StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The Helpdesk

Help desk: What kind of computer do you have?
Customer:  A white  one...

                                     ******

Customer: Hi, this is Celine. I can't get my diskette out.
Helpdesk: Have you tried pushing the  button?
Customer: Yes, sure, it's really  stuck.
Helpdesk: That doesn't sound good; I'll make a note."
Customer: No.  Wait a minute. I hadn't inserted it  yet.  It's still
                 on my desk.  Sorry.

                                     ******
Helpdesk: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the
               screen.
Customer: Your left or my  left?

                                     ******

Helpdesk:  Good day. How may I help  you?
Male customer:    Hello.  I can't print.
Helpdesk:  Would you click on start for me and...
Customer: Listen  pal; don't start getting technical on me! I'm not
                Bill Gates, darn  it!

                                     ******

Customer: Hi, good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print. Every
time
I try, it says 'Can't find  printer'.  I've even lifted the printer
and

placed it  in front of the monitor, but the computer still says it
can't find  it.

                                     ******

Customer: I have problems printing in  red.
Helpdesk: Do you have a color printer?
Customer:  Aaaah...................Thank  you.

                                     ******

Helpdesk: What's on your monitor now, ma'am?
Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me in the supermarket.

                                     ******

Customer: My keyboard is not working  anymore.
Helpdesk: Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?
Customer: No.  I can't get behind the computer.
Helpdesk: Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back.
Customer: Okay.
Helpdesk: Did the keyboard come with you?
Customer: Yes.
Helpdesk: That means the  keyboard is not plugged in. Is there
another
              keyboard?
Customer: Yes, there's another one  here.  Ah...that one does work!

                                     ******

Helpdesk: Your password is the small letter a as  in apple, a capital
              letter V as in Victor, and the number  7.
Customer: Is that 7 in capital  letters?

                                     ******

A customer couldn't get on the Internet:
Helpdesk: Are you sure you used the right  password?
Customer: Yes I'm sure. I saw my colleague do  it.
Helpdesk: Can you tell me what the password  was?
Customer: Five  stars.

                                     ******

Helpdesk: What anti-virus program do you  use?
Customer: Netscape.
Helpdesk: That's not an  anti-virus program.
Customer: Oh, sorry...Internet  Explorer.

                                     ******

Customer: I have a huge problem.  A friend has put a screensaver on my
              computer, but every time I move the mouse, it
disappears!

                  *******

And then there is my  personal favorite!!

Helpdesk: How may I help you?
Customer: I'm writing my  first e-mail.
Helpdesk: OK, and, what seems to be the  problem?
Customer: Well, I have the letter 'a' in the address, but how do I get
the circle around it?[/b]

Love it!

Give us more...

If you want a huge number of these, check out this Computer Stupidities page.

It's not funny.

Not thirty five fucking times a day it isn't, with people on the line who don't want your help, they want someone to come and do it for them.

I had to explain how to cut and paste today. Three times in ten minutes, to the same fucking person. Who couldn't find his photographs because he wasn't paying attention when he copied them from his camera. (woe betide if I'd tried to explain drag and drop copying, that might mean having two explorer windows open at once, and that's technical)

But hell, at least he was listening to me. I once took twenty five bastard minutes to get a thicko to type in one fucking command line. and not a difficult or confusing one, just xcopy, but no, the fucker decided that she didn't want to type what I told her to, even when I told her letter by fucking letter, phonetically. Three times.

And that's not even going in to what Adaware will show you about them.

My record is a caller finding 860 critical objects. I've heard of someone scoring over 1200. And these people have firewalls installed, admittedly Norton or McAfee, which are about as secure as an Essex girl's thong.

And that's not even going into the problems that aren't technical, the problems with the customer's attitude, which I'm sure are unique to my job, since the customers have bought a special extended warranty, which the shopmonkey has told them all sorts of lies about to try and push them to buy it, so they demand an onsite visit next day, no matter what the problem is (yes madam, we'll come and sort that Windows startup file out for you, or that virus, or come and install your fucking printer. Would you like us to cook dinner whilst we're there).

And then the ones who, once they've forked over for a service contract they don't understand, proceed to lose the fucking policy, and then wonder why we won't help them until they can prove who they are and that they're entitled to it.

I'm surprised these people don't have special care workers standing behind them at all times saying "Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Breathe out." as the fuckers are liable to forget everything else.

This is why I think an aptitude test should be required before someone is allowed to purchase a computer.

When I did tech support for a variety/drug store chain a few years back, my favorite tech support story was:

...
After booting a Winblows computer, the store employee is reading what is appearing on screen:
Employee: Okay, now ther e is a window, okay now the close out program is on top of it, now the screen went black and it says logan.
Me: Logan?
Employee: Yeah, logan. All of the other screens are gone now. It just says logan.
Me: Oh, you mean LOG IN!
...

I always loved the ones who didn't realize that the monitor was not the computer. You tell them to turn off the machine, then turn it back on. They do that and complain that the same thing is on the screen.

It's also great to list off the names that people come up with for the actual computer itself. Some just call it the box, others try to sound smart and call it "the cpu," even though they probably don't even know what that stands for much less what a CPU actually does. My favorite, though, was the women in a store's pharmacy (where they have a modem that is used as a backup if and when the leased lines went down) who referred to the box as the "mobem."

One of the rumors around that places was that a techie that had worked at Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon office (might have actually been in Aloha) had apparently been called down to help "fix" some ladies monitor because it "wasn't right." According to this rumor, he tried adjusting the screen resolution, brightness/contrast and other monitor settings. He tried moving the task bar and re-arranging her icons. Finally, about ready to give up, he simply adjusted the tilt angle of the monitor and she said "That's it, you fixed it." Apparently over the next several weeks she had many other stupid problems to which this tech responded. Finally, he blew up and said she was stupid, and didn't care if he got fired for saying so.

My friend works at DirectTV help desk. Thus far the funniest was a guy who couldn't figure out why he wasn't getting the picture. After nearly an hour of troubleshooting the dish, the TV etc, the guy admitted that the reciever was still in the box it came with.

JediToren wrote: It's also great to list off the names that people come up with for the actual computer itself. Some just call it the box, others try to sound smart and call it "the cpu," even though they probably don't even know what that stands for much less what a CPU actually does. My favorite, though, was the women in a store's pharmacy (where they have a modem that is used as a backup if and when the leased lines went down) who referred to the box as the "mobem."

About a quarter of all people I speak to call the computer the 'modem'.

The only universal way of getting people to look at the right part is 'the bit you put discs in'.

JediToren wrote: One of the rumors around that places was that a techie that had worked at Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon office

Office techies aren't always infallible.

One of our customers (in one of my many support roles, cause why have the staff do one job when they can do three) is AMD UK. Since they've bought a lot of computers from us, and they're all CTO, they have a special support number, where they call us up and tell us what they want and we send it.

So far, so good.

So they call, and they give us three serial numbers, and say that the heatsinks have fallen off of the chips. A quick check of the spec reveals that there's a heatsink on the Northbridge as well as the CPU, so we ask which heatsink. After some umms and ahhs we're told it's the one from the CPU.

So we book a visit with three heatsinks.

Half an hour later, they're back, no, it's the northbridge fan that's fallen off, they need motherboards.

Fortunately, they're in our "nice customers" section.


(My department at work provides support for business extended warranty customers of a major retail chain, and we're also the contractor for a reasonably major business PC brand, as well as all sorts of government and miscellaneous business contracts)