Make it go away
I would like to nominate my Ex Sister-in Law for the dumbest user award. After building and setting her up with a new system, she called me to ask about the computer going on idle. I told her that, yes, her system could and would go on idle. After discussing this with her to explain everything properly, she called back to ask how to shut down the monitor, while the computer was on idle. Which of course I responded: by simply turning it off. I found this to be a very funny question. Thought you would too! -Teresa H.
How do you drive this thing?
I have a great one for you. About 4 months ago I was installing new computers in a securities firm on Wall Street. I brought the computer in to a broker, set it up and left. The next day he requested I come to his office. He lifts his mouse and asks, "What the hell is this?" I reply, "That's your mouse." He responds to me, "What the hell do I need this for?" -John C.
Kissing cousins
The story I have to tell isn't really about a dumb user, though I can't help but think of him whenever the topic comes up. The scene: I'm a tech for an ISP, and taking new account configuration calls. This fellow calls in with problems. He can't understand the instructions on the CD sleeve for how to install the software, get online, and start chatting. Okay—we have this all the time. So much so, that we have a step by step walk through, complete with screenshots of every step as a guide. I pull it up just to make sure I can be as explicit as possible with this gentleman who seems to be having so many problems. I spent nearly an hour and a half with him on the phone getting him configured and connected. He required three or four repeats and additional explanations for every step of the process. He was very earnest, and tried very hard, and I could tell he felt sorry for his inability to comprehend what I was trying to explain to him. When we finally got him configured and ready to go, he was very pleased. It was his parting shot that's stuck with me through the years. "I'm really sorry that took so long. You'll have to forgive me, my parents were related!" I barely managed to hang the headset up before losing control of the burst of laughter that erupted. To this day, I still chuckle whenever I think of that phone conversation. –Tom S., Micro Computer Services, Desktop
Can I get a copy of that?
Remember the good old "486"-days when every CPU had a keylock switch? One of our customers called us, saying he was unable to start his computer, because he hasn’t got a key to start the engine. Also, a customer called because he had a problem with a diskette he wanted to use. Our sales representative told him to send us a copy of this disk. After two minutes the fax machine printed out a copy of the diskette. We sent the fax back with the information that it is a double-sided disk, and we would need the other side also. (Not nice, but a good laugh for us) Sorry for my English. –Michael W.
Where does this cord go?
Our software company hired a new “remote” salesperson who called each of the admins in our department at least once a day for the first two weeks with a number of different complaints/problems. At one point she called complaining that her laptop battery wasn't holding the charge and something was wrong with the power supply. I had tested everything before sending it out to her, and another admin and I tried troubleshooting the problem over the phone with her. We ended up having her send everything back. We tested it and all worked fine. We returned the laptop to her and she was still having problems. My co-worker finally deduced that she was trying to connect the power supply through the CPU cooling vent which was located next to the power supply input. –Anonymous
Human error
The first happened earlier this year when a printer was delivered directly to a user, rather than the IS department. The user, taking the initiative, decided to install the printer himself. He did amazingly well for a non-computer person, and got everything connected correctly. Reading the manual, he discovered he had to now install the drivers, which were on CD. His computer was rather old, and unbeknownst to him did not come with a CD drive. It did, however, feature a 5 ¼" floppy drive which he had never used. In many car CD players, you simply push the CD into a slot, and the mechanism will "grab" it and pull it in. Thinking a PC CD drive was the same way, he stuck it into the 5 ¼" drive slot. About halfway in, it stuck, but with just a bit of a push he managed to get it all the way in. He finally called us when, in spite of flipping the drive lever down, the computer still wouldn't find the drivers. We never did get the CD out.
Another incident involved the Operations Manager for our company. A normally calm and intelligent person, he was frustrated by an error within Outlook. Whenever he would open mail, suddenly lines would start inserting at the beginning of the letter. The body of the message scrolled down off the screen so quickly, he couldn't read it. While it happened to him regularly, our tech support department was unable to duplicate the error, even on the user's computer. Finally we noticed that, when reading email, his forearm would lay across the keyboard, just clipping the "Enter" button on the number pad. -Jim P., IS Support Center
Salesman didn't know jack
I just moved my daughter into her dorm at UC Santa Barbara and the dorm has just installed a new Ethernet network. I had installed the Ethernet card but I did not have the patch cord needed to connect to the network. I went to a couple of large electronics stores (Circuit City & Radio Shack) but they had run out because of the large demand from the school dorms. The third place I stopped at was Staples and when I ask if they had any Ethernet patch cords the sales person took me to where they were supposed to be located (after he had asked someone about the location) and there were none in the area. The Sales Person then proceeded to take me to another location and pulled a phone extension off the rack and told me that this would work just as well. I am a Technician at an IS shop and very familiar with networks and its equipment and I knew that this would not work. As I explained to him why this would not work I wondered how many he had sold to parents that did not have any technical training in this field. My guess is that there are a few unhappy parents out there that wondering why the cord will not fit in the jack. -Bob R., Desktop Services
That's what you do…
Then there's the one about the "IT Professional" who bought a brand-new, fully configured system. It was delivered and set up by the technician who built it. Imagine the tech's surprise to receive an irate call from Mr. Professional that his system would not boot into Windows. After a grueling 60 minute telephone run-down, the tech went back (a 60-mile round-trip) to Mr. P's home. Imagine the tech's even greater surprise when he found that Mr. P had fdisked his hard drive. When asked why he did that to a pre-configured machine, he replied "It's brand-new and that's what you always do with brand-new computers." "Sigh" –Nancy W.
Floral life
All right, here's one for the record books: I had a user who consistently had problems with her monitor. I visited her PC multiple times, and each time she complained that the monitor was malfunctioning, and she wanted a new one. I replaced the monitor twice before getting suspicious. After the last call, I pretended to walk away, only to turn and see her stand up and water the plant she had just replaced back ON TOP OF THE MONITOR! She will be waiting a long time for a replacement now. -Jonathan F., Network, MIS
Window pains
Panicking, one of my users came running into my office. "Something is really wrong with my machine. The Windows all look funny." I walked with the person back to their office and had them show me what they meant. "See, the Window fills the whole screen. It was never like that before. I can't work with it like that." After explaining how to resize Windows with the Maximize, Minimize, Restore buttons, and making the person walk through the steps so to be able to do it in the future, we still had to go through how to get the screen exactly the right size so that the user could "work normally." It was amazing how the Window had to be a certain size for the person to think they could use it. Showing them that they could still work in any size Window did not matter. It took about 30 minutes to fix the problem to their satisfaction. Well, two days later, the user comes back into my office. "You know that problem I had where my computer looked all funny? Well, it happened again!! Can you fix it?" -Anonymous
Is that a fedora?
I was handling support calls for a fairly complex financial package. The end-user assured me she knew her way around the PC and that she could handle most problems on her own. As we began to work through the system, I asked her, "What do you see on your screen?" I suggested she get some remedial help, when she answered "Oh, I've got a "C" with a funny little sideways hat." -Ron E.
Spaced out
Here's a dumb user story for you. I was working in a help desk environment and working with a user over the phone. I was trying to get her to type the following command " assign c: d: ." I told her to type exactly what I said, which was "assign space c: space d:" and every time she typed in the command she said it came back with bad command or file name, so after a couple of times I asked her to tell me what she was typing letter by letter, to which she responded with the following "assign space c: space d: " As you can see, she was typing the word space instead of using the space bar. –Gary Y., NT System Engineer
Disk errors
Three users come to mind, all involving floppy disks.
1. While working for the Education department I had a phone call from a user who needed a document off a disk, but was having problems with the document on the disk. I asked her to send me a copy of the disk so I could have a look and retrieve the document. 5 minutes later I had a copy of the disk, from the fax machine. She had copied the disk on the photocopier and faxed it to me.
2. A school principal rang and told me he had problems with a floppy disk which had very important information on it, and no, he had not made a backup. I went to the school and asked for the disk, which was given to me in three pieces. His cat had been playing with it and pulled it apart!
3. A school was having problems with all disk drives, but only when using disks the school had created. I went and had a look. No problems, it read every disk I put into it and created. It was then I saw the problem. A teacher came in with a disk with student work on it and asked for it to be labeled. The office girl took the disk, put a disk label on to it and inserted it into the typewriter to type the name on to the disk. I thought the disks looked a bit bent! –Tim Sayre
