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smakkythecamel · Mon Jul 29, 2002 5:28 pm

Hi guys.

Since there's quite a few of us that work in the tech-support industry, why not share your stories? Heck, even if you don't work in tech-support, you've all recieved humorous emails with helpdesk related stories in them..... I know..... cause I sent 'em.
Anyways I'll start it off.

This happened before I began work there, but I'll tell it like I was there

I work in a government building and there was a power outage and nothing was working obviously. The lady that answers the helpdesk gets a call from a certain lady reknown for being dim...

"Hello? I can't get into my email."

Helpdesk lady says, "Is your computer turned on?"

"Um... No, it doesn't appear to be."

And then our lady then goes on to explain how a blackout affects computers.

- Smakko.

Bomber · Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:13 pm

A kid I went to school with was tech support for a computer company. The person who called him told him that his new computer was not turned on. Obviously the first queston was "Is it plugged in?" The customer of course told him yes. He asked him to humor him and check to make sure all the power cords were plugged in and that the surge protector was plugged in. The customer of course told him that everything was (hehe...otherwise this wouldn't be a FUNNY story :lol:

) So he had the customer check all the connections and trace all cables....saving power again for last. When he made sure that the customer made sure that all the pc cables were right he made the comment "Now the surge protector is plugged into the wall right?" The customer told him, "No, isn't it supposed to be plugged into the surge protector?"

One of my good tech support humor is that the company I work for does computer tutoring. I am tutoring a legally blind woman on how to do video and picture editing! Figure that one out

God in Training · Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:22 pm

In an earlier, non-tech support job, we sent one of our other offices a floppy disk with some data on it. The guy called us and said he couldn't get the data. Turned out he didn't know he had to stick the floppy disk in the computer (and he didn't know which side was up or which to stick in the drive).

pissedoffwookie · Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:22 pm

You can hear mine right here it the one on the bottom called wookies maniac

HowardDrake · Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:26 am

Actually, I just had one last Friday. A customer purchased a SCSI scanner and said he'd plug it in himself. 20 minutes later he came over to me and asked me why it wasn't working and should he install this card. Turns out they gave him a DB25 SCSI cord and he promptly plugged it into the printer port. :roll:

Not ha-ha funny, but worth a grin, I'd say

.

Dissonance · Tue Jul 30, 2002 4:59 am

Not really tech support, but sorta.

Did some contract work for the government a couple of summers ago replacing PCs in a number of offices. The deal was we'd take out the old PCs, wipe the hard drives, and replace them with brand new Dells.

The guys I was working for had made up a couple of disks all formatted to automatically wipe a hard disk. They were lazy, of course, so they set things up so you didnt even have to press a key to verify that you wanted the hard disk wiped... all you did was pop in the disk and reboot the machine.

So I'm working one morning and I hear a bunch of explicatives coming from one of these guys. Turns out that the previous night he had made a couple of new wipe disks with his laptop... but forgot to take the last disk out of the drive. He turns on his laptop in the morning, and goes to grab a coffee while it boots. In true government worker fashion he takes his sweet time, and when he gets back, his wonderful wipe disk has thoroughly trashed his laptop's hard drive.

Next iteration of the wipe disk had a "wipe hard drive? (Y/N)" option on boot, go figure.

Tue Jul 30, 2002 5:42 am

pissedoffwookie: Yu0=teh w1nn4r. I have talked to some dense users but nothing like the people on your page.

Tue Jul 30, 2002 8:08 am

That's a mental patient if I ever heard one Wookie.

My personal favourite is the guy who sawed off the back of his computer to install 4 meg of ram. :lol:

I feel left out, as I have nothing to offer because I work in a factory.

Hunter Viking · Tue Jul 30, 2002 9:36 am

I got a call from the President of our company one morning saying that he had been receiveing E-mail from a Sex Change website and didn’t want anymore.

I figured this guy likes his pron while on the road and signed up for a few things that bit back

So I go to his PC and figured I turn on some rules for his Outlook Client.

I get a look at his E-mail and just about fell out of the chair laughing.

It seems he was trying to send E-mail to a person with an invalid addy and and was getting replys from the Exchange Server.

The MSExchange Server.

Deth · Thu Aug 08, 2002 1:05 pm

I've got a few doozies, but here's one of the funier ones:

A few years back I did a friend for a female colleague and upgraded her system from Win3.1 to Win95. No problems on my end. When she got home with it was another matter entirely as there was no video output whatsoever. So I tried talking her through all the connections and when it sounded as if everything was properly setup, I packed up my tools and got ready to go over to her house and fix it (whatever "it" may have been).

On a hunch I called her back and asked her about the connections again, this time specifying every device and where it should be hooked up. Lo and behold, the monitor cable was *NOT* plugged into the PC. Whereupon I asked her, "How do you think the video gets to the screen? Magic?" Okay, I was being somewhat bastardly, but that was probably better than laughing my ass off on the phone

Deth · Thu Aug 08, 2002 1:06 pm

Hunter Viking wrote:
The MSExchange Server.

Oh, that's just too funny... :wink:

Gandolf · Thu Aug 15, 2002 7:44 am

I got a call at my house from somone who needed help with their computer they explained to me that it wouldn't even boot up. so i took a trip to their place and when i asked where the computer was they pointed at a monitor sitting on a desk. nothing else they went out and bouth a 300 monitor believing that was a computer (talk about stupid)

zgirl · Thu Aug 15, 2002 8:30 am

Wow, I could list quite a few. Some not so funny. I think my favorite one was way back in the early 90's I was working for Ford Motor Company. Helpdesk support. I was helping some secretary zip-up some files that her boss wanted to save for historical purposes. Didn't immediately need them but should save them just in case. So I walked her through using pkzip to place an archive on floppies. 5 1/4 floppies. Ford had a lot of old machine back then. She was great, following my instructions to the letter. Even when the program pause and threw up a dialog box that said: "Please insert another disk." She asked me what to do and I simple said: "Put in another disk." Which she did. Cramming it right in on top of the other one. Not kidding here, it even took me a few seconds to figure out what she had done. I just about feel out of the chair when I asked her if she had taken the first disk out, and she calmly replied "No. It just said insert another disk, nothing about removing the other one."

Needless to say we had to dispatch hardware support for her building at that point.

We laughed about that one for months.

Kuhtarl · Mon Aug 19, 2002 10:42 pm

I got a call one morning (in my office).
The girl asked me where I was.
I said. "um.. in my office where you called me"
she got very flustered at that point.

DiMaestro · Mon Aug 19, 2002 11:18 pm

Wookie: OMG, I've had something along those lines when I was at Symantec, but nothing *that* extreme...

Jesus.

b3n113 · Tue Aug 20, 2002 12:44 am

pissedoffwookie - that has to be the funnist damn call i've ever heard. btw, sorry you had to deal living in first level support

absurdity · Tue Aug 20, 2002 12:52 am

I've been working tech support at my college for 3 years, and one of the better stories I've seen was a couple calls a friend of mine took while we were both working.

Girl calls in, very timid voice, with a question. "I spilled water on my keyboard... is that bad?" My friend asks her if the keyboard works, she says no, and so he's like, okay, take a trip to staples and throw down $10 for a new one, no big deal.

Not even a couple minutes later, the same girl calls back... "I spilled water on my monitor too... is that bad?"

Wed Aug 21, 2002 8:00 am

The MACDADDY of tech support comedy.

Called, oddly enough, techsupport comedy.

www. techcomedy.com

Great stuff there....

Kuhtarl · Wed Aug 21, 2002 9:52 am

www. techcomedy.com

I have to say that I'm highly offended by the condescending nature of those techs. They give techs a bad name. I'M a tech. Granted I'm not on the phones like they are. I've got a cushy director job, so I can't relate to the hours and hours they spend on the phones talking to people.

Without the sheep there would be no need for sheepherders. If all the 'stupid' people died out, who would call tech support? Would tech support even be necessary?

It's all a matter of perspectives.

We use lingo that we take for granted that everyone knows.

To you and I, 'fried' means that the circuitry was zapped.
To a cook it means that it was put into a pan with butter and cooked until it was full of tasty crispy goodness.
To a druggie it means that they overachieved their attempt to reach enlightenment. (or so I've heard)

mmmmm fried.

ok.. I still found some of the stories funny.

God in Training · Wed Aug 21, 2002 12:07 pm

I've been in situations where I was treated like the "stupid customer" by a tech support rep EVEN THOUGH I had tried everything he is suggesting already and told him what I'd tried at the beginning of the call. Believe me, I would never pay that company for tech support.

I work in tech support. I take pride in being told by a customer that our tech support on our software is some of the best in the industry. I solve Windows problems, serial port communication problems, and other problems that are unrelated to our software because that's what it takes to help the caller get their job done.

Actually, the funniest calls I get are guys who are apologizing for having to call me. Why? They paid for software updates and technical support. They are calling about something that is unclear. They did nothing wrong, so they have nothing to apologize for. What do they think I do all day, if not answer their questions?

Wed Aug 21, 2002 5:55 pm

Wookie, that stuff is COMEDY GOLD!

Kuhtarl · Wed Aug 21, 2002 7:35 pm

The stories that I actually found amusing were the ones with the people who called in and tried to bluff their way through the call or intimidate the tech in some way.

"I don't care if I have to take out a 30 thousand dollar ad in the New York Times! You tell Bill Gates or whoever is running Apple....blah blah"

Those pushy bastards deserve to be made fun of.

Aphasia · Thu Aug 22, 2002 4:24 am

Thankfully i dont work phone support anymore,, did when i was the only support, then it was everything, salesman, phone support, technician,,,

Nowdays i work on site support, the funniest things you get around to is when a customer has this really stupid problem, forgetting the powercable etc, and you then is patient and explain it to them.... and they finally realise what a dumbass they have been... you can really see the desperation in their eyes when it gets to em....cracks me up every time(After ive gotten back to my room of course, its not nice to laugh people off in their faces).

smakkythecamel · Thu Aug 22, 2002 5:01 am

Had a pearler of a one today folk.

I asked someone to find out from the caravan parks we provide support for, (For you yanks that's a trailer park), whether or not their email is working. He sends an email to them asking whether their email is working!

*chuckle chuckle*

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