printer. The tech asked her if she was "running it under
Windows." The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the
door. But that's a good point. The man sitting in the
cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working
fine."
**********
Tech Support: "OK Bob, let's press the control and escape
keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the
middle of the screen. Now type the letter 'P' to bring up
the Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"
**********
Overheard in a computer shop:
Customer: "I'd like a mouse mat, please."
Salesperson: "Certainly sir, we've got a large variety."
Customer: "But will they be compatible with my computer?"
**********
I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax the
document back to the sender when I was finished with it,
because he needed to keep it.
**********
Customer in computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet onto
this disk for me?"
**********
Customer: "So that'll get me connected to the Internet,
right?"
Tech Support: "Yeah."
Customer: "And that's the latest version of the Internet,
right?"
Tech Support: "Uhh...uh...uh...yeah."
**********
Tech Support: "All right...now double-click on the File
Manager icon."
Customer: "That's why I hate this Windows - because of
the icons - I'm a Protestant, and I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well, that's just an industry term sir.
I don't believe it was meant to-"
Customer: "I don't care about any 'Industry Terms'.
I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well...why don't you click on the '
little picture' of filing cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"
Customer: [click]
**********
Customer: "My computer crashed!"
Tech Support: "It crashed?"
Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."
Tech Support: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."
Customer: "No, it didn't crash - it crashed."
Tech Support: "Huh?"
Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before.
I crashed my spaceship and now it doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"
Customer: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"
**********
Got a call from a woman said that her laser printer was
having problems: the bottom half of her printed sheets were
coming out blurry. It seemed strange that the printer was
smearing only the bottom half. I walked her through the
basics, then went over and printed out a test sheet.
It printed fine. I asked her to print a sheet, so she sent
a job to the printer. As the paper started coming out, she
yanked it out and showed it to me. I told her to wait until
the paper came out on its own. Problem solved.
**********
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's Deskjet
division for about a month when I had a customer call with
a problem I just couldn't solve. She could not print yellow.
All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled
me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.
For instance, GREen is a combination of cyan and yellow, but
GREen printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine
except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges.
I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing
worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new
ideas. After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about
to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair
when she asked quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of
white paper instead of this yellow paper?"
**********
And another user was all confused about why the cursor always
moved in the opposite direction from the movement of the
mouse. She also complained that the buttons were difficult
to depress. She was very embarrassed when we asked her to
rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her.
**********
For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from
someone, and our computers were facing away from each other.
A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room.
I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for
the keyboards. She came back and started typing and
immediately got a distressed look on her face. She called
the tutor over and explained that no matter what she typed,
nothing would happen. The tutor tried everything. By this
time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.
I typed, "Leave me alone!" They both jumped back as this
appeared on their screen. "What the..." the tutor said. I
typed, "I said leave me alone!" The kid got real upset. "I
didn't do anything to it, I swear!" It was all I could do
to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between
them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes. Me:
"Don't touch me!" Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit
your keys that hard." Me: "Who do you think you are
anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I couldn't contain myself any
longer, and fell out of my chair laughing. After they had
realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny,
I never got more than a C- in that class.
**********
This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied"
message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing
his username and password in capital letters. Tech Support:
"OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Ooh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."
**********
Email from a friend: "CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"
**********
My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon.
He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the
workstations with her arms crossed across her chest, staring
at the screen. After about 15 minutes he noticed that she
was still in the same position, only now she was impatiently
tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she
replied "It's about time! I pressed the F 1 button over
twenty minutes ago!"
