Funny Stories

codeDV

OK we've all heard of the the story where a jerk phones up tech support during a power cut becuase his computer wasn't working. I bet there's a few people here who have their own stories of IT iliteracy. Here's one of mine:

When I was employed as a sales assistant at shop selling computers a man came in with his computer. He was miffed, as he had spent nearly £500 on on a pentium 4 processor which when he put it in his system did not work. My collegue and I hummed and harred for a bit wondering whether we should take a look (we were not supposed to fix them - just sell them 😃). In the end we decided to open up his computer - we both looked in astonishment as we saw that he had in fact an AMD motherboard. What's more he had a piece of celotape accross the fan stuck to the motherboard to hold it in place and had cut off the pins from his Pentium 4 so it would fit in the AMD slot.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

tekky

thats.... amazing....

I've read the Apple one where the lady couldnt get the computer to turn on and when asked to check some connections said "hold on let me get the flashlight" -- the tech was like... "excuse me? flashlight? cant you see behind your desk?" -- "No sir, the powers out..." :rolleyes:

We actually had a book of these (published by a helpdesk company) in our HS library back home 😃

LordShryku

User: "It says Insert Disk Two, but it won't go in!"
Me: "It helps to remove disk one before trying to put disk two in"

I hate tech support

drawmack

client: I can't get into my admin area
me: did you type in www.something.com/admin
client: yup
<about 15 minutes of trying different stuff>
me (completely flustered): can you email me the url you're typing in?
client: sure thing - off it goes

contents of email: wwwdotsomethingdotcom/admin

LordShryku

Reply: "Yeah........maybe you shouldn't be in the admin area...."

Moonglobe

god, that's really sad.

i once asked a friend how fast his processor was. he replied: "Windows 95" :p

edit: that is a pretty good indicator of speed come to think of it.....

dalecosp

Hmm, wish I could remember stuff like this. I usually just write it off as being typical for the non-geek. I have seen hardware secured to the mobo with 'hot glue' ... and seen customers use the Windows "open with" dialog to open viruses that their systems (rightly) didn't recognize....

Today, for example, I got a call --- "computer's gone to heck, picture's destroyed, icons all over the place" --- so I drove 28 miles, spent an hour out of the office, for a fifteen minute service call, during which I set the video settings to 800x600 high color, and for fun, did a cursory inspection of the system registry hoping to find a virus, and actually spent most of the time telling them that there was no way they'd known me when I was 10 years old.

They weren't a "regular customer", so they paid on the spot instead of being billed. Having left, check in hand, I realized I had overcharged them by 300% since I did the math in my head instead of entering them in the billing system...

I think I'll just keep that check.... :rolleyes: Sorry I've got no good stories..... 🙁

Merve

"There's no sound! I don't understand! I popped a CD in and it played but I couldn't hear anything!"
"Check the volume."
"It's at max."
"Are the speakers on?"
"Speakers? What speakers?"

LordShryku

So did you ever get some speakers Merve?

Moonglobe

Originally posted by LordShryku
So did you ever get some speakers Merve?

hehheheheh

Merve

yup

I wasn't the one making or receiving the call. One of my parents' friends told the story.

dalecosp

I have a shop nearby with about 8 desks. We've been in the process of upgrading their machines --- new mobos for most to get speed above 1 GHz, WinXP Pro, Office 2003 (got it before the actual release, even...)

Now, they'd been using Win 98 for quite a long time. File sharing: a] Minimize everything (or click "show desktop" but they never remember...) b] open "Network Neighborhood" c] find the other guy's machine in the list d] double click e] view resources and open the correct folder, f] drag/drop your stuff to the other guy's folder.

I'm sure you're aware that it's a tad easier with XP, at least in theory: everybody has a "shared folder" that appears in the "My Network Places" list on all machines. Start | My Network Places | click | drag/drop

So, I walk by one of the offices there today, and the boss is saying "OK, I'll just put the stuff on floppy and bring it to you in the morning...wait, do we have any floppies? Maybe we need to send someone to go get some...."

:rolleyes:

Education is the greater part of consulting.... 😉