Dumbest Tech Support Situations You've Ever Heard

Dumb, yet plausable...

Published on October 31, 2005 By Zoomba In Personal Computing

A good number of you are pretty tech-saavy and as a result end up being the unofficial tech support person for your friends and family. Heck, I bet a fair number of you even do some tech support professionally. I myself spent a good solid 8 years doing front-line helpdesk work for both my High School, and later at my University. Today I do some higher-level support, but most of my work is centered around infrastructure projects.

Some time ago I wrote an article about a Computer Help spoof book idea I had called "What Every Computer Geek Wishes You Knew: But doesn't have the patience to tell you" The concept was to have it be a light-hearted jab at the ridiculous, but extremely common, tech support questions we receive on a daily basis from those in our lives who are forced to deal with technology, but are frightened to death by anything more complex than a toaster oven (and lately, even THOSE are getting too complex).

The concept was broken down into three sections...
1. "Ok, what do you see on the TV part?" - A guide to computer hardware and basic terminology
2. "No, do NOT open that E-Mail attachment!" - What every user needs to know about staying safe online
3. "The Proper Care & Feeding Of Your Helpdesk Slave" - How to treat your helpdesk/IT guys to get the best service possible!
4. "What Ted the computer guy doesn't feel like explaining" - A Q&A style section with one page dedicated to one common question or issue.

Throughout this "help book" there would be little anecdotes of both stupid users, and stupid tech support people. The whole thing would be done in a humorous tone, and it would be as much comedy as informational.

Well, that was the concept for the whole thing, but putting it all together in a book is a bit of a large task. So instead, I think it might be a fun exercise as a series of articles here on JoeUser. Maybe when it's all done it could be rolled up in a PDF or something, I'm not sure yet.

The thing is, while I've spent a lot of time doing support, I've forgotten all but a few gems of user intelligence. This is where you, the reader, come in. What are your favorite personal tech support stories? Most frustrating moments? Most common points of confusion?

If you've got 'em... post 'em! If you don't want to do so publicly, email them to me at mike@evilsysadmin.net with the subject "Idiot Users" I'm looking for all sorts of funny stories (ones you've experienced personally please, trying to avoid the email forward stories or the urban myths of computing).

Comments (Page 2)

Dr Guy

on Nov 01, 2005

"Don't call me at home unless you've rebooted."

The Mac equivalent (pre-OSX) was "Dont call me until you rebuild the desktop".

DJBandit

on Nov 01, 2005

I have never done pro support but some of the people I know think I know enough about computers for me to help them out. I tried explaining to a friend to install a game and add a shortcut to the desktop, but that was impossible. My wife by far takes the cake in learning how to use a PC. She must have short term memory problems cause at times I have to explain to her thing more than once, like why she couldn't access the pictures in the My Documents from her account, I had to set the location on her account since we didn't use the default location. But then she would go in my kids account and ask me again why she couln't get to the pictures from there.

I've had people who have had problems, a small glitch in the software and the program wont run no more. I have told them many times when something like that happens just restart the PC and it usually works just fine. Hah, they just prefer to call me first and then restart. I will never get it.

Lantec

on Nov 01, 2005

In the mid-nineties I bought my mother a compaq Win95 Pentium that (I thought) was idiot proof. About 2 or 3 monthe after setting it up for her she called to ask how to install a program she bought. I told her to put the cd in the drive and it should automatically start the install process and guide her through. She proceeded to tell me that it wouldn't fit into the CD. After about 30 minutes of questioning I figured I better make the trip to see what was wrong. When I arrived I went right to her system, booted up, pushed the button on the CD drive it popped out I put in the CD which fit perfectly to which she said "you mean that's not a cup holder?"

Peter Gadsden

on Nov 01, 2005

Before I retired..(Now I smile every day !).I worked in the IT unit of a Western Austalian university.
One day the duty help desk person called me to say she had had a call from one of the senior secretaries complaining that despite three visits by different Technicians she was still unable to access her E_Mail. She, the secretary, then asked if the "OLD MAN" (me !)still worked there.......you know the one I mean she said.......THE HUMAN ONE..!!

I felt real good that day.

And I fixed the probllem.....just a minor setting !

mick_k

on Nov 01, 2005

I worte IVR software for one company I worked at before. We had a client who called in saying that the system was going down every night. I went to the clients office and checked throught the system. Looked at the settings checking everything. I was still there when it was quitting time when the guy came in to see how things were going. I said I haven't figured out what the problem is yet and would spend a little more time. He told me ok and that he was heading out. As he was leaving the server room he reached for the power cable to the ups and unplugged it.

He said he unplugs it every day before he leaves for work. I guess he just didn't realize that the battery in the ups doesn't last that long.

M1sterB

on Nov 01, 2005

#1 I do tech and tech training at a junior high. At a camp I attended with some students who help the teachers solve problems like making sure the computer or printer is plugged in, the instructor asked the kids how many times it takes to teach a teacher about technology. His response got a laugh from all of us. "It usually takes as many times as the teacher has been teaching until the have it." So very true.

#2 I was teaching some teachers how to use some programs and I asked one teacher who was having problems to press the "Esc" key. She looked around for what seemed like forever, mainly on the right side of the keyboard and then gave up. Her neighbor had to show her.

#3 Today a teacher asked me to "download" her laptop.

#4 Occasionally when I have training in my classroom I will ask the teachers to turn on the machine they want to use. I have seem many sit down turn the monitor off and then back on again then sit there for several minutes until I go turn the machine on.

If it was for the humor of Id10t and pebcak errors, teaching teachers about technology and fixing their problems would have killed me.

NetBadger

on Nov 02, 2005

I've been in the computer business for over 25 years, and I have enough "stupid end user" stories to fill a book, but my favorite goes back about 20 years to when we were still using 5.25 inch floppy disk.

I had an older lady on the phone, who I was trying to talk through the process of copying some files to a floppy drive. I told her to take a clean floppy and insert it into the drive. She asked if I would wait a moment while she got a floppy disk. I said sure, and as I'm waiting I hear water running and think nothing of it. A few moments later she is back, and we continue with the over the phone instructions.

I ask her to put the floppy into the disk drive, and type copy c:*.* a:

She does and I hear the most gawd awful sound coming from the computer over the phone, and the woman is all freaked out. It turns out she took my "get a clean" disk to mean she should wash the floppy disk before inserting it into the computer.

Dr Guy

on Nov 02, 2005

She does and I hear the most gawd awful sound coming from the computer over the phone, and the woman is all freaked out. It turns out she took my "get a clean" disk to mean she should wash the floppy disk before inserting it into the computer.

Ever heard of Drain? That would freak out the noobies!

StumpMan

on Nov 02, 2005

Back in the early 90s, I worked for a small computer repair company. One day one of our big clients called and reported that his monito lost all color and was no longer visible. I took a new monitor out to his site, and replaced the old one (not having found anything wrong with the old one). After several days of him calling and reporting the same problem at the exact same time each day, I made sure to be onsite at the end of the week before he could call. He asked me to come into his office and see the error. No color or display on the screen.

I turned around, and shut the windowblinds (insert joke) in his office. The afternoon sun had been causing a glare on the screen.

And one more...

Once, again, back in the early DOS / Win 3.0 days. A lady came into our store and asked for a 640k floppy disk. I told her they were either 720 or 1.4, but not 640k. After several minutes of her frantically screaming and demanding a 3 insk disk that was 640k, I asked her why she thought it came in that size..

She responded, "My PC says 640k every time I turn it on!"

Out of desperation, I told her to check at Radio Shack, that we do not carry 640K 3 inch disks.

Jason Thornton

on Nov 02, 2005

Anybody out there remember back in High School when you were allowed to pick a company in your town and be "shadowed" for a few days to learn what that company did and how things work? I was being "shadowed" at a local ISP / Networking company, and after my few days there was offered a full-time job in the company. About a week after my start date, I get a call from a lady who was attempting to install the ISP's software so she could get on the internet. The installation spanned across multiple 3.5 disks, and she said that after the first disk, the others just wouldnt work. After about an hour of troubleshooting the problem I told her I would stop by after work and see what the problem was. So, after work I go to her house, walk into her computer room, and ask her to show me exactly what she had been doing when the installation halted. She says, "I installed the first disk, it asked me to insert Disk #2 to continue, so thats what I did." I look down at her floppy drive, and I can see Disk #1 AND Disk #2 still in the drive! It never occured to her that she should REMOVE the first disk BEFORE inserting the second!

thomassen

on Nov 02, 2005

She asked if I would wait a moment while she got a floppy disk. I said sure, and as I'm waiting I hear water running and think nothing of it. A few moments later she is back, and we continue with the over the phone instructions.

That is just hillarious!

For some reason I allways becomes the guy everyone asks for computer questions. So when I'm working and I hear someone in the background trying to work out some problem on the computer I tend to make my self as small and invisible as possible, otherwise I'll never get any work done.

Leauki

on Nov 02, 2005

I wrote this as a replacement for the original Nine Types of Users, which was college-centered.

This one means business!

http://www.netneurotic.net/mac/support/nine.doc

_I_ think it's funny.

Dr Guy

on Nov 02, 2005

http://www.netneurotic.net/mac/support/nine.doc

That was fantastic! Just what Zoomba needs!

tjesterb

on Nov 02, 2005

All nine of those people work where I work. I think I had four of them just today.

I also love the person who needs the same problem (or some minor variation) fixed every few days.

One guy at work, who has to do archiving on a Mac, has one of us over every few days. Either there are too many icons on his desktop, not enough, he can't connect to the servers (the missing icons again) or the DVD burner won't work.
Today he couldn't connect to any of the server shares without having to manually log into each one. He assured me that one of the other IT guys had it set to log into all of the automatically. I notice a folder on his desktop called: "Servers" Betcha can't guess what was in it....the aliases to all of his "missing" server shares of course.
He also said that when he put a DVD into the DVD burner (external firewire device) the Mac wouldn't see it (no icon on the desktop) I looked at the back of the drive, and there was the firewire cable hanging unplugged. Plugged it back in and "Voila!" the magic icon appeared on his desktop. (and they PAY me for this!!)
Of course there was the lady who called from a sister plant 20 miles away and wanted someone to come fix her PC. The MS Office toolbar was missing from her desktop, so all of her programs were gone. ('cause everyone knows that if the shortcut isn't there, the program doesn't exist!)

Zoomba

on Nov 02, 2005

Of course there was the lady who called from a sister plant 20 miles away and wanted someone to come fix her PC. The MS Office toolbar was missing from her desktop, so all of her programs were gone. ('cause everyone knows that if the shortcut isn't there, the program doesn't exist!)

You'll notice that WinXP now TELLS you that when you delete a program shortcut from the desktop that you're not actually deleting the program, but just a shortcut to it. People still don't get that concept it seems

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