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Admin
So the WTF is that they didn't try to see what was wrong with the computer the first or second time the guy brought it in? and that the computer didn't come with a power cord?
Admin
While these "ID-10-T" stories are funny, I personally don't like the "BOFH" culture they engender. In most workplaces, IT is a support department. They aren't the main game. They don't bring in the money. A bit of humility is important in such a role. Sure, there are stupid users, but by and large users are merely ignorant, not stupid.
Admin
I hate people when they're not polite.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Maybe my reading comprehension is failing me, but I only counted two trips to Commodore. And a shop test after the second time.
What I want to know is: did Commodore find something to fix the first time it was sent in? In other words, would it have worked if the owner had thought to plug it in?
Admin
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Admin
Fixed it for you
Admin
IT should not have to teach basic computer operations to staff where their job requires the use of a computer, it is the staff member's responsibility to ensure they have the level of training required by their job description. Unless it is organisation-specific software of course.
Admin
IT should not have to teach basic computer operations to staff where their job requires the use of a computer, it is the staff member's responsibility to ensure they have the level of training required by their job description. Unless it is organisation-specific software of course.
Admin
I've had people call me because a set of Word file "disappeared", which actually was the result of them accidentally dragging the folder containing them into another folder.
I've had people say that they are no longer able to open ANY files, which was actually their inability to cope with a self-inflicted accidental change to the folder view type while using Word to look for a file.
I've had people call me and bitch at me because their recent document history in Word was gone. Apparently that was how they switched between files. How they ever worked with more than the number of files allowed by that is still a mystery to me.
I've had people call me and be completely unable to understand the most basic of instructions (which computer to reset, which button to press to effect a reset, etc). I know it's not my explaining it poorly, because 75% of their employees never have any trouble understanding what I'm telling them to do. It just seems like some people have a complete mental block when it comes to all things related to technology. Sometimes I think that people do not WANT to understand how to do things, but then I remember the normal curve for intelligence and I realize that a good percentage of people are just plain stupid and no amount of explaining or hand-holding is going to get them up to the level necessary to operate a computer in a business environment without screwing stuff up.
Admin
Addendum (2009-01-23 01:29): On another note, why do we put up with people like the one I originally replied to? The majority of the comments on these forums are utter garbage like that. My two posts are garbage too, but after years of on-and-off reading it, I felt like yelling at somebody.
Oh well.
Admin
Well, yes, the store was partly responsible. They should have checked the machine before sending it in a second time, at the latest.
However, the customer simply cannot be excused. The 1980s were a time when you absolutely had to read the manual to get a moderatly complex machine to make things.
Not to notice that you need to plug it in or get a power cord is either stupidity or laziness and only very very rarely one of the rare cases where even the smartest people get caught on a false track.
Admin
I'm not your douche, buddy.
Admin
Only this week I had a lot of pain trying to explain to a user that a little black square is NOT an empty checkbox. Most of the times it's any random unprintable character in the current font. When converting to PDF you will run into problems, because some PDF generators don't process the substitution character, but the actual unprintable glyph, so the glyph won't be printed. (duh)
Then came my little part of the fun. Unicode character 2610 is an empty checkbox (2611 and 2612 are ticked checkboxes). So now they are modifying hundreds (perhaps thousands) of documents...
Captcha: acsi That's almost ASCII. I'm afraid that the Captcha is becoming sentient... http://xkcd.com/534/
Admin
Another case of a sentient captcha: praesent
Admin
I had the exact same kind of customer cases when I worked in tech support for an IP - and this was in 2003!
Best remembered is the lady who couldn't get Internet to work, and after some questioning I realised she hadn't picked up the modem from the post office! The company also supplied cable tv and once when she had upgraded her channels the support had only had to push buttons at their end to give her Discovery. Naturally, it would only take a button push at our end to get Internet into her computer as well...
Also, the people who would ask to speak to a man, since the matter was technical! I was one of the senior technicians on the team and would connect them to any of the junior boys (and there where some pretty junior ones - they hired people for Internet support who didn't know what an IP address was) who would in the end connect them back to me.
oh the days. never again! but the cases where more entertaining then =)
Admin
P.S. Liked the stories. Or is that "stores"?
Admin
On a tangent regarding this "internet" thing: Here in Sweden there is a radio channel that has been advertising that they are now available via internet.
Their phrasing: "We are now available over the whole internet" (original: "Vi finns nu på hela internet".
I wonder how you have just a little presence on the internet?
Admin
(This immensely annoys friends of ours in Ireland, who are in range of the BBC transmitters, but who can't access iPlayer to view recent programs on demand.)
Admin
Ok, so they buy a new PC, and buy a copy of Windows with it. The first thing you do is delete Windows, which is something they've paid for. Do you go through their groceries as well and throw out all the unhealthy food before they get a chance to unpack it?
If you want to zap Windows on your PC and replace it with something else, fine. But you owe your folks some money for the copies of Windows you've stolen from them and since destroyed.
</pedant>Admin
Perhaps before it was blocked by "The Great Firewall of China", but have since been white listed?
Admin
Admin
Having read these stories of one painful support call after another, I feel compelled to share with you the only really useful thing 5 years+ of tech support has given me.
And that's the ability to phrase an answer as if the associated question was a natural and intelligent question that anyone would have asked in their particular situation.
Try it guys, it makes the "Where is the any key?" type of questions that little bit more challenging to answer...
Admin
That power cord story was the plot of an IBM commercial in the eighties that aired here in the Netherlands. Father and son are sweating over a pc but can't get it to work at all. When they're just about to give up, the youngest daughter holds up the unplugged power cord and says: "it might be a good idea to plug it in" ("of je stopt de stekker erin!")
Admin
Admin
it's worse when that person is your supervisor, and what you have to explain over&over to her is the fact that when she's editing a webpage with embedded links, the links are not in fact live but editable, to test the live links she just has to click the preview button, and no, i can't make the edit window links live, and she gives you a bad perf. review for not doing what she wants, and you get a 0% raise:-(
Admin
i don't buy it. when people make stupid mistakes regarding technology they don't understand, they make those mistakes in ways that are analogous to technology that they DO understand.
when i hear the "the cd tray is a cupholder" story, it's almost believable because cupholders are real things and someone might confuse a CD tray with one.
when i hear the "the mouse is a foot pedal" story, it's almost believable because sewing machines had foot pedals that vaguely resembled mice and some old lady used to sewing machines might get confused.
but there has NEVER, EVER been any product where you buy it, leave it in the box, and expect it to work. no one buys a radio and leaves it in the box. no one buys a coffee maker and leaves it in the box.
i don't care how technically inept someone is, no one IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would buy a product, leave it in the box, and expect it to do anything.
if (IF!@!!) your story is true, then this is not a story about a technically inept user. this is the story of someone so detached from reality that it is probably clinical. it is a story about someone suffering from mental illness to the point that they are completely incapable of taking care of themselves and should be institutionalized.
Admin
Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent, but I truly believe that video on demand is a major threat to the very infrastucture of the internet. The iPlayer has already caused major network disruption in the UK and for what? Just to receive data that could have been received over UHF. This is a shocking waste and the only real solution is for ISPs to start limiting iPlayer traffic. But this then flies directly in the face of "net neutrality" and the principle of a consistent service for all consumers. The BBC have created a major problem here and I really don't see a happy ending to any of it.
Admin
When are we going to get a dedicated "Helpdesk" category? I love the helpdesk stories, they should really be granted the honour of their own category. How about green for the article headers, or possibly a nice orange?
Admin
Admin
Mrs. Murphy: We got two honkies out there, dressed like Hasidic diamond merchants. Matt Murphy: Say what? Mrs. Murphy: They look like they're from the CIA, or somethin'. Matt Murphy: What they want to eat? Mrs. Murphy: The tall one wants white toast, dry, with nothin' on it. Matt Murphy: Elwood. Mrs. Murphy: And the short one wants four whole fried chickens, and a Coke. Matt Murphy: And Jake. Shit, the Blues Brothers.
Admin
That's because they realized they'd called an idiot the first time, who left their computer totally unusable for them. So they called someone else instead. That person reinstalled Windows so they could use their computers again, and they knew not to call you any more because you're an idiot. Hopefully, they still call you on non-computer related things, like your birthday and Christmas, because family is important, especially to the intellectually-challenged like you.
Thanks for playing though, troll.
Admin
I just tried that (opening an Excel file using the File > Open command from Word) and observed:
I don't remember what the default setting is, but I think it's All Office Documents, which would work
When you have the All Documents option selected and open an Excel file using the Open command, Word will insert the contents of the Excel file as a table in the new document.
When you have the All Office Documents option selected and open an Excel file, it will actually prompt you as to whether you'd like to launch Excel instead.
Even if you use the "Recover text from any file" setting (the closest option there is to "Treat the binary data as text") it does not display any of the little square substitute characters when opening my Excel file. Rather, I got something like
Courier1 Arial1 Arial1 Arial1 Arial1 CourierО "$"#,##0_);\("$"#,##0\) "$"#,##0_);[Red]\("$"#,##0\) "$"#,##0.00_);\("$"#,##0.00\) (etc.)You're welcome.
Admin
You could have saved that customer an 18 week wait if you just tested it in the store the first goddamn time... That's just as bad! \o/ The first time was bad enough, but a second time is ridiculous. And a third...? @#$%.
Admin
I understood that the store did check the computer when it came back from Commodore? I didn't think about the battery-operated stuff back then, but I'd think that the power cord would be in the box and the customer might think it was in the box for a reason?
CAPTCHA: valetudo = need to go skiing?
Admin
Admin
Ah the "any" key. Always a perennial favourite. My answer to that (gleaned from years of having to repeat common sense) was always; "Well you have to type the word "any" in full, so hit the "a" key." Inevitably, I would get the desired response; "Oh, there it is!"
On another note though, even those of us with a certain level of technical saavy can have our dumb moments and we need to remember that. When end users get embarrassed because they think they're stupid, I like to relay the following story.
Many years ago, in the dark ages of the late 80's when dot matrix printers were still quite common, I worked at a school board. Part of the reporting on our student database required wide paper (you know the kind, tear away holes for the dot matrix sheet feeder).
We didn't all have printers on our desks, but I had one on mine. One of my colleagues asked to borrow it one day and I happily obliged. She took the printer to her cubicle office and when she finished with it kindly brought it back to my office, carefully placing it exactly where she found it, even going so far as to plug in the power.
Shortly thereafter I tried to print to my "personal" dot matrix printer only to find it would not work. I reset it from the printer, I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers on my machine. I went through every troubleshooting method I could think of and finally got frustrated enough to call in a hardware tech, telling him that the printer must have given up the ghost.
The hardware tech walked up to my desk, where the back of my computer faced him, looked at the printer, picked up the serial cable and connected it to the back of my computer. D'oh!!!
Sometimes when you're looking for the "difficult" answer, you miss the simple ones.
Admin
My worst encounter with the terminally clueless was spending an hour with a manager trying to convince him that it was impossible for a computer linked to a dial up modem to somehow 'ring a bell' when an email was ready for receipt so he could dial in and receive it! (Before broadband and he was unwilling to pay the phone bill to have it permanently dialled in).
Admin
Does it count if my douche has a buddy?
Admin
Admin
Admin
Admin
Yep. Just happened here at work 15 minutes ago. The former temp receptionist was showing the new temp receptionist where some PDF files were on the network. I had just set account permissions so the new temp could access them. Nope, could get into the directories but not see any files. I double checked the permissions to make sure and they were fine. I went over there and saw Word open and they were navigating the file system through Word's Open dialog box which was of course filtering by default for only Word documents. sigh I showed the former temp receptionist numerous times to use My Computer but I guess some thing just don't sink in.
Admin
I used to work for a large organisation which had locked down the desktop PCs it provided, supposedly so that no-one could misuse them. Part of the lockdown was disabling Explorer (or at least, removing it from menus and removing the shortcut key).
What did we use for file management? You guessed it....
Captcha: vulputate - to cut bits off a wolf?
Admin
I had to go take care of a call once where a woman said that he voicemail light was on, but no voicemails were available. I came in to check it out, and as it turned out, the light from her giant window in her office was making the light kinda glow...
The WTF comes in because when I went back to tell my co-workers, they cut me off half way through and finished my story... Apparently, they got this call every few days right around 4:00 in the afternoon... for weeks...
Admin
The commodore story sure brought back memories for me.
I once upon a time worked for Packard bell (I know WTF all by it self).
I once got a support phone call from a man who said he was using his computer and his screen when blank. No power. So he took the monitor back to the store. He said they initially wouldn't take it back because he had had it six months, but he complained enough that they exchanged his monitor for a new one. He came up hooked up the new monitor and it still wouldn't power one. That is when he called me. I immediately suspected that he didn't have the power plugged in. I got him to verify that the monitor was plugged into the computer easily enough but getting him to check the power cord was a fierce struggle taking nearly an hour. Finally we discover that the power cord was plugged into his surge protector but the other end was laying on the floor. I managed to get him to connect the power board and of course his monitor worked just fine. He asked me why it was working now. I proposed the idea that the power cord had simply been disconnected from the monitor some how. He wasn't satisfied with my answer instead he got angry and insisted that the computer should supply the power to the monitor and it should not require it's own power cord.
Admin
The guy with the flashing light might have had a real, hard-to-debug, problem. When an app keeps accessing your hard drive non-stop and for no good reason, this is not good for your hard drive.
I had to debug precisely this problem once. I managed to make it go away, so the hard drive would get a couple accesses per minute, rather than many accesses per second. It was not easy.
The tech support guy might have laughed away a user who had a point.
Admin
I would not normally post a LOLcat, but this just fits too well... [image]
Admin