'True' Tech Illiteracy Stories #12 

I work for a large company and one day had problems with Lotus 1-2-3.
Every time I did a particular action, the computer crashed and I had to
restart the machine. I called the help desk (commonly referred to as
the "helpless desk") and explained the problem. She asked if I could
recreate event, and I did, twice, while on the phone with her.
She thought for a moment, and said: "Well, why don't you just keep
restarting the machine?"


Had a customer was befuddled because his DOS based program called
"Tone Loc" would not run properly in a 95 window. He was very upset, and
could not understand why we could not help him configure a war-dialer.


A cust called complaining that his Lotus 123 was crashing when 
he tried to load the program in Win 3.1. He said that one of our other
techs told him he needed a new AC cable. Needless to say, we tried to
set him straight on that...but to no avail. He would not believe us.
Ended up sending him a new AC cable.


Guy called saying he couldn't get his internal modem to install. I asked
him what was happening, he said, "I can't use my residential port because
I don't have an IQ". Serial port, IRQ? :-)


Had a lady call in. 95 was misconfiguring her PCMCIA modem.
Started to walk her through the reconfiguration when she broke in saying
that the computer was a lemon and that she wanted her money back or a new
computer. Asked her to calm down and was continuing when she
screamed..."My mother is dying in the other room! I'm a registered
nurse, I don't have time to configure this piece of ****!" "Sorry,
ma'am, if you'll have to calm down if you want me to help you." She shot
back, "I want a new computer...can't you see my mother is dying in the
other room...can't you see that I don't have time?!?...Can't you hear
her?!" (no) This went downhill for another five minutes or so before
she hung up.


One customer called up asking for help setting up TCP/IP on his
laptop. Turned out that he had installed NT Server 4.0, MS Back
Office and Cold Fusion onto his laptop and wanted to run it as a Web
server. Asked him about some of his network settings, discovered that he
wasn't connected to a network at all and didn't intend to.
He wanted help setting up TCP/IP for a dialup adapter :-)


Got a call from a guy with one of our older laptops. He and his
brother had found it in a dumpster and wanted to know *why* it wouldn't
boot. Guess he couldn't figure out why they threw it out in the first
place.


'Certified' dealer called in, having trouble removing a HD
from one of our more expensive laptops. Normally you have to push a
latch on the bottom of the hard drive before pulling it out by the nylon
strap. He was trying to YANK the drive out by the strap with a pair of
pliers....needless to say, when he did get it out (after telling him
about the latch) the unit would no longer boot. NOT covered under
warranty :-)


Had a guy call in trying to get a PCMCIA floppy driver that comes
with one of our subcompact units to be recognized under 95. He said that
he had installed the 95 floppy patches on our Web site, plus the
hardware specific 95 drivers for the laptop. Asked him some general
questions about his machine and then asked him to go into the BIOS setup
to verify the ROM revision. He couldn't...he didn't have one
of our laptops (he had bought the PCMCIA floppy second hand). 
Now, of course, 95 would no longer boot after installing our patches.
He wanted me to fix his registry files. I said that I couldn't do that,
that he'd have to contact his laptop manufacturer for support. He said
that he couldn't do that...he bought his unit from some back alley
company in Singapore. OOOhhh Well :-)


Someone called up saying that the program we supplied was losing
contact with the server again, then called later to say that it
was getting worse. In fact, the more annoyed she got, the worse it got.
She had a habit of sitting with her legs crossed and bouncing the top
leg up and down at the knee when she was annoyed - I checked the
cable, and she was tapping it with her foot, which was causing a dodgy
connection to break and re-make. The more it happened, the more
annoyed she got, the more it happened, the more annoyed she got...


A man wanted to use my modem to call his girlfriend. He thought that
if you typed words with the modem software on my computer that the words
would come out in spoken form for the person at the other end of the line!


Tech: "What does the screen say now?"
Person: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'."
Tech: "Well?"
Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"

     
One of our servers crashed.  I was watching our new system
administrator trying to restore it.  He inserted a CD and needed to
type a path name to a directory named 'i386.' He started to type it
and paused, asking me,  "Where's the key for that line thing?" I asked
what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks
like an upside-down exclamation mark."  I replied, "You mean the
letter 'i'?", and he said, "Yeah, that's it!"

     
1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"
2nd Person: "A little.  What's wrong?"
1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back
to say that she only received a cover-sheet and a blank page.  I tried 
it again, and the same thing happened."
2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?"
1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone 
else to read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient 
would open it and read it."


A secretary was asked to order paper for the office fax machine.
The need was immediate, and she didn't want to wait for the next-day
delivery.  Thinking 'outside the box', she called the office
supply store and asked if they would fax her some paper to hold
them over until the delivery came.


A co-worker once told me he had a theory about why there were
shortages of water in some parts of the world.  His theory
was that people are drinking it all.


Winners of a 'Dilbert Quotes' tech illiteracy contest: 
* How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
(Programming intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)
* E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be
used only for company business.
(Accounting Mgr., Electric Boat Company)
* My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only
needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she
couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected.
(CIO of Dell Computers)


Cust: "My computer crashed!"
Tech: "It crashed?"
Cust: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."
Tech: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."
Cust: "No, it didn't crash-it crashed."
Tech: "Huh?"
Cust: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before. I crashed
 my spaceship and now it doesn't work."
Tech: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"
Cust: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"


I work for a local ISP. Frequently, we receive phone calls that
start something like this: "Hi. Is this the Internet?" Some people
pay for their online services with checks made payable to "The Internet."


Cust: "So that'll get me connected to the Internet, right?
 And that's the latest version of the Internet, right?"


I once received a fax with a note to fax the document back to the
sender when I was finished with it, because he needed to keep it.


Tech: "Now double-click on the File Manager icon."
Cust: "That's why I hate this Windows-because of the icons-I'm a
 Protestant, and I don't believe in icons."
Tech: "Well, that's just an industry term sir. I don't believe
 it was meant to-"
Cust: "I don't care about any 'Industry Terms'. I don't believe
 in icons."
Tech: "Well...why don't you click on the 'little picture' of
 a file cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"
Customer: [click]


Tech: "Press the control and escape keys at the same time.
 Now type the letter 'P' to bring up the Program Manager."
Cust: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Cust: "What do you mean?"
Tech: "'P' on your keyboard."
Cust: "I'm not going to do that!"


Cust: "I'd like a mouse mat, please."
Sales: "Certainly sir, we've got a large variety."
Cust: "But will they be compatible with my computer?"


Stupid things people have said or done, trying to get their computers to work:
"Can you fax me a disk?"
"Is that a capital '7'?"
"Can I buy the Internet?"
"I have a 464 with 8k."
"It says I have 512 kegabytes."
"I'd like to buy a box of hard disks."
"My wife downloaded 20 megs of free space.  Is that enough?"
"The Internet - isn't that a microchip?"
"Every time I call you I get disconnected from the Internet!"

 ___  __  __  ___    __    _  _  _  _  ____
/ __)(  )(  )(_  )  /__\  ( \( )( \( )( ___) Suzanne Cook
\__ \ )(__)(  / /  /(__)\  )  (  )  (  )__)  
(___/(______)(___)(__)(__)(_)\_)(_)\_)(____) http://www.cs.utah.edu/~scook/