pc tech support

There's always one. This has got to be one of the funniest things in a long time. I think this guy should have been promoted, not fired This is a true story from the Word Perfect Helpline, which was transcribed from a recording monitoring the customer care department.. Needless to say the Help Desk employee was fired; however, he/she is currently suing the Word Perfect organization for 'Termination without Cause'. Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee. (Now I know why they record these conversations!):

Operator: 'Ridge Hall, computer assistance; may I help you?'
Caller: 'Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect.'
Operator: 'What sort of trouble??'
Caller: 'Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.'
Operator: 'Went away?'
Caller: 'They disappeared.'
Operator: 'Hmm So what does your screen look like now?'
Caller: 'Nothing.'
Operator: 'Nothing??'
Caller: 'It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type.'
Operator: 'Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out??'
Caller: 'How do I tell?'
Operator: 'Can you see the C: prompt on the screen??'
Caller: 'What's a sea-prompt?'
Operator: 'Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?'
Caller: 'There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type.'
Operator: 'Does your monitor have a power indicator??'
Caller: 'What's a monitor?'
Operator: 'It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on??'
Caller: 'I don't know.'
Operator: 'Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that??'
Caller: 'Yes, I think so.'
Operator: 'Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall. Caller: 'Yes, it is.'
Operator: 'When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one??'
Caller: 'No.'
Operator: 'Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable.'
Caller: 'Okay, here it is.'
Operator: 'Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer.'
Caller: 'I can't reach.'
Operator: 'Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is??'
Caller: 'No.'
Operator: 'Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over??'
Caller: 'Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle - it's because it's dark.'
Operator: 'Dark??'
Caller: 'Yes - the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window.
Operator: 'Well, turn on the office light then.'
Caller: 'I can't.'
Operator: 'No? Why not??'
Caller: 'Because there's a power failure.'
Operator: 'A power......... A power failure? Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in??'
Caller: 'Well, yes, I keep them in the closet.'
Operator: 'Good.. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from.'
Caller: 'Really? Is it that bad?'
Operator: 'Yes, I'm afraid it is.'
Caller: 'Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them??'
Operator: 'Tell them you're too f*%king stupid to own a computer!!!!!'

Good find S+F

HAHA see I am not that dumb

I saw another one of these and it cracked me up. I am looking for it now.


When I worked as an operator I had some old Jamican lady not know what a pound sign was...OMG 45mins for her to figure it out...AND she had a rotary phone. it was hilarious and a nightmare.

reply to post by alysha.angel


I remember reading that call when I was doing my computer course in 1997. We need more up to date funny help desk things though, nobody has C: prompts these days

I was doing tech support for a local internet provider about 6-7 years ago, back in the days of dial-up, and had a call from some lady who was having trouble getting/staying connected.

At one point in the conversation I said to her,
"Okay. On the upper left hand side of your screen you should see 'My Computer'".

There was a noticeable pause on the other end, and I could hear her looking around for it on the screen.

A few seconds later she comes back on and exclaims,
"NO. I Don't see your computer ... Can you see mine!?"

I had to take the phone away from my head for a minute or so to avoid bursting out laughing into it.

One of but many similarly humorous situations over the years.

reply to post by alysha.angel


This is rather funny! In my tech support days I actually encountered the same kind of thing - a customer who had moved and hadn't gotten their power turned on yet. The person on the other end of the phone was moving across town, piecemeal, and stated that they wanted to get their computer system totally unpacked, set-up, and running before they went for another load. When I finally figured out the issue, I politely explained that the computer would not boot without the electricity being on and the consumer replied:

"But when I bought this I was told there was a battery in it."

The gentleman was not at all happy or receptive when I attempted to explain that the battery, basically, only powered the clock.

Then again it was way more entertaining than 99% of tech support issues, which usually involved the words "I'm assuming you have a very large and full folder on your desktop labeled something like "Private - do not open"... So we are going to need to wipe your hard drive and PLEASE do not copy any "media" you have downloaded onto any removable storage - as you will only have the same problems again once you reinstall those files....

People become VERY angry and resistant when you tell them to kill their porn. For some reason our hunter / gatherer genes seem to fixate, in this modern day and age, to the act of filling such folders.

I've seen some genius level activity during the last half of 2010 come through my shop.

A guy brought a laptop in to me (he didn't speak english, so we had this conversation in spanish) and said it wouldn't turn on. He didn't bring a power adapter in with it, so I asked about that. No...I left it at home, he said.
After a while of checking the computer, I concur it either has a bad motherboard, or a bad power jack and the battery is totally discharged. He asks if the "black box" in the middle of the power adapter cord is necessary to the functioning of the laptop. Feeling like I am about to hear the truth finally come out of him, I say that it IS, and why is he asking that. He says that it stopped working, so he cut the plug end off of the adapter, and hardwired the plug directly to the 120V line that he then plugged into the wall. He said..."It was like it was going to work for a second, the lights came on and then there was this noise....."

Another guy brought a laptop in, that would power on and then immediately off. The laptop was a caveman relic, a Compaq E500 (or something like that) that this guy had plugged the power cord for an HP printer in to. The adapter read something like 30V - and the laptop required 19V. I told him that the over voltage had killed the laptop. HE COULD NOT UNDERSTAND THIS. He said that it had BEEN working, just the mouse was erratic, and it made a really high pitched noise. I explained that the noise was the computer equivalent of what you hear when you crack and egg on a hot griddle. He still didn't believe me. I finally told him that I wasn't qualified to fix the issue at hand and that he needed to call Compaq Tech Support.

I sold a laptop to a lady. I showed her the dvd player, the cd burner. I showed her the wireless connection, explained the antivirus software, pointed out the games I had installed on there per her request. We talked about the battery, charging the battery - the warranty & what was covered. She departs. An hour later she calls me and says she has a question about the laptop. "How do you turn it on?"

Terminology. Most people get memory (ram) confused with hard drive storage space. When I say it needs more memory, they nearly always respond with "Well cant you just delete some of that stuff on there?" or they'll say "I need a bigger hard drive, with more memory, because my computer is saying 'virtual memory is low'"
PC Towers are called modems, hard drives, tabletops, towers, boxes.
People have brought in their monitor only, saying it has a lot of viruses in it.
People will spend all night defragging their hard drive to remove viruses.

A business called me yesterday morning, hysterical, none of their computers would get online nor could they connect to their central database. They needed me IMMEDIATELY, please HURRY, they were totally DOWN and had spent three hours on the phone with their ISP to no avail. I drop the hundred things I'm juggling and drive the hour there to find out THEY BOUGHT A NEW ROUTER and didn't tell me about it. Their only problem was that they DIDN'T CONNECT ALL THE COMPUTERS BACK TO THE WIRELESS NETWORK.

Last year a lady brought in a desktop computer for repair, and after three weeks or so came back to pick it up. I grabbed her computer, & booted it up showing that it had been repaired and that all of her data was still intact.
She said that this didn't look like her computer at all, and that was indeed her data, but that was NOT the computer that she brought in. We reviewed the sec camera footage from weeks before and watched as she took the same computer (identifiable by several stickers on the case, and the particular shape of the case) and as I met her halfway and brought the computer inside placing it a mere five feet from another camera. She STILL insisted that wasn't her computer, so we watched the video several more times. The video was perfect, even showing a scrape on the case where the paint was missing that was visible as it came from the trunk of her car to my workbench - and still visible on the computer she claimed wasn't hers.

A guy I had never seen before stuck his head in the door & asked "Can you take the password off this laptop? It's stolen"

A guy brings a computer in, wrecked with viruses - and says "Whatever you do, don't delete my porn...I need that. I need it because my girlfriend is pregnant and fat"

An old man brings a computer in, and says whatever you do - don't delete my Poser files. Poser is a program to manipulate 3d models such as people & animals in various positions & save as files and/or movies.
He had over 50 poser movies he had made of children receiving enemas, and with "worms"
I called the police.

Ew, that last one was a bit nasty
My favourite support request in my current job is "The Smart board isn't working". The fix for this can range from the data projector not turning on or not getting a signal from the PC, through to the speakers not working or as in a case I had this morning, Internet explorer not loading as one instance had crashed and she'd carried on clicking to open the program ending up with over 20 instances of Iexplore.exe in task manager.
Occasionally I have a request to fix a job and they have actually told me the thing that is actually causing the problem!

JUST NOW departed a guy with a laptop that I had ordered a battery for. He asked how do you charge it. I said...well....you plug it in. "It's got to be plugged in to charge then?" - "Yes", I say. He says, "Oh...I was thinking something like a car...when it has a dead battery you can get a jump and then it keeps the battery charged while it's running" - I replied..."Yeah, that would probably work, if your laptop had an alternator on it"

I'm glad I'm a nerd. Back in Windows '98 days I used to get viruses from -ahem- downloading stuff. At least I knew how to format my hard drive and do a clean install and I was a early teenager back then.

But seriously if people are going to download either pirated stuff or porn they should use Linux. There is a slim chance to get a virus that way. Or use a Mac. That and there is a lot of open source software out there so downloading pirated software really isn't necessary.

Windows is like a public restroom, it's messy, it stinks and people don't know how to use it properly. Linux and Macs are like private restrooms where you need a keycard to enter. It's cleaner and fresher.

I did PC support for a while until I got so bored with it the I started fantasising about how exciting being an accountant would be

I didn't get that many stupid calls but I can let you into the secret of how to completely confound most PC support people, and a joke I played on a few people at work.

1) With just your desktop open press print screen, take that picture and set it as the desktop background

2) Hide the task bar and delete every single item from the desktop making sure to remove the recycle bin etc within the control panel

3) Watch in amazement as someone with a PHD completely losses his mind because nothing at all on his PC works any more and nothing he does makes any difference .

Its fun and you can undelete all the desktop items after you have finished annoying them

reply to post by davespanners


I worked at a computer consulting firm, and once I emailed a program to a guy that I had known for years that was a gag program. It would slice your desktop into an 10X10 grid, much like the old slide puzzles, only this software would lock the computer down until you solved the puzzle. This IDIOT (without ever opening it) FORWARDED it on to EVERYONE that worked in the building. There were 75 to 80 people out of the 200 or so there that opened it that were unable to solve the puzzle. He got in an amazing amount of trouble for that, being as they handled medical insurance claims from all over the country and couldn't file claims or anything because they couldn't figure out the puzzle. He tried blaming me for it, and I simply said "I didn't tell you to forward it to ANYONE" - my boss agreed. We logged over a dozen hours of service work solving puzzles.

Old funny picture I still have.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a8cfd500c631.jpg[/atsimg]


And another.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/204cda52315e.jpg[/atsimg]

If anyone recalls the days of office 97/2000/XP with that very annoying office assistant.
Well I saw this video a couple of years ago and have to share it - I was crying with laughter the first time I saw it.
NB - if you never experienced the persistence that was the old office assistant this wont mean much to you so apologies if it's not that funny!
**************
also DON'T play at work as there is strong language in the clip
**************

reply to post by facchino


are you kidding me its funny as hell

reply to post by alysha.angel


Glad you liked it -
Not PC related but this is another thing that had me crying with laughter (I dont do that often I promise) but this felt like it was written for my sense of humour...
Chilli Taster

That paper clip if freaking hilarious. Yeah, I've had some funny stuff happen while working on computers. Some people really have a hard time with technology.

Troy

OK, here ya go....

Episode #1 is a MUST SEE. Language Warning.

www.thewebsiteisdown.com...

That is funny stuff. I'll have to pass it on to my IT friends.

reply to post by sykickvision


your stories are a great example of why I got out of retail. I have not eliminated stupid people, but I have decreased my exposure of them. Bypassing the AC adapter is priceless.