>
>A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her 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."
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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!"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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.
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>Customer in computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet onto this disk for me?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>I work for a local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls that start
something like this:
>Customer: "Hi. Is this the Internet?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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."
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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 a
filing cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"
>Customer: [click]
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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.
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer's tech
support number, complaining about the error message: "Can't find the
printer." On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front
of the screen, but the computer still couldn't find it.
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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.
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>Customer: "Hello? I'm trying to dial in. I installed the software okay,
and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear the two computers
connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I picked up the phone to see
if they were still connected, and I got the message, 'No carrier,' on my
screen. What's wrong?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows
installation that had gone terribly wrong.
>Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my home
computer." Training stresses that we are "not the Software Police," so I
let the little act of piracy slide.
>Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
>Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't initialized.
>Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"
>Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a Macintosh disk. Would
you like to initialize it?"
>Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
>Customer: "After they were initialized, all the disks appeared to be
blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can't read them in the A:
drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows
disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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.
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>Email from a friend: "CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"
>GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS
>
>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 F1 button over twenty minutes ago!"
>
Received on Thu Jun 22 2000 - 16:01:48 BST
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