What's the most ridiculous thing an end user has ever asked of you?

SrSysAdmin

As the jr. guy in a small company I get a mixture of responsibilities that vary from staging and stigging new servers down to the most mundane of help desk responsibilities.

I thought sharing our most "d'oh!" moments from end users would lighten the mood in here amidst a sea of disheartening threads discussing a lack of job enjoyment and inability to find a new job.


Today I had a particularly good one. One of my end users brought in his laptop to be rebuilt due to a virus (has anybody had a inordinately high number of virus infections lately due to Drudge Report?). I gave him a loaner laptop in the meantime and had him login to his account before leaving site so the laptop would cache his credentials (he works offiste).

Last night he posted on my public Facebook wall asking for the password for his system(!) because he couldn't login...and he started it by saying "Hey, this is John Doe..." as if the little picture of him and the NAME weren't enough to figure out who it was.

I finally catch up wit him this morning and he said he was unable to login to his HOME wireless network because he doesn't know the password (and he thought it was his laptop password he didn't know). Needless to say, I had to inform him that unfortunately I could not help him out because I am not privy to his home wireless network password.



Come on people...I may not be a banker but I know how to use an ATM!

veritas_libertas

JrSysAdmin wrote: »

One of my end users brought in his laptop to be rebuilt due to a virus (has anybody had a inordinately high number of virus infections lately due to Drudge Report?).

I highly doubt the viruses came from Drudge Report...

Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for drudgereport.com

I have visited that page for years and never have recieved a virus from it.

Now if you said they spent time on MySpace I would totally be with you
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=myspace.com

Last night he posted on my public Facebook wall asking for the password for his system(!) because he couldn't login...and he started it by saying "Hey, this is John Doe..." as if the little picture of him and the NAME weren't enough to figure out who it was.

Now that one I just can't beat...

Of course there was the time I had to inform my supervisor that the college professors were putting there joint Username and Password (don't ask... ) for a PC on the Dry-Erase board in a meeting room. This room just happens to have glass walls and is viewable from the hallway.

SrSysAdmin

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I highly doubt the viruses came from Drudge Report...

Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for drudgereport.com

I have visited that page for years and never have recieved a virus from it.

It may not be coming directly from Drudge Report, but it is certainly coming from either one of the ad servers or one of the pages they are linking to.

We have had 4 of the fake anti-virus infections and every single one of them had visited that site recently prior to the infection. It has even been banned from being visited at Congress, Senate, and the DoD for the next couple weeks.

CNET Discusses it Here


I don't care about which way the site slants in terms of politics, but there is no doubt viruses have stemmed from this site.

veritas_libertas

JrSysAdmin wrote: »

I don't care about which way the site slants in terms of politics, but there is no doubt viruses have stemmed from this site.

I wasn't suggesting you were. I just really doubt it.

elphrank0

"Well how does the phone system know what letter I want when I hit the number?"

stlsmoore

I remember when I interned for the city police department for a while, I have a few stories but they rarely involved end users. I remember once the hire ups asked me to destroy a few desktops....literally destroy them with a hammer until they were in 1000 pieces. The department was to cheap to hire a professional company to do this for them lol.

I also remember when we had to do a major upgrade of all desktops for all the city districts including the city prison used for holding convicts until trial! Nothing like swapping out PC's while prisoners who were in their for serious charges (murder) were 2 feet away from you talking some serious sh*t.

MentholMoose

At a former employer, someone needed to fill out a form on a web page. I sent a PDF with carefully written instructions, including a screenshot of every step. Surprisingly, I received a call, "why isn't this working?!!" I got to the office and he demonstrated the problem: he was trying to fill out the screenshots of the form in the PDF!!!!! I had him scroll up to step 1, "open Internet Explorer and access http://...".

pml1

We have an online excel spreadsheet for our HR staff to fill out and submit to us with all the information we need to create user accounts for new hires. On multiple occasions, people have printed out the form, filled it out by hand, and then scanned and emailed the form into us...when they could have filled it out and submitted it directly online. Isn't technology great?!

EDIT: Maybe one day I'll learn to spell, and my end users will learn to email excel spreadsheets.

earweed

This is a good thread..lol

Hyper-Me

"Where is the any key?"

and No, i'm not kidding.

Another good one was "Why is it anytime I type anything into excel it changes into #######?"

sambuca69

This is with a field tech, and not a user....

Had a tech in a branch working on a PC. He had me on speaker phone, and was telling me he was having an issue with a script we have to do some stuff automatically for them. While, on with him, he tried to run it, and it promptly *beeps* and displays an error message.

I ask him what was the error message.

The tech replies, "hold on, let me turn up the speakers"

..let that one dance around in your head for a bit. SO many things wrong there.

brad-

a fellow co-worker tried to tell me that only certain colored cables (all cat5e) would work when setting up a new pc. Confident in what I thought, I set up a new computer with the 'wrong' color, and what do you know...it worked just fine.

After demonstrating that the new PC had network connectivity, my co-worker replies to me "you must have set it up wirelessly". This is a SFF desktop with no wireless card built in.

This same co-worker also told me that monitors cant be swapped out with different models or brands...and that keyboards and mice had to stay with the PC they came with.

I've got a couple of years worth of those. Its been a long road.

phoeneous

I had a user complain that she couldnt turn on her computer. Turns out she was pushing the Dell logo badge, thinking it was the power button...

Forsaken_GA

ive dealt with enough end users that I'm finally to the point that, whenever I actually have to talk to one, and whenever they open their mouths, the first syllable out of their piehole is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

but really, I'm not anti-social. honest injun.

wheez

Just the usual: why isn't the *insert any device having a powercord* working.. sigh!

We also had some director come in a few years ago, who liked us to copy one of his cd's approx. 25 times. He even brought the blank cd's with him.. Why? Because a cd burner usually is builtin to a pc, which links to.. right.. IT!

And yes, he did have a CDRW drive himself.

wheez

brad- wrote: »

a fellow co-worker tried to tell me that only certain colored cables (all cat5e) would work when setting up a new pc. Confident in what I thought, I set up a new computer with the 'wrong' color, and what do you know...it worked just fine.

Did you use color coding for different devices at that place? Still.. even then...

Obdurate

elphrank0 wrote: »

"Well how does the phone system know what letter I want when I hit the number?"

Ouch! Your end user just made my brain hurt.

~Obdurate~

RobertKaucher

rhermans wrote: »

Just the usual: why isn't the *insert any device having a powercord* working.. sigh!

We also had some director come in a few years ago, who liked us to copy one of his cd's approx. 25 times. He even brought the blank cd's with him.. Why? Because a cd burner usually is builtin to a pc, which links to.. right.. IT!

And yes, he did have a CDRW drive himself.

I get similar requests from managers and supervisors all the time. I was once asked to change a supervisor's VM message for him. "My reply was sure thing. Do you need me to type your emails, get you coffee, or take dictation for you, Mr. Doe?"

I have a good relationship with the guy, so he laughed about it and realized he was being an a$$.

eMeS

This didn't happen to me, but one of my customers told me that one day their help desk received a call from someone that wanted a ride home.

MS

Super99

I promise on everything I love. One user called and asked if the upgrade we did the night before is the reason why the ligts in the lobby are not working. I laughed and asked her if the coffee maker was working ans she said yes. She was still confused.

Bokeh

Many moons ago, when 5.25 floppies were king. User calls and says he has a virus that only works over the weekend. Claims he backs up the one program he is responsible for on Fridays, and when he comes in to work on Mon, all the data is gone from his disc. I tell him that is very unlikely, but would come over on Fri to see what is going on.

Come that day, he shows me how he copies the data. We make another copy and I take that one back to the office. On Mon, I go back again, put my copy in, works like a charm. I ask where his copy is, and he said right here on my office partition, I hold it up with a magnet so it doesn’t get lost!

As Carlos Mencia would say “Durt der dur!”

undomiel

Well one of my favourites is from a former supervisor of mine. The lady was quite the paranoid control freak type. Some files went missing on the server (which turned out that she had dragged them into a folder by accident) and so she was freaking and demanding that I make it so that all deleted show up on her computer first so that she would authorize the deletions. If I had known how to do it I would have loved to and see how long it would take before she decides that it is too much of a pain.

Oh and just the other day another user decided to be smart. She didn't want people poking into the accounting folder so she decided NTFS permissions were the way to go. So of course she goes and puts deny read permissions for the Users group. Then blames it on us when she calls up saying that nobody can access anything anymore.

down77

Bokeh wrote: »

As Carlos Mencia would say “Durt der dur!”

The dee dee dee song rocks!

A few years ago a user who was on the road had to call in to get help connecting while at a hotel. As I tried to explain how to type in ipconfig /release, the user did not understand the word so I spelled it out. The user still was unable to connect and began to get frustrated so I used the military alphabet to help them try to understand what I was asking. They ended up trying to type in the following:

indiapapacharlieoscarnovemberfoxtrotindiagolf /release

Needless to say it took a while before they were able to connect.

networker050184

eMeS wrote: »

This didn't happen to me, but one of my customers told me that one day their help desk received a call from someone that wanted a ride home.

MS

Awesome lol.

brad-

rhermans wrote: »

Did you use color coding for different devices at that place? Still.. even then...

Thats a big fat no. There were just purchased a different times and came from wherever...color is irrelevant to the capabilities since they're all Cat5e.

This person's entire argument was that it couldnt work because I was using a black cable and not a pink one. Even after demonstrating that argument was wrong, the whole "you must have set it up wirelessly" just blows me away to this day.

Synthros

In more recent times, I received a ticket where a customer was requesting to have "XP 2005" installed on their machine. After calling them back and getting a little more detail, it turns out they were looking to get Office 2007

Nuwin

Synthros wrote: »

In more recent times, I received a ticket where a customer was requesting to have "XP 2005" installed on their machine. After calling them back and getting a little more detail, it turns out they were looking to get Office 2007

I'm still amazed at how many people cannot differentiate the operating system versus Office.

[Deleted User]

I had a user once ask "Where is the internet?"

Another guy on the help desk had a guy ask him if he could help him put his desk together.

Alif_Sadida_Ekin

When I did software support for a bank, I had a user call in. While waiting for her to access a certain website, she apologized that it was taking so long. She said, "Our internet is being really slow right now. It's probably because it's cold and drizzling outside". I pretended that I didn't hear her since I honestly didn't know how to respond to that without being rude.

Bl8ckr0uter

Had someone ask how do they press the plus sign twice (referring to control+alt+delete).

billyr

Whilst serving in the military I had a call one day asking if we could receive a secret message via fax. I informed the originator that as the fax lines were unclassified this would not be possible.
I then explained the correct procedure, which was to double envelope the message with the inner envelope clearly marked Secret and the outer envelope with no markings except the recipients name. This should then be sent by secure courier.

Twenty minutes later the fax machine kicked into action and a sheet of paper with the outline of an envelope was delivered to my desk!

Still makes me smile..