[binary visions]

So, several of the people who post in this forum seem to work in the tech support/computer industry. Share some of your favorite stories (and please, I don't want this to turn into a list of the urban legends about the woman who called tech support when her power went out and the guy asked her to check to see if it was plugged in etc).

I did support for a medical testing company for a couple years, and have lots of stories

One time, one of the high level execs called me complaining that his computer was too slow. That's a pretty common complaint from the high-ups, who didn't seem to have much to do except play on their computers - everyone else was happily word processing on their machines, while the high ups were downloading Open GL screensavers and complaining that the computers couldn't run them in 1600x1200 32 bit color.

I went up and started poking around his computer, doing the usual - checking for weird background processes, registry cleanup. Then I go to defrag, and there's not enough space on his 40 gig drive to run the defrag properly. So I mentioned that to him and asked if it was okay for me to go through his drive and find stuff that was taking up space, so we could figure out if it was okay to delete. He hesitated, then said sure. So I start poking around, and what do I find, but a directory full of gigs and gigs (10+ gigs) of gay porn, some of it S&M - I was a little bit traumatized, he had the "thumbnails" view on in the directory and all the images just popped up in front of me. Didn't even know how to react to it.

Now, gay porn is all well and good, but right next to the computer is a picture of the guy's wife of 10 years and his two daughters.

I think I mentioned to him that he had a lot of files in his "My Documents" directory and that if he'd get rid of everything he didn't absolutely need, I'd come back later to do a final cleanup.

I wonder if his wife knows...

 

[Tenchiro]

I was doing support for a short time for USWest's dial-up service. Since I had to reset like a million e-mail passwords a day, I susually wrote down all thir info so I could peruse their e-mails. :devil:

This one time, this lady had a couple of years worth of family drama on the server. It was basically an ongoing conversation about their nephews sexual abuse of just about every woman in the family. Some were consunsual but most weren't.

Aonther time when I was supporting system admins for Merrill Lynch I had a guy call me to say that one of his users wasn't able to login remotely. So I told him just to enable remote access in the user manager. He actually asked "What's that?"... This coming from a guy who at the time made a boatload ($50k + per year) being an admin on a Windows based network and didn't know what the user manager was. So as I explained it, it became quite clear that he didn't know a damned thing about his job...

 

[Ciaran]

Working at Kaiser Physicians PC help desk....

Doc calls with a heavy accent... he says that he can't logon. We start to go through the basics with him but he doesn't understand anything. We try to get him to press CTRL-ALT-Delete so we can check user name domain, etc. He cant. says it no work, where that?

Hmmm... Doctor, on the KEYBOARD in front of you...
"What is dat" he replies.
The plastic thing with the letters all over it!
"Ummm... I do not understand"
Dr., Where do your fingers go when you use the computer?
"Oh! Arrow working fine! I can not logon"
Doctor, will you please look at your desk? What do you see?
"Desk"
Yes sir. But ON your desk, in fron of the big TV thing where the pictures are you have a plastic thing with buttons on it. The buttons have letters! Do you see it?
"No"

After about 15 minutes of this we send out the local IT guys to look at this. Turns out the docs keyboard was stolen, but he know so little about computers and English that he did not realize that therewas supposed to be a keyboard there nor how to describe it. And this is the guy you trust with your health.

I find porn all the time on lusers computers here. Generally we delete withuot letting them know. (Hey, it's MY network, not theirs!) but one guy I HAD to report... he had rape and child porn stuff on his PC. And who was this guy? The head of security. And also had the pic of the wife and kids next to his monitor. What is even scarier is that he is still working here. Stupid me, I should have blackmailed him into giving me a better parking spot.

 

[binary visions]

I find porn all the time on lusers computers here. Generally we delete withuot letting them know. (Hey, it's MY network, not theirs!)

Yeah, we were generally required to delete it but sometimes we had to tip-toe around the higher-ups so that they didn't know we had found it.

Another good porn-on-the-network story, was a small meeting that we were having with the entire tech support team when I was a summer intern. The manager (who I knew personally, being that he was my father) was there as well. The guy who was holding the meeting was discussing the massive consumption of our network drives by personal files, and he opened the network drive on the projector and started showing some of the larger files. Most of 'em were large collections of family photos and such, and he opened one movie file. What pops up on the screen, but the infamous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee video.

Oops. Six feet tall on the wall, Pam is going to town on Tommy.

 

[Westy]

I worked tech support for CNC Controls. We had all kinds or morons call, most were degreed engineers and should have known better. Had a mechanical engineer tell me he wanted more torque out of a spindle motor at 3000 rpm but wanted to reduce the horsepower at 3000 rpm??

We would get cases distributed to us by untrained operators, their description of problems was priceless. My favorite was

"Bob XX from Ford and Clayton XXX from Bridgeport are trying to ballscrew and have questions on how to do it"

 

[ET_SoCal]

When I was in Tech Support for printers (years ago) there was this one case:

I was "level3" network support & the manager came to me in a panic, saying there was this one guy that has gone through two other tech support people, and the customer was extremely mad, the previous two people could not "fix" what was wrong, and could I take the call?
So...
After listening to this guy rant & rave & "vent" for 15 minutes w/o letting me get two words in, finally we started to communicate.
As we were going through things, I could hear he had a voice response program that told him whatever key's he hit and whatever would be on the screen, (didn't think much of this at the time), but finally I asked him to verify that the printer was on-line, and that the data light was flashing...
He kept saying "I can't see it", I asked him to toggle the online button, push, this or that button, but he would always say, "I can't see it"
I was thinking, maybe the bezel(Sticker) was gone from the front panel, so I was explaining "the second button over from the top left" he kept replying the same answer....

Then it hit me - we was blind and would not admit it.
So I had to ask if he was "sight impaired" - to which he acknowledged.

2 minutes later - problem solved.

 

[JRB]

I chose to erase those 2 years of horrors from memory. I will say, convenience store clerks from the middle east were the most fun.

 

[tonyhawk]

I work for a small software developer - we make, sell and support our program direct.

Was on the phone with a user this morning who was having problems. Went through some troubleshooting, part of which required him to restart Windows. While waiting, I usually read Ridemonkey or something and only half-participate in the obligatory small talk. This guy says "I wish I could come to your office and suck your brain." I wasn't sure I heard that right, and replied "uhhh" so he repeated his statement. At this point I had to put him on hold so I could laugh my ass off...

 

[s1ngletrack]

We have a new president here at the bank - I got his laptop setup with a new docking station and a wireless mouse / keyboard combo last week. I had been showing him something on his computer (from the opposite side of his desk) before I walked out of his office. Five minutes after I left, he comes up to me and tells me "Something strange is going on with my mouse - when I try to scroll up, it goes down, and vice-versa" Apparently his cordless mouse had confused him and he was holding it upside down

 

[binary visions]

Apparently his cordless mouse had confused him and he was holding it upside down

Non tech support related, but funny anyway:

My girlfriend has trouble using a mouse. I wasn't sure why, because she's pretty computer literate, but I chalked it up to one of those weird things that people never get comfortable with. Still occasionally wondered, though, because it's like she has to think what direction to move the mouse in before she does it.

Well, I was over at her parent's house the other day and walked into the computer room while she was in there. I saw her holding the mouse upside-down (it was a corded mouse, mind you).

It turns out that when she was just starting to learn how to use a computer, nobody taught her anything - she just taught herself. One of the things that nobody taught her was how to hold a mouse properly, and of course the mice never used to have scroll wheels so they were easy to operate with your palm if you got used to the inverse motions (like using a joystick, right?). Nobody told her until well into high school that she was doing it backwards. She became so accustomed to using a mouse upside-down that she has a lot of difficulty using it the right way now and has to consider which way the cursor will move when she moves the mouse - the only reason she doesn't use it upside down all the time is because she knows its "wrong" (though I suppose that's a little like saying that the way you type is "wrong" - as long as the keystrokes come out, who cares?). One of her friends who she grew up with uses the mouse the same way because Jenn taught her how to use a computer.

 

[lux]

Also not tech-related, but I think you can relate.

At one time I ran the maintenance department of a converting factory. We made rolls of anti-stat material (metalized polyester bound to polystyrene -- as used to make the anti-stat bags in which semiconductors are shipped).

We had tons of archaic machines I had to keep running and they were busting constantly. A lot of times the problems were -- imagine this -- operator error.

Early one morning (around 3am) I got called in. One of the slitters wasn't maintaining proper tension as the material was being rolled up (The material would come off the converting machines and was either shipped at full width or cut into smaller width rolls via the slitters).

Most of the machines maintained tension through sensors (strain guages) which sent signals to air-operated clutches. If the material became too slack the air pressure was increased at the clutch. Too tight and pressure was decreased. A constant and immediate cycle whenever the material was rolling.

I asked the operator why the clutch seemed oily and why there was a can of WD-40 next to it. "Cause that thing was squeeling and the WD-40 fixed it." Those clutches were a bitch to overhaul, too. Man, I was pissed -- but I usually was, working at that hell-hole.

 

[Barbaton]

I work in computers for a major university in the boston area and we had a fun one in our department a couple years ago. One of our support guys was sent to the office of a distinguished senior faculty member to install something like memory in the guy's machine. here is the dialogue that transpired:

prof: "you aren't coming in here without a strap-on!"

tech: "uuh, excuse me?"

prof: "you aren't touching my machine without a strap-on"

tech: "ok..."

pause

tech: "what do you mean, strap-on"

prof: "one of wrist things for static electricity. you should know not to work without one"

tech, much relieved: "aah. I'll be right back."