techrecovery | (no subject)

I work for a community college satellite campus as the only tech support person on the entire campus. I'm the one everybody comes to when they've got problems on their computers, whether it's at home or work. Sometimes I just want to get a shirt that says "NO, I will NOT fix your computer." But I'm a glutton for punishment.

My best story this week is not from work, though, it's from trying to do tech support for my family. Here's the (fairly) short version:

My dad bought a new laser printer from Home Depot yesterday. He called last night at 9:30 because he can't get the printer to work. I tell him he has to install the drivers. He puts my 19 year old brother on the phone because he knows just a little more tech speak than my dad. My brother tells me he's installed the drivers three times and it's still not printing. He keeps telling me that the red light on the top of the printer is on. I had him unplug the printer, count to 10 and plug it back in. The red light is still on. I tell him it's a physical problem with the printer, but he doesn't believe me, so I proceed to check all of his printer settings over the phone. It's recognized by Microsoft Word and in the printer properties it's using the right driver but no test page is printing out. I'm *this close* to telling him I'll come over tomorrow and check it out when I ask him if he's installed the toner for the printer.

Silence.
Bro: "Dad, did you install the toner?"
Dad: "I thought *you* said you were going to set it all up."
Bro: "You didn't install the toner??"
Dad: "You said you were going to take care of it."
Me: "You didn't install the toner?!?!?"
Bro: "Well, I thought *he* did, but I didn't know that's what this big black thing here was."
Me: (nearly banging head on desk) "Okay, that's the toner. Put it in the printer."

He does as he's told, and lo and behold, 10 pieces of paper come flying out, all nice and pretty, and one Windows Printer Test Page.

Thank you, that'll be $40. Have a nice day.