• Steve O. (unregistered)

    A while back, when I was still working the phones in a call center, I got a call from an angry user saying they couldn't get the CDs with updates to load on his system. Knowing that the machine in question was sitting a parts department at a dealership, I told him that he needed to clean the CD reader of dust. I assumed (incorrectly as it turned out) that he would use a can of compressed air or something to that effect to do this. Thirty minutes later he called back screaming that his whole machine just "melted down". After calming him down a bit, I asked what happened. Apparently he used brake cleaner to clean out the CD reader. So his machine truly melted down. I dispatched a hardware tech to help.

  • Manni (unregistered)

    My own experiences are somewhat limited (like when I told someone I could write a program to do what they wanted, they offered me a pad of paper and a pen to write it with).

    A good friend of mine worked the phones for a DSL tech support department, and her worst call involved an irate customer whose sole problem was that he had no clue how to use a computer. After determining that the monitor wasn't on, she asked the guy to double-click an icon on his desktop. She heard a tapping sound and he said that nothing happened. She asked him to try again, and still nothing. Turns out he was tapping the mouse against the screen, all the while blaming the company for having crappy service. After she taught him how to use the mouse, everything was working fine.

  • Phil Scott (unregistered)

    Working for a computer training company that also did a lot of desktop training in addition to technical stuff, we saw a lot of "interesting" habits and assumptions.

    now, keep in mind, a lot of times the people doing the really "dumb" things were in fact very smart people. people that this very minute have some type of website dedicated to non-mechanics trying to work on their cars saying stuff like "This guy didn't even know where his COOLANT went without looking at the pictures on the caps. And then after seeing the label asked me if he read it right!! And the coolant he was using wasn't even UNICODE. DUMB ASS!"

    But anyways, I've seen people
    1) turn their mouse over and move the ball with their hands and push down on the thing when they want to click
    2) point at the screen
    3) talk into the mouse (ala Homer Simpsons's "Computer, Kill Flanders)

    Some of the more interesting habits involved people in development roles that I trained. In these classes, you generally could make an assumption that most people know what windows explorer is, but it's funny to see how people launch it.

    I'd say it breaks down like this:
    30% right click on the start menu
    30% WIN-E
    20% Start->programs->accessories->windows explorer
    9% minimize all windows, double click on my computer
    .00001% Go to start->to search->search for "windows explorer"

    that was perhaps the oddest thing I've seen someone do that I considered technically proficient.

  • Miles Archer (unregistered)

    I got distracted once and pushed a 5 1/4 in the gap between drive bays rather in the drive itself. Doing it intentionally seems rather odd, though.

  • WanFactory (unregistered)

    Urban myth from the 5.25" days?

    TechSupport, help! I was trying to install some new software. I put in the first disk and after a few minutes it said, "insert second disk and press space bar", but now I can't get either disk out of the drive!

  • drift (unregistered)

    reminds me on:

    "...but i can't find the 'any' key"

    :-D

  • Peter (unregistered)

    WanFactory, I used to work at a place that fixed car radios. You wouldn't believe the stuff folks put in the tape decks. Urban myth or not, I wouldn't be surprised.

  • Enigma (unregistered)
  • Jonathan (unregistered)

    How did he get the 5.25" disk around the cup in his cup holder/

  • dave (unregistered)

    My old boss actually had rolls of "ANY" stickers kicking around - he told me they used to put them on the spacebar so people could find the "ANY" key...

  • hostile17 (unregistered)

    I saw some guy on a newsgroup once talking about how he worked on a software manual years ago, and the manual was created from a database -- he was doing the data entry.

    He would have to complete things like this:

    FOR HELP: KEY ______
    FOR PRINT: KEY ______

    and at some points he would type

    CONTINUE: KEY ANY

    but because the manual was created from this DB and nobody thought ahead about the possible variations, it ended up on the page, printed out as

    To continue, hit the key marked ANY ...

  • Jeremy Morton (unregistered)

    It drives me nuts when people right click on the start menu to open explorer. Can't say I know why, except that it opens up a directory that they usually don't want and they have to back out, maybe I hate the inefficiency of it. I love the "My Computer" button on MS keyboards that opens explorer and Win-E works well, too.

  • Huffie (unregistered)

    I remember during college days when there's a transition of 5.25" to 3.5" drive. As I was working on assignment in the labs, saw this person trying hard to find a 5.25" drive but couldn't find any after 5mins of searching high and low. In the end, folded 5.25" floppy an inserted into 3.5" drive.

  • byron (unregistered)

    finding explorer: i do win+r, path (i type fast, it's normally quicker for me to enter the path than to browse to it).

    stupid tale: i used to be sysadmin at a university. academics are excellent for stupid computer tales. my favourite is the guy who, in word, used "undo" to deselect text, then couldn't figure out why his work kept on disappearing.

  • Terry (unregistered)

    I worked next to a guy who had a spare bay on the front of his computer. He removed the external plastic facade and used the free bay to hold his packets of loose tobacco.

    Needless to say that he was very surprised after a few months when the loose tobacco that had fallen out of the pack onto the motherboard caught on fire.

    I laughed my arse off.

  • hetas (unregistered)

    I don't have any nice stories but I recommend computer stupidities site (http://rinkworks.com/stupid/) if someone isn't familiar with it.

    The programming section has some nice WTFs.

  • x (unregistered)

    In the mid 90's while in high school I had a part-time job in a small local computer shop. A guy once came in and said his mouse wasn't working well anymore. Then he asked if we had those small felt cloth pieces that are found besides the mouse ball (he thought they were outworn). I almost bursted into laughter when I told him that it was just dust, and the mouse would probably work if he'd just get rid of those "pieces of felt cloth"...

  • Zka (unregistered)

    LOL! Why should anyone open Windows Explorer anyway? :)

  • pb (unregistered)

    A friend of mine told me this story about his classmate: they were at a computer class and the teacher instructed them to take the 5.25" disk out of the case and insert the disk to the floppy drive. The classmate's disk had no external paper case (uh, school stuff), so needless to say, she tried to tear up the plastic case of the disk... and she succeeded! :)

  • not so good coder (unregistered)

    you know byron.... the e key is 1/2 centimeter to ur left :P

  • Alan Bellingham (unregistered)

    @not so good coder

    I think Byron knows that. He just finds it easier to type the final path in directly rather than do Win+E, and then click (wait) click (wait) click (wait).

  • BradC (unregistered)

    Nice link, Hetas. Here's the best one I've found so far: (in the Stupid Tech Support section)

    Customer: "When my computer boots up, all I get is a black screen that says, 'boot2/'."
    Tech Support: "What operating system are you using?"
    Customer: "I'm using Windows 98 and NT 4.0."
    Tech Support: "Ok, I'm the Mac tech. The Windows tech is gone, but I can try to help you."
    Customer: "Ok, what should I do? I've reformatted the hard drive and have fresh installs of both operating systems."
    Tech Support: "Sir, have you put any cheese or mustard in your a drive?"
    Customer: "What? Did you just ask me if I put cheese or mustard in my floppy drive?"
    Tech Support: "Yeah, we've had that happen a lot lately."
    Customer: (staring blankly at roommate, who was laughing uncontrollably on the floor) "I think I'll wait for the PC tech to get back. Thanks for the help." (click)

  • (cs)

    A friend of mine did the same thing on her first day of a new temp job. She was not computer literate. She was told to put a 5 1/4 in the slot on the computer, and she put it in the gap between drive bays, thinking this must be the way to do it.

    I did user support for a few years around the turn of the millennium, and most of the users were not stupid, just not very familiar with computers. The only ones who came across as stupid were some of the ones who were more computer literate, as they would be doing stuff in the background while you were trouble-shooting with them which would create a moving target, would lie to you when you asked them questions, etc.

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