• (cs)

    O-M-G ...

  • A. Friend (unregistered)

    Maybe it was a hint, like "I'm not your secretary, print your own copies if you need them."

  • sweavo (unregistered)

    Hahah, yes but she came half way... I'LL do the copying if YOU do the printing

  • (cs)

    Maybe they were using m$ outlook, it allows you to ctrl+drag attachments into the same email to create duplicate copies... i use that feature all the time when co-workers ask for multiple copies ;)

  • sweavo (unregistered)

    Back in '92, when Object Linking and Embedding was new and exciting, I caught myself embedding WAV files in a word document I was intending to send by snail mail.

  • (cs)

    Though I have heard a lot about it, I have never seen anyone mistake a CD tray for a cup holder. I have seen money in floppy drives though.

  • (cs)

    I think there are lots of people that have trouble understanding the relationship between print documents and digital documents.

    I worked as a "copy boy" at a law firm a few years ago and saw similar things. Sometimes lawyers would send me a Word doc and ask me to print, say, 500 copies. Sometimes they would send me a stack of 500 pages and ask me to scan them in and e-mail them the PDF.

    One day, a woman comes down and asks me to scan in a bunch of stuff to make a PDF. I'm happily scanning this stuff until she realizes there's a typo or something in the document. "Luckily," she says, "I've got the Word Doc this stuff came from on this floppy here!" She whips out the floppy and makes the change, then tries to print out the document so I can scan in the new version.

    At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

    The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...

  • Anon (unregistered)

    "Coffee cups on the PC's cup holder." I'm guessing you meant CD-ROM drive tray... seen that one myself LOL

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    I've seen it, but only where it was intentional (i.e. CD-ROM was broken anyway, and the user figured at least this way it was good for something -- and good for a laugh as well).

  • Pyro (unregistered) in reply to Outlaw Programmer

    You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

  • (cs)

    She was being efficient.

    You only had to print each copy once, instead of one document six times. Printing a document six times might wear our the ones and zeros.

  • (cs) in reply to Pyro
    Pyro:
    You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

    OK, but that's only the first step. 2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete 3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed. 4. Get the pictures a few days later 5. Make b/w copies 6. Scan the copies

  • Carra (unregistered)

    Printing out a Word document to convert it to a pdf, now thats a real WTF.

    I mean, "I'll need 6 copies" and she sends 6, that's only logical!

  • Happy Programmer (unregistered)

    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

  • BinaryPhalanx (unregistered) in reply to Lars Vargas
    Lars Vargas:
    She was being efficient.

    You only had to print each copy once, instead of one document six times. Printing a document six times might wear our the ones and zeros.

    Worn out binary gets stuck sometimes. That's why old computers crash more!

  • BrainyRon (unregistered)

    Sounds like half of the clients where I work...amusingly, the government jobs tend to be the most ignorant in this respect.

  • jmj (unregistered)

    heh, I was expecting the last line to say that she sent six separate emails.

  • Neil (unregistered)

    Why not just email the thing to begin with and avoid the paper?

  • Jasmine (unregistered) in reply to Happy Programmer
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

    Oh come on! You are making that up...

  • (cs) in reply to Jasmine
    Jasmine:
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

    Oh come on! You are making that up...

    I remember a story from my Dad back when fax machines first appeared in the UK... they started to fax a a letter through it and the secretary screamed 'no that's our only copy'.... I think it's more of an urban legend, but still good.

  • KG (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy
    Grovesy:
    I remember a story from my Dad back when fax machines first appeared in the UK... they started to fax a a letter through it and the secretary screamed 'no that's our only copy'.... I think it's more of an urban legend, but still good.

    I used to believe that fax machines worked by sending the physical documents through the power lines. I was 6 at the time :)

    I remember thinking to myself: "How does the paper fit inside a power line? Is it rolled up really tight?" LOL, good times.

  • (cs) in reply to Happy Programmer
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

    You might appreciate this

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to KG

    At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.

  • (cs) in reply to Outlaw Programmer
    Outlaw Programmer:
    I think there are lots of people that have trouble understanding the relationship between print documents and digital documents.

    I worked as a "copy boy" at a law firm a few years ago and saw similar things. Sometimes lawyers would send me a Word doc and ask me to print, say, 500 copies. Sometimes they would send me a stack of 500 pages and ask me to scan them in and e-mail them the PDF.

    One day, a woman comes down and asks me to scan in a bunch of stuff to make a PDF. I'm happily scanning this stuff until she realizes there's a typo or something in the document. "Luckily," she says, "I've got the Word Doc this stuff came from on this floppy here!" She whips out the floppy and makes the change, then tries to print out the document so I can scan in the new version.

    At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

    The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...

    Actually, the entire field of law is filled with this sort of WTF. The reason is that they need physical evidence, and an electronic copy is apparently only "valid" if it is a copy of a physical item. I recall at one point during a patent infringement suit, we had to go through about 200 boxes of printed source code. It would have taken an hour or so to do electronically but instead we were there for a week. Some of the boxes also had the floppies or CDs that contained the original files, which was helpful.

  • Some E-Mailer (unregistered) in reply to Happy Programmer
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    Yeah, I tried that too. It got returned. Something about insufficient postage. :-(

  • (cs) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    Actually, the entire field of law is filled with this sort of WTF. The reason is that they need physical evidence, and an electronic copy is apparently only "valid" if it is a copy of a physical item. I recall at one point during a patent infringement suit, we had to go through about 200 boxes of printed source code. It would have taken an hour or so to do electronically but instead we were there for a week. Some of the boxes also had the floppies or CDs that contained the original files, which was helpful.
    I suppose it could have been worse; there might have been pictures of the pdf files created from scanned pictures of the disks on wooden tables...
  • (cs) in reply to Drum D.
    Drum D.:
    Pyro:
    You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

    OK, but that's only the first step. 2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete 3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed. 4. Get the pictures a few days later 5. Make b/w copies 6. Scan the copies

    You're both clueless. Come to the swamp shack. I video in my docs. Then I add them to all-docs.txt. Search them with Desktop Search. Much easier. Stop by. I'll bring you up to speed.

  • (cs) in reply to Outlaw Programmer
    Outlaw Programmer:

    At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

    The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...

    Law offices are notoriously technology-backwards.

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to A. Friend
    A. Friend:
    Maybe it was a hint, like "I'm not your secretary, print your own copies if you need them."

    Or she could not be a bitch and say, "Hey, I'm busy would you mind running off the copies."

  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:
    Law offices are notoriously technology-backwards.

    Which may be why you never hear of a law office losing years of customer data due to a server crash and inadequate backups.

  • (cs)

    Reminds me of the time I had to call Micro$oft about an issue. Turns out they needed a non-disclosure agreement from my company. Except he's not allowed to email it, he has to fax it to me. So I give him my fax number and a few minutes later I get the document twice over the fax machine. Figured that he wasn't sure it went through the first time and faxed it a second time to be sure or something like that. Called him back to let him know I got it. While we were talking, I mentioned the two copies. "Oh yeah," he says."There's one for you to sign and fax back and another for you to keep."

  • Mike (unregistered)

    I know the whole "cupholder" joke has been around for a long time...but has anyone actually tried it? Actually works quite well when you have paperwork spread all over your desk.

  • mudkipz (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.

    You can save disk space over using regular casing, if you compress your files. Using call caps lowers a document's entropy, which implies that it is more compressible.

  • splaestro (unregistered) in reply to Happy Programmer
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    And no doubt she put the envelope on a wooden table when addressing it...

  • (cs) in reply to Happy Programmer
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

    My mom, she printed out the Word document, put it on a wooden table, photographed it, developed it, scanned it and sent it as an attachment.

  • FIA (unregistered) in reply to mudkipz
    mudkipz:
    Bob:
    At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.

    You can save disk space over using regular casing, if you compress your files. Using call caps lowers a document's entropy, which implies that it is more compressible.

    I've heard that eating a balanced diet and taking regular exercise can help to lower your entropy too. Dunno if it's true though.

    (Sorry, that was a bit random wasn't it?)

  • Jay (unregistered)

    A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"

  • Jay (unregistered)

    I used to work for a company that had a contract to repair damaged computers for a local college. We got lots of entertaining problems. For example, we once got a computer where someone had stuffed four floppies into the floppy drive and they were all now well jammed in there. (These were the old 5.25".) I couldn't help but wonder, Was somebody trying to follow install instructions that said, Insert disk #1 ... Insert disk #2 ... Insert disk #3, and the instructions didn't say to remove the previous disk before inserting the new one?

  • KT (unregistered) in reply to Drum D.
    Drum D.:
    Pyro:
    You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

    OK, but that's only the first step. 2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete 3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed. 4. Get the pictures a few days later 5. Make b/w copies 6. Scan the copies

    6. Go to 1;

  • (cs)

    I'm almost starting to think that most application functions need to have the word "copy" in their names somewhere. For example, instead of "Attach" it would be "Attach Copy." Instead of "Send" it would be "Send Copy." There's this fundamental idea in computing where you're always just duplicating the data, not sending the only existing object. I think this is what trips most people up.

    My uncle has a hard time understanding this. For whatever reason, he can't understand the idea of "installing software." To him, if the CD isn't in the drive, then the software can't possibly work. He doesn't understand that notion of copying the data from the CD to some internal storage no matter how many times I try to explain it. God help me if I ever try to tell him that the sound system in my car has a hard drive in it...

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    I used to work for a company that had a contract to repair damaged computers for a local college. We got lots of entertaining problems. For example, we once got a computer where someone had stuffed four floppies into the floppy drive and they were all now well jammed in there. (These were the old 5.25".) I couldn't help but wonder, Was somebody trying to follow install instructions that said, Insert disk #1 ... Insert disk #2 ... Insert disk #3, and the instructions didn't say to remove the previous disk before inserting the new one?

    Probably trying to solve the "disk full" problem by adding more storage capacity...

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"

    One of my co-workers, a web designer, once gave a mockup of a new design to a customer and was asked if he could give it "a warmer font". My co-worker considered telling her that she should leave her monitor on for a while before viewing the site.

  • Tei (unregistered)

    I am on tons of mail list with people that always make topposting, and have absolutelly zero idea what is quoting, bottomposting or nettiquete. I try to teach these people to remove the ad's, or to reply only to whatever is really replying. But Is imposible.

    EMAIL IS DYING!!, email netiquette has become a unknom art!!

  • Agrona (unregistered)

    This has been a dilbert cartoon for years...

    the PHB asks for a fax on colored paper, several e-mailed copies, etc.

  • The Masked Director of Development (unregistered)

    Years ago at a small company we were all under indescribable stress. The chief EE had to fax an important document to a customer. He put the document in the fax, started to walk away, then shouted, "S***! I didn't make a copy first!" and ran back to yank the paper out of the fax rollers.

    We just looked at him in silence. He stood there stunned at what he had just done, and started laughing with us.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Happy Programmer:
    I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

    We had a good laugh about that one :)

    CAPTCHA: bene

    You might appreciate this

    TRWTF is the pathetic attempt at copy-protection on that page. All your cartoon are belong to us hahahahaha!

  • Wickerman (unregistered)

    We had a large print job that we had to run, but our high-speed printer was down. The only way to get it done was to print it on some slow desktop printers. I overheard a co-worker say to the person who was to run the job, "Get a couple of extra boxes of paper, because it'll take more to print on those small printers."

  • Devilfish (unregistered) in reply to Pyro
    Pyro:
    You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

    WTF = Wooden Table Frenzy ?

  • jkupski (unregistered) in reply to Wickerman
    Wickerman:
    We had a large print job that we had to run, but our high-speed printer was down. The only way to get it done was to print it on some slow desktop printers. I overheard a co-worker say to the person who was to run the job, "Get a couple of extra boxes of paper, because it'll take more to print on those small printers."

    It's not that it will take more paper to print out (and doubt the user meant it that way, though you never can tell) but that the desktop printers probably had significantly less paper capacity than your production machine, and would likely needed to have been restocked one or more times during the print job.

    That's not really a WTF as opposed to a slip of the tongue.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"
    That actually could make a document slightly smaller, by reducing the number of line breaks.

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