Claims made by non IT centric folks?

OK, so I had someone today ask me why his 200 document paper cannot be sent by a digital sender on our network. I advised the user that we have a 10MB limit on attachments and that the 200 document paper once converted to a PDF file might have exceeded that limit. He then proceeded to tell me that he saw someone the previous day send 5 Gigabytes... I told him politely that it would be impossible to send 5GB via e-mail on our network seeing as our mailbox limit is substantially less than that. He then became belligerent claiming he saw it happen and 5GB can easily be sent over the network. I explained just how large 5GB is in relations to pages and he stood his ground. He then told me I wasn't as smart as I thought I was, and that he has personally sent 1TB over e-mail before and I need to go back to school to learn about computers..

So now this guy has become an inside joke around our entire office, so I am curious if anyone else has ever had a confrontation like that or story to share?

BTW, he still hasn't been able to send his 200 page document and claims the digital sender must be broke...

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chopsticks

Bounds to have folks like that in office, we are thought to be less smart than them, haha ...

Excellent1

These types of individuals exist in all walks of life. Whenever you see escalation of commitment (doubling down on something blatantly wrong in the face of contrary evidence), you can stop talking as you are not dealing with a rational response. The best thing you can do in that situation is to accept the fact that you are not going to convince the other person and simply change the subject and walk away.

I know for me this has always been a very difficult thing to do, but it is necessary. You will not win the person over and you will develop ulcers in the face of such sheer idiocy. Sometimes, if you're very lucky, if you let the situation go early, the individual will sometimes actually approach you later and be receptive to learning about whatever you were trying to educate them on. If you have offended their pride, however, they'll burn at the stake before admitting you were right--it's just how most people are. Pride is the biggest obstacle in learning that has ever existed, in my humble opinion.

In any case, the world would be a better place if logic dictated response, but emotion (in all its myriad forms) is more often the norm. Trying to reason with someone who is reacting emotionally is futile. The vast majority of the time I've dealt with individuals such as this, their resonse was absolutely predicated upon emotion with a thin veil of logic to try to justify it.

To your question, however, I had an invidivual tell me the other day that his new laptop had 12 TB of ram. I politely asked him if he meant GB, and he immediately grew defensive and began explaining that it was a custom job he built himself (which is odd in itself, I don't know many folks who build their own laptops) and yada yada yada. I just said "ohhhh", nodded in a seemingly impressed way and the situation was immediately defused. Sure, I was tempted with that innate desire we all have to haul out the facts and bludgeon someone into submission with them, but it would only have made the person angry and needlessly damaged a working relationship over something that is, in the end, unimportant. When I was younger, I would have done so. Now, be it old age, apathy, wisdom, or some curious blend of the three, I just let it go.

jmritenour

Excellent1 wrote: »

To your question, however, I had an invidivual tell me the other day that his new laptop had 12 TB of ram. I politely asked him if he meant GB, and he immediately grew defensive and began explaining that it was a custom job he built himself (which is odd in itself, I don't know many folks who build their own laptops) and yada yada yada. I just said "ohhhh", nodded in a seemingly impressed way and the situation was immediately defused. Sure, I was tempted with that innate desire we all have to haul out the facts and bludgeon someone into submission with them, but it would only have made the person angry and needlessly damaged a working relationship over something that is, in the end, unimportant. When I was younger, I would have done so. Now, be it old age, apathy, wisdom, or some curious blend of the three, I just let it go.

I've heard of similarly specced laptops, and I pretty much just smile and nod. I also love the people who know a handful of buzzwords, and offer me their explanation of a problem at hand. Like when our main site was without internet, and one of the directors point blankly asked me if the the router "had the proper WEP key set". I assured him that had already been looked into, and continued on about my merry way, knowing that the problem was at the ISP's end, and out of my hands, and shuddering at the thought that this guy was probably still using WEP at home.

Chris:/*

All the time but I typically ignore them unless a retort is necessary because they will impact the mission at hand. No point arguing with idiots.

Excellent1

jmritenour wrote: »

and shuddering at the thought that this guy was probably still using WEP at home.

I currently have access to 9 wireless connections that have zero security on them whatsoever. I discovered them by accident when I was initially setting up a wireless connection for my son's PC. It still sometimes surprises me just how little understanding about such things exists in the general populace.

twodogs62

I think this will be a growing problem.
We have people complain about how long our pcs take to boot sometimes, etc..
They never have this problem at home.
Enterprise network vs. Standalone......
Some don't understand, at home they don't map and get connected to network devices. While at work, there may be as many as 12,000 devices.
Also, problem is people have different attitudes about anti-virus.
We have some users that think product b is better than product a. Product b gets installed and now with a and b running the pc just runs worse...... And od course per user it is our network......

Slowhand

This is, by far, my favorite outrageous claim made by a user/customer:

Slowhand wrote: »

I remember this gem of a phonecall from my days as a PC tech:

Me: "Thank you for calling the CompUSA techshop, how can I help you?"

Angry Customer: "You guys installed the damn thing, come out and fix it!"

Me: "What 'damn thing', and what's going on with it?"

AC: "You idiots came to my house and installed my iMac about a year ago, and now it's dead!"

Me: "It's dead, you say? Is it simply not booting up to the Mac OS, or are you not getting any power at all?"

AC: "There's no power, dammit!"

Me: "Alright, let me see if we can do some troubleshooting to see what the problem is, I don't want you to have to bring it in unless you absolutely have to."

AC: "Damn right I'm not bringing it in, you're gonna come out here and pick it up."

Me: "Umm. . . right, okay. What was the last thing that happened before it powered down?"

AC: "There was a f#$*ing power outage!"

Me: "Alright, and what happened when the power came back on?"

AC: "Nothing, the thing doesn't work!"

Me: "Was the computer plugged directly into the wall, or did you have it on a power strip?"

AC: "It was plugged into one of those damned things your salesman made me buy. F#$*ing rip-off!"

Me: "Okay, so it wasn't plugged directly into the wall. That's good news, since the power strip probably took whatever power surge may have occured. What happens when you try to hit the power button?"

AC: "There is no f#$*ing power button!"

Me: "Come again?"

AC: "It's an iMac, there is no power button. That's why I bought it, your salesguy said it would 'just work'."

Me: "Sir, there is a power button on every computer. How have you been turning it on in the past?"

AC: "I just told you, it's an iMac!"

Me: "And you've just left it on since the tech came out and installed it for you?"

AC: "What the hell do you think?"

Me: "Alright, I want you to look on the side of the computer, down along the right side. Slip your fingers along there, you'll see a little button with a circle and a line coming straight down the middle. Push it."

AC: "I already told you, there is no f#$*ing power-"
<iMac chime heard in the background>
*CLICK*

After he hung up, I had to take lunch. I couldn't stop laughing for pretty much the rest of the day. It took at least a half hour before I got it together enough to tell my co-workers what had happened.

ehnde

This is a general problem known as the delusion of confidence, which is something that we all suffer from to some extent. I first read about this in the book The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

It's a human problem (worse for some than others, I'm afraid). They also cover the delusion of knowledge. One specific example is to pose the question "How does a bicycle work? Draw a full functional bicycle." As simple as this sounds, almost no one can draw a functional bicycle. There is some error in the design, or multiple gross flaws.

Other people will always think they could do your job, if only they wanted to. Probably better than you do. It helps if you accept that you are prone to these delusions as well. The problem is more people's behavior (being defensive, stubborn, refusing to reason through things) than it is the actual delusions.

Keep the stories coming, really good stuff in this thread

Psoasman

Excellent1 wrote: »

I currently have access to 9 wireless connections that have zero security on them whatsoever. I discovered them by accident when I was initially setting up a wireless connection for my son's PC. It still sometimes surprises me just how little understanding about such things exists in the general populace.

They probably have the default credentials running, too.

Anonymouse

I usually just agree with the user or don't say anything at all. No point in getting on their bad side since the ones who tend to think they know more than the support staff are the users needing the most support.

WilliamK99

Excellent1 wrote: »

To your question, however, I had an invidivual tell me the other day that his new laptop had 12 TB of ram. I politely asked him if he meant GB

The question remains though, does Microsoft support 12 TB of Ram?

Paule123

WilliamK99 wrote: »

The question remains though, does Microsoft support 12 TB of Ram?

Only if you're running Windoze 2011 like that guy

hypnotoad

I've found that graphic design people have no concept of file size. They dont know a 50 megabyte TIFF from a 200k Jpeg. They both have their places, but I've found the average graphic designer has no idea which one goes where. They will claim they are right and make you fix your email server so it accepts multiple 50 megabyte attachments, they think it's your fault their messages bounce. If you can't "fix" your email server, they will then insist you set up FTP. I think that's because it's the only "protocol" they know, from their interactions with web servers.

My other favorite:
"The servers down"
"which server?"
"the server"
"uh ok. so whats it doing?"
"the computer wont turn on. the server must be down. i dont know why you have so many server problems, my computer at home doesnt do this"

Plantwiz

Oh...

I had a guy come in after burning two CPUs and screamed that we're idiots because he couldn't build his own box.

It took a great deal of patience to let him finish yelling at my young techs who had the misfortune of answering the bell to when I asked him to SHOW how he assembled the box. All was fine until he removed the CPU H/S and Fan and the CPU plastic cover was melted to the bottom of the H/S.

He didn't do this once, but twice (during one build). His 1st burnt out CPU was in a box he brought along for testing....which we were unable to do as I could read his two serial numbers on his H/S. He damaged the product by not installing it correctly.

We offered custom build services whereby the client could pick out all their parts and we'd simply assemble the box, they could take home and install the OS, or we'd do that part for them.

Nevertheless, he left pretty ticked, but luckily not at us. Although, he did **** his stuff off the counter...at the time, it was difficult to tell exactly who he was angry with. I'd spoken with him afterward (day or two) and he was really just angry he blew about $600 on CPUs and didn't have a machine to use. However, he was one of the many who had a 'buddy' who 'knows' computers...

(it is good to try, but do so with something less expensive)

jmritenour

Oh Plantwiz, that brings me back to my days in a retail shop. One time, I had a guy call in and said that he was trying to help his friend speed up his computer, and he saw a red switch in the back near the power cable that said 110 and 220 on it, and he flipped it because he thought that would make it faster. He said he heard a pop, and it wouldn't turn on after that, and was wondering what could be wrong.

I had to put him on hold so I could stop laughing - I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not. I explained to him that he most likely blew out he power supply, and we had them in stock for around $50, plus a $20 install fee. He was absolutely belligerent with me. His exact words, if I remember were "What the ****, man?! It's gonna cost me $50 for just trying to help a friend out?!" Not missing a beat, I said "Actually, don't you mean $70? Because if I'm your friend there's no way I'm letting you touch my computer even again".

He hung up. In retrospect, what I said was uncalled for. But hell, I was 20 back then. I'm much better at patience and suffering fools these days.

ibcritn

My favorite memory was when a user was FLIPPING out that they couldn't attend a web seminar in their Citrix session.

I asked her if she could try it locally out of Citrix on her regular desktop and she explained there was no regular desktop...well no problem thats possible as the company did use some Thin clients.

After some more digging she actually DID have a regular computer and had NO idea she coudl be on Citrix AND use her browser on her local desktop.

She was livid throughout this whole thing and her tone flip flopped and she quickly got off the phone.

Moments like this are why I don't miss doing support.

Hypntick

My favorite was an older gentleman I had on the line while I did support for hotel connections.

First words out of his mouth were i'm so and so and I teach computer science at such and such university, your system must be down i'm unable to connect. So I ask him to check his connection status and I get the reply of "well how do I do that?" When you call support and the first thing you do is boast in some fashion, you're usually full of it.

So I walk him through checking the connection,

he says "well it says the cable is unplugged."

me: "Have you checked the connection?"

him: "Of course I have, it's plugged in securely!"

me: "Okay and what about the other end of the cable?"

and you could hear a pin drop.

We got that kinda call a lot, "Yeah it says the cable is unplugged." "Well is it plugged in?" You could almost hear the light-bulb ping over the phone.

Mike-Mike

jmritenour wrote: »

Oh Plantwiz, that brings me back to my days in a retail shop. One time, I had a guy call in and said that he was trying to help his friend speed up his computer, and he saw a red switch in the back near the power cable that said 110 and 220 on it, and he flipped it because he thought that would make it faster. He said he heard a pop, and it wouldn't turn on after that, and was wondering what could be wrong.

I had to put him on hold so I could stop laughing - I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not. I explained to him that he most likely blew out he power supply, and we had them in stock for around $50, plus a $20 install fee. He was absolutely belligerent with me. His exact words, if I remember were "What the ****, man?! It's gonna cost me $50 for just trying to help a friend out?!" Not missing a beat, I said "Actually, don't you mean $70? Because if I'm your friend there's no way I'm letting you touch my computer even again".

He hung up. In retrospect, what I said was uncalled for. But hell, I was 20 back then. I'm much better at patience and suffering fools these days.

this is my favorite story so far

mickeycoronado

Hey you opened a thread about me?

Really though, those are great stories, I wish I had one to share. Or actually maybe I'm happy I don't yet? I did once know a twenty something year old girl who seemed of normal intelligence not know who Abraham Lincoln was. Sometimes those people bug me more then somebody who can't send an email.

Plantwiz

jmritenour wrote: »

Oh Plantwiz, that brings me back to my days in a retail shop. One time, I had a guy call in and said that he was trying to help his friend speed up his computer, and he saw a red switch in the back near the power cable that said 110 and 220 on it, and he flipped it because he thought that would make it faster. He said he heard a pop, and it wouldn't turn on after that, and was wondering what could be wrong.

I had to put him on hold so I could stop laughing - I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not. I explained to him that he most likely blew out he power supply, and we had them in stock for around $50, plus a $20 install fee. He was absolutely belligerent with me. His exact words, if I remember were "What the ****, man?! It's gonna cost me $50 for just trying to help a friend out?!" Not missing a beat, I said "Actually, don't you mean $70? Because if I'm your friend there's no way I'm letting you touch my computer even again".

He hung up. In retrospect, what I said was uncalled for. But hell, I was 20 back then. I'm much better at patience and suffering fools these days.

This is why we had the 'my buddy helped me fee' listed on the wall along with the regular published rates.

It was more of a fun thing like the urn for "ashes of former clients", but when we offered 'free' advice/walk through for anyonoe who wanted it, there was little sympothy left for those who blew us off and then came back wanted 'free' help on damaged parts.

Yep, glad I'm not in retail any longer. Over the past 20 years the customer has become more demanding and more ignorant. I do try to help out the poor clerks who get these types of jerks in the store because there are some good clerks who do try to help and need to know they are doing the right thing when they are faced with a jerk.

When I was younger I held my tongue more, but if I were in retail these days, I'm sure I'd be much more blunt with someone who acted this way.

***

And I didn't tell you about the time the guy broke his Monitor (CRT) and while he showed me how he broke it, didn't appreciate his option of contacting the MFG himself (which he'd have had the best result for a replacement) or having us contact the MFG and maybe getting him a replacement. He dropped his monitor and kicked it (literally) out the door.

Ah....wow those were the days

(oh and he too returned a few days later to purchase a new Monitor. So remaining calm and letting the temper tantrum fly apparently worked, but his problem wasn't huge, several of the MFG we carried had better end-user support then reseller support, so we coached our customers on what to do and many would receive new items, a few received refurbs, and some had to wait on a repair, but 100% were always helped).

za3bour

Mike-Mike wrote: »

this is my favorite story so far

Mine too,

Man what does he do for a living?

Repo Man

Working for an ISP when Vista dropped when stores were selling machines with 512 MB of ram was brutal. You'd have to spend 20 minutes helping them boot into safe mode to try out the internet to realize it's not the connection that is slow. Then they realize their new machine wasn't powerful enough.

When working a help desk job we had this older employee who called all the time for help and would always be on the phone for over an hour. Our manager spoke to his and apparently told him to stop calling for help (he'd call for everything, how to cut and paste, send emails, format a word document, etc.) I guess they scared him by saying we charge for each call. Every time he'd call he'd always ask if we were going to charge him

Zentraedi

Meh, this happens to people in all industries.

Don't think IT people are above others. One thing I have noticed is that many IT people lack hard math and science backgrounds and it leads them to make wild speculation beyond what's physically or mathematically possible. My favorite is the "infinite bandwidth" notion whereby many without an EE background seem to believe you can just go from a carrier frequency of 2.4000000000000000000000 GHz to 2.4000000000000000000001 GHz.

Then there's IT jokes like "How do I download a video card?" I'll chime in with, "OK, do you want that in verilog or VHDL?" and none of the IT people will get it.

Slowhand

Zentraedi wrote: »

Meh, this happens to people in all industries.

Don't think IT people are above others. One thing I have noticed is that many IT people lack hard math and science backgrounds and it leads them to make wild speculation beyond what's physically or mathematically possible. My favorite is the "infinite bandwidth" notion whereby many without an EE background seem to believe you can just go from a carrier frequency of 2.4000000000000000000000 GHz to 2.4000000000000000000001 GHz.

I don't know if knocking on IT people in a thread full of IT people venting about bad experiences is particularly diplomatic, but I do understand your underlying point that every industry has professionals and users, and there will always be users who annoy the professionals.

Zentraedi wrote: »

Then there's IT jokes like "How do I download a video card?" I'll chime in with, "OK, do you want that in verilog or VHDL?" and none of the IT people will get it.

Well, maybe you can write us all an explanation in LaTeX and we will get it.

eansdad

mickeycoronado wrote: »

Hey you opened a thread about me?

Really though, those are great stories, I wish I had one to share. Or actually maybe I'm happy I don't yet? I did once know a twenty something year old girl who seemed of normal intelligence not know who Abraham Lincoln was. Sometimes those people bug me more then somebody who can't send an email.

I might have dated her...lol. I dated a girl back in my teens that thought Philadelphia was a state. She spent the night over and went to the fridge...I asked her if she turned the light out and she actually got up to check. She came into the house one day after I had stopped by the pizzeria. I had gotten a pizza turnover which was written on the box. Sure enough when I walked into the kitchen the box was upside-down. She lasted all of a few weeks, I can't deal with stupid for very long. I didn't care how hot she was, there is a line of dumb and she fell through it.

SteveO86

I once had a printer tech come up to me and insist the network is stealing the IP off the printers and kept questioning what does the switch do.. Of course that was after he was blaming Microsoft Excel Spread sheets for crashing the printer.

Really not much to say about that. But it's a never ending joke for the dept... I'm just he made those statements infront of other co-workers because I doubt anyone would have believed me..

fonestar1978

I was repairing a server at a past place of employment. I fixed it, copied all of their data and did a parallel install. Then this guy came in who was friends with the boss and started claiming that it was all wrong. An older guy.

When I showed him where all of the files were stored and that nothing had been deleted he didn't want to admit defeat. So he starts making up file extensions! "Are you sure you got the .mrq files?" "Um, what are .mrq files?" I ask. "Don't you know? Those are for the emails!"

Another guy at my work has done nothing to fix the server that we have. When I started it had malware on it, expired antivirus and fifteen users who no longer worked for the company but could still log in, the sever had six different admins who shouldn't have been admins. In short it was a mess.

I took the initiative and began to fix the glaring problems. Then he confronted me (I guess he was scared I was cutting his grass) and says that the system will not back up if I am logged in! I told him that this is not correct, that the system will backup and has backed up no matter who is logged into the machine. I wasn't really prepared to debate the issue in front of my boss.

I found his resume on that same server. He had listed "proficient with Windows95/98" and "solid knowledge of DOS". "course in C programming". No certifications listed. He was just some guy who took a computer course over a decade ago.

But I mean what can you do? If the he is guy smiley and is a friend of the company?

Devilsbane

jmritenour wrote: »

I've heard of similarly specced laptops, and I pretty much just smile and nod. I also love the people who know a handful of buzzwords, and offer me their explanation of a problem at hand. Like when our main site was without internet, and one of the directors point blankly asked me if the the router "had the proper WEP key set". I assured him that had already been looked into, and continued on about my merry way, knowing that the problem was at the ISP's end, and out of my hands, and shuddering at the thought that this guy was probably still using WEP at home.

What bugs me is when non technical users invent their own descriptions of problems. And then one uses it so they all overhear it and start using it. Then when they tell me whats going on, I have no idea what their invented word means.

Devilsbane

eansdad wrote: »

I might have dated her...lol. I dated a girl back in my teens that thought Philadelphia was a state. She spent the night over and went to the fridge...I asked her if she turned the light out and she actually got up to check. She came into the house one day after I had stopped by the pizzeria. I had gotten a pizza turnover which was written on the box. Sure enough when I walked into the kitchen the box was upside-down. She lasted all of a few weeks, I can't deal with stupid for very long. I didn't care how hot she was, there is a line of dumb and she fell through it.

I dated a girl like that. She was a natural blonde but dyed her hair brown once. She instantly hated it because people started expecting to know things. Needless to say, she also didn't last long.

RobertKaucher

Slowhand wrote: »

This is, by far, my favorite outrageous claim made by a user/customer:

After he hung up, I had to take lunch. I couldn't stop laughing for pretty much the rest of the day. It took at least a half hour before I got it together enough to tell my co-workers what had happened.

I swear I had nearly the same conversation with someone when I worked at Geek Squad. It was a PC and it was unplugged.