but you've been misinformed. Your machine only has 128K. I'm not sure how your machine thinks it has 256K of RAM, but it's only got 128K of RAM. Maybe there's some sort of memory error."
"Oh, no, it has 128K of RAM"
"But.. but.. You told me that it had 256K. The diagnostics you read out to me said 256K.."
"Well, if I told you it had 128K, you'd have told me that your software didn't run on it."
Every time he saw the diagnostic say 128K, he'd tell me it was saying 256K. If I hadn't got the result back in a format he didn't understand, I'd probably *still* be trying to figure out what was wrong with our software.
I was too stunned to tell him that he'd just wasted two hours of both our lives, thanked him and hung up. Of course, my coworkers came running at my scream of frustration once I'd put down the phone.
Years ago, when I worked phone support for a decent sized dialup isp in Ohio, we had this woman, she was utter hell to deal with. She was a neat freak, vaccuumed almost everyday, and would knock the power cable for her pc out of the wall. Now, for some reason, when people can't turn their computer on, they call their internet service provider and complain..... don't get me started on that. But she would call almost everyday, and some unfortunate SOB (usually 3-4 of us in the office) would have to convince this woman to plug her PC back in, and she was stubborn as hell. The conversations almost invariably went like this:
HER: My computer is broken again, I need it fixed now!
TECH: Ma'am, could you please check and make sure that the power chord is plugged in?
HER: Why do you always have me check that, that's not the problem.
TECH: Ma'am, we are just going down the checklist, and this is very easy to check for, so it makes a lot fo sense to check it first.
HER (usually pisssed off at that last remark): I'm tired of your stupid checklist, I want someone out here to fix my PC right now.
TECH: Ma'am, we are an ISP, not a computer repair shop, if you PC is in need of repaits, you should take it to one of the many local computer stores to have it serviced, but I am sure that is not nessesary, if will just please check all the power cables, I am sure we can resolve this quickly and easily.
(now, this would go on for at least 3-4 minutes, at which time it would turn better.)
HER: Oh, I found a chord that was unplugged, guess I knocked it loose while I was cleaning. (hangs up)
TECH: *sobs*
Now, like I said, this happened almost everyday for nearly two weeks. She signed up, and the calls started. About the 4th time I was unlucky enough to get her on the phone, I'd had enough. I cannot handle it when people refuse to learn. So when she got angry about us asking her to plug it in yet again, and it never being that (yeah right), I blew up. I'd do remember what I said, but I screamed it loud, and long, it was a five minute verbal onslaught that made me realize three things: I hate people, I'm about to be fired, and I'm glad.
My supervisor hugged me, the entire staff clapped, and I was fired on the spot. I'm told she called back an hour later, in tears, and closed her account. I hope she boxed up her PC, and sent it back to wherever she got it from.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Clicky
You know, I had not thought of that, but yea... they are poorly formed. Why couldn't they do something cool, like a trapazoid? :
Reminds me of the guys at the place I used to work at who used a snapshot of the blue screen of death as the screensaver for a very important router. The IT division boss came into the network server room and saw it and almost had a stroke. He just made them get rid of it pretty fast.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I won't name companies, but I support NAS boxes;
I got a call on a NAS server that was down, the user could not reach the shares on her NAS.
I asked them to go to our support website, the reply almost made me laugh out loud:
"I can't get on the Internet now, our network is down"
I asked for them to call for suppport on the NAS after the network was back up!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Never. Ever. Remote into a users machine when they are trying to configure a webcam. Especially if you work a night shift.
Now that is what I call a computer bug.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
My good friend had the exact same problem in suburban Portland, OR.
It's a shame they didn't kick your ass (or your computer) out on the street for pulling that kind of a stunt.
Maybe one day you'll grow up and learn to not be such a complete dickhead.
A friend of mine is teaching at university, but also co-owns a few servers and does ISP for small businesses. The servers are located about 300km away from where the university is and he does more or less everything via ssh, while a buddy of his who lives next to the site does hardware stuff when needed. You can see where this is headed, can't you?
The other day he gives an introduction to ssh in one of his classes, using an ssh connection to one of his servers as an example. "See, it's like you were there, although the machine is 300km away!" At the end of the lesson, he has about eight different terminal windows open on his X. Wants to shut down his computer, types in "sudo shutdown -h now", his password and wonders why his computer doesn't shut down.
He had about thirty seconds from realising what he had done to the first call on his mobile. Needless to say, his buddy is on holidays for the day, so he has to jump into his car and race through half the country to switch the stupid thing back on.
Goes to show: Don't use mission critical machines for educational purposes. (And don't use the same password twice...)
My favourite is the one that happened while I was working in the techsupport of the second largest ISP in Finland, right after the internet started invading homes.
... a minute passes...
An older lady, a reporter, calls in tells us that she has got our installation cd-rom, but her old computer doesn't have a cd-rom drive. After making sure she had an modem, we mailed (snail mailed) her disks that she could install from.
After few days this same lady calls in and is having some simple problems with the installation. Dutifully I help and guide her thrue the process until...
she says: "now one of the keys got stuck. What should I do?"
me: "it won't come out if you press and wiggle a bit?"
she: "no, it's stuck"
me: "maybe if you hit it to table gently."
she: "ok."
she: "umm, now the monitor is cracked and it looks all black"
me: "your monitor?"
she: "yes, I took the laptop and whacked the table with it."
me: "you..."
she: "and not the monitor has cracks"
me: "you have a laptop? and you its screen to the table?"
The next day the company bought her a new laptop with a cd-rom drive.
1. About ten years ago we sold a customer an SVGA monitor. He wanted to inspect it and so he pulled it out of the box. He looked at the pin connector and became very angry when he saw that the connector was missing pins(they're all like that). Even after we reassured him that the monitor was designed like that he was still angry.
2. Back in high school we had a rather clueless computer teacher. We were running Windows 3.1 I think. Some of my classmates designed a program that looked exactly like the login screen and then complained to the teacher that they could not login. He came over and entered his administrator password and username which was promptly saved to a text file. He was the administrator for the school. I cringe at what they could have done to our school network.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
My best was when an old women called saying her scanner wasn't working. I went over, looked for a scanner and didn't see one. I asked her to show me it. She put a paper to the monitor and said "Look, it's not working!" She was very pissed when I had to explain it to her.
So he put together a course with some things that should be challenging enough, like pivot tables and some simple macros.
When he started all he got was blank stares. He was asked to be a little more basic, so he quickly revised the course a bit and started talking about diagrams and how to create them. Again, nothing but blank stares.
He was asked do do it simpler yet and thought that he'd start from the absolute beginning instead.
Him: "Here's the button that automatically sums up your numbers"
(Can't be more basic than that, right?)
Customer: "It can count automatically?"
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
This happened to a friend of mine. My friend (techie) and his colleague (doing sales) were trying to snag a Systems Integration order with a holiday resort. They presented a great case, with pretty pictures, facts and figures and a quote that gave a neat detailed breakdown of various phases/components of the project.
...
System reqs:
1)hardware -- x$
2)os licensing -- y$
3) application software --
Networking reqs:
1) hardware cabling
2) lan equipment
The would-be client had hired a Pompous Technical consultant (paid big bucks too) to go over and see the deal through. This "guru" looked over the proposal and then, with a gleam in his eyes (kinda look you'd have if you were a sadistic motorist with a deer caught in your headlights) and the following conversation followed:
HPC (Highly paid consultant) -- "I noticed that you have mentioned Hardware cabling costs -- but what about the software cabling hmm...? Are we going to do something about that?!?"
Techie -- "But Sir...there's..."
interrupted by the Sales Guy who cut him short -- "Perhaps I can deal with that"...
Sales Guy -- "Er...the software cabling is a complementary service that we provide with all our systems intergration projects!"
I was working at Radio Shack one summer back in college and I sold a cordless phone to an older lady. It was a display model that had caller ID in the hand set. A few days later she was at the coutner with the phone complaining that she could not remove the numbers from caller id. She gave this long story about how she tried and tried and it just would not work.
I took the phone from her and just as I was going to plug the base in, I saw a plastic sticker over the caller ID with SONY CORP 888 888 8888 on it. I pealed the sticker off and handed it back to her.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I got a hushed phone call from my Brother-in-Law who had just started using Windows 95 for the first time.
"I think I am going to be in trouble over my computer, it did something bad"
What happend?
(very quite reply) "My computer did something illegal, it has a blue message telling me so"
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
This person was having some problems logging in to his Unix box as himself, but not as root. So we told him to log in as root, and then do a more on /etc/passwd. His answer was: 'It does not work - it prints out "moron: command not found"'.
it's amazing how little people understand about the directory system, time and again, even with non-novices when I ask them they don't really get it. Searching around the files system is not in their congitive structure...
once my aunt's friends had lost all their business files (oh no!) in quickbooks.
when I "recovered" it they really really were excited, they wanted to pay me, I was a GENIUS!!!
They had installed a tutorial that had changed the default directory in the file open dialog... their data was merely in the original directory... um, not the tutorial's directory.
-pyrrho
-b.
I was a programmer at an online game network in the 90s and we had people that would say the service wasn't working.
Many people, even those WITH modems, didn't understand you had to plug the phone line in.
So much of the computer worked as if by magic to them, they just didn't ever make a list of stuff they might have to do to get things to work... who knew how the modem worked?
My other post in here is true too.
-pyrrho
HP corporate PC support, Amsterdam, 1998:
Agent: Yes, it's a known problem. It's been fixed, you just need to upgrade your BIOS.
Customer: How do I do that?
A: You have to download the new BIOS and [bla, bla, bla]
C: We don't have internet here.
A: Uhm, you can download it anywhere and take it to the office on a floppy.
C: I don't have internet at home either.
A: In that case I'll take your address and send you the BIOS on a floppy. We normally don't do this, but I'll make an exception.
C: But if you send it by post it will take a week to arrive (customer is in Spain).
A: Well, yes, but what else can I do?
C: Fax it to me.
A: That's not possible sir, you can't fax a BIOS.
C: Why not? I insist that you fax it to me at once. We have paid for premium support and we are entitled to
A: OK, OK, can I have your fax number please?
Ten minutes later, the BIOS had been printed and was being faxed to the customer.
which, thankfully, no longer exists, a field tech recieved a service call for a server that was "buggy". Turns out the dink running the server room had spilled a well sugared cup of joe in the thing and it was crawling with ants,MANY,MANY ants. Techs notes on the service record call were long ,loud,and very inventive. I learned a few new phrases, and I was a Marine. This was two weeks after a Fortune 500 company CFO called my boss to squall about his " coffee cup holder" being broke and we were to get over there right now and fix it, or lose his contract.
1) A buddy of mine got a call from a lady, and he told her to cut the power, to reboot. After leaving it off for 5 seconds, and asked her to power it back on. There is a pregnant pause, at which time, she asked how. Go to find out, she had taken some shears and CUT the power cord.
:-)
2) This was at a grocery chain. Our overnight guy got a call. It seems that a shoplifter had been caught, and instead of having a manager around to watch him, they locked him into the computer room. (you know, the one with the controllers for pharmacy, Shipping and receiving, registers, credit cards). He proceeded to unplug EVERY device in the room, and we had boot disks in some devices. He pulled them out, and hid them elsewhere, and jumbled the room up. It took the tech something like 12 hours to get that store running again.
3) I had a call that went something like this:
me: Hello, how may I help you?
Pharmacist: My laser printer is billowing black smoke.
me: Turn it off.
Pharmacists: Ok, it is off. Now, people are coughing, should we leave the pharmacy?
me: Yes, and close it up, to keep the fumes out of the store. (and to keep customers from getting into the empty pharmacy)
4) Oh, this is a good one. I can handle ignorance. Someone that doesn't know something, doesn't know it. I can handle that... but the ones that KNOW something bad is happening, and ignore it, bug me. So, our bookkeepers had windows 3.1 machines in the offices at stores. One district manager gave the stores diskettes, so he could come around weekly, get their numbers, and keep close tabs on the stores.
So, we had DOS 5.0 installed (I think) with windows antivirus, that had not been updated in probably 2 years... These are supposed to be closed systems to prevent viruses. Well, our onsite tech (we just replaced whole hard drives when we had a failure, and the failed unit was sent back to be formatted), noticed the trend, and since he talked to me (a lot) let me in on the high number of failures he had been noticing. I finally tracked it down to this district manager. We asked him to stop sending diskettes to the store, and he refused, saying that he did better, with immediate numbers. Since his stores were doing so well, and we were "just IT" we couldn't do a lot to force him to change. Until our manager had a brilliant idea. We started charging the cost of those hard drive replacements to that division. When a division is all the sudden hit with 1k+ bills a month, because of a handful of stores... things get changed fast.
I was on a generic call back in my Win95 support days. The telephone connection was bad - take enough phone calls, and a certain percentage end up going through bad exchanges somewhere. Lots of static, and occasionally you'd get the whispers of another conversation drifting through. We carried on, though. Until the other coversation snapped into clarity for a few seconds, just long enough to hear a female voice say, in her best phone-sex moan, "I want you to f*** me in the a**!".
Long pause, followed by the customer on the other end saying, very timidly, "Was that you?".
I stifled the cackles and agreed I'd call him right back and see if we could get a clean circuit.
After a guy poured some brown sparkling fluid into a keyboard (which stopped working), he wrote the following:
http://www.cs.umu.se/~stric/tmp/tangentbord.jpg
(translation: I will not pour cola into keyboards)
He was probably just reading his script. That certainly sounds like the first question they usually ask.
This happened just a couple of years ago, when one of those email viruses was plaguing the Windows world.
.doc.exe something, ... do .. you .. think .. I ..
He: Good afternoon, I seem to have a problem with my home computer. I think I've got a virus.
Me: Well, we don't support home computers, but I guess you've heard about the new virus on the news.
He: Yes I have, but I don't think I have that one. I'm very careful about this. I always read my mail by ssh'ing to work and read the mail using pine.
Me: OK, that seems good to me. Why do you think you have a virus ?
He: Well, today I got mail from a colleague of mine, whom I'm sure would never send me anything nasty, so I had pine
to save his attachment on the disk at work. Then I fetched it to my home computer using F-secure SSH, and double-clicked
on the icon.
Me: Ah-ha! You didn't by any chance notice the name of the attachment?
He: I don't know exactly, but I remember it had a peculiar extension,
Me: Ahem, as I said, we don't support home computers. I guess you'll have a nice evening reinstalling your machine...
I was IT manager of a department of four at a manufacturer. A user three cubicles away called me and said "My computer is frozen". I stood up, and Jan was also standing up, looking at me. I said "Can you move your mouse?" She replied "Yes," and picked up the mouse, waving it in the air so I could see that its mobility was unimpaired.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
At our facility in California, the servers had no server room, they were simply out in the open in the front office. I convinced them to move the servers to an unused office and install an air conditioner that should have been sufficient to keep it cool.
A week after the move, the boxes started shutting down, and we were called. I had the person on the phone who'd been responsible for the move, to go into the new server room.
"It's hot in here."
"Why is it hot? You were supposed to install an air conditioner!"
"Well, we're trying to save money, so we just bought a swamp cooler instead." A swamp cooler is, in other respects, an ingenious device for cooling in hot climates at a minimum expense. Imagine a fan with a water reservoir below it, and a sheet of foam running up one side, all the way down into the reservoir; capilliary action draws water up through the foam, where moving air evaporates it and humidifies the room.
After banging my head on the desk for a few minutes, I asked "Was the swamp cooler not on?"
"No," he said, "we have to turn it off now and then because of all the condensation on the walls."
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
More or less, yeah.
Same has happened here - but we've got some pretty decent management. Most of our market is B2B. We've gotten the occasional "fine customer" who through helpful heaps of abuse, have actually brought members of our support team to tears. Unbelievable abuse, laced with filth and personal attacks on gender, intelligence, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (including their mothers, sisters, fathers, etc.).
However, we also have VPs who call other VPs at the offending companies, and explain to them exactly the content of the conversation that occurred (a good audio replay usually gets people's attention). That is usually about all it takes to clean up abusers. Too bad that's not usually something that can happen in the enduser support arena....
sloth_jr
I had this happen about 10 years ago. Still remember it today. I worked at an IT shop and a lady brought her computer in to get repaired. Kept getting a blue screen several times a day. I did EVERYTHING I could think of to fix this back in the day. Everything seemed to be fine.
Lady came back a week later and said it still happened. Several times a day. I did the same checks and everything looked fine.
This went on for a year. (really) Then I finally said ok, im going to your house, free of charge. Call it professional interest. I wanted to know what made this damn thing crash so often.
When I arrived she let me into the house. I almost fell over at what I saw. The computer case was COVERED in magnets of various flowers. I collected myself and asked her why there were magnets all over her case.
She said 'isnt it pretty? i take them off when I take it to the shop so I done lose any of them!'
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
I was working as a tech support guy for a windows based tax software, and this user called me up having trouble getting the software installed from the cd. This was in the days where Windows 2000 was king.
Me: What version of windows are you using: 95, 98, ME, or 2000?
User: 95, it is an old computer... I think I bought it in 95.
Me: Okay, go ahead and double click on 'My Computer'.
User: Double click on YOUR computer?
[supressing a chuckle at the obviousness of the confusion]
Me: No no, the icon on your desktop. Should be in the upper left, it says 'My Computer' just below it.
User: I'm not seeing anything there.
Me: Okay, how about the Start menu, do you see that in the lower left?
User: No, I don't see anything down there.
I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how to tell the guy to open up my computer so he could access his cd-rom. I tried telling him keyboard shortcuts, the windows key (he didn't have one), everything I could think of before I finally asked him to describe what was on his screen. He went on for about 3 minutes describing every detail, and he finally said something that triggered me to realize what was going on (I can't recall what it was).
Me: Wait, do you see a gray box in the upper left with a little white line in the middle?
User: Yes, I see that.
Me: Ooookay now we're getting somewhere. You are using Windows 3.11, not Windows 95.
I had to run over to another machine that wasn't as locked down as our desktops were and launch winfile so I had some idea how to guide this guy around. Just another example of 'don't assume anything' when supporting the general public.
While working at desk support for Sprint many years ago we would get a call at least once a month from a high level management employee. She would call and say her computer was beeping at her and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Each time the solution was pulling her keyboard out from under her monitor which was holding down the ESC key. When one of my fellow employees pointed out her stupidity he was fired. So every month or so until I left that position we simply pulled her keyboard our from under the monitor and said nothing.
Ok, so I'm not really tech support, but I do work at a gaming center with a LOT of PC's and xboxes, and at least once a day we have someone, on an xbox, come up and tell us that the TV is all black and they can't see anything. Usually we ask if the TV is on, and it ends at that, but every so often they insist that they tried the power button. I still haven't seen one where walking to the TV, and pressing the button myself hasn't fixed it.
Scott Swezey
Did they have any in stock?
Okay, this is a training and not a support story, and true, but too good not to share. I was teaching an intro class on Microsoft Word for computer novices around 10 years ago, when we had the class exercises on a 3-1/2" diskette. After I told the class to put the diskette in the drive, a cute young thing in the rear of the class raised her hand and said, "Teacher, I have an A hole and a B hole. Where should I stick it?" Honest, I'm not making this up.
Way back in 1998, I got a job doing tech support for AIRnet, an ISP which serviced north Alabama. AIRnet had covered most of north Alabama, and was pushing farther and farther south -- towards areas that didn't know much about electricity, much less The Interwebs.
One of the high-growth areas was Blountsville, county seat of Blount County, Alabama. Blount being the opposite of 'sharp', I suppose.
One afternoon, the receptionist called out, "I've got a live one! It's from Blountsville! Who wants it?"
I volunteered, knowing what I was getting myself into.
"AIRnet tech support, how can I help you?"
"Yeah, I bought the internet the other day," the woman said. (Wow, deep pockets on this one.)
"OK, ma'm, what can I help you with?"
"Well, I can't get on," she said.
"Can you be more specific," I asked. "What happens when you try to connect?"
"Well I call that number that you give me, and it just squeals in my ear."
Oh boy.
"Ma'm, do you HAVE a computer?" I asked.
"Why, hell no -- that's what I pay you people twenty dollar a month for!"
"Hold please, while I transfer you to Billing."
http://unxmaal.com
Are always the funniest.
Now, this anecdote says worlds about priorities regarding IT in American public education, particularly the 0 training policy followed in most school districts in California.
After a user who's system was just replaced she experienced a "crash" and immediately called tech support. In a panic she asked for the technician who had just installed the system. In my experience, most system fatalities occur when they're just installed, or at the end of their warranty. The tech who did the deployment was on another call so I took it anticipating something disasterous.
Now, the user just so happened to be the administrative assistant of my bosses, boss. So we were told to take care of it right away. I ran over, and the other tech who had done the job ran over, and my boss made his way over to make sure everything was ok. We all gathered inside the user's workspace and started troubleshooting.
I let my partner in crime do the troubleshooting and made my own silent contribution (not laughing) after his initial steps I had already figured it out. He had hit the power button on the monitor (with no response) and the power button on the workstation itself to no response. I had glanced at the printer before we started, it was a color laser and most people hate waiting for them to print, so they leave it on, and it was notably off.
I sneaked a peak under the corner of her desk and sure enough, there was something amiss. I let my compadre know, where the problem lay and walked out before the fireworks. We recieved a fresh batch of home-made cookies the next day.
The poor user had dropped a can of lysol on the power switch of her surge protector.
I've been following this thread wondering about why anyone would want a static IP (I would understand if they were running a server, but for home?), and the fact that I supposedly have dynamic IP with my cable connection. I'm told if I unplug the power from my modem for four days, I'll get a new IP address. Aparently it renews the 4-day lease every second. That's dynamic? Uh... right... I suppose I'm paying as much as I am for this broadband connection just so I can't use it for most of a week if I want/need a new IP (and no, I've never been banned, except from a game server (Eternal Lands) because I typed !@#$ (literally, not a word, just the symbols) one too many times ("Hey! We have children here!")... Needless to say, I've no interest in returning there anyway.)
So much for dynamic IPs being used for security - oh wait, if I'm not even connected, I guess I'm 100% secure!
Other places I've lived, with other providers, it has worked to leave the modem unplugged overnight and then I have a new IP in the morning.
Kind of reminds me of a painful problem we had with a store. It seemed rather random, that our store's wireless hand helds would go down. They were generally within a certain period of time, but on random days. After MONTHS of troubleshooting, someone contacted the Air Force base nearby.
Go to find out, they were doing something, and targetting the store. (we were told, to get a land bearing?) well, the electronic pulse generated would knock out the equipment. Scrambled their poor little brains.
This is an adaptation of the "Intensive Care Bed Of Death" story where there is a spate of deaths in a hospital ICU - all on Fridays. Turns out that Friday is when the floors get polished and the cleaner has to unplug a machine (that goes "ping") in order to plug in her floor-polisher.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Dude, you claim to live with a hot babe AND to have an understanding girlfriend...
How understanding is she?
Do I really need to spell it out for you?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You have no idea how many memory sticks I've had to remove from floppy drives.
(Setting: this dimension, many years ago)
(ring ring)
Me: Repair, how can I help you?
Customer: My computer won't turn on.
Me: What happens when you try to turn it on?
Customer: Nothing. I press the power key and nothing happens.
Me: You don't see anything on the screen? You can't hear any startup sounds?
Customer: Nothing at all happens.
Me: What kind of computer do you have?
Customer: It's a Classic II.
Me: The Classic II has a power switch on the back that needs to be switched on in order for the power key on the keyboard to work. Could you check that switch and make sure that it's in the ON position?
Customer: There's no switch there.
Me: There's no switch? Are you sure this is a Classic II?
Customer: Yes, it says right on it Classic II.
Me: Then there should be a power switch on the back right above the power cable.
Customer: There's nothing there.
Me: You're sure there's no switch? Could you just look again?
Customer: Yeah, there's no switch.
Me: Well, if you'd like, you can bring it down and I'll set it up quickly on the counter and see what we see.
Customer: Ok. See you in a few minutes.
(Customer enters store and carries computer to repair counter.)
Customer: Hello? Here it is.
Me: Well, it is a Classic II. Let's set it up here.
(I set up the computer on the counter. The back of the computer is facing the customer. I reach behind the computer, flip the power switch and press the power key. BRONG! The computer start up.)
Customer: That switch wasn't there before!
(Me - flabbergasted)
I was working at a small biochemical reagents company about 10 years ago, doing R&D type stuff. As part of the job, each employee had to man the technical support lines for a few hours each week. One of our products was DNA purified from herring sperm, for use in nucleic acid assays. The call went something like:
...uh, that would be a male fish. The herring sperm DNA comes from the male fish.
...great. And what's the molecular weight of your Streptavidin in the 20 milligram package?
Caller: Hello, I'm So-and-so from the University of Someplace. I have a question about your product number [some integer], the Herring Sperm DNA.
Me: What would you like to know?
Caller: Well, we want to use it as a blocking agent for a membrane-bound sex typing assay, and we need to know the sex of the fish that it came from.
Me: [long pause]
Caller: Okay! Thank you very much.
The other one I recall was somebody asking about the company's purified Streptavidin:
Caller: What's the molecular weight of your Streptavidin in the 10 milligram package?
Me: About 55,000 daltons.
Caller:
Me: [sigh.]
I don't know if one or both of these were pranks, but if not...(shudder)
I'm so late, but I must share this at every possible chance:
I was doing remote support for a set of PC based cash registers running O/S2. One person called and told me that a dialog box had popped up on her screen and she couldn't get it to go away.
Me: What does the box say?
Her: 'Press Enter to close dialog box'
Me: And what happens when you press enter?
Her: Oh! Thanks!
In Soviet Russia, asses suck this joke.
If he had been using an "Ouroboros Brand" powerstrip, it wouldn't have been a problem.... :-)
I worked in a Riyadh hospital for over two years, and I was the resident mac/OSX expert. I would do some troubleshooting for other offices too.
I frequently (at least once a week for two years) did troubleshooting for one Saudi woman, who had been working on macs as a "graphic designer" for about a decade. In case you don't know, in Saudi Arabia, if you are Saudi, then you don't need to be qualified or experienced to get a plum job. This makes for an interesting work environment. Outrageous tech stories were so commonplace with this woman that I can't even remember most of them, but they were all ridiculous.
Actually, I have been trying to forget all the crap that happened while I worked there - it was all ridiculous.
- The Saudi designer is using Photoshop and all her palettes have disappeared (which is a feature - hit tab and they go away, hit it again and they come back). She panics! I'm standing by her desk and I ask her to hit her "tab" key. She pauses, lightly touches her space bar, then seems to hit keys at random, slowly... she didn't know where the tab key was.
- She's throwing a fit because her computer is broken. She boots the machine and the mouse/keyboard don't work. She has been force-rebooting it all morning and demanding a new computer from the manager. Shifting of the huge pile of papers and crap on her desk has managed to unplug the keyboard from the computer - which is the first thing I check - the mouse was plugged into the keyboard, which is why that didn't work.
- She claims her computer is irredeemably broken because it is so slow as to be unusable, and she wants a new one. She is working on a photoshop file she has created. It is big, very high resolution, and literally has hundreds of layers. It is several gigs in size. Eliminating layers and lowering resolution solves the problem. I also give her the umpteenth lesson in doing text in Illustrator or InDesign, not Photoshop.
I had plenty of experience cleaning up after local tech support too. "Totally incapable" is a descriptor which comes to mind.
- One guy fixed problems on an OS9 machine by copying data onto an external HD, wiping the computer's drive and then reinstalling OS9 and all software onto the computer again, then returning the data to the computer, all in exactly the same state it was in before the problems began. This process would take at least a full day, during which he would hang around, drink coffee and use the office phones while software installed, and he got paid by the hour. This happened about once a week. He never actually solved the problem. When I took ten minutes and resolved the extension conflict which was the root of the issue, I cut off his gravy train.
- A computer goes down after a power outage, and won't boot. The tech guy they call in declares it dead, and they need a new one. (by the way, his company also sells macs). The first thing I do is reset the PMU and it's running fine - two minutes work.
- There was a piece of OSX client software which we couldn't get to work with the hospital's back-up server. A tech guy who worked for CA flew in from Dubai to do troubleshooting on the back-up system, and I worked with him trying to resolve the OSX issues. We're sitting at my desk going through stuff, and he's baffled. He's asking me questions. I give him some answers, and he's still confused. Then he looks at me and asks "Macs have their own operating system?"
RTFM; please, I beg you.
As a Tech Support guy for over 30 years, mainframes of all sizes and large Sun/Fujitsu SPARC servers, the funniest stories come from Support Desk personnel. Like the guy who tried telling me that running an Oscilloscope off 110 Volt rather than 240V would have damaged it - this was on a faulty return from the manufacturer's annual service. Next was when I reported that the CD/DVD-ROM drive on my new 64-bit laptop was not being recognised by the BIOS - on hearing that I was running Linux, the guy's supervisor asked him to tell me that Linux wrote to the BIOS and may have corrupted it. Just as I was about to tell him his supervisor was talking out the top of his hat, it started working - problem appeared to be a bad contact as I only had to press hard on the caddy whenever I got the problem - since reseated and OK.
What can I say, I was a stupid user at one point too.
My first home computer was a Apple ][c, which came with a 5.25" drive built in. At the time, I was only marginally interested in how computer's worked, so I didn't bother keeping up with all the new technology. So when I was first offered a 3.5" disk, I really had no idea what to do with it. Obviously this was one of those new fangled "hard disks" (it obviously wasn't very floppy). But it fit fairly well into the 5.25" drive, especially after I jiggled it around a bit.
Of course, the drive wouldn't read the disk, so after a few unsatisfying reboots, I decided to yank the disk (I wasn't too surprised that the Apple ][c didn't support hard drives; it was a fairly old PC)
Unbeknownst to me, my "jigglings" got the metal latch of the 3.5" floppy caught on the inner mechanisms of the drive. I had to call my more computer-savy cousin to help me repair my PC.
Of course, now *I* fix *his* computers (and much more frequently too; I guess he wasn't too savy after all). But he never lets me forget that ONE mistake he fixed for me.
Well doesn't the laptop have a voltage regulator on the board? You'd think it would be a safe assumption for the average user... :)
After something like half an hour of increasingly baffling phone support, I figured out the problem, and found myself saying this:
"So, just to clarify, throughout this whole discussion, whenever you've used the word 'manually' you actually meant 'automatically', is that correct?"
"Oh, I don't know these technical terms!"
"Somehow the guy had made a screenshot while running the application and used that screenshot as Windows wallpaper. "
;)
should be
"A practical joker had made a screenshot while running the application and used that screenshot as Windows wallpaper."
all fixy
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"You have windows right?" "Yes" "Good, go to the lower right hand corner of your screen and read off the icons that are there" "bla bla bla finder bla bla"... "Ummm.. Sir, are you on a Mac?" "Yes"
(This is after some time troubleshooting Ethernet conenctivity to the modem, we were checking Device Manager for the driver)"Ok, click on the plus sign next to 'network adapters' and tell me what is listed "bla bla bla token ring bla bla"(no ethernet listed). Yup. Trying to connect to the ethernet port on the modem via a Token Ring card.
"My computer wont turn on!"
"What OS do you have?" "Word"
I didn't believe most of the tech support stories that are out there, until I took this job. Now, I believe all of them. There are people I wish I could refer to kindergarten.
Sounds like they might not be on site. Well if there's one thing I know about users it's that they often lie about what they have or have not done with their computer. Ok, maybe lie is too strong a word as that implies intent, but they at least misremember. So the techs may have questioned her aobut something like a firewall and she said no.
.cshrc receantly? .cshrc has been modified today and is busted* .cshrc, today in fact, and that's broken it, we've replaced it with the default so it works. ...etc
We get crap like this all the time:
They: The C compiler doesn't work.
We: Which one, what system?
They: The C compiler, the system I'm on.
*Repeat for a bit*
We: Ok so GCC doesn't work on shell. Got it. What's the error?
They: It says it can't find it.
We: Have you edited your
They: No.
*We have a look, sure enough the
We: Yes, you did modify the
They: Oh yes I changed that to make program X work, but that's not related to the compiler.
We: Yes it is and why did you say you didn't?
That's probably our biggest problem troubleshooting systems that we don't have hands on around here, and why we like making people send e-mail. When they have to think out the whole problem in one go we tend to get better information. I find that over 90% of problems that just don't seem to make sense (like somthing suddenly breaking) do make perfect sense, when the user stops giving us bad information they either:
1) Outright lie, because they've done something they know they aren't supposed to and think we won't figure it out (despite being asked to help).
2) Forget they did something and so claim they didn't.
3) Tell us what they think we want to hear so we will get around to telling them the magic secret to fix their problem.
4) Answer "ya" when they don't understand what we are saying.
#4 is a real big problem here. Lots of foriegners, The Chinese students, espically, tend to have very poor English skills. Their system for teaching English isn't real effective so the poor students have a lot of trouble. However they've been conditoned to just agree or say "ya" when they don't understand something. Maybe that's good in conversation, but it's real bad when you are being asked a technical question. If I ask you "Have you done X?" I want ot know the real answer so I can proceed correctly, I don't want to just hear "yes" if that's not the truth.
First, I run a small on-site computer consulting company. We repair computers for homes and small businesses. Usually software issues. Before that, I worked as an engineering-level tech support for Intel's server motherboard department; mostly supporting OEMs and distributors, but the occasional end user would make their way through lower level tech support to reach me. Before THAT, I was third-tier telephone tech support for a now-defunct DSL ISP. My job was to resolve issues that were related to the actual telephone line, usually by calling the customer's local phone provider.
Personal support instance 1: My on-site consulting. Customer calls in complaining that his internet connection isn't working right. He has a wireless router, but he can only get either his wireless laptop connected OR his wired desktop; not both at the same time. I get out there, have him demonstrate what's going on. I find out that his laptop works fine wirelessly. Then he demonstrates how he connects his desktop... By unplugging the ethernet cable from the back of the router and plugging it into the desktop. He didn't have an extra ethernet cable to plug the desktop into the router. 5 minutes later, I walk out after having sold him a 10' Ethernet cable for $10, and charged him $75 for the service call. Quickest money-making appointment I've ever had. (Just today I had one that was 'walk in, diagnose bad monitor, walk out', but I would have felt guilty charging for that.)
Personal support instance 2: Intel support. A large (very large, you've heard of them,) OEM used our server boards in their products. Their head tech rep calls me one day complaining that multiple (but not all) of their customers are complaining that when they plug a PS/2 mouse in to their server, using a certain model of our mainboard, it loses video. (On-board video.) If they use a PCI video card, it works just fine; if they use a USB mouse, it works just fine. But it's a server, and at the time, USB mice weren't as common as they are now. After much telephone troubleshooting, I have them have one of their customers send the system to me. I check it out, and indeed, plugging a PS/2 mouse in makes it lose video. (Being a PS/2 mouse, it has to be plugged in at boot time to work, so I plug in a mouse, turn it on, and never get video, even though a POST card says everything is fine, and I can use remote management tools to verify that it is booting correctly.) So I remove the board from the case, put it on my test bench, and it works just fine. I put it back in the case, and no video with mouse. I double check, and there is nothing in the case that should be shorting out either the mouse port or the video port. After a few days of hair-pulling, I notice that this case has standoff holes for both our board, and someone else's not-quite-full-ATX board. The OEM had put standoffs in ALL of the holes, even the ones that don't line up with screw holes in our full-ATX-compliant board. But none of them are under the mouse port or the video port. When I remove the extras, though, the server all of a sudden works just fine. I finally narrow it down to a standoff that lies underneath the built-in SCSI connector (channel 2.) After talking with our engineers, we figure out that SCSI channel 2 shares a ground with the video plug and the mouse plug. Apparently plugging in a mouse completes a short circuit that shorts out the video. Case solved: OEM had to instruct their factory to be more careful installing standoffs.
Personal support instance 3: DSL company. The worst problem to have to diagnose is 'intermittent sync'. When the DSL modem loses its connection sometimes, but is fine others. The phone company always blames internal wiring, customer equipment, or the boogeyman. So I get this customer who loses sync every night at about sunset. It has been doing so for months. As sunset got later (it started in the early Spring,) he would lose sync later. He had called in and previous technicians had not been able to find a cause. The p
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
We had a product that was delivered on three single-sided 5.24" floppies. One time we got a call from someone who'd managed to cram the second disc into the drive in without removing the first disc, and then called us to complain, "the third one won't fit!" When we finally figured out what he was talking about (and what he'd done), it became a running joke in the company for months afterwards.
While working for an administrative division in the Navy, I received a call from a lady whose computer would not "turn on."
Caller: "I can't get my new computer to come on."
Tech (me): "Is the power on the monitor on?" (We have spoken before).
Caller: "Of course. And I keep pushing on the foot pedal and nothing is happening."
Tech : "I'll be right there."
If you haven't already guessed, when I got there, she had the mouse on the floor and was pushing the button with her foot. We had just done an upgrade from DOS to Winodws, and the old computers did not have a mouse. The mouse was new to her environment and she thought it was like a sewing machine pedal.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Granted we have more than our fair share of bloated hogs here, but don't take those CDC "obesity" figures at face value. For one, they're based on BMI, which is a faulty way of indexing "fatness" to begin with, and some years ago they lowered the index for "obesity" so overnight millions of overweight Americans became obese without gaining an ounce.
-- Old Man Kensey
The Dog Phone
An elderly lady with several pets called to say that her telephone failed
to ring when her friends called, and that on the few occasions when it did ring her
dog always barked first.
The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, hooked in his test set, and dialed.
The phone didn't ring. He tried again. The dog barked loudly, followed by a
ringing telephone.
Climbing down form the pole, the telephone repairman found:
1. A dog was tied to the telephone system's ground post via an iron chain and collar.
2. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current.
3. After several such jolts, the dog would start barking and urinating on the ground.
4. The wet ground now completed the circuit and the phone would ring
I was swapping stupid user tricks with a TRW printer tech while we waited for parts to show up from his shop. This was back in the mid 80s, I think. He told me one that had me laughing so hard I was crying.
:)
It seems that way back when, TRW had gotten into providing support contracts for people in small towns all over the Midwest. We were in the Twin Cities, and this guy's territory covered Minnesota, Iowa, and most of North and South Dakota. Anyhow, he gets this call from a lawyer's secretary somewhere in North Dakota.
It seems that no matter what she tried, she just couldn't seem to save her files to her 5 1/4" floppies. This was back in the days when many PCs were sold without any hard drive, so the loss of those floppies meant that she had no soft copies of her boss's correspondence. She didn't mind so much, as she was required to print out everything anyway. Still, she knew that if she could use those old letters as templates, she wouldn't have near as much work.
Well, the tech goes back and forth with her. No magnets nearby. No, she wasn't using magnets to stick them to the desk. (Don't laugh! I actually had a user do that to me!) No paper clips. None of the more usual or even unlikely problems that we all saw back then.
He even walked her through saving a file from Word Perfect, then verified that she could actually pull it back up. Everything seemed to check out fine.
Now, he doesn't want to drive to the far side of North Dakota unless he has to. It's a looong haul. So he has her send him one of the bad floppies so he can run it through some diagnostic software.
It shows up in a 3" mailer tube.
Think about that for a second. He had to explain it to me twice before I got what he was telling me.
He pulls the floppy out and unrolls it, but naturally by this time it's unreadable. He calls her up and asked her how it got that way. It seems that after she was done filling up a floppy, she would slap a blank label on it, slide over to the old IBM Selectric typewriter, roll the floppy in like a piece of paper, and fill in the label!
Twenty minutes of patient over the phone tutoring later, problem solved.
Tech Support Request:
No, I won't post the photo
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Allthough it seems to not happen as frequently as much anymore, I would get IP banned from slashdot and wikipedia about twice a week because my isp uses dynamic ip addresses.
Chances are any disscution on Slashdot will degrade into a flamewar about ID/Christianity within 14 posts.
"My favorite horror story was while working a tech support call for a governmental employee, when asked to take her mouse and click on the "start" button all I could hear over the phone is what I later found out was the user banging her mouse against the monitor."
I've heard that one a few times now. It sounds like a lot of the stories on Snopes. Frankly, I just don't buy it.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
I once found a 5.25" floppy folded in half and shoved into a 3.5" drive... You really have to wonder at some people's thought processes.
I had a similar experience when my former ISP decided that they could stop spam by blocking TCP port 25 on all of their customers. Since it never occured to them to actually _notify_ anybody of this, the first thing I noticed was that I was no longer receiving any mail.
I went through all the proper steps to confirm that they were indeed silently filtering all inbound SMTP traffic and then called their helpdesk to ask what was going on and when they were going to stop doing it. The first person I reached listened to my story, thought for a moment, and then suggested that if my port wasn't working then maybe I should take my computer to a shop to get the port fixed.
Then he hung up on me.
Later that day I finally reached Someone With Clue who confirmed that something was indeed happening, but he had no idea why because nobody had told him about it either.
By the next day I had a new ISP.
You would NOT beleive the number of people who after I told them I had no listing, would say "But I'm standing right in front of it!"
is to glue the mouse to the desk while she's away.
I used to work on a helpdesk for BT (UK phone provider). One of my favourite incidents was when we were called out to fix someone's PC that was overheating. According to the fault report, it was "Overheating due to having too many files in the root directory".
What had actually happened was a hardware engineer had been called out to look at the PC overheating, and as part of his routine checks had looked at the hard drive. There were quite a few data files in C:\, and the engineer had mentioned that they might want to fix that (this was in FAT12/DOS 3.x days when you could only have 128 - I think? - files in the root folder). A fair point - if the user hit the limit they'd probably get confused - but for some reason the user interpreted this as being the cause of overheating. And that's a software problem, so they called us.
Another good one was a fault reported on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum that was being used for some critical purpose in a telephone exchange, and could we take a look at it? Be very afraid.
On a related note, we also dealt with ordering new kit. We used to get a few requests for a Zenith laptop from phone engineers for testing lines, etc - because it was good for playing this 3D golf game that was doing the rounds. Requests for this were usually denied by management, because they see that the guy just wanted a laptop to play with. In response to the denial (and more often, as a first line of attack as people got wise to this), they would opt to order a 'Tester 4A' instead, which also allowed them to test phone lines/systems. Orders for a Tester 4A were always approved by management - with, I like to imagine, a harrumphing grunt of approval that here was an engineer that was actually interested in doing their job for a change, dammit.
Now, I'm sure you can guess what a 'Tester 4A' actually was :-)
Anecdote from a co-worker, that he swears is true:
HE was doing support back in the day of early brother typewriter/processor type machines. Had a VERY nervous user who had taken one of these luggables up to a conference in new york city and couldnt get it to work, she had never used an electric typewriter of this kind before. He walks her through setting it up, getting hte ribbon in and everything else and just as theyre finishing, he tells her to turn it on. AS she flips it on, the lights in the room go out. The lights in New York go out. No matter what he said, he could not convice this nice hysterical lady that she did not cause the great blackout of nineteen seventy something.
Frankly, i think he made up the story, but i find it amusing.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
don't forget to put in the standard minimum time too. For those calls I like 20 minutes.
I get a good bit of these when people wonder why they aren't getting their full bandwidth commit as the result of a cnet style broadband test. These are the customers who aren't even on T1's they just use the standard feed with no sla once it hits the public internet and don't like to be told there isn't a whole lot anyone can do about it.
I work at a webhosting company. A week or two ago, I recieved a phone call about a customer who had problems with their php based website. I reviewed their site's code, and I could immediately tell it was a result of poor coding, not a server side issue. So, I explained this to the client, and he immediately denied it, and told me he was a "PHP expert of 14 years". Well, thats nice, but PHP has only been around for 11 years. :P
Not really support story per se. One time I was helping a girl with a Final Cut project. She seemed pretty computer savvy, not a hand holder like some of the people we get in there.
She had some audio files on her laptop we needed to get onto the G5. She asked about emailing them to herself, I said that'd work but a flash drive would be faster. She said she had one with her but was reluctant to use it. She wanted to just burn a CD instead.
I asked why - she said flash drives were too expensive.
"$20 for 256MB? I can get a 700MB CD for $1."
I said "Yeah but flash drives are faster and you can't really reuse a CD like you can a flash drive" (CDRWs suck, admit it).
She looked really surprised and said - "you can delete from a flash drive?"
As it turns out she was on something like her 5th flash drive and had never even tried to delete from them.
One time a customer called in because the techs at her company (she was in purchasing) couldn't install the boxed version of our product due to a known bug. We had an updated version available as a 4 CD ISO download, but no corresponding boxed version. They had a modem link, so this was going to take a very long time. Recall that this woman is in purchasing, and often deals with suppliers who send out catalogs as huge image-filled PDFs, which do not do well over a shared modem link. Reciting the line she had used so often before, she said, and I quote verbatim:
"Can you just print them out and mail them?"
We calculated that in base64 using standard fixed width resolution, this would take 833 REAMS of paper.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Support: Sir, you need to disconnect all of the cables from your computer, put back in the box, and take it back to the store where you bought it from.
Caller: Oh, is my computer defective?
Support: No. You, sir, are to stupid to own a computer.
I worked in tech support doing internal support for a chain of gas stations. They had Windows 95 and Microsoft Exchange set up to send the central office its sales figures everyday. One day an emmployee calls in and says "Help! My computer is frozen! What should I do?" This happens a lot, because the modems we used caused conflicts with the mouse somehow, and the program we used was buggy, and about a million other reasons that had me questioning the capability of the Sysadmin. So I asked, "OK, what do you see on your screen?"
She replied, "It says 'It is now safe to turn off your computer.'"
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
I'm at a company for about a year so far, everything seems fine. Assistant IT admin blah blah.
I'm testing something, so via smbclient I send a little popup message to my boss. His systems name is bill. Or at least, I thought it was.
The message, which obviously should have been thought out beforehand, was "This is a f*cking test." without the *.
Hm. It didn't show up on my bosses system. What gives... What's the solution? Why, of course, to send it again. Damn, STILL no message. Okay fine, give up, time for a break.
About an hour later, the company president, whose first name is Bill, strolls in, and asks "So, guys, are we doing anymore f*cking tests?", without the * of course.
I go white at this point, and my boss looks at me and demands to know what the hell I've done.
Turns out my bosses system was indeed Bill, but with an additional letter at the end. Of course, the company presidents computer was called Bill. D'oh!!
Thankfully the company president was very laid back, and found it hillarious... But only after he let me fry myself mentally for about 10 seconds. He teased me on and off for the 3 further years I worked there, occasionally wondering what I was "f-ing" testing lately, which brought very weird looks from anyone else in the vicinity.
Check those commands before pressing enter...
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Way back in the '80's I worked for a PC wholesaler...We also did a little maintenance work on the side...
One day a guy called to say he wanted us to replace the defective Seagate ST251 hard drive he bought from us.
When I asked him what was wrong with the drive, he said it was making noise so he opened the case and cleaned the heads and now it wasn't working at all...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
We got a call once from a customer who was trying to figure out why their Linux server kept rebooting. We looked at the logs, and sure enough, a few times a week, usually around 9 a.m. or 1 p.m., the system would gracefully shut down, as if someone had typed "reboot" or "shutdown -r now", and start back up again without fsck or any error. They weren't running any clustering or management software that should be auto-rebooting, or anything in cron, and there was nothing in root's bash history. At the time of these reboots, there were no users logged in to the system. There was no data corruption or substantial negative impact other than the intranet web server being down for a couple of minutes, but they were worried that this was a symptom of a more serious problem.
After a bit of pondering, I figured it out.
Does the server boot into X, or stop at a text login?
Text login
And is it plugged into a KVM, or does it have its own keyboard, mouse, and monitor?
It's on a KVM
What else is plugged into that KVM?
A mysql server and our domain controller.
What time does your Windows administrator come in to work?
He's here right now, should I get him on the line?
No, that's okay, but am I right that he gets in to work around 9:00 and gets back from lunch around 1:00?
I guess so, usually.
What does he do to log into the domain controller?
He switched displays, saw the "press ctrl-alt-del to log in", and burst out laughing.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
My company mainly did support for small- to medium-sized businesses, but we had an ad in the phone book so we'd get calls from residential customers. No more than one per week, though. So a call comes in on a quiet afternoon from a gentleman who said his computer wouldn't turn on. I try to do as much as I can on the phone first, for free, before trucking out to the house, because it was our company policy to charge $100/hr. with a 1 hour minimum.
So, I start by asking if he'd had a power outage recently. We're on Cape Cod, and the power here is terrible: dirty, prone to surges and outages, and served by a single plant (Mirant, on the Cape Cod Canal). "No, not recently," he said. "How old is the PC?" I asked. If it was recent enough to fall under warranty, the customer would have to deal with the company directly. If it was quite old, I'd bring a replacement power supply with me. If it fell within a certain time period (2001-2004), it may have been bad caps on the motherboard. "Two years old, and out of warranty," was the reply.
"Okay, I have to ask this," I said, "but is it plugged in?".
"Yes," he said.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure".
"I'll be there within the hour." I get in my car and drive out to the customer's house.
Now, I don't like doing residential calls. You see too much of peoples' lives when you're in their houses. They love to shoulder-surf, second-guess, and sometimes it's really unpleasant, like this one woman whose aging Doberman (a nice, gentle dog, really) laid down next to her PC and began emitting eye-watering farts while I was showing her how to burn a DVD. Or the B&B owners whose residential apartment looked like something out of Deliverence, complete with slow-witted children who stared at me the whole time like I was the first outsider to visit their enclave.
The customer's house was pleasant enough, a retiree's home filled with his wife's chachkas and knick-knacks: hundreds of Hummel figurines, collectable plates, Margaret Keene's paintings of wide-eyed children. I was relieved that I was not stepping into something out of Pink Flamingoes. The computer, a Gateway, was in a guest room. The first thing I did was check to see where the power cable went.
It was unplugged.
I plugged it in, booted it up. The customer began apologizing profusely, and his wife came in to say that she had unplugged the PC in order to vacuum the carpet. It was then that I noticed the plaques and certificates on the wall: he had retired from DEC, where he was employed as an engineer. This guy knew forgot more tech in his lifetime than I'll ever know.
I couldn't charge him the full $100 just to plug his computer back into the power strip, but I knew I'd have a fight with my employer if I left emptyhanded, so I split the difference and left with a check for $50. I assuaged my guilt at taking even that much by giving him my personal cell number and telling him to call me if he had any further problems. Surprisingly, my boss had no problem with this.
I'll add one more mini-anecdote: there's an ASP with a TLA (who shall remain nameless, but it's not EDS, though just as big...they're known for doing automated data processing) who serves one of our larger customers, a car dealership. The dealership runs maybe 75% of its business on their software, which is done with a terminal emulator via telnet over a dedicated T-1 to the ASP's datacenter. Whenever the ASP changes their software, numerous things break. Usually we fix things, but this time the ASP sent a tech to sort it all out.
The tech proceeds to take control of the Cisco 2610 router that connects to the datacenter, changing the passwords from the ones we had set. I inform the tech that we need access to the router in order to troubleshoot the connection problems that pop up from time to time. The tech tells me that he can't, because the ASP uses the same passwords for every router on their network. After I successfully supress a bout of hysteri
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
These anecdotes are NOT bullshit. Fucking prig. "I've never had it happen to me so it never happens to anyone." There are far too many idiots in the world for these stories to be all bullshit, and personally I believe most of them. Some have been embellished, sure, but they're mostly true. I work in repair for the phone company; we get the same things, people who think the battery in the cordless will run it when their power is out, "But I've never had trouble with it before!" or "but it was fine this morning!" etc etc.
My personal favorite of all time was when I worked at the waterbed store. I personally heard half the conversation, and the guy involved in it, Reggie, faithfully reproduced the other half:
Caller: "My waterbed mattress is a foot too short on the bottom and a foot too long on the side."
Reggie: "It is? Hmmm...What size is it?"
"Queen size."
"Do you have a tape measure? Measure it; how long is it?"
"Five feet."
"And how wide is it?"
"Seven feet."
"Well, you've got it in their sideways. Turn it."
"What that valve doesn't go on the side?"
"No, it goes at the bottom. Turn it."
"Oh, I feel so stupid.."
Yet another true story others will foolishly scoff at.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I worked at WorkPerfect UNIX (5.1 and 6.0 at the time) and I was one of 3 last-tier support techs for customer escalations. The irate, well-paid lawyer complained that ever since installing the latest version of WP with its new print drivers, the printer has been squeeking. Yes - WordPerfect broke the printer. No amount of reasoning from any of hte previous techs down the line satisfied her - and I was just about out of reasonable explanations about how there was absolutely no way WordPerfect could have caused this. Being the last-tier of support, I decided to provide a bit of white-glove service as a last resort. I put her on hold, contacted a HP printer service center in her area (SF, CA), told them the deal and told them we'd pay the bill whatever it cost (this was back in the glory days of WP where we could had a blank check to do whatever it took to make a customer happy). I got back on the phone, told her I spoke with one of our developers who assured us that - as remote as this problem was - that technically is COULD happen. I also told her that we were sending out a repair tech the next day (who, of course, was the HP hardware tech) who wouldn't leave until the problem solved. The result? The next day, not 1 but 2 thank you calls for being the ONE TECH who truely understood the problem and had the BRAINS that no one else seemed to have to solve her problem. 1 huge complementary letter to my managers and 1 happy customer. The HP tech and I had a big laugh about it for weeks afterward.
This is the entire problem with the world today. Everybody (or most people anyway) think EVERYTHING works by magic. And not even halfway real magic where you'd have to actually put thought into doing it and raising energy, gathering herbs or crystals or carving runes or whatever, just "Bewitched" shit where people wiggle their noses and it happens. Miracles.
After all, every problem on TV is solved within thirty seconds. That's a commercial. Or at most with an hour or two. That's episodic TV. And instead of putting two whole seconds of thought into how something might work, why bother using those nerdy ol' brains when you can just call someone?
Was it here on slashdot where I read that a crowd of italians' response to "How does TV work?" was "God's Will!"
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
When I was in college, the PC support was split into a hardware group for the whole campus, then each department had their own software support. While working in the hardware support group, we got a call about a monitor that was completely blank. So, I loaded up a refurb monitor on a cart and trudged to the opposite corner of campus. When I got to the professor's office, the computer was on one side of the office and the monitor was on the opposite... not even plugged into electricity. She swore up and down that she didn't do it. I plugged it in and was her hero for the day.
When I was working helpdesk at the university , circa 1998, a woman called with some issue and when I started to troubleshoot with her the following conversation took place...
"Ok, ma'am.. what operating system are you using"
"hmmmm....I'm not sure..oh wait..Windows 98...yeah..it's Windows 98"
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah...I'm sorry..it's windows 98"
"Ok then can you click on the START button for me"
"Hmm..I don't see a start button...where would it be"
"It is most likely at the bottom left, but it could be on either side or even the top of the screen if somone dragged the taskbar to those locations"
"Hmm...no...I don't see it..."
"Ok...do you see any sort of taskbar on any border of the screen...like a toolbar of sorts with some icons or where your minimized windows are if you have any programs open?"
"Yeah..I have that bar..oh, yeah.it's up at the top"
"Ok...what does it have on it.."
"Hmmm...ok well there is the little apple...File.."
"Oh..ok ma'am could you hold on one second".
At this point I put her on hold because I knew I was about to lose it and my buddy was sort of watching/listening to me and as soon as I put her on hold and looked at him he said.."She's got a frickin' Mac doesn't she..she's got a fricken mac, doesn't she!!" and we all busted out laughing. I regained my compusure and everyone got silent and I got back on the line
"Hello, ma'am are you still there..?"
"I said something really really stupid didn't I"?
I lived my very own favorite tech support horror story....
and...
and...
and...
and...
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
My favourite support calls:
:)
... well... it's the letter A, and the colon symbol. ....
1. A friend of mine had a computer with similar specs to mine, a 486 DX2-66 with 16 MB of RAM (I had 12 MB). Thing was, on my computer Duke Nukem 3D ran great, but on his it was slow as a dog. He drives his computer out to my place, 25 miles, and we set it up in my basement. Sure enough, it's freaking slow. I check his conventional memory, seems fine, in fact everything seems normal. But it's slow. So I hit the turbo button, and what do you know? The damn thing works now
2. Same friend, new computer. He's got a shiny new Athlon (original Athlon) and everyone's envious. But for some reason his "explorer is messed up"; when he opens "My Computer" the button appears on the task bar but the window is nowhere to be seen. But if he clicks on the button he can see a maximize/minimize animation, but no window appears. I right click on the button, hit "resize", tap the arrow keys, and the My Computer window expands out of nowhere in the middle of the screen. He says "Great, now why don't you just hit the turbo button?"
3. Customer where I used to work: The computer shop I worked at had lots of corporate customers who had their own IT depts and only called us in when things got bad. Well, some non-IT user calls us up and says he's trying to install Sympatico software on his Win 95 box. (Windows 95 OEM version A, or Win95 upgrade, doesn't have TCP/IP by default). So Windows says "Please insert Windows 95 Disk 2". The user is confused, he doesn't know what to do.
Me: Are you at the computer?
User: No
Me: Did your helpdesk give you any disks?
User: Yes, there are two stacks, the Windows 95 disks 1-13 and the Sympatico disks 1-4
Me: And the computer is asking for Windows Disk 2?
User: Yes
Me: What's the problem?
User: Which disk do I put in? There are two disk twos, one in each pile.
Me (trying not to sound condescending): Well, usually when the computer wants a particular disk, it'usually pretty specific. So if it's asking for Windows 95 disk 2, I'd use the Disk 2 from the Windows 95 pile.
User: So that's it? What do I do next?
Me: Well, you can press enter to acknowledge that the disk is there. But if Windows asks you WHERE the disk is, type A: and press ENTER.
User: (long pause)... how do you spell that?
Me:
User:
Me: It's next to the 'L'
User: which side?
Me: The right side.
User: Do I have to press SHIFT?
Me: Yes.
And we're not talking about people who don't speak English, or who speak it as a second or third lanugage or anything. This is someone who was born and raised speaking English, but doesn't know what a colon is. One of my coworkers told me I should have said "You type the letter A, then your name..."
I got called over to do support for a company that is partnered with my company, and owns a few offices in our building. The accountant was trying to do a year-end in MYOB and needed to rename a database.
I navigated to the database folder in Windows explorer and told her to rename the correct database. To my amazement, she closed the explorer window, opened MYOB, selected "open" then right clicked on the database and selected "rename".
I asked why she did that, and it turns out it's what she does when she needs any file in Windows!
To quote the SysAdmin creed "down, not across"
Anyhoo, my favourite all time one was when we replaced the computers at one of our branches. There was a particulary crotchity older gentleman at this branch that hated the new keyboard (small laptop-esqe funky thing with no numpad) and wanted the old keyboard back (Full 101 keyboard, F1 keys and numpad). So I sent it out in the internal mail, telling him to call me when he recieves it.
I get a call a couple of hours later saying he can't get it working. I find out the older keyboard is PS2 whereas the new one is USB. No prob, I sez. I tell him to turn the computer off, plug the old keyboard in and turn it back on. Guess what his response is IN IT'S ENTIRETY???
"I didn't have to do that with the new one"
I said "Just do what I said, it will fix it". He repeats it with anger growing in his voice. For 8-9 minutes, this guy argues with me that since the new keyboard can be hotswapped, the old one should as well. He even gets pissed off (with me!!!) when he can't get the PS2 keyboard working, even though I told him the computer needs to restart to see it. Eventually he restarts the computer, the keyboard works fine. Just after he see's the new keyboard working, he say's it:
"Why do they make these bloody things so hard to use?"
I would have happily chopped off his hands and worn them on a necklace as a warning to others.
This space for rent
I work for a small retail/repair shop in a somewhat rural town in Ohio.
We had a customer come in with a laptop. Brand new. He said his previous laptop was hacked in a large town on the west coast, by russian hackers. Said a beautiful woman in a coffee shop asked to use, and then infected it with a virus (in his words, "porn started popping up on the screen and they knew what I was doing"). So he ditched that laptop and bought this new one. He's now living in a local hotel. He's been in several times, he had us install an ABSURD amount of privacy software on the machine (the full McAfee suite, some browsing software that routes through an anonymous proxy, etc). I didn't have the heart/inclination to tell him he could get the same things for free with things like torpark. So we do all that for him, he brings the laptop in like a week later for us to format and reinstall everything.
He also made me show him how to change the MAC address of his wifi card, then he made me show him how to disable the wifi, because he wasn't going to use it since they might find out what he was doing. He bought a router/firewall combo to connect to the ethernet at the hotel and then called us trying to get help setting it up.
He is also very loud, obnoxious, and has a tendency to use profanity when other customers are in the store. He also pulled up a picture of a gun on a webpage when he came in once, and then proudly announced "I just bought one of these today!" Needless to say, we put up the notice forbidding concealed weapons.
I'm thinking that if he comes in again we're going to ban him.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
Years ago my employer at the time decided that in addition to the perfectly good archaeological consulting business he was running, we would branch out into the ISP arena. As a result of some horrible karma from a past life, I was detailed to answer "help desk" calls in addition to all the normal things an archaeologist does. This was a temporary expedient until an actual staff for the ISP business was hired. I took two calls that still stand out. One was from a man who had signed up and waited eagerly the internet to do its thing. When he was flooded with amazing things he called to ask how come he had npt so far recieved any "mail from the E." I often still refer to email by that term and now so does my family.
The other call I have seen labeled as an Urban Myth. Since I took it, I know it isn't, and it wasn't a joke either. I answered a call and found I was talking with a middle aged woman. She had signed up for internet service three days earlier and had just received her computer. She had successfully set it up - mostly. She was eager to get on line and wanted one of us "help desk" people to talk her through the process. I talked her through booting the system and then asked her to open the floppy disk that contained the basic driver (Trumpet Winsock) she needed to install. There was a pause and she then said "nothing" was happening. I was asking what she meant when she said, "oh dear! It just broke!" After a little furthe discussion, I discovered she had carefully placed her mouse on the floor and tried to work it like a sewing machine foot pedal. Naturally, it failed as she put more weight on it. About two years later I was surprised to see a similar story listed as a modern urban myth.
JD
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
"Let me guess: You were IP-banned for language?"
Maybe he was IP banned for earning too many negative moderations over a legitimate complaint about Apple. Go against public opinion, and some dipshits with mod points will go attack posts made in completely unrelated stories. It's happened to me.
Not every IP ban on Slashdot is just.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Someone I know works in the support of a local cellphone company. Once a person called him wanting to buy a certain ringtone. He had one of those prepaid deals in which you charge your account with a certain amount of money and after you use it up, you need to recharge it. Since the account was empty he was explained that he can't buy the ringtone until he puts some more money into it. The customer asked if he can get it now, promising to charge his account as soon as he can. After my friend explained that this is not possible, the man agreed, saying he'll charge his phone and call right back, and just asked that if my friend hold on to that ringtone for him. My friend tried to explain that ringtones can't run out, but since the customer didn't seem to get the idea, he simply ended up saying "Ok, I'll hold on to a copy for you".
...How did this get modded informative???
I mean yes, 5 Funny, but...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It was an old, horribly scratched CD called "Star Warped", yet it had worked every time I tried, no matter how badly scratched it got. It was kind of fun -- think in the days before mainstream Flash or any real Flash games, that's basically what this was. Lots of little parody Flash games with voiceovers. Anyway, I'm not sure if it was even the Lite-On 52x drive or the old 24x drive, but it did explode. If it was the 24x drive, that might explain why we have no working 24x drives anymore. Definitely not easy to shake all the pieces out of the drive...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My mother came back from her cruise-of-a-lifetime with her new digital camera. "Here" she says, "I'll get the thingie from the camera and you can put the photos on your computer". Two minutes later she comes in and hands me .... a battery. "This is not a good sign", thinks I. Later digging around in her actual memory card produces a handful of pictures from the second half of the voyage. What happened to the rest is a mystery, but they were probably wiped by a "helpful" crew-member who provided some "tech-support" of his own at one point during the cruise.
I developed the online help files for a webmail client a little while back. In one of the help files, I provide my (spam-proofed) email address so that users can email me if they have suggestions for the help files or if they can point out something that may have been overlooked. It even says that I have nothing to do with the actual webmail client -- only the help files, that's it -- and am only to be emailed for suggestions on the help files.
Despite these very clear instructions, I have received countless emails of people asking for technical support for the installation of the webmail client they use that could hosted on a server in Bulgaria for all I know. Most of the time, I reply with a stock message, but one in particular called for more...
Arrrgg!!!
I can't get into my mail account. I have tried [www.website.com/webmailclient] with the password of ********* ( I think that is the right combo) to no avail.... Any chance you can help me?
[Signature]
[Alternate email]
[Phone Number]
Please email me as I can give you any security info you may need including SS# and/or bank account number I am using to pay for your services.
I need to get access to my account as soon as possible as I think I am loosing business as I write this. Thanks for your help.
[Signature]
Maybe she thought I was Nigerian.
You can run phone signals (or anything else on RJ-11; I've got a doorbell wired up to use it :) ) down cat 5 easily. It really simplifies wiring to just have one big patch panel, and generic outlets that can be used for network or phone. You have to be careful about plugging them in right, though - you don't want your network card ringing!
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I deal with seriously clueless employees all day.... but the ones that drive me crazy are when I call for tech support and get the idiots...
Case #1
I had to temporarily run a company computer in an adjacent building, complete with network printer. I set up a WAP, a range extender, a wireless NIC in the PC, and a wireless-to-ethernet bridge. Because it's ****sys crap, it takes a while and many device reboots to get it all to behave, but finally it does. Everything connects fine... except the printer. Turns out the print jobs they needed are generated by a server on another network, and the subnet on the bridge was 255.255.255.0. "Change the subnet". Easy peasy, eh? I go into the config page, change it, restart it, and... it's the same. I try 5 ways from Sunday, it refuses to accept any other subnet. Note that nothing was on DHCP...
So I (reluctantly) call in for support. I think happy thoughts. I explain my problem. My device X won't accept any other subnet. I am not on DHCP. I exactly know my problem. I want a fix.
Him: "What is the model of your WAP?" I give it to him.
"That is not the right model. What is the model of your WAP?" I check the config page, I tell him.
Him: "I'm sorry sir, that's not a correct model.What is the model of your WAP?" I get a little annoyed, I tell him it doesn't matter what the model is, it's not configured for DHCP, and my problem is with my bridge, not my WAP.
Him: "I need the model to continue troubleshooting. What is the model of your WAP?" I tell him it is the only 54G WAP they currently sell. I point out the web page. I explain in detail how my problem is subnet on my bridge, not WAP related, and how it doesn't matter, I can get to the config page anyways.
Him: "I need the model to continue troubleshooting. Can you give me the numbers on the black tag on the WAP?" Well, no, I can't, the WAP is currently about 20' off the ground in a warehouse in another building... but I'm not having WAP problems, screw my WAP, I want help with my bri...
Him: "I'm sorry sir, but I need the model number of your WAP to continue troubleshooting. What is the model of your WAP?"
I tell him it doesn't matter, pick one at random and continue. He won't. I tell him I understand he has a script to follow, but he needs to move beyond it. He won't. I ask for as supervisor or a T2 tech, he refuses. Given my 40 minute hold time, I don't want to call back in now that I have a live body. He gets to the part of his script where he has to give me my case number before telling me to call back when I have my WAP model. I refuse to accept the number, I keep trying. He keeps saying "What is the model of your WAP?". I tell him, clearly, "You are annoying me greatly by continually asking the exact same irrelevant question in the exact same tone of voice in the exact same wordings. Do not ask me the model of my WAP again. I have told it to you, you don't have it, and I don't care. Move on. We are going to talk about my bridge now, about how it won't accept a subnet change, and how you're going to fix this. There will be no more mention of my WAP model, period. Am I clear?"
Him: "Yes sir, I am sorry sir. Could you please tell me the model of your WAP?"
So after I eat the phone, I get my case number, I hang up, I climb up the 20' to the WAP, I unmount it, I bring it down.
The model I was telling him, the model it says on the config page of the WAP?
"WAP54G Revision C" (I paraphrase)
The model on the sticker?
"WAP54G-C"
I call back with my newfound wealth of knowledge.
"I'm sorry sir, I don't have that case number on file."
Case #2:
I am configuring a new static DSL link, with router, some firewall config for an app passthrough. I need the default gateway, and because of the nature of the on-the-fly configuration of this DSL provider, I can't get it until I have it. I call.
This is a week or two after WAP-Boy. I am worried, but cautiously optimistic.
"Hi, new business class static DSL line, here's my #, I just need to know your default gateway f
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
A few years ago I was working at my university's IT helpdesk while I finished my degree. Here is one of many incidents. There's a userfriendly.org cartoon based on this though I don't have the URL handy.
This is, approximately, my 15th attempt to post this past the fucking lameness filters. WHAT ARE THE JUNK CHARACTERS GIVE ME A CLUE.
From: Julia [mailto:@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2002 10:34 PM
To: helpdesk@student.murdoch.edu.au
Subject: Re: Only 20 days remain until your email account will be
deactivated.
Dear Help Desk
Regarding your above mentioned email, I am very concerned that you will
deactivate my personal hotmail email account. The email address I am using
is my personal hotmail account which I do not want deactivated by Murdoch
University.
Please do not cancel this email address. I would appreciate a reply email
to let me know that my personal hotmail account is safe and that you will
not be deactivating it.
Thank you.
Julia Taylor.
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: Click Here
***
From: Student IT Helpdesk
To: 'Julia '
Subject: RE: Only 20 days remain until your email account will be deactiva ted.
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 11:51:08 +0800
Hi Julia,
Unfortunately, Murdoch University's long-term plan to take over the world
has not yet reached the hotmail acquisition stage. As such, the email you
received is referring to your Murdoch University student email account (eg:
j.@student.murdoch.edu.au ).
You have set your preferred email address in MyInfo as your hotmail account
- as such, all email received by your student account is being forwarded on
to your hotmail account. That is why you received the deactivation notice
there.
Hope this clears things up,
Regards,
Richard @ Student IT Helpdesk.
---
Student IT Helpdesk
Murdoch University
Email: helpdesk@student.murdoch.edu.au
URL: http://wwwstudent.murdoch.edu.au/
Contact: (+61 8) 9360 2000
Hours of operation: 8.00am - 5.00pm Mon-Fri (+08:00 GMT)
---
***
From: Julia [mailto:@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2002 1:13 AM
To: Student IT Helpdesk
Subject: Email Account
Hi Richard
Wonderful news! Thanks very much.
Julia.
And from the same time ... we had some users that were mistakenly sent expiry notices on their enrolments. One such user emailed the helpdesk and got an automated reply telling them we would deal with it once the break was over (we were shut for about 2 weeks over Christmas). So they replied to the automatic reply with the following - the second last sentence is the kicker:
Dear Help desk,
Please help.
My email is about to be de-activated because I am currently not recorded
as having re-enrolled. I have previously asked for help as I thought I
had re-enrolled correctly and I printed out my re-enrolment on Dec 11th
showing the subjects I have re-enrolled in.
I know you are not there and cannot help before my email address expires,
so I don't know why these alarming messages are being sent.
Please do not send an automated reply saying that you are not there.
I hope you are able to help.
Sincerely,
This email speaks for itself... unfortunately I didn't keep a record of my reply.
From: [mailto:]
Sent: Saturday, 27 September 2003 10:59 PM
To: helpdesk@student.murdoch.edu.au
Subject: Help me please
Dear Sir,
Please let me know how can I get login facility and please also answer my
few questions given below.
Q. No. 1 Computer plays an important role in helping researchers. Describe
different tips for guidance
Q. No. 2 what are 1. Graphs 2. Pie Charting3. Tables 4. Boolean Search
three illustrations of each :
Q. No. 3 How data are collected in different research methods. Describe in
detail.
Q. No. 4 A researcher has surveyed more than fifty libraries and collected
data questionnaire application. Describe full as how he would analyze the
data.
Q. No. 5 Interpretation of data is back bone of a research study. Describe
in detail the interpretation of data.
I shall be highly appreciated if I am given answer with the examination view
of point.
Thanking you,
Yeah, more than once I've gotten five negative moderations in a row, on posts that shouldn't have been modded that way (e.g. an off-topic mod on a post that was clearly on-topic). Not complaining about one or two wayward mods, but these were obviously personal attacks.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
At 9:30 one morning a customer asked me to reboot their server and that it was urgent, (that was all the details they gave me)
So I stated to try and narrow it down a little. I eventually worked out that he wanted to me powercycle the colo server he has labeled Server2 (great server labels could be a whole new topic)
I arrange for the reboot to be done, and 10 mins later the customer ring back and the conversation went like this
Customer: "Dont restart my server, I've fixed"
Me: "Ummm I rebooted it 10 mins ago, its probably working cause of the restart"
Customer: "No you didn't restart it"
At which point they hung up and I closed the ticket.
I thought at this point that no one could beat the "Muppet of the day" award, so I promptly gave it to him.
I was wrong. At 1630 another customer phoned, they asked me to use ethereal to capture all the traffic their server did yesterday because they noticed an increase in traffic and didn't want to pay for anything thats not theirs.
O.K. I will top you all except "MY" Tech Support were guys on IRC back in 97 ( I think.) Someone else had delivered, set up, done the install and taught me enough to use Usenet, mIRC, play musical C.D.'s while we chatted and DCC'd back and forth to one another. I had in a dot matrix printer, speakers and even could fax. I could send jpegs and gifs and thought I was HOT STUFF! I was also slipping up on 60 and perhaps a smidgen of senility as quietly as possible.
The setup was on a special desk I had built out of the dinette ( which I had found useless except for eating and vastly more useful for a tiny home office in my 35' fifth wheel which I used for a mobile snowbird business.
After a prolonged stay in Washington State, it was time to hit the road and after notifying the phone Co to disconnect my wiring to the rig and unplugging the phone jack inside the trailer, I took one look at the snake pit wires running out of cpu, apc, printer, speakers etc, I went directly into a panic attack! Besides all those CONNECTORS.. x pins xxx pins, long skinny one short fat ones OMG!!!!!!
Soooooo...I hooked up my 35' fifth wheel to my F350 Ford pickup, got out my girlie pink tool kit and a brand new roll of Duct Tape! Miles of duct tape, over the top of the monitor in all four directions and under the table top. Same with the CPU, the APC, the keyboard, the track ball and the fax/ speakers/modem and etc. ALL DUCK TAPED in their exact position.
Several hours later upon arrival after unhooking the rig, hooking up the power, finding the exterior phone connection I had ordered in advance and peeling off foot after foot of Duct tape, I plugged in my phone, dialed in to warped.net via my favorite MIT server and with great expectation of being praised for my ingenuity described in my usual graphic fashion my brilliant solution.
They had a wonderful time telling one another for days and days earning me the Duct Tape Queen title for many a many dull evening on IRC.
I DID NOT however ruin a weary techs day. But I am sure the story still gives one or more a chuckle.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
I was trying to talk my mother through some operation on her computer over the phone ( I forget exactly what it was she was trying to do) I told her to click on "My Computer", she replied "How can I click on your computer? Your on the other end of the phone!".
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
One of the bosses I had working for an e-commerce company in the late 1990's had came over to Sweden from the US.
She asked me one morning why her international AOL dial up wouldn't work. I found that she had plugged in the modem cable into a cat 5 outlet, which wouldn't work. I told her that the modem wanted a phone line and not ethernet.
I wasn't surprised when she told me again that things wouldn't work, and I found that she now had pluged an actual phone into the modem plug. "See? Your idea wouldn't work either".
She was actually a natural. At another visit to Sweden, she noticed that the Olympic games was on the TV:
"Oh, so you have the Olympics in Europe now too".
I bit my tounge to keep a sour comment of the location of mount Olympus in.
Rik
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.
I can not recall all the times i have heard people not having real backups despite being instructed too. A couple of great ones
1) Having a backup - i saved it twice...
2) Having a backup - 2 floppies (only)- in the same backpack. Stolen the week before the thesis was due.
3) Having a backup - and overwriting it with the corrupted copy (anyone else expreienced the big red X in old MS word?)
4)Having a backup - and not realising that the first 50 pages are corrupted and overwriting the perfectly good backup...
5)Trying incremental backups but stuffing it up completely and working on an old file *and then* overwriting the latest (numbers and dates people...)
These experiences of other people have me using; 5 minute autosave, immediate copy to another media, using incremental filename, having more than 3 backups (home, work, thumbdrive) and emailing it to myself (gmail/gspace is great... i guess that counts as a 4th) and keeping printouts... If something bad enough happens to take out all my backups then i have a lot more to worry about than my thesis...
I still cant believe that someone can spend months (or even hours) working on a project and not have backups. I really have no sympathy when someone comes to me (somehow i am the go to person...) and says "my file is stuffed". To which the reply is "where is your backup/s". "oh i didnt have time..."
One christmas, Santa brought my family our first CD player. We all got CDs in our stockings. We played the first CD as we were doing other Christmassy stuff. The CD ends, the tray ejects. Mum asks "How do you play the other side?"
- Lnr
Slashdot really is for geeks and nerds if you find that anecdote funny.
About 3 years ago my girlfriend decided to get DSL, as she was getting tired of using dial-up. So she ordered Bell Sympatico (DSL service here in Canada) and Bell sent her all the goods in the mail, or at least she thought they did.
:-)
She installed everything herself, but afterwards she kept complaining to me that she hadn't noticed any difference in speed. Her downloads were still slow, etc.
About three months later I drove up to visit her for a weekend (we live about a 4 hour drive from each other so we don't see each other often). I decided to check out her computer to see what the problem was with her DSL. She has a first generation Apple eMac with the ethernet, modem, USB, etc. ports built into the side of the monitor. The first thing I notice is that there is no network cable plugged into the ethernet port, but there is a RJ-11 phone cable plugged into the modem port. And there is a tangled mess of cables on the ground, underneath her computer desk.
I untangled all the cables and noticed the RJ-11 cable plugged into the eMac is connected to the RJ-11 port on her DSL modem, which in turn is connected to the phone jack on her wall. There is no network cables to be found anywhere, none plugged into the eMac, none plugged into the DSL modem. It turns out she wasn't even using the DSL. She was still using her dial-up account, thinking that it was DSL. And to top it off Bell had never bothered to send her an network cable. All this time she was paying for DSL and not even using it.
So we went to the local computer store and picked up your basic cat. 5 network cable and I hooked it all up for her and configured the network settings on the eMac. She immediately noticed the difference in speed, and was a little embarassed that she hadn't hooked it up properly.
While Bell may have shafted her by not giving her a network cable, I gave her a shaft of a different kind later that night,
I got sent this via email several years ago. I only hope it's true as I nearly wet myself the first time I read it:
Customer: "I got this problem. You people sent me this install disk, and now my A: drive won't work."
Tech support: "Your A drive won't work ?"
Customer: "That's what I said. You sent me a bad disk, it got stuck in my drive, now it won't work at all."
Tech support: "Did it not install properly ? What kind of error messages did you get ?"
Customer: "I didn't get any error message. The disk got stuck in the drive and wouldn't come out. So I got these pliers and tried to get it out. That didn't work either."
Tech support: "You did what sir ?"
Customer: "I got these pliers, and tried to get the disk out, but it wouldn't budge. I just ended up cracking the plastic stuff a bit."
Tech support: "I don't understand sir, did you push the eject button ?"
Customer: "No, so then I got a stick of butter and melted it and used a turkey baster and put the butter in the drive, around the disk, and that got it loose. Then I used the pliers and it came out fine. I can't believe you would send me a disk that was broke and defective."
Tech support: "Let me get this clear. You put melted butter in your A: drive and used pliers to pull the disk out ?" At this point, I put the call on the speaker phone and motioned at the other techs to listen in.
Tech support: "Just so I am absolutely clear on this, can you repeat what you just said ?"
Customer: "I said I put butter in my A: drive to get your crappy disk out, then I had to use pliers to pull it out."
Tech support: "Did you push that little button that was sticking out when the disk was in the drive, you know, the thing called the disk eject button ?" Silence.
Tech support: "Sir ?"
Customer: "Yes."
Tech support: "Sir, did you push the eject button ?"
Customer: "No, but you people are going to fix my computer, or I am going to sue you for breaking my computer ?"
Tech support: "Let me get this straight. You are going to sue our company because you put the disk in the A: drive, didn't follow the instructions we sent you, didn't actually seek professional advice, didn't consult your user's manual on how to use your computer properly, instead proceeding to pour butter into the drive and physically rip the disk out ?"
Customer: "Ummmm."
Tech support: "Do you really think you stand a chance, since we do record every call and have it on tape ?"
Customer: (now rather humbled) "But you're supposed to help !"
Tech support: "I am sorry sir, but there is nothing we can do for you. Have a nice day."
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I work in schools so I get this stuff every day.
The best stuff usually came from PC's that had been "supported" by the local Borough. Two such examples:
1) I go to a school for a interview to see if they need my support help, I'm not supposed to be doing anything just yet, I'm just given a tour to see if I can help them with their systems. I notice four computers with "out of order" stickers in the corner of a classroom and ask about them. They have been for repair six times, taking months each time and always coming back broken. They won't boot into Windows. To the apparent annoyance of the person giving me a tour of the school, I turn them on. All four show "CMOS Checksum Error". I send out a member of staff for four CR2032 batteries (they are impressed that I can remember the code for the battery). They come back ten minutes later when I've opened the cases, I swap the CMOS batteries, all four come up and boot Windows first time (still working four years later). These PC's had ALL been sent off for expensive repair half a dozen times each and always come back "faulty"... Needless to say, the school hired me there and then and are still one of my best clients today.
2) Same school, same borough support team, six months later. In the office, they print directly onto cheques for paying suppliers, staff wages etc. For the first time ever I get to see it happening, watching the user put through a blank sheet of paper between each pre-printed cheque page as they insert them into the paper tray. I assume it's to do with record keeping of what cheques have been issued etc. No. Whenever they print cheques (which is the only use of this machine) they have to insert a blank piece of paper between each or only every other cheque gets printed, which screws up the receipts etc. and wastes lots of blank, pre-printed cheques. They tell me that they've had the support team in so many times and it's to do with the archaic software they use (actually a DOS telnet program logging into a remote server using a primitive Windows interface). I take a quick look, notice that the HP Laserjet's menu is set to "Copies:2" and change the setting. Surprisingly, everything starts working properly, no unnecessary blank pages, etc. and STILL does to this day with the same printer and software. The office staff COULD NOT believe that it was so simple and their support team missed it. I get a lovely card with a hand-written funny verse on it (I still have it somewhere) and their eternal gratitude, they no longer have to spend HOURS each day inserting blank pages into a stack of cheques and the Borough Support Team gets another telling off.
I was working at a big broadcasting corporation a few years ago. A senior director, known for his fabulously short fuse, burst into the support office shouting "It doesn't work! Why does nothing bloody work round here?"
I said "What doesn't work?"
"My bloody computer - I have important work to do and it doesn't bloody work. Come and fix it. And I don't want this to happen again."
I looked around at my colleagues, my eyes saying farewell to them, and walked down the hall behind this tall, raving man.
When I got into his office, he pointed at his laptop docking station and said "There. Fix it."
There was no laptop in the docking station. He'd left it at home, and had merely been jabbing the power button on the monitor and swearing.
I pointed out the obvious to him and left, quickly. Six months later, he was gone.
Gee, I can't imagine why you were banned. Next time you want a new IP just change your MAC and reboot, unless that's to stupid for you.
For a story all about tech support humour, there sure are a shitload of humourless cocksuckers commenting. The parent post was so obviously a joke that anybody who thought otherwise should simply commit suicide immediately. Fuck you and the other hundred self righteous donkey raping retards.
Hey, that's my story! About 9 years ago, a consultant at the firm at which I was working had dissambled her laptop (and docking station) so that a new desk could be installed. She then carefully reassembled the computer. A couple hours later, I was asked to figure out why her machine kept crashing. I turned the laptop on, and sure enough, partway through the boot process, it shut off. Sort of like the battery was almost dead. I traced the power cable to the power strip, which was plugged into itself. I wonder just how common this is.
We sent a computer to the other side of Australia for a remote site associated with a client. We tried to configure everything as best we could, but just in case, as well as the ISDN card, we put a normal modem on it so that we could dial in and fix any problems. We also carefully labeled all of the ports so that everything would get plugged in right.
Well, it arrives over there, and everything seems to have been connected right, but the ISDN won't connect (it turned out that we'd been given the wrong number). So the following conversation ensues...
Me: Could you please find a phone line and connect it to the port in the back labelled 'Modem'"
Client: Yeah, no worries. I'll call you back when it's done.
About 5-10 minutes later, I get the call...
Client: Ok I found the port and connected the phone line: Now where does the other end go?
If anyone's still reading this thread...
I worked in a finance department for a large hotel chain and was what passed for "the guy who knows about computers 'n stuff". I got called upstairs to the office of the hotel's second-in-command because all her spreadsheets were suddenly screwed. I went up and sure enough her screen was filled with crap. She'd been opening her Excel files in Word 97.
Two friends of mine set up a new PC for one of their friends: a 50+ yr old woman who'd never used one before. A couple of days later they got a call from her to say that everything was going wrong so they went round to her house to see what was up. She'd decorated the case with cat fridge magnets.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
So there i was in the netherlands at a dutch phone company.
... it crashed)
Their mail server was running for his last minutes since they had hardware memmory errors.
Allready i had lots of errors and the mail-database had gone corrupt.
This server was going to starve in realy a few minutes.
Their topshot top IT manager flown in specaily frome france for their problem
I say this server should be shut down safely as soon as possible or it will be in beyond repairable state, we should do this quickly and now!
So this topshot IT manger insisted that "he needed to write an email to everyone informing them that their mail server was down".
(Most people allready knew that by experience, still he wanted to mak that mail. While i told him not to do... well he did
(Lessons learned : Managers are just like kids screaming but don't no meaning.)
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
I worked as tier two support for a major cell phone manufacturer. I supported the phones as well as hardware and software for connect them to computers and using them as modems. A woman called in having a problem with one of our phones. She rattles off what she thinks is the problem:
Cust: Do I have that right?
Me: No, that is not the problem.
Cust: Ok, then I will shut the hell up and do what you say.
And, she DID! My favorite call ever.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
is this living, I guess it is. For everyone needs laughs. I seem mostly to have to stupid to name suport teams. But sometimes I have been suport. As when I was an intern at a hospital libary, computers where not what I should do, but due to age and stuff it become me how did all that. There where quite many on the lines of how do you open files from a disc... Or how do you set margin ,or footer.
(ah, and how do I get a good modern GNU\Linux distro. That was a nice request) and acctualy accesing floppy drives on the RedHat 5.2 computer.
Then we have about ten people how tried to put a disc into the cdrom when there was a computer "upgrade". The trouble with this upgrade was that acording to policy discstations shouldn't be used inside the hospital and this was by good reasons for most of the machines to, but at the libary, where nursing students come to print there essays it was quite bad. (The above mentioned RedHat computer was a real savior doing this time, untill the USB discstations arrived).
But now I had an feel of the techies beeing, humbly stupid. This thought begone to araise sometime during my first week, when it took half an hour for them to say that, "No! You can't run javascript to invoke google and other searches direct on your page.", half an hour, stupid sod.
Then changes in the database system and having the servers elsewhere, through vpns and stuff to access. That changed the webinterface to the search enginge... And therefor we had to change all the settings for that, of 'course on the m$ computers it went quite smooths. But afore mentioned RedHat crowling computer did not like to save the start page changes, so we called helpdesk and asked them about the root password as, we'll really we had to smooth that computer out more, as it was totaly shity and filled with unesecaritys*. But there answer was first "Ehmm, What is a root password?" to change to "Oh, the guy that set up that project has moved, nobody knows anything linux anymore". Sah...
And then there was worm attacks and only Linux surrived. Ah people most become better at setting up for such events.
*= It was the slowest worst computer they had at the time of installing RedHat 5.2....
After the better part of a morning, we determined that the culpret was probably static electricity from the carpet. The client, being an interiors firm, knew of static resistant carpeting. Because the computer could be moved to any part of the office area, they were ready to rip up and replace all of the carpet with anti-static stuff.
After talking for a few minutes we (the tech guys) came up with the idea of spraying the area with fabric softener. Initially we thought it would solve the problem just temporarily, but the management liked it. So we looked like heros! We saved the client a bundle of money on new carpet, the computer functioned like it was supposed to, and the office smelled April fresh.
We all won!
----------
Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
My supervisor was thrilled with his new toy, a new tomtom navigator for his company car. So he goes out to somewhere just to test it. After 10 minutes, a call comes in and he asks: "You know, I have been able to enter my destination, but how do I tell this thing what my departure point is?"...
This guy supervises a computer helpdesk.
Fuckin A' :)
If they made a movie of your life, would anybody buy a ticket?
Let me chime in with a variant on the theme. Verizon put me through 13 weeks of frustration through a display of Corporate Arrogance.
... Your scheduled physical install is 3 weeks from today."
The setup: My Apt unit is a stand alone building, wired underground to the switch box attached to the building behind me.
Round 1: Customer (Me) calls up: "I'd like a Dry Loop DSL Line. "
Rep: (I talked to four departments over and over, so department is irrelevant) "Thank you for calling Verizon.
3 weeks later: On Site Tech was unable to locate the wire (though not really his fault.) The landlord visited, and labeled it better. But - the tech was *not* able to visit the next day. Time to wait 3 more weeks.
19 days later, a mysterious email arrives. "We are sorry you have chosen not to visit Verizon." I called up.
Rep: "We couldn't figure out the address, so our system deleted the account". Me: "Well, let's re-order."
Rep: "Okay. Your new install date is (wait for it...) 3 weeks from now."
Me: "Put a note in large letters on the customer account: 'Call Client when Tech is dispatched.' "
(Presumably they did. Onsite tech ignores it.)
I called to check in about 4 days later:
Rep: "They did a line test, and your service appears to be working, so they didn't send a tech."
Me: "I *ASKED* for an onsite tech. He needs to wire my standalone building."
Rep: "Wait 3 weeks."
Then they spelled both my first AND last name wrong. Twice. Differently.
Both install CD's they sent were defective.
I only survived because I have moderate computer skills of my own.
Grumpily,
TaoPhoenix
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
And right here we have proof that there are, indeed, very few problems that cannot be solved with duct tape.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
One of my favorites is from ... a long time ago.
Student has a class assignment in FORTRAN, has the whole program punched up on cards, but when he runs the deck, he gets a nice compile listing, no diagnostics, except at the end, it says "NO PROGRAM", and exits.
He takes his deck and listing to Use{r|less} Services, where the usual suspects mull over his listing for half the day trying to figure out what in the world was going on. They see obvious CS101 novice type syntax errors which should have provoked nastygrams from the compiler, but the compiler just happily chugged through them with no diagnostic.
Someone notices that the addresses in the right hand column are all zero. No code is being generated. (This compiler, in its output listing, printed the address of the generated code for each line as a debugging aid. Obviously, it's not doing any optimization.)
Finally, they give up and hand it to the resident person who really knew this stuff. He looked at the listing, said "Hand me the deck." They did, he looked at it, punched a card to read it into a file, did a quick text edit on the file, punched the file, and threw the original away.
When the deck he punched ran, there was the same listing, but with all the diagnostics for the syntax errors.
The first line of the FORTRAN program was a comment.
The user had started all the lines of his program in column 6, rather than column 7, making them all continuations of the leading comment.
Was called Distribution Media Format (DMF) and held 1.76MB*, IIRC. I've still got about half a set of Visual Studio 4 discs still on that format, as I subsequently got my first CD-R (2 x SCSI by Ricoh - WOOT!) and only used floppies for boot purposes and scsi/raid drivers thereafter.
m l
Apparently it cut the number of floppies for a Win95 install down by two, and the increased difficulty in pirating the discs was an unexpected bonus.
Now it's so long ago that I can't remember what utility I used to make DMF discs - the name WinImage has faint memory associations, but I can't really remember.
*Wikipedia reckons 1.76MB; not certain if this is binary megabytes versus decimal megs, or if it's just a parity error on my mindtank.
On a completely unrelated note, some posters have mentioned the Rinkworks computer stupidities sites. Without wanting to karma-whore, I particularly like this alternative collection of tech-related misadventures: http://www.kenthamilton.net/humor/admin-horror.ht
Too many in the career to count.. but one recent one comes to mind. Customer has a laptop, brought it in for a format/rebuild due to some nasty viruses and a pile of spyware. He had the HD filled up about.. 75% full with porn images. We rebuild, and he goes on his (merry) way. Two weeks later, he brings it back.. "yeah.. I got a virus or two again, and since then it's acting funny" Guess what his HD is full of again.. ? You guessed it - he's been on the free porn sites again.
:)
You think he'd learn. At leasts we've learned to use a Lysol handi-wipe on his keyboard before working on it. I'm almost glad I don't do much hardware work lately
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
As I was helping a nice lady to uninstall/reinstall the software I supported I needed her to delete a registry key. The key was located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall\NAMEOFPROGRAM. I walked her through the steps to browse the registry editor to find this key. Once she found it I told her to right-click on NAMEOFPROGRAM and choose 'Delete'. She then said "Ok, I've deleted Microsoft, now what?" so I asked her "So you deleted NAMEOFPROGRAM, right?" to which she replied, "No, I deleted Microsoft like you said." I quickly corrected her and told her that I said to delete the NAMEOFPROGRAM key and that she must not have understood me. She said that she remembered now that I told her to delete NAMEOFPROGRAM and that she made a mistake. I explained to her that the mistake she just made might ruin Windows to the point that she would need to reformat and reinstall the OS. She mumbled some curses and then said she would call the guy that sold them their computers to get that problem fixed and then call us back. Poor poor lady.
True:
In one of my former lives, the employees were fond of telling me that the server was down. It's not that it was (and there was more than one server), it's just that this became the thing to say when you had tech issues. Every day, all day, I'd have to listen to people stroll by my door and say "Hey, the server is down!" "Is the server down?" "How come the server keeps crashing?!"
Thing is, the server was never down; ever. It turns out, "The server is down" = Mouse unplugged -or- spyware -or- misplaced document -or- copy machine out of paper -or- burnt out light-bulb -or- whatever.
I got fed up. So, at one of of our weekly all-hands meetings, I cleared a little policy change with approval of our president.
"Everybody," I announced, "we have implemented a new IT policy. If the server is down, and you are the first person to alert me, I will give you ten dollars on the spot" Eyes widened in excitement and there was this muttering over this wonderful, new found source of income at the office.
"But!" I continued, "If you alert me that the server is down and it actually is not, you will pay -=me=- ten dollars."
I never heard about the server being down again.
Ever.
When I was working in support I had a lady call in who couldn't get the software I supported to install. She was trying to install it for her husband who was busy at the time and she said that the install told her she did not have enough disk space and she wanted to know how to get more disk space. I told her she could get an additional hard drive or try to clean some stuff off of her existing hard drive to make room. She wanted to clean some stuff off and I explained to her that it wasn't our job to help her clean up her hard drive but she said she would really appreciate it if I would just help her clean some stuff up. The easiest thing I could think of was to have her clean out her temporary internet files from IE so I had her browse to that directory so we could clean it out. She gasped and said "What are these files supposed to be?" I told her that they were files saved from browsing the internet that are cached to speed things up. She then asked, "So are you telling me that these dirty pictures are here because someone was looking at them on the internet from this computer?" I told her that that was the case. She got really upset and said she had to talk to her husband and she didn't care about installing the software for him anymore. What a shame.
I live next to Hurlburt Field, the USAF Special Operations HQ, and one of the only bases with AC-130 gunships nearby. Every so often, you can see them doing that biiiig, lazy left hand turn around the area, and I'm told they practice-target vehicles and people and such kicking around town. :)
:)
I'm also told they can hear what you're saying on the ground, but I digress.
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
Many on these humerous incidents are due to terrible user interface design in both hardware and software. Compuers should be as easy to use as a car. Car designers have been around about a century longer than computer designers and had their share of bad features. When I rent a car I expect it to be driveable immediately. When I rent a computer at an Internet cafe I expect to be able to use it immediately.
A friend of mine worked at a big chain computer store. Names will not be mentioned. He says someone oncecome back to the store after buying an iPod, wondering how to put her music CDs on them... the whole computer thing was over her head.
Another said he was gonna sue the store and Apple because his iPod nano (2Gig) couldn't hold the 500 songs the store display said it could. Places have to say '500 songs' because most potential iPod buyers don't really understand what a Gigabyte is. They like having HD sizes measured in things they understand, like how many photos a 4Gig flash card can hold, how many hours video a 80Gig HD can hold...
My friend pointed out the fine print on the display, noting that the calculation is dependant on songs of a certain length and quality, and that either his songs were really long, or of very high quality...
Idiot: So if my songs were of lower quality, I could fit 500 of them on my iPod?
Friend: Yes. Idiot: That's insane! Why should I stop listening to Bach and Chopin just so I can fit 500 songs worth of moronic rap on my iPod!
Friend: What? No! Not that kind of quality! The bit rate quality!
One of my Mom's friend at office asked her if I could check her home computer because it was working really slowly. So I thought it could be a worm, virus, spyware and other "fauna" that live's in a common house computer. I agreed and asked my mom to take it to home.
Once I gt to home I started to conect kb, mouse and other things, just to figure the vga connector completly wiped so i asked my mom call her friend about the issue and she said "the screen didnt unpluged so I got and screw-driver and unobstructed that thing".
Because it was an all in one motherboard instead of being $20usd repair, replacing cpu mb and memmory cost about 300 bucks.
He proceeded to tell her that the reason her computer was so slow is because she needed a flux capacitor. Now to any normal half way intelligent person this would be an obvious joke, but not to her. Apparently she has never seen the movie, but I won't make fun of her for that. I prefer to make fun of her for trusting what this smart ass told her.
After he got done telling her that he came back to his desk near mine and told me I might be receiving an email from her. He then told me the entire story, which I kind of wrote off until I received the following email from her:
I was talking to Justin and he said I should request a Flux Capacitor (whatever that is - he said some sort of computer nerd talk for a place to save stuff... you'd know apparently) to save my files too (before my computer dies and I lose it all...) I told him you game me a folder on the network through your computer to save stuff too (but I put complete stuff there, not the stuff I'm currently working on 'cause it seems redundant to save things multiple times while I'm working on them.)
So what do you think?
I laughed for an hour because I couldn't believe she actually fell for it. People like that give people like me job security.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
ME: Yes
HER: Good. I need you to set up my wi-fi connection on my laptop.
ME: I'm not that kind of engineer
HER: Oh, I thought that they taught you guys how to work with computers.
1) I learned the hard way to never sell a cell phone to an older customer unless they have used one before or I have time to
train them on how they work. Case in point. I sold a flip phone (Samsung 3500 I believe) to an older lady. I activated the phone for her, made a test phone call and then the lady left. She returned 2 hours later absolutely livid. She complained the phone was garbage and "Doesn't even have a dial tone". I explained that cell phones do not have dial tones and it fell on deaf ears.
2) Customer purchased a COMPAQ from the store and returned it because he smelled a rancid smell. Turns out a mouse gained access to the box and was rotting dead by the heatsink.
Reason #32767 not to use VB6: Integers are 2 bytes... Think about it!
In the early nineties we were in the process of upgrading from terminals with badge readers to PC's and I was on the Help desk for a while. One afternoon we get a call from an irate manager who had just had her terminal swapped out and she was furious because she could not log in. When we tried to talk her through it, we just got "I don't have time for this, you need to send someone" so we sent a tech out to the site. Tech arrives at manager's office and asks her to log in so she can see what's going on. The manager quickly puts her employee badge into the diskette drive and says "See? I told you! Nothing!"
This really did happen, and chapter 2 to the story was that when we were conducting training sessions we used to use the story as sort of a funny anecdote to break the ice. We told it that is until the very same manager wound up in one of the sessions and heard it being repeated by a third person. To say she was not amused would be a gross understatement, and fair amount of ass chewing later ensued.
I haven't gotten through all of the threads yet so I don't know if anyone else mentioned it, but ComputerWorld's Shark Tank sometimes has some good stories of tech support nightmares. If you submit one that gets posted, they send you a tee-shirt for your troubles.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
I once had a very grumpy old man call me to get help installing his internet dialing software from his new ISP. The instructions were clearly printed on the Disk's label: Goto Start, then Run. Type a:\install.exe. click OK. He had no trouble following these instructions over the phone for me again, at which point an error appeared (paraphrased) "Disk is not in drive...".
Me: is the disk in the drive sir?
Him: No, the instructions did not say to put the disk in the drive.
Me: (checks instructions) Certainly not sir. Please put the disk in the drive and let's try again.
Him: What the hell? Why don't the instructions say that? (obivously embarrassed)
Me: I don't write the instructions sir, I think they assumed you would know to put the disk in the drive. I'll let them know they may need to update the labels.
Him: This is stupid! (hangs up)
My vocabulary is so huge it's enormous. if only I could think of a word bigger than enormous, like huge.
Computers are now part of the modern office, and they aren't going anywhere. If your job involves using a computer, and you don't know how, guess what? You are not qualified to hold that position, any more than I would be qualified to have a job as a lumberjack without knowing how to use a saw.
It's like pointing someone at an F-16 and saying, "She's all yours. Go do your job. We'll make sure you're shot down quickly so you don't have to do anything other than get it airborne."
Hey. If they're in the Air Force and their job is to fly fighter jets, then yes, I as the mechanic expect them to know how to freaking fly it. It's not my job to teach them. If they can't fly it, then what the hell are they doing in this job?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
When I ordered my satellite internet service, a company rep gathered the required information via phone. During the process, she asked me to select a username and password. I was going to use a format like "john_smith". That's not my name, and several letters had to be repeated, but I thought everything was clear. When the technician showed up to install the dish and get me set up, I learned that my new username was
:-)
johnunderscoresmith
I had another call from a user, apparently he tried turning on their computer this morning but all he could get was a "sad Mac". I asked the user what they'd last been doing, and as usual was told "nothing unusual" - that's always the give away ;)
After booting from their System CD the problem became apparent: They had twenty-six folders, all with alphabetical names - "A", "B", "C" etc, and each of those folders contained the relevant files - in other words "S" contained "system enabler" etc.
I couldn't quite see how that had happened, so I asked him. The answer? Apparently it was "untidy" having all those files scattered across the disk - so he'd "tidied his computer", by manually moving everything into those folders alphabetically...
After re-installing his system software, and explaining that the computer needed those files in those places in order to find them, it all worked perfectly once more - what odds!
That's for letting us know.
BANNED!
From: End User
Sent: Tuesday
To: Support Desk
Subject: Squeaky wheels
Hi,
The cleaning crew needs to WD-40 the cleaning carts! The wheels are emitting a very high pitched sound that can be heard by those under the age of 45. I have stopped a couple of them to let them know but none of them have been able to hear it so they haven't fixed the issue.
End user
By any chance was it this guy?
Slashdot link
Because everybody else runs Windows ?
I was working for a large university, running the off-campus modem pool (mostly maintaining Cisco 5200's). One of the top admins of the network services dept. comes to my desk one morning. "I can't get my email!" She was pretty mad so I didn't try to explain that off-campus modem pool != on-campus ethernet (nor email, for that matter), I just trailed after her to her office. She sits down at her desk and I immediately notice the little green light on her keyboard indicating CAPSLOCK IS ON. Some quick thinking - "How am I going to NOT make her feel like an idiot?" I said "Oh, I do this all the time." and hit the capslock button and quickly head back to my desk.
I believe them. Especially any story about a customer lying and being abusive to avoid admitting that they could have caused their own problem or that their problem can't be helped.
This isn't because I've worked in tech support. I have, but it was supporting mission-critical middleware applications, so I didn't run into the same sorts of people.
No, I believe these stories because I have friends that have worked extensively with the masses -- in the hotel industry, in arcades, and in a call-center for a car rental place. Most people are smart, sane, honorable, and are not missing some sort of obvious facts.
Most people.
However, enough exposure to people who aren't college or even high school educated will eventually put you in contact with somebody out there who's either stupid, crazy, deceitful, or just having a bad day where they are missing something obvious and are too embarrassed to admit it once you mention it to them. This can be anything from people who don't realize you can't put real money in an arcade machine (even though it's right next to the token machine and the slot says "2 tokens") to people who try to claim that their check card is a real credit card even after being told that they can't rent a car on it.
My favorite story from the guy who works at the rental call center is about a guy who wanted to rent a car to go to Massachusettes but wasn't allowed to because the local offices would not rent to anyone driving through New York due to New York's liability laws.
"But I'm not going to New York! I'm going to Boston!"
"You have to go through New York to get to Boston!"
"But I'm not going to New York! I'm going to Boston!"
(Incidentally, this got a lot of stares and laughs at the call center because it was the first time in 2-3 months since he started working there that he raised his voice. Most people don't last a week before someone frustrates them enough to snap.)
He finally got the guy to go away, even though he couldn't hang up, and the guy just didn't get it. The guy had also tried to haggle for a car rental. Six days later, my friend's working and he hears another representative raise her voice to say, "But you have to go through New York to get to Boston!"
Yep, same guy. No kidding.
So, yeah, when people give their stories about customer just not getting it, customers lying about what they did, and customers jamming things that don't belong into slots that plausibly look like they can take it, I believe them. I have too many friends who have been there.
If you don't believe them, you need to mingle with the general public more. They're 99% good and decent people, but it's that 1% and the just plain bad days of the sane 99% that generate these stories.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
One day, doing tech support for a large ISP, some fuckwit called to complain that his Internet didn't work on thursday evenings.
Standard procedure was to check the LEDS on the customers modem. This guy couldn't locate them, because it was to dark in the basement. He couldn't get any light in there, because there was only one socket in the basement, and his wife was using it the vacuum clean the hallway.
I asked him to ask his wife to unplug the vacuum cleaner, and put the plug to his cable modem back in, and everything worked again...
Some customer called me while doing tech support for a large cable ISP. He started by complementing us for the good reliability. In the past he had lots of trouble with our service, but the last few months had been great.
Everything was still working fine, but he noticed that his neighbor (who was also a customer) had a much faster connection. After going through his connection settings I learned that he was not using his cable modem at all. Instead he was using his telephone modem to connect to some provider in the US (from Europe)!
I can't recall if I dared to tell him what was going on.
You know that's pretty much logically and morally equivalent to telling someone who objects to the NSA wire-tapping program, "If you hate your country so much, perhaps you should find another field to work in."
We can do better. That's all he's asking.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
My girlfriend is more tolerant than understanding but, still, very understanding!
;-)
My bodalicious and outrageous female roommate (14yrs younger than myself) is one of my best friends and we've been living together since before I met my wonderful girlfriend so everything has been clear from the start. We all go out and party together from time to time. All my girlfriend asks is that I don't let my roomie be alone in the same room with her son.
Yes, I *do* realize how fortunate I am.
The terrorists have won. They've got us surrendering our Bics and taking off our shoes, standing in free speech zones and bitching about illegal aliens. Okay, maybe that last one isn't on them.
As much as I used to love using that trope in the early days of post-9/11 rights loss, I've come to realize something very important -- the terrorists really don't give a #$@! about all that.
All the terrorists want is for the US to pull out of the Middle East, stop building bases and applying military pressure, stop exposing them to "decadent Western culture," and stop propping up corrupt regimes like in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt that aren't as friendly to theocratic elements within their own states as the terrorists would want. (Yes, even the Sauds.)
They don't care if we turn into a fascist war machine so long as we point our attention elsewhere. If anything, the possibility that it could make us more focused on the Middle East (like it gave us an excuse to go into Iraq) represents a huge loss to the terrorists.
Their motivations are entirely about turf and being "allowed" to live in communities driven entirely by their own moral codes without any outside influence from the moral values of others.
In other words, terrorists are just xenophobic, fire-and-brimstone religious, "git off my propertee" rednecks with bombs and a little more fire in their belly. They're Klansmen with a different hate who have to go international to strike at the people they blame all their community's problems on.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Apparently you've missed my point. I'm talking Ménage à trois.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My cousin told me the same story...about fifteen years ago!
When I worked for the web hosting group of a regional ISP, I remember once hearing another support guy say, "I don't know. You're the MCSE!"
Shotgun Solution
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
"You need to upgrade to the newer version, this problem is fixed in the upgrade." .com and click 'Stay up to date' and follow the instructions."
"So what do I have to do?"
"Go to
"Isn't that a web site?"
"Um, Yes..."
"Well, I don't have the internet. Can I get the upgrade some other way?"
"We can mail you an Upgrade CD, no charge. It will take about three weeks."
"Oh, thats too slow. Can you fax it to me?"
http://brandonbloom.name
Doh! Well, that and more was always an option before my girlfriend arrived on the scene. ;-)
Sorry if any of these are already done (hey, look at the number of pages, give me a break.) d-: I'm not really going to illustrate with a long story, just say what I remember.
First, my favorite of all time was probably the one I heard about someone who called a tech support because their CD-ROM drive had become jammed and broken. The tech support guy scheduled a time to go and fix or replace the drive and went to the person's house ready for a simple job. What he discovered when he arrived and actually saw the computer was that the person had decided to emulate the desktop style systems by placing their tower case horizontally. At the time, not all CD-ROMs were designed to be able to operate like this, and theirs just happened to be one of those without the extra little catches to hold a CD in vertically. The user's solution? Press the close button to get the case to begin to close, then throw the CD as quickly as they could at it in the hopes that it would catch just right. It turned out that job was harder than he thought due to having to clean up little bits of broken CDs (and, I suspect, it would involve a hassle since it seems unlikely the service covered such a thing.)
Another I had heard once a long time ago was of a user complaining that they couldn't see their screen. The tech support guy ran through the usual stuff. Check that the power cables are correctly plugged in, that the monitor's plug is in the video card, try pressing the power button again just to be sure, etc. The user sort of gave them the runaround on answers to these and generally just came back to saying that they couldn't really see where the plugs go, where the power button was, etc. Well, after the long runthrough of steps, the tech support guy finally managed to get a straight response from the user. It turned out that the problem all along had been that they had not turned on the light in the room and couldn't see to plug in, much less turn on the computer. (Yes, this is actually what I heard, though I can't tell you if it's true or not since I have no direct experience.)
I have also heard once that between the cleaning disks (which basically consisted of a cloth with just a dab of alcohol added inside a disc instead of the normal metallic or whatever cylinder) and that joke program which said it washed your drive and proceeded to make sound effects through the PC speaker that could be imagined to resemble that of a washer, some rather intelligent person got it into their head to clean one the cheapest easiest possible way rather than spending money on the cleaning disks or what they assumed to be commercial software. Soapy water on a q-tip. Whether this is true or not, the story goes that basically by the end of it there wasn't a single component inside that computer that did not get ruined.
I don't know how funny it is, but, I can even tell one from direct experience where I called up my ISP's tech support to ask why my bandwidth had basically gone down the toilet. The tech guy clearly caught on to the fact that I knew what I was talking about and just had me do a few of those routine from the book steps like running bandwidth tests from multiple locations instead of just one. He didn't bother so much with the stupid little things that only someone completely new to computers wouldn't know (and this is the first time where someone didn't treat me like an idiot where I actually almost wished they had.) We verify that the phone line is ok and such, but, he notices a little something off, so he tells me that it looks like there must be a slight problem in the line somewhere and they'll probably have to send a tech out to fix it. To this end, he asks me to carry a phone and hook it into each line in the house to see if I can determine exactly where it goes wrong. Well, I start to do this and everything seems normal, until I get to one of the bedrooms where I discover that, behind the bed where I couldn't see it, someone had removed the DSL filter and simply plugged the phone directly into the p
I was doing repair and I took a call from an irate customer that just picked up her computer. She was yelling about the modem not working. I referred to my notes and I had verified dial tone and connection.
So I started explaining that there are two phone connectors on the back of the computer; one says 'in' and the other 'out.' She continued to scream that she is not an idiot and knew how to connect the cables.
I went over the obvious problem in the nicest possible way. She continued to berate me until I hear 'Oh, you mean like...'
The line went dead. She never called back. I reread BOFH.
One of our techs once asked a customer over the phone "What kind of windows do you have?". The customer was silent for a moment, then he replied "Storm windows. I have 14 of 'em!".