The Support Joke
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I have a friend who worked for a Microsoft support team back in the '90s. One day a customer called up, complaining that Windows wasn't starting. "Ma'am, did you delete any files recently?" my friend asked. "Yes," she said, "I was running out of space on my computer. So I deleted the DOS directory 'cause I didn't need Spanish lessons."
Regards,Dan
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While not my direct incident, I was close by when the message was played. This happened maybe 7-8 years ago when a company I worked for wrote/supported an app that ran in DOS.
Phone call from frantic customer: "Flint, I can't find the any key. The system's down and I need to press the any key. You need to call me as soon as possible because I can't get this working until I find the ....." (pause) "I am such an idiot."
Unfortunately, we didn't have a good way to record this at the time, but it was about the funniest call we'd received in a while for both the customer not being able to find the any key to start with, then actually realizing what that meant. IIRC, one of the releases shortly after that changed the message to "Press a key".
(Greetings to anyone who may have been with me at the time and is reading this post.)
-Pete
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This just happened a few months ago. It made me understand just how far removed us "IT dorks" really are sometimes from our users.
We had an all-hands meeting with all of the C-levels and all employees. This was supposed to be a ra-ra meeting where management could tell all the employees how great the company was doing and get everyone cheered up and motivated without saying anything of substance. Having been through at least 12 of these pep rallies in my 6 years here, I was less than enthusiastic about wasting an hour of my time.
I was standing behind the CEO and CFO with our other senior database guy, trying to act like we were paying attention while they were making their speeches. At one point during his speech, the CEO made the statement "We have three times as many active customers as our nearest competitor! Do you know why that is?" Without missing a beat, my buddy said to me "Cartesian?" We both starting laughing loudly, then realized that all eyes had turned to us. We left the meeting early.
"Cartesian" still cracks us up. We kept our jubs, but are not required to attend the pep rallies anymore.
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Thank you Steve. I needed a laugh and could relate. I think you've started a roll. -Joan
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That is great, you definitely had me rolling on the floor. However, I am glad I wasn't the one dealing with it
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Thanks for brightening my day Andrew. The Chronicles of George is the funniest thing I've ever read, although I wish you had warned me that I would spend soo much time there. I've been havening tears roll down my face ever since I've read the site. I can't stop laughing. Thanks again.
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I used to carry a dead 40 meg drive in the tool bag for just such occasions. I'd say, "That box under the counter is the computer. It's called a PC. It contains a hard drive. And here's what one of those looks like." I would toss the dead one out onto the desk.
My dead 40 had all the seal ripped out and the case screws loosely back in place. That way I could show them the insides. My customers were all dentists, assistants, hygenists, and practice managers. Doing an "autopsy" on the dead drive got their attention.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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Of course you know that it was under the watch of the late, great, Admiral Grace M. Hopper that the term "bug" originated. This, too, was in Florida.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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About three years ago the college I work for hired a whiz-bang programmer/DBA with a Masters degree in Computer Science to oversee all of us peons who were building data-driven applications for the institution. As one of the more experienced personell, he often questioned me on difficult tasks. One day I received the following email.
I am trying to set up replication for our (SQL 2000) databases and I am having problems. I have a trigger that updates DB B on insert, update and delete which is working fine. When I enable the same trigger to update DB A the systems run fine for about fifteen minutes then both servers run out of memory. Have you ever heard of this?
Thanks,
(name withheld to protect the guilty)
After I picked myself up off of the floor, I sent him an email simply stating "infinite recursive loop."
He never did resolve the issue. I now have his job.
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity.
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If you like that, you should try the BOFH .... ... He is awesome ...
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In my first job we had a guy ring up the IT department and ask
You know these computer viruses? Can humans catch them?
This from a guy who forgot his wife when he left the office Christmas party and only went back because he thought he had forgotten his hat!
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At a company where I worked several years ago, all the developers had to support production on a rotating basis. We had 2 facilities, one in the Midwest and one in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The programs ran on a Dec Vax with an Oracle database.
A fellow dev had to walk a lab technician based in Toronto through a problem that he was havening with one of the applications. The dev kept telling the lab tech to hit CTL-A. The lab tech kept saying that nothing was happening. The support developer kept repeating "you have to hit CTL-A to do that function." Finally the lab tech, out of frustration, barked "look, I am hitting friggin' CTL".
Apparently the Canadian was under the impression that the developer was telling him "hit CTL eh."
Karen Gayda
MCP, MCSD, MCDBA
gaydaware.com -
This story is from a friend of mine; wish I could have been there to witness it.
The tech support team recently hired a new hotshot tech. One day this tech gets a call from a user who is unable to print. The guy decides to mess with her head - "There's a leak in the printer cable...how do you test it? Well, go down to the break room and run water into one end of it."
The other techs look at each other, then at this guy, incredulously...and say "No freakin' way!!!" They all run down to the break room, and, lo and behold, there's a printer cable lying there and a pool of water. The user bought it
The tech got a raise.
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One day, while working for the dental software company, the support manager called me into her office. She was on the phone with a desperate user. The customer system would not come on. Four computer system - all dead. This was an ancient system that had four computers tied to a common hard drive. Yes, I know - - but it worked!
The computers themselves were on but could not log in to the application. No lights on the master hard drive and no sound from it. The multiplexer also had no lights. I knew that the mux drew power from the drive unit.
The support manager, a normally calm person, was frantic. "I've tried everything. I've even had her replace the power cord." I said that I would take the call. I started over.
After about 10 minutes I figured that we had a blown power supply in the drive unit. There different types of power supplies that could go in these units and I wanted to determine which type the customer had. "Which way does the red switch on you unit flip? Up and down or left and right?"
"What red switch? There is no switch on this unit." No switch? What the...
Wait a second! There was a third type! I said "Take a flash light and shine is on the area of the case directly over the hole that that power cord plugs into. Do you see something that looks like a bump?" "Yes, I do." "Push in near the top of the bump." Click. Whirr. "I've got lights!"
Shiny black rocker switch on a shiny black panel on a unit tucked under a counter. No words like "On" or "Off" on this switch. Oh no. two and a quarter hours all for the lack of some engraving and paint.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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That story was hilarious,
I have one that I thought was pretty good. It happened to a colleague of mine. He was liaising with a customer and trying to get them to change a setting in the application. Needless to say I broke out in tears when I later found out. Our colleague had sent the client a screen shot of where he could change that setting……. about 2 minutes later we found out the client was clicking on screenshot trying to make the change.
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