Take the cotton balls out of your ears!

[thalionar.livejournal.com]

stupid stupid stupid people who cannot hear what I'm saying.

Customer: I can't log on to Windows, says my password is not correct.
*I check to see if password is expired or account is locked out, everything looks good.*
Thalionar: Make sure you don't have your caps lock on and you do have your number lock on and try one more time.
Customer: But I don't have any numbers in my password? Why should I have my number lock on?
Thalionar: Go ahead and humor me and make sure your number lock is on and try again, please.
Customer: *heavy sigh* It still didn't work.
Thalionar: OK. What does it say where is says "Log on to?"
Customer: You want me to put in my password again?
Thalionar: No ma'am, just tell me what it says where it says "log on to." It might say "domain" but it should say "log on to."
Customer: Should I put my password in now?
Thalionar: No ma'am. You should have three fields. One says Username, one says password and one should say "Log on to." What does it say where it says "log on to"?
Customer: I don't know what your asking. Here, talk to my coworker.
Coworker: Hi, this is Mary.
Thalionar: Hi, Mary, this is Thalionar. What does it say in the "log on to" field?
Mary: *reads computer name*
Thalionar: OK, can you click on the dropdown menu and select the domain for me? it should be *blah.*
Mary: Sure.
Thalionar: OK, have the customer try again.
*sound of typing*
Customer: Oh! That worked! Thanks! Bye!
Thalionar: is there anythi...*click*...I guess not since you hung up on me.

*sigh*

(crossposted to techsupport and my own journal)

Introductory post...

[guitarguy1980.livejournal.com]

Greetings all! Let me introduce myself. My name is Brian, and I work for a company in the tire retreading business, where I do tech support for a program based in the korn shell of Unix.

I found this community, and feel it will be my salvation from the dullards who call in everyday because they once again fried something in their computer

Suffice to say, the primary people I support are the retreaders in the plants, and well, not to offend anyone, but these guys aren't the most computer literate people on the planet, so I often have to dumb down everything (click the red x in the upper right hand corner of your monitor instead of close out the window) and of course, it drives me nuts.

How can people be so stupid?

Case in point: I was helping a retread customer yesterday configure a terminal. Now, let me explain, that these terminals are windows based, but use Netterm to connect to the Unix host box. So, I have to know some microshaft along with Unix in here, and if that wasn't enough, I have to tell an amoeba how to use it.

So, we're in the configuration tool and I'm trying to explain to this guy to use the mouse to select a particular field. He then replies to me "Well, I don't even have a cat here, but how is a mouse going to help me?"

I swear, I couldn't make this up. So, I explain what a mouse is, and then I say to take the cursor (which I had to explain wasn't a foul mouthed person) and put it into the field (which wasn't on his farm) where he can input the IP configuration (Won't even go into the rant how how long it took to explain IP and it's possible configurations).

So, after about an hour and a half of basically teaching this guy to use the computer, I finally walk him through getting it fixed. The Default Gateway was off by one number in the last octet, which of course, prevented any type of network connection.

God save me from the morons....

Brian

And the hits just keep on comin'

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

I've had about three times as many calls with stupid issues as the ones I'm going to detail here, but the other issues would only sound stupid to someone familiar with details of my work's policies, so here are the generic ones:

(Background:  I work in the email/remote access queue for internal tech support.  Not hardware support or anything else like that.  I know how to do hardware support, but other people get paid for that, so call them!)

1.  Guy with nearly 2GB personal folder wants to know why he can't move more email into it.
2.  Wireless network in hotel keeps dropping client, they don't know how to fix it, so that's my fault.
3.  Lady two time zones away from me, working from home, spills coffee on her portable computer's keyboard, it no longer POSTs, and she wants to know what I am going to do about getting her onto the company Intranet so that she can do her work.

( And then... )

(no subject)

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

Well, that was wonderful. We lost our entire internet including servers at work.

At least they put up an IVR for our customers. In fact, they turned the phones off!

There is a god...20 minutes of bliss

Crap, its back on. *expletive here*

(no subject)

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

No, when your PC shuts itself off, then during POST informs you, "Previous shutdown due to Thermal Event." ... it's probably not OK to ignore it and just keep using it until it happens again...