Just...Dumb....

[samwize.livejournal.com]

"Can you go talk to D.? He needs to get into B.'s email and the password isn't working."

"Why's he need to do that?"

"B. left the company. Now we can't get into his MSNmail."

"MSNmail...? I don't think I can help with that. I can't reset their passwords...."

"Just talk to him."

"Ohhhhhkay."
......

Solved the problem by closing Internet Explorer (on the .NET passport login page) and opening Outlook Express.

It's like they jsut have one big bucket in their head and EVERYTHING they hear about "The Internet" just gets dumped in a big heap. "Email? Oh you mean MSN! But that's just a web page, it's not "On The Net". That interweb thing's pretty cool, huh? Holy crap, I COULD KEEP RECIPES ON HERE!!!"

GRAH!

Updating My List Of Tech Support Laws

[dpaul007.livejournal.com]

Doug's Law #322 Of Phone-Based Tech Support:
No one who has a normal speaking voice *ever* uses a speakerphone. The only users who use speakerphones either have booming, overbearing voices that override your feeble attempts to get a word in edgewise, or have tiny fairy-voices that require the client to repeat everything at least three times.

Doug's Law #322-a Of Phone-Based Tech Support:
A fairy-voiced user will spontaneously change to the booming-voice type after being asked for the 6th time to repeat themselves.

You know you're a tech when...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

http://www.techcomedy.com/single/new_stories.php?content_number=42236

"It's twue! It's all twue!"

Co-Irker rant...

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

( cut for profanity and violence! )

A special kind of keyboard

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

30 minutes for what should have been a 7 minute mail-server-checking call.

And why did it take so long?

Well, apart from the user being completely useless when it came to simple commands to type in ("So now type mail-dot-myISP-dot-com-dot-au" "It won't let me. I've gone to the next line but it won't let me type dot." "By dot I mean a full stop." *pause* *pause* "Which one's the full stop?" *Head-desk-WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM*) it seems that this user had an expanded keyboard of the type I have never heard of before.

O2G: The User of doom.
CSR: This little black duck

(And I'm going to omit the loooooong pauses between me asking him to do something and him responding. Just imagine them, and me almost tearing out my hair.)

CSR: "Now in the black box type in 'ping' then a space..."

O2G: "Which one is the space?"

CSR: "The space bar." *pause* "The long skinny bar at the bottom of the keyboard."

O2G: "Oh. I have two space bars - a long one at the bottom and a short one at the top."

( /me thinks for a moment about all the expanded keyboards she's seen, decides this must be some new one, and just lives with it.)

CSR: "Ok, just type 'ping', then press the spacebar once. Then mail-dot-myISP-dot-com-dot-au, then another space, then one-one-zero. Now press enter."

O2G: "It's saying there's no such command."

CSR: (*puzzled boggle*) "Odd. Ping is a fairly standard command. Did you type it P-I-N-G?"

O2G: "Yes."

CSR: "What is the exact error message?"

O2G: "Ping all that stuff is not recognized as an internal or external command."

CSR: "Weird. Just type 'ping' and press enter."

O2G: "All this stuff came up about Ping..."

CSR: "Hmmmm - so 'ping' is a recognised command. I wonder why..."

O2G: "I used the short space - was that the right one?"

CSR: "Short space? What does a short space look like?"

O2G: "It's got this line along the bottom..."

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH We'd just spent 15 smegging minutes trying a simple PING command because he didn't know that an underscore is NOT a space.

I was almost crying after that one.

Crappity crap crap crap crap crap.

[thatvoiceguy.livejournal.com]

Computer at work re-imaged. Can't install anything. Not even QuickTime.

Which means that watching (most) movie trailers is a thing of the past. So much for http://apple.com/trailers being of any use.

Reason for the re-image? To prevent spyware. All well and good, but...presumably, one reason I'm working there is because I already *&^%ing know how to keep spyware off my ^%#$ing machine. I'm a &^$%ing computer geek.

This means there are "support technicians" working there who, apparently, don't have this knowledge. *heavy sigh...*

For those in need of cheering up on the Helldesk...

[microchip.livejournal.com]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/b45b564dd93222faa7fc0335836835d1/index.html

Safe for work. Slightly geeky. Highly amusing. Slightly scary. Cross-posted too.
(Apologies if duped.)

April Fool's

[katyism.livejournal.com]

Now that I have my very first job in a tech support call center, I'm thinking about how to celebrate April Fool's day with my job. I'd like to call in and play stupid annoying luser with easy question that just can't be solved because the luser is too stupid. And the "problem" I'm calling about should be the kind that will make them burst out laughing after the call is over.

The problem is I can't think of a stupid enough problem that's also hilarious. I had one idea, which I nicked from a post about stupid callers I saw somewhere, to call and say "Hi I'm an old lady typing her very first e-mail, but I can't find the @ sign... I've typed the 'a' but I can't figure out how to make the circle go around it."

Any better ideas, ones that would keep my coworker on the phone for at least 10 minutes? I can act the part of stupid once I have the context, but so far I can't think of a silly enough luser problem to call about.