Funny or bizarre stories from tech support/customer service people

[shark_megabyte]

I got the idea to start a thread for this. Post your side-splitting or weird stuff here, I'm sure there are enough of us with enough experience to take this past 1 page.

I work at the help desk in the computer labs at the University of Iowa, providing live face-to-face assistance for students and university staff who come in to work on the school computers and have questions or problems.

If there is one single example to show how complicated computers can appear to someone who's had zero experience with one, then I have seen it with my own eyes....

One night about a year and a half ago, a guy came up to my desk and asked for help because his disk wasn't working. We went over to the station he was using, I ejected the disk and right away I saw the problem. It took a herculean effort to keep a straight face, but I didn't smile or even laugh (still dont know how I managed). The disk had been placed in the drive upside down AND backwards . I explained that 'the metal circle faces down and the metal square faces in' when you put a floppy in the machine. He thanked me and I went back to the desk, still suppressing laughter. I kind of felt sorry for the guy if he had trouble with just that part, there are so many more headaches to come for him, and he didn't need to feel like I was making fun of him.

[dgardner]

Not quite real but should make you laugh if you havent already seen it.

Dear IT department


Eighteen months ago I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2
which I'd used for years without any trouble. However, there are
apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to
try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off.

To make matters worse,Girlfriend 1.0 is also incompatible with several
other applications,such as Lads Night Out 3.1, Football 2 and Playboy 6.1.
Successive versions of Girlfriend proved no better. A shareware
beta-programme, Party Girl 2.1, which I tried, had many bugs and left a
virus in my system,forcing me to
shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same
time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other
they caused severe damage to my hardware.

Sensing a way out, I then upgraded to Fiancé 1.0 only to discover that
this product soon had to be upgraded (at great cost) to Wife 1.0, which I
reluctantly agreed to because, whilst Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my
available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSex Plus and Cleanhouse
2000.

Shortly after this upgrade however I then discovered that Wife 1.0 can be
very unstable and costly to run. For example, any mistakes I made were
automatically stored in Wife 1.0's memory and could not be deleted. They
then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.

Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary Explorer and E-mail porn filter, and
can, without warning,launch Photostrop and Whingezip! These latter
products have no help files and I have to try and guess what the problem
is myself.

Additional costly problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly,
requiring Shoe Shop Browser for new attachments and also Hairstyle
Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Wife 1.0 also spawns
unwelcome child processing that also drains my resources. It also
conflicted with some of the new games I wanted to try,stating that they
are an illegal operation.

When Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Audi TT programme it often crashes or
runs the system dry. Wife 1.0 also has a rather annoying pop-up called
Mother-in-Law, which can't be turned off. Recently I've attempted to try
Mistress 2001, but there could be problems: a friend has alerted me to the
fact that if Wife 1.0 detects the presence of Mistress 2001 it tends to
delete all my MS Money files before un-installing itself.
Please can you help me.

[Mr. Sparkle]

After nearly 4 years in retail, and about 6 months as a Network Admin, I've got tons of stupid human trick stories. But I find people are funniest when I've already instigated them.

For a while, I fell in love with PC Anywhere. It's remote control tool was more fun that Unreal Tournament to me. I installed it on a computer I sold my sister, and put a second modem in it, which would pick up incoming calls.

Anyway, I took the PC to my sister's house and set it up. She had 3 phone lines - one for voice, one for data and one for fax. Just to avoid taking any chances, I plugged the PCA modem into data line, and the net modem into the fax line. That way, I wouldn't have PCA trying to answer faxes.

Anyway, I set my computer at work up to dial into her PC at home about 15 minutes before she got home from work. Then, when I'd see she had started using it, I'd take over. I'd make it go to porn sites, open 10 programs at once, etc. She called me about 5 minutes later, claiming her computer was possessed. I told her I'd take a look at it after work. She tried messing with it some more, but after me making her do the complete opposite of what she was trying to do, she finally gave up until I got there.

And of course, without me controlling it on the other end, it ran beautifully. She got pissed off as I gave her a hand-holding "how to use your computer" lesson.

I did this for the next 2-3 days, but then she figured it out when someone kept trying to send a fax to her and they said the line was busy. She did a little line tracing, and then saw too modems in the PC. My sister knows just enough about computer to know that she didn't need two modems.

Once she figured out what was going on, she called me up and told me she was going to kill me. She was prety pissed, but it was worth it.

[hyborn]

hehe - that rocks.

Most of the stories I hear contain the words "CD Drive" and "Coffee cup holder".

It is surprising how many exec's I have heard of confusing the two, leading to $$ damage.

[Smadguy]

Excellent Mr. Sparkle.......

A few years ago I was doing Desktop and hardware support for an Airline in the UK.

One day I installed an old portable HP Inkjet printer to a guys laptop. Showed him how to attach it when he was going to use it and explained that even a simpleton could do it, (Maybe thats where I went wrong).

The next day he logs a call with the help desk to explain that the printer doesn't work. Rather than pay him a visit I try to talk to him on the phone about setting it up. He assures me that it is all connected but the printer just wont turn on. I decide to pay him a visit (Or rather my boss orders me too).

When I get there I check over the connections and immediately I can see the problem.

The guy had connected the parallel cable the wrong way into the printer parallel port. God knows how he managed it, I mean they are only designed to go in one way right? Wrong in this case.

Try as I might I couldn't get the blasted connection out. He had forced it in so hard he had bent the metal frameon the cable and it was jammed solid.

I unscrewed the connection from the PC end and removed the printer. When getting back to the office I tried to explain it to my boss, who didn't believe me. I then showed him the guys handiwork and well to say we couldn't stop laughing was an understatement. We ordered him a replacement printer and cable and explained again how he should connect it up.

Hint: Never say to a user "Even a simpleton couldn't get this wrong" - The user will always prove you wrong!

[Lycia]

My boring call yesterday:

(L)user: My outlook isn't working!
Me: What wrong?
(L)user: When I try to forward an email nothing shows up!! Outlook isn't working! (FYI, we had just replaced his laptop becuase he had been complaing about the old one not working fast enough! So I had received the new one and had brought it down to him, and not 10 mins later he calls with this...)
Me: Uhm when you forward an email, you have to manually enter the address' of the people you want to send it to. If you reply to an email the address of the person you are replying to will show up.
(L)user: (Very mad now) NEVERMIND.
Me: Wait, is that the problem?
(L)user: (Still mad) Nevermind! You don't want to help! Fine! NEVERMIND! (Hangs up).

[lowlife_ltd]

I am not a puter support person (not any more the ppl drove me Crazy) But where i am going to school right now In our computer Lab the so called "suppert ppl" are big dumb Bumms, We have a program called "Deep Freeze" (does any one know how to hack it?) and what is does is just make every thing on the HD undeletable, so if there is an error on the puter they just..... Turn it off. than back on. FUN





But when i was a support person for MNR a person asked me if i could help them hack there GirlFriends Hotmail. I said no the guy got mad.

You had to be there.

[shark_megabyte]

lol

If he didnt know his gf well enough to supply her password hint answer, he gets no sympathy

[araaraara]

We have that stupid Deep Freeze program at school on all the computers in our 3 main labs. I hate it so much! I have gotten around it before, using a dos boot disk to boot the computer(df is in the boot sector of the HD), but then they changed to boot order to c: only.

Deep freeze sucks ***. It makes the computers like 100X slower. Everything I do causes the HD to grind up a storm! It takes like 30 seconds to open MS Word! Even opening Notepad takes 10 seconds to open. Plus, it works good for about 4 months after it's installed, but then the computers get really messed up for no reason. The computer I work on crashes like 2-3 times in a 1 hour class!

[ironik311]

hehe... all very funny.
Here is one I had today:


Client: "I had this weird error about a cable and the screen flashed red green and blue. Now it has gone black and the computer won't work anymore"
Me: "what were you doing when this happened?"
Client: "I was saving a word document and I went away from the computer for a bit. I locked the screen and when I came back there was this cable error! Now the computer doesn't work!"
Me: "What did you press to lock the screen?"
Client: "I went to the start menu and pressed something there"
Me: "Ok, we might need to reboot the machine. Can you see the button on the front of the computer... the one that says 'optiplex gx-150'?"
Client: "Yes."
Me: "Ok, now hold that button down until the green light goes off"
Client: "what green light?"
Me: "The one on the button"
Client: "There is no green light"
Me: "ok, can you press the button once"
Client: "There is a green light now and something about f12 on the screen. Its working now."
Client hangs up.

The client had shutdown the machine and the dell monitor screen saver comes up saying "check signal cable". The screen saver disappears after about 5min...

[pmasley]

I especially built a workstation for the bosses executive secretary. As money was no object, you can imagine what she got. One thing that I did was to ghost the entire system onto the server to make repairs a snap. Her system stores all files on the server.

This secretary can operate this system for days without a BSD, however the bosses daughter can come in and as it appears, just sit down in the chair in front of it and the box will BSD. I cannot for the life of me figure out what she is doing. I have installed a keystroke program and I have even thought of installing a camera in the cubicle and watch her as she plays around with the computer. Now, I mean she actually trashes it. It will not reboot. I have to ghost the entire system to make it run again.

It only takes 10 minutes to ghost it back and I think the problem is hillarious, but the boss does not. He paid over $2,000.00 to set this box up and is pi###d off that his daughter cannot use. By the way, the secretary loves it. It keeps the bosses daughter out of her system.

[michaeln]

Originally posted by Mr. Sparkle


Anyway, I set my computer at work up to dial into her PC at home about 15 minutes before she got home from work. Then, when I'd see she had started using it, I'd take over. I'd make it go to porn sites, open 10 programs at once, etc. She called me about 5 minutes later, claiming her computer was possessed. I told her I'd take a look at it after work. She tried messing with it some more, but after me making her do the complete opposite of what she was trying to do, she finally gave up until I got there.

Did you charge her for the call oluts

[michaeln]

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants over 100%
Here's to achieving 103%
Here's a little math that might prove helpful
in the future! What makes life 100% ??
IF,A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Then,

H A R D W O R K
8 1 18 4 23 15 18 11 = 98 % Only


K N O W L E D G E
11 14 15 23 12 5 4 7 5 = 96 % Only

But,

A T T I T U D E
1 20 20 9 20 21 4 5 = 100 %

However,

B U L L S H I T
2 21 12 12 19 8 9 20 = 103%

[skuz]

Many many hours of fun ahead : www.rinkworks.com/stupid

[gfunkmartin]

I remember this one guy...

His CPU fan wasn't working for whatever reason...so he thought it would be a good idea to work on it...with a HAMMER! so he hit it once, just to see what would happen and the fan blades moved a little from being hit. He assumed that meant the fan worked when you hit it, so he really started whacking away at it. pretty soon he realized something wasn't right when the motherboard broke from his incessant hammering. Oh, BTW, it was his (ex-?) girlfriend's computer