Anyone care to share any funny help desk stories that involved users?

CodeBlox

I'm not asking for anything condescending. Just to give you all a little background on me, this is my first IT job ever at a help desk and I freakin love it!!! The last three weeks were "training". This week we are out of training and have been on our own all week on the phones. So today, I had to remote in and had helped one guy fix his drive permissions on an external drive. The next like 3 calls didn't require me to remote into a computer and the after those did. Well, I had forgot to change the machine name and windows save the previous one in RDC :P Well I went to log in and thought nothing of the fact that i was prompted that a warning about the user being logged off. I clicked okay anyways and right when I did I started thinking "SHOOT!!! WRONG COMPUTER!!!" At this point I started laughing and told my tech lead what happened and he just said "**** happens better hope he wasn't doing anything important". For some reason, I couldn't stop laughing and then right when I get to the desktop, I get all sorts of warnings about applications stopping abruptly and shortly after that "Windows is shutting down"... Thats when I was really laughing. I wonder what the user was thinking when this happened. It wasn't on purpose and I couldn't stop the process. My story may not be funny but does anyone have any "chuckle worthy" stories? I'm not immature and have no idea why I thought it was so funny. I do also understand that something like that is taken seriously at some places but it was an honest mistake on my part.

Akaricloud

Well.. not exactly help desk but desktop support.

I had a user report that Windows Aero was making them seasick. I just disabled it for her and moved on until the next day when I had 4 additional users asking to have it disabled because they were also feeling sick from it.

WafflesAndRootbeer

All my stuff was in-person and on-site so I got nothing but tales of terror and utter despair if you wanna hear those.

Hypntick

One of the other forum members on here and a former co-worker of mine dealt with a gentleman who decided to mix ambien and energy drinks. From his end of the conversation I overheard it was pretty crazy stuff.

I spoke with a guy one night that as soon as I picked up the call he started going on about how he was a professor of comp. sci. at some university and what he felt the problem was. Turns out the Ethernet cable wasn't connected to his laptop, when I asked him to check the cable you could hear the light-bulb over his head *ding* He seemed pretty embarrassed.

Heard second hand (which I hope it's true) of a person not having a rj-45 port on their laptop and taking a knife to the cable to get it to fit in the rj-11 port. If it's a true story i'd love to have seen a picture of that.

And then the obvious goofy user stories of people trying to connect to a VPN without an internet connection and not understanding why you need one. That happens way more often than it should....

jtoast

This isn't exactly a helpdesk story but it made me laugh. I work for a fortune 500 company doing tier 3 application support as part of a 7 man team supporting about 35,000 users.

We recently rolled out Office 2007 to about 1500 pilot users. The day prior to each users scheduled install, we sent a powerpoint with screenshots of the application process so that users would know what to expect. About 2 weeks into the pilot one of our guys got a phone call from a user telling him that her machine had been stuck on "Updating Microsoft Office" for over 24 hours.

Apparently she had gotten a phone call around 3:30 pm the day before and completely forgot she was watching a powerpoint presentation. She didn't want to click anything in fear of screwing up the install so she just left early for the day and opened a trouble ticket when it hadn't finished by the time she came in the next morning. Because it was a pilot application the ticket bypassed the local support queue and went straight to us. When she realized what she had done she became angry and said that it was our fault for not putting some kind of notation in each corner to remind a user that what they were seeing on the screen was not really happening. As a result, we agreed to add "Simulated installation, press ESC to end presentation" on our powerpoints for the remainder of the pilot. Gotta love users.

CamtheChamp

I had a funny moment going the opposite direction this week. Our help desk is based out of Manila and lets just say they aren't very good.

A user called in to update her PKI keys (they expire every 3 years).

Manila Rep: What is the issue?

User: I need to update my PKI keys

Manila Rep: What do they look like? (Does he think they are real keys?!!?)

User: I don't know how to answer your question...

Manila Rep: Ma'am, I am not able help you if you are not willing to answer my questions

User: *Silence"

Sadly, I have more stories about our help desk than I do about our users...

gosh1976

We had replaced a router for a customer a couple days ago. The next morning he called to complain that we messed something up when we installed the router because now google has a weird black bar at the top.

nethacker

gosh1976 wrote: »

We had replaced a router for a customer a couple days ago. The next morning he called to complain that we messed something up when we installed the router because now google has a weird black bar at the top.

looooooool !!!!!!!!

cyberguypr

gosh1976 wrote: »

We had replaced a router for a customer a couple days ago. The next morning he called to complain that we messed something up when we installed the router because now google has a weird black bar at the top.

HAHA!

The router said:

cyberguypr

I remember a lady back in 1999 was looking over my shoulder while I moved some data form her C: to a network drive. She looked at the paper icon flying from folder to folder and:

her: That is ridiculous! (agitated)
me: I'm sorry?
her: That! (points at screen). If Microsoft put those folders closer it wouldn't take that long to copy files.
me: laughed
her: What? (with an attitude)
me: ...silence...

nethacker

cyberguypr wrote: »

I remember a lady back in 1999 was looking over my shoulder while I moved some data form her C: to a network drive. She looked at the paper icon flying from folder to folder and:

her: That is ridiculous! (agitated)
me: I'm sorry?
her: That! (points at screen). If Microsoft put those folders closer it wouldn't take that long to copy files.
me: laughed
her: What? (with an attitude)
me: ...silence...

OMG!!! are you kidding me?

CodeBlox

cyberguypr wrote: »

i remember a lady back in 1999 was looking over my shoulder while i moved some data form her c: To a network drive. She looked at the paper icon flying from folder to folder and:

Her: That is ridiculous! (agitated)
me: I'm sorry?
Her: That! (points at screen). If microsoft put those folders closer it wouldn't take that long to copy files.
Me: Laughed
her: What? (with an attitude)
me: ...silence...

hahahaha omg!! :d

remyforbes777

Guys:
Sounds like this song is describing you all. Courtesy of myself and nerdcore hip hop legend Dual Core.

Here to Help (ft Remington Forbes) | Dual Core

RobertKaucher

remyforbes777 wrote: »

Guys:
Sounds like this song is describing you all. Courtesy of myself and nerdcore hip hop legend Dual Core.

Here to Help (ft Remington Forbes) | Dual Core

I CANNNOOOOT REP YOU ENOUGH!!!!!!

pham0329

Back when I was in help desk, we had a lot of calls for password reset.

me: Service desk, this is _____________
user: I've been locked out of the website and need a password reset
me: Ok, can I get your username?
user: It's "D" like Dan, "Q" like cucumber, yada yada
me: *thinking to myself...Q like cucumber??*...I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it one more time?
user: *SIGH* "D" like Dan, "Q" like cucumber..
me: Did you mean "Q" like queen or "C" like cucumber?
user: ......oh, Q like queen

Then there was a time where we had a user email is saying something to the effect of:

Hello, I'm sorry for the trouble but it seems like I've violated myself (referring to her being locked out of the account), could you please help me?

ChooseLife

pham0329 wrote: »

"Q" like cucumber..

Priceless!

P.S. In fact, I'm stealing it for the title, if you don't mind...

yuddhidhtir

NICE THREAD!!!

CodeBlox

Updating this thread. A few days ago, I had a user call in because they wanted me to adjust the noise the keys made on the keyboard when striking them. Bear in mind this is a remote helpdesk. I told the person, this is something that we as a company do not configure. I referrerd her to the proper person to replace it if she didn't like it. At the time I thought it was pretty funny. Maybe there is someone somewhere doing this but I know we don't. And I don't know if its doable (within reasonable time)

MrRyte

pham0329 wrote: »

me: *thinking to myself...q like cucumber??*...i'm sorry, i didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it one more time?
User: *sigh* "d" like dan, "q" like cucumber..
Me: Did you mean "q" like queen or "c" like cucumber?
User: ......oh, q like queen

<....smh....>

MentholMoose

One situation I won't forget was years ago while doing desktop support. A user reported that her laptop screen wouldn't turn on, so I went to her office to check it out and noticed a problem right away. The front edge of the laptop had two huge dents and multiple cracks, which totally screwed up the latch that held the lid closed. I was pretty shocked and asked if she dropped it (I imagined it rolling down a flight of stairs or something), but of course she said "no". I then asked how she transports this laptop, and she said, "oh I keep it safe in my laptop bag, right here", pointing to a rolling business case.

I asked which compartment she used for the laptop, so she showed me... it was the compartment directly above the casters which had absolutely no padding whatsoever! The spacing of the bolts holding the two casters in place precisely matched the spacing between the two massive dents in the edge of the laptop. I somehow managed to fix the sensor (it was a Vaio with the lid sensor near the latch) so the laptop screen would work, but I asked her to stop using that compartment when transporting the laptop to avoid further destruction.

jtoast wrote: »

We recently rolled out Office 2007 to about 1500 pilot users. The day prior to each users scheduled install, we sent a powerpoint with screenshots of the application process so that users would know what to expect. About 2 weeks into the pilot one of our guys got a phone call from a user telling him that her machine had been stuck on "Updating Microsoft Office" for over 24 hours.

Apparently she had gotten a phone call around 3:30 pm the day before and completely forgot she was watching a powerpoint presentation. She didn't want to click anything in fear of screwing up the install so she just left early for the day and opened a trouble ticket when it hadn't finished by the time she came in the next morning. Because it was a pilot application the ticket bypassed the local support queue and went straight to us. When she realized what she had done she became angry and said that it was our fault for not putting some kind of notation in each corner to remind a user that what they were seeing on the screen was not really happening. As a result, we agreed to add "Simulated installation, press ESC to end presentation" on our powerpoints for the remainder of the pilot. Gotta love users.

I have something similar. A user needed to obtain a digital certificate for signing PDF forms. The process needed to be done on the website of a certificate authority. The CA provided instructions, which was a PDF with text and screenshots thoroughly detailing every step of the process. I figured anybody would be able to follow it, so I sent it to the user.

Naturally I got a call saying that it wasn't working, so I visited the user who proceeded to explain that he couldn't fill out the form in step 2. I told him to show me and he opened up the instructions PDF and proceeded to try to click the screenshot of the web page that step 1 said to visit! I did my very best to maintain my composure since the user was the president of the company.

Stuppored

I picked up a massive printer one time in front of a group of girls. I was removing it for a cleaning. I squatted for the pickup and RIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPP went the back of my jeans (my jeans tore under pressure). My boxers were exposed and everyone was laughing at me. I stapled them together after but that didn't work too well.

Yes, users can seem to be quite dumb lacking basic common sense in the simplest of matters. I have been helping people too long for the stupid stuff to phase me as being funny anymore. I find that sitting there laughing at something stupid and sucking everyone into it is a complete waste of time. Why sit and joke when it's doing nothing to line your pockets or improve your knowledge. Offices are littered with these people who would rather waste time than learn something productive.