A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The
tech asked her if she was running it under "Windows", to which the woman
responded, "No, my desk is next to the door. But, that is a good point.
The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his printer
is working fine."
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 finished with it, because he needed to keep it.
CUSTOMER: "Can you copy the Internet for me on this diskette?"
I work for a local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls that start
something like this: CUSTOMER: "Hi, Is this the Internet?"
CUSTOMER: "So that will get me connected to the Internet, right?"
TECH SUPPORT: "Yeah."
CUSTOMER: "And that's the latest version of the Internet, right?"
Some people pay for their online services with checks made payable to
"The Internet."
CUSTOMER: "My computer crashed!"
TECH SUPPORT: "It crashed?"
CUSTOMER: "Yeah, and 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?"
I got a call from a woman who said 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 came over and printed out a test sheet. It printed
fine. I asked her to print a sheet herself. So she sent a print 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 with a problem I just couldn't solve.
She could not print yellow. All the 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 in the rainbow printed, except for yellow. I had the customer
change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the
drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers 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
construction paper?"
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 held the printer up in front of the screen but the
computer still couldn't find it.
Another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in the
opposite direction from the movement of the mouse. She also complained
about how hard it was to hit the buttons. She was quite embarrassed when we
asked her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her.
This guy calls in to complain that he gets "access denied" message every
time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in
capital letters.
TECH SUPPORT: "O.K., let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
CUSTOMER: "Oh, but I only have capital letters on my keyboard."
I have a friend who just bought a computer and was instructed to load a
program by typing "A:" and then the name of the program. My friend told me
it would not work because his keyboard was no good. He said he couldn't
type the "dot over dot thingie" and that every time he tried to type the
"dot over dot thingie" he got the "dot over comma thingie", no matter how
careful he was to press only the very top of the key. When I told him
about the shift key, he thought I was a 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 work stations with her arms
crossed across her chest and 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 pushed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!"
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