Why do funny stories about tech support abound? Maybe computers themselves are funny. Or maybe we need to laugh to keep from crying.

Customer reports his 300watt Battery backup unit is buzzing. I go over and see that he has daisy-chained 3 power strips and plugged them into the APC unit. Included were
PC
2 LCD monitors
150watt speaker system
PocketPC
Laser printer
Laptop
Router
DSL phone
Small radio.

He said it has been buzzing for a week now, but hasnt had time to deal with the problem.

NO KIDDING?

AND WTF with the random placement of this topic. This must be an ongoing internal joke of some sort... cause nobody is that misguided.

We all know this should be here in the Mobile Phone subforum!!!!!

Come ON!!!!



Ah, the IBM system 50. Got the 50Z here my freshman year in college. I tried going a semester w/o and it was a PITA to walk cross campus to use their system 30's to do cad, and the other lab was usually cramped and full (also, no late-night available).

Thing cost over $3000 and was out at about the time the 386 came out (At $4500!!!). I remember running Wing Commander on it at the lowes resolution this side of Atari. The cut-scene for jumping in the craft took 30 seconds to load and 60 seconds to play!!! (1fps!!!!). The monitor was a good space heater, and the 256 colors made games like the 16 color "Vette" so realistic you could almost count the facets!!!



As for tech support, some of the funniest is when you get people that are 100% unfamiliar with the computer. You try to teach them how to use a mouse and they can't use it w/o looking at the mouse, then the screen, then the mouse... You try to tell them how to use a printer, and they forget to remove all the wrapping and papaer/plastic seperators in it (as the instructions call for) and wonder why it does not work.

Ah well, what are you going to do? Besides MOVE THIS THREAD TO SOMEWHERE IT MAKES MORE SENSE!!!

my 2 cents...

I had a friend at a local tech support. A woman comes and says to him: "Hello, I've bought that pc from your store about a year ago and bla bla, my problem is that the coffee holder is broken?!?!" After thinking about a minute, the answer was obvious: she meant the cd-rw drive!!!

That make me lol all week.

Those are OOOOOOLD comix there bud!

I think they were in my school newspaper back in 90!!!!!

If customer X requests Mousing lessons....
I reply:



Dear customer X, you are not qualifed to use a computer at this time. Please purchase a slide rule and graph paper and be on your way. If you wish to learn how to use a Mouse that badly, please read my book on fluid dynamics.

Customers can be "stupid". Tech support can be even "stupider".


Recently I have had problems with the content on my home page not being updated.

The ISP's Tech support has concluded their servers are not being update properly, and have asked me to notify them (Tech Support) should the problem re-occurs.


Then one day the content on the home page is dated for the NEXT calendar day, while the news and sports feeds are from 3 days prior.

Refreshing the webpage resulted in updated news and sports feeds, while the date would remain on the future date.

Refreshing the webpage again would result in the old news and sports feeds and the future date.


So I call Tech Support to report the problem.

English is her first language. So communicating should be no problem.

I run through the problem.

Then it is Tech Support's time to try and "solve the problem" with my computer.

Tech Support: Have you cleared your browser history?

Me: History is what has happened, the date is tommorrow's date. My computer shows today's date. The date feed is from your server.

Tech Support: I understand. When you refresh the page do you get tomorrow's sports and news reports?

Me: Gosh darn, if I was getting tommorrow's sports scores I would have not reported the problem, instead I would have called my bookie and made some bets.

Tech Support: I don't understand.

Me: How can I receive the score to a game that has yet to be played?

Tech Support: I don't understand.

Me: Just report the problem to your supervisor. Hopefully he/she can explain time travel to you better than I can.

I'm surprised no one told of the
CD-ROM cup-holder. - minim3 got it.
"I don't know if it's running windows, but it's near a window"
"I just stapled the 5 1/4" floppy to the documents"
"These disks arn't really magnetic"

1990 isn't that long ago.

im a tech and i use my cdrom as a cup holder.... if it works why not? lol.
Thats kinda old in the computer world.



Again, why are the editors incapable of navigating their own forums ???

Yes... and plus these ones on 5 1/4 floppy disks:

1) A guy calls for assistance saying that the 5 1/4" floppy drive on his new computer is broken because it didn't eject the floppy discs properly and he already had spent lots of money on floppy discs (much more expensive in those days!). So the technician goes see the PC and ask the guy to try one more floppy disk. The guy was introducing the diskette not on the drive entry but on a small entrance between the drive and the box chassis and filled the interior with plenty of diskettes!!

2) A guy calls assistance to resolve a problem with a 5 1/4" floppy drive (which, if you do remember, most had a locker handle to lock the disk to be read and this was called to "close the door" ). The operator aks the guy if he "closed the door", the guy says on the phone "no, just one moment", BLAAM!, "ok. i already closed my door and now my room is closed. Can you start resolving my drive problem now?". :-)

Another good one i remember:
A guy calls assistance because of his new "foot-pedal" was hard to control. The operator asks him what is a "foot-pedal". The guy explains that was a new equipment with 2 buttons and a small ball below but it was hard to control.......

I have used a mouse as a foot pedel. It works well actualy (optical) and great for that extra advantage in games.

Great stories. The "Do I need a stamp to send e-mail" is such a great question. The "cup-holder" reference is probably the oldest and most popular "computer ignorance" joke of all time.

When I played techie, I had a LOT of stories that inspired tears more than laughter.

The best was that we were using a (logging) proxy server, back when people didn't realize that their internet access / e-mail at work was monitored. I had the craziest dirt on everyone in the company. I'd sit there for hours just reading people's e-mails.

Really? Cause im still reading your emails... o.0




And PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS TECHY AND GOOD....

BRING BACK OUR FAITH IN THG AND PROVE YOUR SKILLZ


-------> MOVE THIS THREAD

I used to work for a local computer retailer here in Edmonton Alberta. This is a true story.

It was a normal holiday season retail day, and the store was busy as usual. Around this time of year, we usually had special promos for computer packages targeted towards new users. These packages include the entirety of the system including the monitor, some type of printer, bundle software and so on. Given their price, they were a popular purchase that year.

That particular year I’d sold many of these packages to a wide diversity of clients. All was going well….

Until Boxing Day.

You see, being a mom ‘n’ pop computer place, employees were also required to be tech support for their clients. As a hardcore geek myself, I generally erred toward this side of the job.

9am Boxing Day. 1 hour before the opening of the biggest retail day of the year, I pick up the phone:

Me: “Hello?”

Client: “Yes, Hello. My name is [client], and I was in a couple days ago and purchased the HP home value package from you guys, but we’re having a few problems. Do you have a minute?”

this client was a regular of mine. These things *never* take a minute.

Me: “um… sure. What seems to be the problem?”

Client: “well, we’re not really sure if we have everything set up properly.”

Me: “how so? What’s not working?”

Client: “well we can’t get my documents into the computer.”

and so it begins.

Me: “what do you mean you can’t get documents into the computer?”

Client: “It just doesn’t take anything I give it.”

I could see this getting recursive at this point. A cold sweat appeared above my brow as I was scared she was trying to cram a floppy into the CD- ROM tray.
Me: “okay then. Let’s work this out together. Where are your documents now?”

Client: “They’re on my desk, silly”

Me: “as in on a disk of some sort?”

Client: “well, my desk is sort of a disc shape…”

It was at this point I realized she was referring to carbon copy documents.

Me: “wait a minute here, just so we’re clear with each other, the documents you speak of are on paper?”

Client: “yep”

Me: “So you want to get these paper documents onto your computer?”

Client: “Yes! That’s right!”

Now we were getting somewhere. As the package I’d sold her included a scanner, everything seemed to be going well. The fact that she could take her carbon copy documents and scan them was one of the features that had sold her on this particular package.

Me: “so the computer itself turns on, you see the images and can work with it?”

Client: “yes”

Me: “and all the pieces are hooked up according to the instruction manuals?”

Client: “that’s what I’m unsure about, but yes, as far as I can tell”

Me: “and all the software that came on the CD’s that were included with all of the pieces were installed according to the instructions?”

Client “um… I think so”

Being familiar with both the hardware and software for this particular package (we had a demo set up in the store), I walked through with her over the phone to see if all the software was installed, and all the hardware was being detected.

Everything seemed okay, and she had even installed the scanner software properly. Aside from a hardware defect, there was no reason why she couldn’t scan.

Me: “okay. Do you see the HP scanjet icon on your desktop?”

Client: “yes”

Me: “okay. Click on that icon to open the application”.


Client: “okay…”

Me: “what do you see now?”

Client: “A big grey window with a few icons on the top”

Me: “Do you see a little icon on the very top left that looks something like the scanner on your desk?”

Client: “um…. I think so.”

Me: “try clicking on it anyways”

Client: “okay…. Now it says ‘scan now’. Is that okay?”

Me: “good. This is exactly what we want”

I thought it was almost over. How wrong I was.

Me: “Do you have a paper document handy?”

Client: “yes”

Me: “good. Put it on the glass and hit the ‘scan now’ button”

Client: “okay…. “

Me: “is this what you were doing before?”

Client: “not exactly. I didn’t put the document on the glass”

The revelation

Me: “How else did you figure it would pull the information off the page and give it to your computer?”

Client: “I don’t know really. I never thought about that.”

Client: “okay… it’s done now.”

Me: “good! And it works now?”

Client: “no”

I just about lost it at this point

Me: “what do you mean? Nothing happened?”

Client: “well, I heard all these funny noises and now the grey window turned white.”

Getting a little annoyed at this point, I figured there was a breach in communication between the scanner and the system somewhere. For the following hour we ran through a series of troubleshooting trying to resolve the problem.

* * *

Some time later after I was positive everything was hooked up and installed properly:

Me: “Let’s try it one last time. If it fails, bring everything back to us and we’ll check it out.”

Client: “I’m so frustrated with this”

I tell her to launch the scanjet application again.

Me: “So once again, put the document on the glass and hit the ‘scan now’ button”

Client: “You know, I wish they’d move the button over. It would make this a lot easier to hit when I’m holding the document up to the glass”

My heart sank past the floor.

Me: “What do you mean ‘up to’?”

Client: “you know! The document you told me to put on the glass! It’s hard to hold up to it and hit the button because the page covers it, so I can’t see it! I have to put the mouse over the button before I put the page up to the glass, right?”

Me: “um.. no.”

Client: “well then how the heck am I supposed to do this?”

Me: “The scanner. It’s on your desk right?”

Client: “yes”

Me: “open the lid of the scanner. You’re putting the document ‘in’ the scanner underneath the lid, on the glass right?”

Client: “….oh….”

It was at this point that my client realized that this must have been the glass I was referring to rather than the glass on her monitor.

Now that she knew what I was talking about, I walked her through a successful scan. We had been on the phone together close to an hour and a half together. What’s really stupid is that the same documentation that told her how to install the scanner was the same documentation that showed her how to use the scanner.

I guess some people never learn.

If all else fails, RTFM

Client “um… I think so”


That is the most feared phrase in tech support.



and I dont think many people know about boxing day. (and I thought boxing day was after Xmas???)

Back when I worked at Riggs Bank, I monitored the executives spending hours browsing the mailorder-bride catalog.

well alright i was working for dell tech support and this is a totally true story.

alright one night i was working as a L2 basically assisting other techs. We got a very strange call from a lady that had alot of odd things in her account that we couldnt figure out at that time. well back to the story lady calls in and is histerical becuase she has been on the phone all night long. First we try to get her info to pull up her account and she is asking us to give her a password so she knows she is talking to the REAL Dell tech support and not the illegal aliens that are using her computer!!! that right there flew up a red flag but who knows so on we go we use the caller id and great the account came up. So we find this password we give it to her and she st