Yes, there ARE actually people out there this stupid!!
Helpdesk: What kind of computer do you have?
Female customer: A white one...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi, this is Celine. I can't get my diskette out.
Helpdesk: Have you tried pushing the button?
Customer: Yes, sure, it's really stuck.
Helpdesk: That doesn't sound good; I'll make a note "
Customer: No ... wait a minute... I hadn't inserted it yet... it's still
on my desk... sorry
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the screen.
Customer: Your left or my left?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print. Every time I try it
says 'Can't find printer'. I've even lifted the printer and placed it in
front of the monitor, but the computer still says he can't find it...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Customer: I have problems printing in red...
Helpdesk: Do you have a color printer?
Customer: Aaaah....................thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: What's on your monitor now ma'am?
Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me in the supermarket.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: And now hit F8.
Customer: It's not working.
Helpdesk: What did you do, exactly?
Customer: I hit the F-key 8-times as you told me, but nothing's
happening...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore.
Helpdesk: Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?
Customer: No. I can't get behind the computer.
Helpdesk: Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back.
Customer: OK
Helpdesk: Did the keyboard come with you?
Customer: Yes
Helpdesk: That means the keyboard is not plugged in. Is there another
keyboard?
Customer: Yes, there's another one here. Ah...that one does work!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: Your password is the small letter a as in apple, a capital
letter V as in Victor, the number 7.
Customer: Is that 7 in capital letters?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A customer couldn't get on the internet.
Helpdesk: Are you sure you used the right password?
Customer: Yes I'm sure. I saw my colleague do it.
Helpdesk: Can you tell me what the password was?
Customer: Five stars.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: What antivirus program do you use?
Customer: Netscape.
Helpdesk: That's not an antivirus program.
Customer: Oh, sorry...Internet Explorer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Customer: I have a huge problem. A friend has placed a screensaver on
my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: Microsoft Tech. Support, may I help you?
Old woman: Good afternoon! I have waited over 4 hours for you.
Can you please tell me how long it will take before you can help me?
Helpdesk: Uhh..? Pardon, I don't understand your problem?
Old woman: I was working in Word and clicked the help button more than
4 hours ago.
Can you tell me when you will finally be helping me?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Helpdesk: How may I help you?
Customer: I'm writing my first e-mail.
Helpdesk: OK, and, what seems to be the problem?
Customer: Well, I have the letter a, but how do I get the circle around
it?
Joke (NOT) - IS Help desk calls (alledgedly)
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bstardchild
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carmadaaron
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carmadaaron
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CalvinGTI
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haha carmadaaron too right !, i mostly have to deal with retards trying to use specialist equipment, like these funky scanner pc's we have.
The other day i had some lady phoning up cos she she couldnt log into one of these special scanner pc's, i spent 20 mins trying to get her to power off the pc, and everytime she did she would switch it on again and it would instantly go back to the log-on screen. . .so im busy telling her that she is simply turning off the monitor and not the actual pc base unit, which is what she needs to do. So she said ok then ill try now and then.. . .
BOOP
phone goes dead hahahah i never did bother ringing her back, couldnt bne assed in the end, i mean if your gonna take the power out from your phone which doesnt look anything like a kettle lead, then sod ya, go annoy someone else haha
NErrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr some people and technology just dont mix. . oh yea and ive found over the years, that the blondes are most def the worst !!!!
FACT !
Calâ„¢
The other day i had some lady phoning up cos she she couldnt log into one of these special scanner pc's, i spent 20 mins trying to get her to power off the pc, and everytime she did she would switch it on again and it would instantly go back to the log-on screen. . .so im busy telling her that she is simply turning off the monitor and not the actual pc base unit, which is what she needs to do. So she said ok then ill try now and then.. . .
BOOP
phone goes dead hahahah i never did bother ringing her back, couldnt bne assed in the end, i mean if your gonna take the power out from your phone which doesnt look anything like a kettle lead, then sod ya, go annoy someone else haha
NErrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr some people and technology just dont mix. . oh yea and ive found over the years, that the blondes are most def the worst !!!!
FACT !
Calâ„¢
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carmadaaron
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Tahrey1043
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The worst ones are people who think they're so sh*t-hot with computers and technology but don't have the first clue. I've tired of having to troubleshoot problems for friends and family who have just rushed into things pulling assumptions out the air and their ass about how things work
Annoyingly these are the f*cks who tend to blag their way into IT maintenance jobs etc in schools, colleges, offices, because they appear to know what they're talking about to the average layman who runs their PC to type in word and play solitaire - and even when you argue against their thickness to the head/boss/etc, you're beaten back because, well, who are you to tell them their job? Even if they're doing it so badly it's affecting your productivity?
e.g. back in the day - them: if I buy this Voodoo card, can i run that MMX-only 32mb game on my 8mb 486...? me: er what?! the same as saying, if i put optimax and slick 50 in my car, will people look at it and think it's a ferrari? (most worryingly... it worked - quake 2!)
Or the bloke who was convinced that monitors and things associated with them were the source of all evil, e.g. his crappy monitor burnt out and he was convinced it was something to do with a virus he'd recently got, or running the screen at too high a "resolution" (read: colour depth) or having too many files on a CDR etc etc etc.... and would the power supply in his "hard disc" (desktop unit) now be at risk? and then going off on some kind of thing where he'd have to replace the entire computer... at cost... because of a dodgy monitor - that was covered under an on-site replacement warranty.
(another guy who i knew through him, couldn't double click, or even click-select - he couldn't hold the mouse still whilst double clicking to save his life, nor click fast enough. his desktop was full of out-of-line shortcuts and things that had been panickingly renamed to " ". luckily we taught him to use the start menu... via the windows key, cursor arrows and Enter)
Or the school IT tech who setup the new machines so badly - in one room we went from 486-50s running a respectable screen res of 800x600 16bit at 72hz with a simple but reliable, secure (but lenient/user friendly) network interface....... to brand spankin' new "extra fast!" 233mmx's (when 400+ pcs were the ones to have) in gigantonormous, noisy desktop cases (in a small room with narrow desks - nowhere to put the keyboards, and monitors above head height when sitting!)... running retardomatic 640x480 in 256 colours at 60hz (useless for internet, photo editing, encarta, DTP etc, or for looking at for more than a few minutes - but you got a ration of crap for changing the (unsecured) setting.. which led to me setting it to secret VGA Mono mode in spite) and with the worlds most ass backwards, overly restrictive but actually completely insecure login system. When I confronted him over how crap this was and whether he was going to fix it.... blown right off. He never used Shutdown either, just the power switch, but naturally was annoyed by Scandisc interrupting his boot-up.
Oh yeah and for a school of under 1000 pupils, when 10gb discs were fairly affordable -- you had a maximum filespace allowance of 3mb. Three megs. IE one average 2-page publisher document. I think the other 7gb probably got given over to porn....
...and for that same 1000 pupil school with nigh on 100 networked computers, a single quad ISDN line which was usually tied up downloading printer drivers every time you tried to print something off a machine that had never been printed from before. 1-2kb/sec average, even at that time, was rubbish... No Net-Nanny either, so it was usually 1-2kb/sec of pure, undiluted porn.
but ... i still get roped into amateur tech support
my uncle's the best, because he fully realises when he doesnt know what's going on, maybe too much so.. stuff that he could figure out if he wasn't so adrenaline hyped by fear of the computer and just sat for a moment to read what the dialogue box says, freaks him, and i get the phone call.. but i'm allowed to just get on with it, with a minimum of silly questions. bliss.
oddly, neither my 80+ years old neighbour, nor a 60+ friend of my mum have any major problems at all, they seem to gel very well with their machines. both of them asked me to come install office for them (understandable, it requires a half hour just to trawl the options so it doesnt go into default Retarded Mode) and set up some internet options (never immediately obvious)... and that's about the end of it.
It's the middle agers who tend to go really batsh*t insane when confronted with a computer... mobile phone... DVD player... or even a simple VCR or walkman (ie mother, uncle, college lecturers). This stuff should literally be like childs play to them, considering the times at which such items began to gain popularity, yet it totally stumps 'em, even with the simple bleeding obvious things like "you can tell it's turned on but in standby mode BECAUSE THE POWER LIGHT IS STILL ON... No! NO! Look at it, damn you!!! STOP REPEATEDLY PRESSING THAT POWER BUTTON!!!". And these are the folk who run the world!
(i burnt techtales out, about a year ago, there should just about be enough new readable stuff now if the organisation has improved any)
my favourite is always the one where someone plugged the 4-socket extension cable back into itself, and then couldn't understand why the computer wouldn't turn on
just the plain old monday-morning syndrome but a good giggle.
type your password in at a login screen, while using windows. Change your mind and hold down Backspace til it's all gone, and your username too if you're paranoid.
Now right click in the password box (and username if you erased it) and choose Undo.... voila... you can still log in. This works at the very least for Win98 network logins, maybe WinXP too (if someone ctrl-alt-dels, types in something but then gets called away etc). Very worrying. It may hurt the computer, but if you happen to be a in a situ where you get as far as tapping your password in but then have to leave the PC.. trip the power switch or hit the physical Reset button (if you still have one! where have they gone?!).
PS Calv ----- ooooh thick people and scanners/other specialist equipment in public use places, that riles me. Spent about two hours waiting to get to use a scanner to insert some photos into an urgent assignment in the uni library once, whilst some guy who was older than god himself struggled to understand it with the "help" of the uni IT staff (from the things they both said, it appears he had the more computer experience, just not in scanners - of which they were on an equal level... so who actually installed the thing???). Eventually got the bottle up to but in and go like "excuse me... just press that button there on the machine, and then click that icon... it'll finally work and i can get my bloody turn after you". (dipped into the overdraft and bought my own £30 job the day after)
Or folk who'll hog the single high-speed, CDR/zip drive equipped PC out of an entire room even though they're just writing a three page word document/some emails (hunting & a-pecking), and you have to struggle on making your photoshop-tweaked-image laden powerpoint presentation on a raddled old P133, getting it home by splitting it across fourteen goddamn bad-sector plagued floppies with WinZip.
Ahum. touched a vein there mate
Annoyingly these are the f*cks who tend to blag their way into IT maintenance jobs etc in schools, colleges, offices, because they appear to know what they're talking about to the average layman who runs their PC to type in word and play solitaire - and even when you argue against their thickness to the head/boss/etc, you're beaten back because, well, who are you to tell them their job? Even if they're doing it so badly it's affecting your productivity?
e.g. back in the day - them: if I buy this Voodoo card, can i run that MMX-only 32mb game on my 8mb 486...? me: er what?! the same as saying, if i put optimax and slick 50 in my car, will people look at it and think it's a ferrari? (most worryingly... it worked - quake 2!)
Or the bloke who was convinced that monitors and things associated with them were the source of all evil, e.g. his crappy monitor burnt out and he was convinced it was something to do with a virus he'd recently got, or running the screen at too high a "resolution" (read: colour depth) or having too many files on a CDR etc etc etc.... and would the power supply in his "hard disc" (desktop unit) now be at risk? and then going off on some kind of thing where he'd have to replace the entire computer... at cost... because of a dodgy monitor - that was covered under an on-site replacement warranty.
(another guy who i knew through him, couldn't double click, or even click-select - he couldn't hold the mouse still whilst double clicking to save his life, nor click fast enough. his desktop was full of out-of-line shortcuts and things that had been panickingly renamed to " ". luckily we taught him to use the start menu... via the windows key, cursor arrows and Enter)
Or the school IT tech who setup the new machines so badly - in one room we went from 486-50s running a respectable screen res of 800x600 16bit at 72hz with a simple but reliable, secure (but lenient/user friendly) network interface....... to brand spankin' new "extra fast!" 233mmx's (when 400+ pcs were the ones to have) in gigantonormous, noisy desktop cases (in a small room with narrow desks - nowhere to put the keyboards, and monitors above head height when sitting!)... running retardomatic 640x480 in 256 colours at 60hz (useless for internet, photo editing, encarta, DTP etc, or for looking at for more than a few minutes - but you got a ration of crap for changing the (unsecured) setting.. which led to me setting it to secret VGA Mono mode in spite) and with the worlds most ass backwards, overly restrictive but actually completely insecure login system. When I confronted him over how crap this was and whether he was going to fix it.... blown right off. He never used Shutdown either, just the power switch, but naturally was annoyed by Scandisc interrupting his boot-up.
Oh yeah and for a school of under 1000 pupils, when 10gb discs were fairly affordable -- you had a maximum filespace allowance of 3mb. Three megs. IE one average 2-page publisher document. I think the other 7gb probably got given over to porn....
...and for that same 1000 pupil school with nigh on 100 networked computers, a single quad ISDN line which was usually tied up downloading printer drivers every time you tried to print something off a machine that had never been printed from before. 1-2kb/sec average, even at that time, was rubbish... No Net-Nanny either, so it was usually 1-2kb/sec of pure, undiluted porn.
but ... i still get roped into amateur tech support
my uncle's the best, because he fully realises when he doesnt know what's going on, maybe too much so.. stuff that he could figure out if he wasn't so adrenaline hyped by fear of the computer and just sat for a moment to read what the dialogue box says, freaks him, and i get the phone call.. but i'm allowed to just get on with it, with a minimum of silly questions. bliss.
oddly, neither my 80+ years old neighbour, nor a 60+ friend of my mum have any major problems at all, they seem to gel very well with their machines. both of them asked me to come install office for them (understandable, it requires a half hour just to trawl the options so it doesnt go into default Retarded Mode) and set up some internet options (never immediately obvious)... and that's about the end of it.
It's the middle agers who tend to go really batsh*t insane when confronted with a computer... mobile phone... DVD player... or even a simple VCR or walkman (ie mother, uncle, college lecturers). This stuff should literally be like childs play to them, considering the times at which such items began to gain popularity, yet it totally stumps 'em, even with the simple bleeding obvious things like "you can tell it's turned on but in standby mode BECAUSE THE POWER LIGHT IS STILL ON... No! NO! Look at it, damn you!!! STOP REPEATEDLY PRESSING THAT POWER BUTTON!!!". And these are the folk who run the world!
(i burnt techtales out, about a year ago, there should just about be enough new readable stuff now if the organisation has improved any)
my favourite is always the one where someone plugged the 4-socket extension cable back into itself, and then couldn't understand why the computer wouldn't turn on
just the plain old monday-morning syndrome but a good giggle.Something scary that i pondered today, and to my dismay, immediately proved to be right ---Helpdesk: Can you tell me what the password was?
Customer: Five stars.
type your password in at a login screen, while using windows. Change your mind and hold down Backspace til it's all gone, and your username too if you're paranoid.
Now right click in the password box (and username if you erased it) and choose Undo.... voila... you can still log in. This works at the very least for Win98 network logins, maybe WinXP too (if someone ctrl-alt-dels, types in something but then gets called away etc). Very worrying. It may hurt the computer, but if you happen to be a in a situ where you get as far as tapping your password in but then have to leave the PC.. trip the power switch or hit the physical Reset button (if you still have one! where have they gone?!).
PS Calv ----- ooooh thick people and scanners/other specialist equipment in public use places, that riles me. Spent about two hours waiting to get to use a scanner to insert some photos into an urgent assignment in the uni library once, whilst some guy who was older than god himself struggled to understand it with the "help" of the uni IT staff (from the things they both said, it appears he had the more computer experience, just not in scanners - of which they were on an equal level... so who actually installed the thing???). Eventually got the bottle up to but in and go like "excuse me... just press that button there on the machine, and then click that icon... it'll finally work and i can get my bloody turn after you". (dipped into the overdraft and bought my own £30 job the day after)
Or folk who'll hog the single high-speed, CDR/zip drive equipped PC out of an entire room even though they're just writing a three page word document/some emails (hunting & a-pecking), and you have to struggle on making your photoshop-tweaked-image laden powerpoint presentation on a raddled old P133, getting it home by splitting it across fourteen goddamn bad-sector plagued floppies with WinZip.
Ahum. touched a vein there mate
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carmadaaron
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Karl_CLCoupe
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Awww, you wanna try being the technical person in your family. If ever someone gets a new TV/DVD, etc, then "I'll give Karl a ring..."
The thing I've found the hardest to teach the older generations to use is mobiles. I had an auntie once who thought you had to turn the phone off after a call, otherwise you still got billed. Then grandad and uncle still don't have a clue when it comes to reading text messages, nevermind sending the things. I have come to his phone, and found the display saying 8 new messages. I wouldn't mind, but they're months old, and the phones in loud! Mother is just as bad. Taken her about 2 years to understand how to navigate the menu on her 3210. Its gonna take a miracle to get her to text.
Karl.
The thing I've found the hardest to teach the older generations to use is mobiles. I had an auntie once who thought you had to turn the phone off after a call, otherwise you still got billed. Then grandad and uncle still don't have a clue when it comes to reading text messages, nevermind sending the things. I have come to his phone, and found the display saying 8 new messages. I wouldn't mind, but they're months old, and the phones in loud! Mother is just as bad. Taken her about 2 years to understand how to navigate the menu on her 3210. Its gonna take a miracle to get her to text.
Karl.
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carmadaaron
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Tahrey1043
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It pissed me right off when some charvers got in thru my nans window and took her handbag - the only thing in there of worth (apart from some tissues and boiled sweets) being her hand-me-down 3310. Its bad enough that they nicked a phone that's now got to be replaced and the new number distributed to everyone again, but also, there is no phone easier to use for a technophobe. Nokia got it spot on with the 33 series - its just too bad they didnt make an "accessible" one with big keys, large screen, louder ringer/receiver etc (less likely to get nicked too!). Got to replace it with another myself before specification-blind aunt (she goes for the shiny) does it instead.
Took ages to teach her how to use it, including drawing out 4 illustrated very-large-text A4 sheets on the subject of how to use the phone book for a call, making a call without phone book, dialling 999, receiving a call, turning the phone on and off, and charging it. If I'd been brave I would have covered entering a new number into the phone book as well (actually quite simple). This however was all after helping her unlearn the incredibly complex way that same auntie taught her (why go through three or four layers of OAP-baffling menu in order to reach the phone book when there's a button which lets you scroll right through it from the screensaver?)
Unless you need to tap in a new number, the whole phone can be controlled satisfactorially with very few presses of just five buttons - up, down, "yes" (navi), "no" (clear) and power. Or as I put it to her - simpler than her television's remote control, which she had no problem with.
e.g. Press down to enter phone book, keep pressing til you find the person you want to call, and press YES to dial. Press it again when you want to hang up. Even my nan can understand that one, when given a large simple instruction sheet.
(rather than "press menu then star to unlock it, then that one again to go into the menu, go down to phone book, press enter, choose search, press enter again, type in the name of who you're after on the number keys..." etc etc which was my aunts method!)
The complexity of modern devices and people's fear that they'll never learn how to use such a thing, and might break it by doing it wrong, can be blamed for a lot, more work needs to be done in simplifying them without making them idiot-boxes that have next to no functionality or customisation ability. The 6100 I had after the 3310 was a nightmare to make calls with...
(the first hurdle in getting granny to use her mobile and therefore remember to take it with her in case of emergency, was convincing her that she could learn how to use it, and that she wasnt going to make it explode by pressing the wrong key)
Took ages to teach her how to use it, including drawing out 4 illustrated very-large-text A4 sheets on the subject of how to use the phone book for a call, making a call without phone book, dialling 999, receiving a call, turning the phone on and off, and charging it. If I'd been brave I would have covered entering a new number into the phone book as well (actually quite simple). This however was all after helping her unlearn the incredibly complex way that same auntie taught her (why go through three or four layers of OAP-baffling menu in order to reach the phone book when there's a button which lets you scroll right through it from the screensaver?)
Unless you need to tap in a new number, the whole phone can be controlled satisfactorially with very few presses of just five buttons - up, down, "yes" (navi), "no" (clear) and power. Or as I put it to her - simpler than her television's remote control, which she had no problem with.
e.g. Press down to enter phone book, keep pressing til you find the person you want to call, and press YES to dial. Press it again when you want to hang up. Even my nan can understand that one, when given a large simple instruction sheet.
(rather than "press menu then star to unlock it, then that one again to go into the menu, go down to phone book, press enter, choose search, press enter again, type in the name of who you're after on the number keys..." etc etc which was my aunts method!)
The complexity of modern devices and people's fear that they'll never learn how to use such a thing, and might break it by doing it wrong, can be blamed for a lot, more work needs to be done in simplifying them without making them idiot-boxes that have next to no functionality or customisation ability. The 6100 I had after the 3310 was a nightmare to make calls with...
(the first hurdle in getting granny to use her mobile and therefore remember to take it with her in case of emergency, was convincing her that she could learn how to use it, and that she wasnt going to make it explode by pressing the wrong key)
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carmadaaron
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Tahrey1043
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oh hell yeah!
oddly she just got that new "radio" (radio + tape + her first CD player --- as you simply cannot get a radio + tape unit any more that isnt apparently made of paper).... she got used to the idea of the compact disc within about 30 minutes of first properly coming into contact with it as something she had to use.
They're almost as good as cassettes, apparently, these little discs
oddly she just got that new "radio" (radio + tape + her first CD player --- as you simply cannot get a radio + tape unit any more that isnt apparently made of paper).... she got used to the idea of the compact disc within about 30 minutes of first properly coming into contact with it as something she had to use.
They're almost as good as cassettes, apparently, these little discs
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carmadaaron
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