HELPDESK FUNNIES
(Or: I have no reason whatsoever to believe these are made up!)
'What's a SPACEBAR? Whereabouts on the keyboard is it?' Are typical questions posed to those fortunate folks who have worked in user-computing telephone support. Take it from me that the moment the phone has gone off-hook the best calls have been propagated round the office, and within a very few seconds everyone will be rolling round the floor and laughing like drains. Below are some user support/helpline funnies that I received via email.
Oh, by the way, the SPACEBAR is the key in the middle of the main section of the keyboard, it is the longest key on the bottom row - it is generally used to type, or insert, a space.
A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with
her printer. The tech asked her if she was "running it
under Windows." The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to
the door. But that's a good point. The man sitting in the
cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working
fine."
**********
Tech Support: "OK Bob, let's press the control and escape
keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the
middle of th screen. Now type the letter 'P' to bring up the
Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"
**********
Overheard in a computer shop:
Customer: "I'd like a mouse mat, please."
Salesperson: "Certainly sir, we've got a large variety."
Customer: "But will they be compatible with my computer?"
**********
I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax
the document back to the sender when I was finished with it,
because he needed to keep it.
**********
Customer in computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet
onto this disk for me?"
**********
I work for a local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls
that start something like this: Customer: "Hi. Is this
the Internet?"
**********
Customer: "So that'll get me connected to the Internet,
right?"
Tech Support: "Yeah."
Customer: "And that's the latest version of the Internet,
right?"
Tech Support: "Uhh...uh...uh...yeah."
**********
Tech Support: "All right...now double-click on the File
Manager icon."
Customer: "That's why I hate this Windows - because of
the icons - I'm a Protestant, and I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well, that's just an industry term sir. I
don't believe it was meant to-"
Customer: "I don't care about any 'Industry Terms'. I
don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well...why don't you click on the 'little
picture' of a filing cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"
Customer: [click]
**********
Customer: "My computer crashed!"
Tech Support: "It crashed?"
Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."
Tech Support: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to
reboot."
Customer: "No, it didn't crash-it crashed."
Tech Support: "Huh?"
Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before.
I crashed my spaceship and now it doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"
Customer: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"
**********
Got a call from a woman said that her laser printer was
having problems: the bottom half of her printed sheets were
coming out blurry. It seemed strange that the printer was smearing
only the bottom half. I walked her through the basics, then went
over and printed out a test sheet. It printed fine. I asked
her to print a sheet, so she sent a job to the printer.
As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and
showed it to me. I told her to wait until the paper came out on
its own. Problem solved.
**********
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's
DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a
problem I just couldn't solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors
would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new ideas. After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?"
**********
A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer's tech
support number, complaining about the error message:
"Can't find the printer."
On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in
front of the screen, but the computer still couldn't find it.
**********
And another user was all confused about why the
cursor always moved in the opposite direction from the movement of
the mouse. She also complained that the buttons were difficult to
depress.
She was very embarrassed when we asked her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her.
**********
Customer: "Hello? I'm trying to dial in. I installed
the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I
could hear the two computers connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I
picked up the phone to see if they were still connected, and I got the
message, 'No carrier,' on my screen. What's wrong?"
**********
An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a
Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.
Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to
install them on my home computer." Training stresses that we are
"not the Software Police," so I let the little act of piracy slide.
Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they
weren't initialized."
Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly,
ma'am?"
Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a
Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it?'"
Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
Customer: "After they were initialized, all the disks
appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I
can't read them in the A: drive; the PC wants to format them.
And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did
I do something wrong?"
**********
For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from
someone, and our computers were facing away from each other.
A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the
room.
I reached between our computers and switched the inputs
for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and
immediately got a distressed look on her face. She called the tutor
over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would
happen.
The tutor tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my
monitor and quaking red-faced. I typed, "Leave me alone!"
They both jumped back as this appeared on their screen.
"What the..." the tutor said. I typed, "I said leave me
alone!"
The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I
swear!"
It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The
conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an
amazing five minutes.
Me: "Don't touch me!"
Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that
hard."
Me: "Who do you think you are anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I
couldn't contain myself any longer, and fell out of my
chair laughing. After they had realized what I had done, they
both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in
that class.
**********
This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access
Denied" message every time he logs in. It turned out he was
typing his username and password in capital letters.
Tech Support: "Ok, let's try once more, but use lower
case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my
keyboard."
**********
Email from a friend:
"CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"
**********
My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet
afternoon. He noticed a young woman sitting in front
of one of the workstations with her arms crossed across her chest,
staring at the screen.
After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same
position, only now she was impatiently tapping her foot.
He asked if she needed help and she replied "It's about
time!
I pressed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!"
