Who needs a laugh?

pwjohnston

So I’m at work and one of our users with a corp laptop calls up:

Him: You probably don’t ever have things like this happen, but maybe you can help me. My fan on my laptop stopped working.

Me: That not a problem, just save all your data and shut it down.

Him: Well it was heating up real bad.

Me: Ya, they’ll do that if they’re not properly cooled.

Him: So I stuck it in the freezer.

@&^%@#$*(@* What? Is it still on?

Him: Yes.

Then I proceeded to tell him he couldn’t use it till we looked at it and if he did not only would he destroy the laptop, but probably lose all his data. That made him sit up and take notice.

Feel free to post any of your computing “experiences.” I could use a few more good laughs today.

undomiel

Her: Hi, my computer isn't working and I demand that you send a tech over immediately to fix it or that you send me a new computer.

Me: What is the problem with the computer?

Her: It doesn't work so I got mad at it and took it entirely part and it is sitting in trash bags that my boyfriend pulled out of the dumpster so could you get that tech over now? Or the new computer, because this one is ready to be hauled off.

Me: *rapid mute button use*

Mishra

lol

pwjohnston

nice

I actually have that laptop.

pwjohnston

undomiel wrote:

boyfriend pulled out of the dumpster

If at first you don't succeed, take it apart and throw it away!

Rikku

Nice.

At my first tech support gig, my fellow co-workers and I used to always crank call into the tech support call queue with outragous/bogus support issues and have each other go on trying to troubleshoot. Eventually everyone caught on...

I crank called an issue that the companys video capture device (Snappy Video Snapshot) was taking captures of people and the captured pictures had displayed people with thier clothes off.

We had an actual real call where a wife called in to complain that one of our picture/organization products came pre-installed with hardcore pictures. You should have heard her assault her husband over the phone when I told her how it works and it does not come pre-installed that way....

-Rikku

slinuxuzer

Setting up a remote office this week, went horribly bad due to the office not being cabled, cable modem not setup for static (like time warner swore to god it was when I called the day before going), office users being bitchy to the max, the non encrypted default password ssid broadcasting linksys time warner left in place for god knows how long, 16 hour day 5 hour round trip from near shreveport to dallas. Plus this is my first week and the main office is in such bad shape I can't log in to half the equiptment because previous IT left no documenation, about 30 domain admins I have no idea who they are, all users local admins. So anyway lets get to the funny I know your all dying by now.

Day after my trip to dallas office. Very masculine female calls from dallas

Her: Hi, this is mallerie, you remember when you and the other guy were here setting up our printers? (actually trying to get Vpn tunnel to work / connect all users to domain)

Me: yes.

Her: Well, I'm gonna set all that up so you guys can just scratch us off your list.

Me: (I'll play along) How you gonna do that?

Her: Im gonna use a usb hub

Me: well there is more to it than that, what we are gonna do is tie you guys into the main office and make alot of changes there, so you can go ahead and do whatever you gotta do to make things easier on you for right now, but just remember that anything you do is going to be temporary.

Her: BYE.

Probably one of the better parts of my week believe it or not.

Rikku

Her: Im gonna use a usb hub

So, she thinks she is going to setup a USB hub to setup the VPN herself?

Who was she? The local admin at that office or an end user?

I bet she spoke to a local guy at the office who thinks he's tech savvy/educated or a nearby best buy tech and thinks she knows how to network.

-Rikku

Vassago68

10 years ago before I joined the Army and worked for a tech support call center I had a lady call in for help with her printer.

She was having a problem printing the color yellow. It would print every color that was mixed with yellow to create it, but not just yellow.

After spending 90 minutes on the phone with her trying various things and coming up empty handed, I was about to hand her off to a more experienced person to see if maybe I had missed something.

It was at this point that she asked me "Does it make a difference that I am using yellow paper?"

Sie

a few users ago I got a call from a user who was having issues with his touch screen device not responding, after spending time investigating over the phone, checking it used to work (which he confirmed) it eventually turned out that it wasnt a touch screen device at all and never was.

Still dont know to this day what he was thinking.....

Makes me smile each time I think of him trying to run through the diagnostics I was doing and his collegues wondering why he kept pressing his laptop screen!

KGhaleon

During a large project, migrating a few thousand Win2000 machines to XP and carrying over data and settings...we used PC transplant to transfer profiles. We often had to work on machines that were shared between a dozen or more workers. Those can be quite nasty, and you only want to transfer a few profiles at a time...or all the data gets corrupted or doesn't get migrated properly. >_<

A coworker of mine(whom I will call Joe) had a machine with 30 profiles that he needed to move onto a new computer, so he started the process and was moving only a few at a time. One of the men who used the machine for work told Joe that EVERYTHING needed to be carried over. Joe ensured him that everything would, then walked away to take care of something while PCT did the work. He came back later and began testing some of the profiles...but noticed that ALL 30 profiles were present, and they were all screwed up. O_O

When Joe had walked away, the employee told PCT to migrate all 30 profiles.

A few days ago I had a user who was issuing tickets almost hourly because his screen was messed up. I came over(the office was a good walking distance away...mile or two?, I have no car) and found that his video cable was bent. I fixed the video by wiggling the cable and everything seemed to work fine...though the user was still insistent that the laptop would die the minute I leave. He was demanding a new company laptop. My supervisor told me to just go ahead and give him one.

I walked all the way back to the main building and got the new laptop, docking station, etc. I set it up at his office and decided to transfer the data over the network from the comfort of my office...and headed back. I told him not to touch the laptop since I was going to transfer the data and didn't want him logging into his profile while I was working on it.

Later that day I was almost done transferring the data when I got an "access denied" message, meaning the profile was in use. <_<

I walked over there and found him checking his email.

Aldur

On the previous team I was on at work I received a call one day from a customer who was upset because the new appliance that he just received prompted him for a username and password, which made it look like it was a used appliance.

After trying different default passwords that might have been put on the box in a quality test situation I asked the customer to power cycle the box. He tried this by pushing the power button, which strangly enough didn't do anything. I then had him pull the power cord from the box, strangly enough the prompt for the username and password stayed on the screen. At this point he put the phone down for a minute and then the line went dead. I called him back, applogized for the phone problems and he let me know that he had just hung up the phone out of embarassment since he was consoled into a different device.

It was great fun and we both had a good laugh afterwards.

HeroPsycho

I used to work for Wal-Mart for a short while when I was in college. Electronics of course. Well, right as I was about to quit out of sheer frustration with employees not doing their job, total incompetence of management, lack of pay considering what I was doing, and idiotic customers (one time a customer told me as I repaired a floor display computer I shouldn't be working in electronics because I didn't know who sang a particular R&B song), I got this phone call.

Customer: "Do you have any Windows 95 compatible mouse pads?"

Me without hesitation: "No, I'm sorry, all we have are OS2 Warp."

Customer: "OK, thank you!"

*customer hung up the phone*

Not the best way of handling it, I admit, but I still laugh thinking about that.

pLuhhmm

I got one, a friend callled me and was having trouble turning on her laptop.

Her: When i push the power button my laptop doesnt come on.

Me: Is it plugged in or is the battery in?

Her: Yes.

Her: Im pretty sure its the computer b/c it turns the t.v. on.

Me:.......What do you mean?

Her: I point the remote at the laptop and nothing happens

After that i said id come over and take a look, what she was trying to do is use her universal remote and thought that the IR port on the laptop meant it could use a tv remote..... I thought it was pretty funny.