Do the most computer illiterate people in the world all work at my office?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just came back to my desk from the HelpDesk area, having heard one of the techs laughing so hard that he had to walk out into the hallway, where he was doubled over.

Here’s the tech support horror story of the day:

User called in because she couldn’t print. Tech started with the basics:

Tech: Are you logged into the Network?
User: I think so, I put in my name and my password.
Tech: Okay, let me check. No, it shows that you are not logged in, and you haven’t logged in since… May.
User: But I typed in my name and my password, then a message came up, and I pressed cancel.
Tech: <sighs> Okay, let’s have you shut down and restart (she does). Okay, now type in your login name.
User: My login name? I always type in <firstname lastname>.
Tech: You need to type in your user name, which is <gives her the correct username>.
User: What do I type in for password?

The tech changes her password, which has of course expired. He gives her the new one to type in. I’m not even going to go through the comedy of getting her to change it when prompted, or through her reading EVERY SINGLE THING the screen displayed, though he kept telling her she didn’t have to.

Once logged into the network:

Tech: Open Microsoft Word, and print out the document you were trying to print.
User: How do I know if it worked?
Tech: Umm… Go over to the printer and see if your document is there.

She does.

User: It printed a blank page.
Tech: Blank?
User: Yes, it’s just a blank sheet of paper. Oh, wait a minute,…

Here’s the punch line:

User: I forgot to open the document.

She printed out the blank page that Word defaults to when you open it.
This woman has been working here, with a computer, with Microsoft Word, every day, for at least TWO YEARS.

Two years ago, we had a woman who could not get logged in because she was spelling her own four letter last name WRONG.

This morning, we had a caller wanting to know what this program running during his login was, because he’s never seen it before. It was a program that runs EVERY DAY, and has for the last eighteen months.

I’m so glad I don’t work on the HelpDesk, I’d have gone crazy by now.
Okay. Now, someone please convince me that we do not have the stupidest computer users in the world ALL working in my office! No Internet joke stories, please - let’s hear your true stories…

2

Why does the ‘Too stupid to own a computer’ joke come to mind. :rolleyes:

I don’t think I could top that one though, so you’ve got the lead on “Stupid Users”.

[sub]Those are the type of people that will be ‘delt with’, when the time comes.[/sub]

3

Here are some websites you will enjoy. They will assure you the world is full of clueless computer users:

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.html
And for a change of pace, here’s one about a clueless helpdesk worker:

http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/navmain.htm

4

Yesterday someone wrote a email to my co-worker basically complaining that I had not sent her the User IDs and Passwords for accessing her testing reports. She made a point to say that she had asked three times and still had not received anything.

Co-worker comes into my office to ask me about it and I open my sent box and show her the three emails I’d exchanged with this person and included in two of them were the instructions for accessing her reports and an attachment that had all the User IDs and Passwords for everyone in the school. This was my standard email to everyone who called asking this information and I would attach a separate document containing that school’s stuff. My email even said “Open the attached document for your user ids and passwords” and in the instructions for printing said “Using the user ids and passwords from the attached document…” I know she received my emails because it recorded the date sent as well as the date and time she opened the damn thing. Apparently this person is confused with the whole concept of ‘attached’.

So late yesterday I sent her another email only this time I used BOLD letters every time I mentioned the attached document. If I get another email from her, I swear I’m going to tell her that she’s an idiot.

5

“Do the most computer illiterate people in the world all work at my office?”

No, silly – they work at Microsoft! :smiley:

(What can I say, the setup was too easy…)

6

I used to work for a small company that wrote software and sold it to local government (in the UK) and the NHS (hospitals). They would also supply the hardware if required to run the software on (servers, client PC etc) and set the whole thing up.

The sales manager was prolly in his 50s. He did not even have a PC on his desk, even though he talked to customers about them every day. He relied on me and a junior sales man to find all the information and present it to him on a plate, then he could just rad off the figures. He could not and did not type things out or anything. Everyone else in the office had (admittedly aging) PCs except him.

Thank god I am out of there.

I think it is worse when you have people who are supposed to know and they don’t have a clue. Where I work now, we have on site engineers to deal with problems with remote servers. Attached to them are backup tape drives. One guy ejected 7 tapes. To make things quicker, I said he could open the machine up and put the tapes in, rather than loading them. He called back to say he could only fit 6 tapes in. Funny, I thought. Then the machine reported a problem. All the drives were full with unknown tapes in them, there are only 6 tape drives :rolleyes: Me and the guy next to me at work burst into fits of laughter when we realised what he had done. Unfortunately, the on call person had to go and get all the tapes out of the drives.

Rick

7

HA! She says darkly.

My third day on the Helpdesk, I pick up the phone, and before I can even say “Helpdesk, me speaking”, the air around the receiver turns blue and purple. “What the H*** did you @ssH**** fscking do to my fscking crap! …” “What seems to be the problem sir?” More blue and purple air. “I’m just a trainee, can you tell me what the problem is?” Even more blue and purple air. Apparently he had been having trouble with one of the machines for a while, and it was my fault. Even though I hadn’t been hired yet…

Then there was the field tech that called me from the middle of nowhere (literally - a microwave site somewhere in the MacKenzie valley) to ask me “How do I get into this here computer thing?”
me: “Whattya got, a PC or a terminal?”
him: “I dunno, how can I tell?”
me: “What’s the brand name on the monitor?”
him: “Hunh? Starmaster logged out.”
me:“No, what is the brand name…you know, the little label in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.”
him: “Starmaster logged out, I said!”
me: “Sweetie, that’s what’s ON the screen - the little TV thingy. What is the brand name?”
him: “I can’t find one.”
I eventually told him he was going to have to return to HQ and get his supervisor to actually train him. I wasn’t equipped to teach someone from scratch, how to update their tickets in a system I’d never seen. And no, looking for the mouse wouldn’t have helped - this was back when you drove Windows 3.1 with a keyboard.

Then there was the clerk who’d call for help getting to various business areas on the mainframes. “Okay, Debbie, type EXACTLY what I tell you. Type [short command].” I’d hear a few keyclicks, then pause. “Hit enter.” One click. “Type [command].” A few keyclicks, then a pause. Then a bunch more keyclicks, a pause, and more keyclicks. As far as I can tell from the sound, she’s writing a letter. “Debbie, you aren’t doing what I tell you, are you?”
“Yes, I am so. Hey, how did I get here? How do I get out of this?”
“Well, Debbie, since you don’t follow instructions worth spit, I don’t know where you are and I sure as hell can’t back you out…”
“I did follow your instructions!”
“No Debbie, you didn’t, or you wouldn’t be there. Besides, I can hear you typing…” Click, end of support call.

Last week, we got a brandspanking new laptop sent back to us from another field tech in one of the communities. We had sent it to him the week before. He couldn’t get the modem to work, so he figured he’d better take it apart. After all, he is a technician, therefore he can do anything technical. :eek: Never mind he’s a phone tech, obviously all you need is the technician part of the title. So after taking it apart, VOIDING THE WARRANTY, he sent it back 'cause it still didn’t work.

Then there was the IS director, that when presented with our WAN diagram, called it “too complicated”, and slashed out all our fault tolerance. In case you might think it was a financial decision - we are the telco, so it wasn’t the bandwidth cost. We still have no idea what that was all about, we’re just grateful he’s gone.

The fact that I work on an internal Helpdesk has been both a blessing and a curse. I can’t get away with some of the sloughing methods you can pull on the gen pop, but I can say things to my customers that would get me fired anyplace else.

With the first gentleman mentioned in this exceedingly lengthy post, I learned how to greet him properly with “I dunno, SOB, what the fsck did you &^#^ do to the piece of #%&) anyways?” and all was well.

Then there was a time when I was in one of “those” moods, and when I recognized my buddy’s phone number, I answered the phone in my best sex voice, “Helloo…this is the…Computer Helpdesk. It would help me…become more familiar with your…problem…if you tell me what you’re wearing…” He hung up on me. :smiley:

It’s been…edifying. People are truly truly bizarre. I cannot fathom the thought processes that go into some of these incidents.

8

Oh, I Love it!!! I’ve pulled that shiat answering my Nextel, but I have to be careful, because most of us keep them on speaker mode, and you never know who is standing around.

Came up with another one. I had a user who works in the IT department call in a panic - she needed a file restored from the night before, because she’d opened the file, and it was now empty. You expect people in IT to have at least a clue about their computers, right? Anyhow, I checked the file myself before doing anything toward restoring it - it was a spreadsheet, and when I opened it, sure enough, there was no data. On that sheet. She had clicked on the second sheet. It was right there on the screen, perfectly clear… ugh.
Thank you, thank you - y’all are making me feel better. :slight_smile:

9

It’s things like this that make me damn glad I go to a nerd school.

10

For more amusing horror stories:

http://pebkac.net

11

I set up an e-mail notification system at work so that customers would be notified when packages shipped. I told my boss “Why don’t you print out the customer list with phone numbers and split it up amongst the office personell so that one person doesn’t have to make all those calls?” (to get the customer e-mail addresses).

He has a better idea. Can you guess it?

12

Then there was the time that a user called me and asked how to type the Roman Numeral “4” on his keyboard. I suggest “capitol I, capitol V”. IV

Then there was the time that I got a panicked call from a user who’s power strip was on fire. On the other side of the building. No amount of reasoning could convince him that I was not the appropriate person to call in case of fire, and in the end I ran to his office, unplugged it, and extinguished.

More? I got more. The other day my boss came in panicked- his printer wouldn’t work!

No paper.

I got a million of 'em. The most computer illiterate people on earth work in MY office, and I get to take care of 'em.

Zette

13

No, dear, all the computer illiterate people in the world do NOT work in your office. Some of them work in MY office. Me, for instance.

:slight_smile:

14

KimKatt, I had three of those today!

“No, here’s your network ID.”
…
“Yes, that’s the password… Yes, the capital letters count.”
…
“This is your first time on this PC, so the same password lets you connect to the network drives…”
…
“No, we’re just setting up. In future you only have to type it once.”
…
“We should change that now, because everybody gets the same one to start…”
…
“No, we don’t want to just leave it…”
…
“OK, now let’s look at your mail…”
…
That one had about six months worth of mail in her inbox before she called. Fifteen minutes before we even got to look at it. Then I had to show her how to read it and get rid of the old messages.

And she isn’t the worst. :frowning:

15

BTW - I just want to post a little disclaimer here… I have infinite patience for anyone who is new to computers. I can totally respect that.

It’s the people who should BLOODY WELL KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING BY NOW!!! that drive me crazy.

My all time favourite is my dad. While reading, please keep in mind that the man had taken two, count 'em, two classes on using Windows (he repeated the same one twice), and uses a computer every day at work - he tracks the stock for his company on it.

This is going back a little, but here are my three Dad calls Kim for tech support stories:

  1. Dad calls me - he can’t get on the Internet. I walk him through accessing the program, dialing up, putting in his password - he can’t get it. I have him restart his computer, and tell to tell me everything he’s doing as he does it - he’s going through all the right steps, but still can’t get in. I ask him if he’s certain about his password - yes, he says. So, I drive over there. Standing right next to him, I say, “Okay, start up the computer, and show me what’s happening.” He does.

As soon as the computer is booted up, he hits the CAPS LOCK key. I say, “Dad, do you do that every time?” He says, “Yes, you have to.”

I turn the CAPS LOCK off and say, “Try it now.” He does, and he’s in. He says, “Oh, that matters?”

  1. On a related note, Dad used to send all of his emails to me in all capital letters. I gently advised him, then less gently, then quite un-gently, that doing so suggested to the recipient that he was yelling at them. He now sends them in all small letters - no capitals at all.

  2. Way back, now - Dad had a 486-SX running Windows 3.1. He was complaining that he couldn’t get to the Internet - it took too long for the pages to load (about half an hour per page :)). He asked me what he needed to do to fix it. I told him he needed more memory in his PC - he had 4 MB. He asked me again about a week later, and I told him the same thing. He then proceeded to tell me that I was wrong, that one of the guys at work had told him he needed to take DoubleSpace off of his machine, and that would fix it. We went back and forth on this for 6 months, with me trying to explain the physical impossibility of uninstalling the program, that the 600 MB of data would no longer fit on his 500 MB hard drive, that it had nothing to do with it anyway, and besides, why the hell was he listening to Joe Blow at work instead of his Microsoft certified daughter??? [/rant]

After 6 months of this, his stepson finally got sick of the whole mess, and called me. I told him exactly which RAM to purchase, he went out and bought it, I installed it - all while Dad wasn’t home. Dad walked in as I was putting the case back on. I booted up and showed him how much better the Internet access speed was, and of course, he said:

“Oh, you finally removed DoubleSpace?”

16

How about these:

Person needs to give a blank floppy to a tech doing an install. She asks where the new floppies are; I tell her we don’t have any brand new ones but there are a bunch of them in the cabinet. She says that she needs a blank one. I tell her that they probably are all blank, but she can just check one to make sure and if there are any old files on it, she can just delete them. She expresses surprise not only that it is possible to delete files from a floppy but that they are also reusable.

I had several people whose systems were crashing every time they tried to print by clicking on the printer icon that some programs show in a toolbar. I never had printing problems while printing from the same program using Ctrl-P, so I told them to stop using the printer icon and print by some other method. They were not aware that there was any other means of printing – they didn’t know they could go to File>Print or type Ctrl-P.

On a related subject, I have several people who were unaware of the concept of keystrokes. It’s not that they didn’t know any of them, they didn’t even know it was possible. Even the most basic ones: Ctrl-P, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-S. How can someone get through 4 or 5 years of working in a corporate environment without knowing this stuff?

I too have a lot of patience for people new to computers but I am astounded as to how some people have managed to get through years of using them in a corporate setting every day and don’t know that Ctrl-P exists. The mind just boggles.

17

The most Computer illiterate people work in my office, and I are him.

I work for a software company. I get to tell the techs what the business needs, and I get to teach the business how to run best while using our software. My expertise is in the Business, not the technology.

The techs I work with however, don’t seem to realize that people like me sometimes actually want to use the system.

Monday, my sign-on attempt fails. I call a tech. His response: “We changed everyone’s passwords.” M’kay, when were you going to tell me about this?

Tuesday, my sign-on attempt fails. I call a tech. His response: “We put you on a different server, and you don’t have a sign-on for it.”

Wednesday, my sign-on attempt fails. I call a tech. His response: “The glitzfarb didn’t load correctly on the new server, so I had to ZDF the wang-dang-doodle.” And this will get me into the system how?

Thursday, my sign-on attempt fails. I call my new best friend - the tech. His response: “What OS are you on?”
“what’s an OS?”
“You know, Win 98, Win NT”
“Office 2000”
“No, that’s an ap.”
“Huh?”

Friday, my sign-on attempt fails. After ducking my call, the tech guy tells me “We have to install Oxo-gap on your PC.”
“OK”
“But we didn’t buy enough licenses”
“OK”
"But we think that we can install dork-pruf and it will do the same thing. We need your PC for a couple of hours.

Boss walks into my office, You haven’t seemed to accomplish much this week…
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH…

18

I work at the help desk of a company that makes hotel software. Here are some precious stories. They really happened to me!

Me: What type of modem do you have?
Caller: Windows

Me: Please right-click on the icon that says “Modem”
Caller: Should I use my right hand or my left hand?
Me: Please use your middle finger - I use it, too !!!

Me: Your server has crashed - did you have a power cut?
Caller: No
Me: Did you unplug anything in the server room?
Caller: No…except…I needed the multiple power strip to power my heater at the front desk - so I unplugged everything in the server room, but I plugged it right back in!
Me: <groan>

Caller: We have the following error message on the screen “(strange, unfamiliar error message I had never heard)”
Me: Which version of Fidelio (our program) do you have?
Caller: We don’t have Fidelio! We have (competition product)! I asked a friend at another hotel for the number they call when they have computer problems.

Caller: I have a problem in Excel
Me: I can not help you with that, we only support Micros Fidelio products
Caller: But you make Excel, don’t you?
Me: No, that’s Microsoft…

On a German keyboard, the CTRL-key is called STRG (abbreviation for Steuerung, which is German for Control). However, German lusers assume anything on a computer must be English, so this key is commonly called “STRONG”, “STRING” or - my favourite - “STRANGE”. And they get really angry when I tell them it’s called “Steuerung”…When I tell them to press STEUERUNG-ALT-Delete they can’t find the key, and then I tell them that it’s all the way in the bottom left corner. And they go: "Oh, you mean STRANGE/STRONG/STRING! Why didn’t you say that in the first place!

I have to add that I have no problem with people that are new to computers or our software. The only thing I don’t like is if they do not follow my instructions or do not read to me what’s on the screen. This frequently happens with Germans who do not speak English and are afraid to mispronounce something. I tell them it’s OK and that they can spell it out, but sometimes there is no way and they will just say “there is nothing on the screen” or “something has changed”.

The joys of support…

19

Even though, in the dark, dark days of the early 90’s, I worked an internal help desk, my brother-in-law told me the best one I ever heard. We were, however, drunk when he related it to me, so I may not have it completely straight, and it may be apocryphal…

Set up: Operator calls BIL and states that a job isn’t running correctly. After several minutes of troubleshooting that go like most on this thread know all too well, BIL figures this guy is a few cans shy of a case.

BIL: “Well, it has to say something on the screen!”
Op: “Nope, completely blank”
BIL: “What about the keystrokes I had you put in?”
Op: “Oh yeah, those are there”
BIL (after punching his own monitor in frustation): “Ok, hold the phone up to the screen”
a rustling noise as Op complies, several seconds later
Op: “OK, how was that?”
BIL: “I think I see your problem now…”

[hijack]

This also reminds me of when I was on the helpdesk, I had just transferred to the company’s central offices to support a new system I had spent the last year installing and training at some of the branch offices. My boss didn’t know much about me yet, but was trying to learn more about all his employees. He asks to sit with me and listen in on some of my calls, because he “had heard some very good things from our branches”. I should also point out that calls to help desk were blind until you answer the line, so at the start of each one, you didn’t know who it was.

Boss sits down and plugs headset in. First call:
“Blah, Blah, this is Douglas, how can I help you?”
(It turns out to be my old office)
Breathy voice of secretary: “Ohhhh, Dougie, you KNOW you are the only one who can fix meeee…”

After call, rapidly explain to boss that it was an old co-worker having fun at my expense.

Next call turns out to be from another office that I had been at several times. It was almost all women, so I always found some reason to go there…

“Blah, Blah, this is Douglas, how can I help you?”
Excited voice: “Douglas? My babydoll? How are you, babydoll! It’s been so long since you were here, we miss you! Hey guys! It’s Doug!”
In background, 10 or so women chorus “Hi Babydoll!”

After call, boss looks at me, unplugs headset and says, “I’m beginning to understand your popularity”

[/hijack]

20

Years ago, in the days of Win 3.11, I worked at a publishing company. Overall, it was nice, but there was this one user…

This person (let’s call her X) X had apparently inspired the ire of all computers everywhere at some point in time. Perhaps she had insulted Eniac. Perhaps she had once snubbed Bill Gates in high school. Whatever the case, according to her, her computer always did weird and horrible things to her… whenever I wasn’t around.

In addition to which, she had contracted an affliction which made her entirely unable to write down any of the strange and ominous, and sometimes darkly Satanic, error messages her machine would spew out at her virulently, as soon as I wasn’t in the vicinity. To hear her talk about it, her monitor was on the verge of spinning around and regurgitating soup products.

I tried everything. Replaced all the drivers. Reformatted, reinstalled. Upgraded ram. Upgraded video card. Reformatted, did full hardware burn-in tests, reinstalled. All without ever having seen the error messages in question. I was new at this.

Now, I had arranged a schedule where I showed up at 9:00am every morning, instead of 8, so that I could both be conscious when I arrived at work, and so that I could stay later than everyone else in case work needed to be done on critical systems. Mostly so I could sleep late. But user X, beset by phantom problems before I arrive, which were irreproducible while I was there, talked to the boss, and got me on the same schedule as everybody else, so I could experience her problems. Which promptly rescheduled themselves.

Having tried every logical solution, I started to realize that the problem may very well be of a psychosomatic nature. She was, in other words, a total freaking loon. And I devised a plan.

One day, I showed up with a gadget. I’d spent a couple of days beforehand talking with her, and to employees near her, about this great gadget I was about to buy; this diagnostic tool that would fix just about anything. I built it up to be the diagnostic equivalent of Einstein on Red Bull; it was the be-all, end-all of scientific equipment. And then, I brought it over to her desk.

It had lights on it. It made reassuringly scientific sounds. I pressed buttons, it booped. I pressed other buttons, it beeped, but never ostentatiously. Oh, no, this was a sophisticated scientific instrument, it even purred as it worked. I scanned it up and down her computer, looking concerned, but confident. I pressed another button, the purr changed pitch, and the lights blinked. I looked enlightened for a second, straightened up, and told her, “It’s an IRQ conflict between your video card and your hard drive controller. I’ll have it straightened out right away.”

A few meaningless windows opened, a few minutes of flashy but insignificant changes to her system, and she never had another computer problem again. She went around singing my praises, claiming I could fix anything. I went back to my later schedule.

All thanks to my Kay-Bee Toys, Star Trek the Next Generation toy tricorder. A must for any tech geek’s tool kit.