Stupid, thy name is User
A colleague of mine who works on the IT helpdesk was just talking to a user1 on the phone, helping her with a problem. Through the wonders of remote-desktop technology he was able to see her screen display on his own.
Halfway through the call he said "okay, now I want you to right-click on that..."
So she wrote "click" in a text box on the screen.
Ahem.
Reminds me of a few years ago when I was a tech-monkey going out to users and helping them with their PC problems. One user complained that their PC was occasionally "eating" CDs.
I went along to investigate. She had a PC with the trayless style of CD drive, where you just push the CD into a slot in the front. She explained that sometimes she'd push a CD in and it wouldn't run on her system, and then it wouldn't eject. The next CD she put in seemed to work fine. It had been doing this for several weeks.
I looked at the front of the PC. There didn't seem to be a whole load of CDs crammed into CD slot. Then I noticed something. Between the CD drive bay and the next drive bay there was a narrow gap.
Suspecting the worst, I unscrewed the casing on the PC and lifted off the lid.
There, resting at the bottom of the case, was a neat pile of CDs.
--
1 The IT term for people that bugger up computer systems.
Halfway through the call he said "okay, now I want you to right-click on that..."
So she wrote "click" in a text box on the screen.
Ahem.
Reminds me of a few years ago when I was a tech-monkey going out to users and helping them with their PC problems. One user complained that their PC was occasionally "eating" CDs.
I went along to investigate. She had a PC with the trayless style of CD drive, where you just push the CD into a slot in the front. She explained that sometimes she'd push a CD in and it wouldn't run on her system, and then it wouldn't eject. The next CD she put in seemed to work fine. It had been doing this for several weeks.
I looked at the front of the PC. There didn't seem to be a whole load of CDs crammed into CD slot. Then I noticed something. Between the CD drive bay and the next drive bay there was a narrow gap.
Suspecting the worst, I unscrewed the casing on the PC and lifted off the lid.
There, resting at the bottom of the case, was a neat pile of CDs.
--
1 The IT term for people that bugger up computer systems.
I'd also suggest, if you aren't already a reader, that you take a gander at the Bastard Operator from Hell over on El Reg.
How do I do that?
Just make a tape copy every night and store it somewhere safe.
After a problem he returned and asked if she had a backup.
Yes she replied and showed him a filing cabinet - in it, carefully labelled where photocopies of the tape cassettes.
I once couldn't work out why a User couldn't see a page i'd created on the intranet. I went down to investigate in person and discovered she always typed every URL she wanted to view into the Google search box, then clicked on the link that Google gave to that site.
Except it can't do that when the site is on a intranet that Google can't see.
She "thought that was the way the internet worked".
--
I once had to set up a laptop for a User. It was quite snazzy and it came with interchangeable plastic wrist-rests. I swapped out the yellow ones that were fitted for some blue ones that were in the box.
I took it down to the user who said "I don't like the colour, it's not the same as the one in the book. Change it back!"
Fair enough, doesn't make much difference to the operation of the laptop. So I snapped off the blue ones off, put back on the yellow ones and showed her again. She examined the new livery carefully.
"AND the keys!" she said, scowling.
I looked at the keys, each one had a little blue text label representing the function key assignments. She thought I'd changed each key to a different colour too. :-/
My wife was on tech support to a sales team who had all been issued with laptops to dial in from home. One chap was having real problems connecting to the internet - but was very agressive about anything she suggested - the kind of "yes, done that... next" kind of guy.
Finally she asked if there was anything wrong with the phone socket the modem cable was connected to... "Cable? What cable?" Turned out he had no idea that he needed to connect the laptop to the phone socket.. he just assumed it connected (in those pre-wireless days...)
I was fooling around on technorati (sp?) and saw your blog. I like the tech stuff you have on your site.. keep it up.
I run a website call HelpDesk-Hub.Org. We are basically oriented towards IT professionals, but also those who simply like talking tech stuff. We have IT forums that cater to a variety of user types.
I would like to cross-link with your site if that is appealing to you. We sometimes get over 3000 hits a day, and doing so would boost both our rankings in google. If your interested just bump me a email at webmaster@helpdesk-hub.org
Have a good one,
-Matt
Help Desk Hub.Org
my idiot's guide to the great world of computers.
Well I had a colleague who couldn't work out the difference between the internet and email, that was scary but not on reflection very funny.
The "funniest" thing we suffer from is a friend of mine who will forward any scam or urban myth and believe it all.
I used to work in the NHS. Full of high and mighty doctors....he he nothing like pointing out they were useless.
I remember one
ME - "Can you reboot your pc for me"
User - "It's off"
M - "hmm that was quick"
M - "turn it back on please"
U - "it's back"
M - "ok now we have found the monitor...."
M - "can you turn the pc off"
Amd BOFH is so true
Having said that, there was the day when a customer asked me to fax him a paper sample so he could see what it looked like.
The last place I worked at we had a report that would kick out an extra sheet of paper at the end. Now this was in the dark, pin-fed days so it was not like now where you could just run the paper back through.
One of our support reps had a rather nasty user on the line complaining about loosing the sheet of paper.
After 5 minutes of trying to make nice with the user the frustrated support rep said "what do you want me to do, fax you a sheet of paper?" to which the user replied "Yes, I want you to fax me a sheet of paper."
Keep in mind this was the dark days of technology when we used the old roll thermal paper for fax machines.
So to satisfy our client's demands the client rep went ahead and faxed our user a blank sheet of paper.
Never did hear what the client did with his "free" sheet of paper.
:>)
1.A user phoned up from a client in london to ask what was on the menu in the staff canteen that day?
2.When working on a remote desktop, the user was very unaware what we could see and had left several browsers open connected to hard porn sites!
3.We had a person from a client in Norwich phone to say someone had just jumped off the building oposite and what should they do?
i have technical stories a plenty, but these ones always come to mind first.
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