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The humorous side of IT

Some humor is so bad it is funny. I'm not necessarily saying that my jokes are bad. I'll leave that determination up to you.

I would love to hear some of your war stories.

Backstory -

Back when 5.25" full height drives roamed the earth, we began to get PCs with 2 5.25" half height drives in the same bay.

Story -

Frantic lady "My disk won't read and the computer won't give it back!" Upon examination she had forced her floppy disk in the crack between the half height drives. I had to disassemble the PC to retreive her disk, but at least it gave me a chance to show her the new drive form factor!

That problem was more common than you know. We always referred to it as the "Third Drive". I had a small surgical tool that was perfect for retrieving the floppy without disassembly. I miss the days when problems were simple, but users thought Geeks were all geniuses! ;^)

My standard procedure for inserting 5.25" drives was to put the front corner of the disk above the slot, then slide the disk downwards until it slid partway into the slot, at which point I would straighten the disk out, push it into the slot, and close the door. It was almost subconscious, and I would do this many times every day.

One day I was at a friend's house (another "computer guy"), and tried putting a disk in the drive, when I realized I'd started too high and instead of sliding into the disk slot, I'd slid it into the gap between the 3.5" drive (in a full-size bay) and the 5.25" drive. Dangit. We powered off the PC, took apart the case, and retrieved the disk. We all had a good laugh at my expense.

So we powered on the PC, and I went to put in the disk ... and did it again. After we retrieved the disk for the second time, he put a piece of scotch tape over the gap. It was a good thing he was a friend rather than a paying customer.

Hello Kyle. It takes a special kind of person to be able to admit that. You are in good company. I have done my share of dumb things - usually when working on hardware. I fried a DVD burner when I connected an PATA cable upside down. Impossible, you say? The connector is keyed! When it comes to hardware I can do the impossible or improbable. That is also why I hold techs in high esteem.

Backstory- In the mid 90's I was a student worker for university IT. We were upgrading memory in lots of PCs to support Windows 95. Lots of systems on campus had both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives. Some had CD-ROMs.

Story - While upgrading one system while the user was away, I noticed something orange in the 5.25" drive. I pulled it out to discover a CD titled "Idiot's Guide to PCs."

One of my users was complaining that her external 3.5" floppy drive was busted. Try as she might she couldn't put a disk into the drive. I came over, turned the external drive over to right side up, and the problem was solved. She wanted me to promise not to tell anybody... yeah right.

Hi Charles.

All of these floppy disk stories makes me wonder if "clueless user" is on the endagered species list? The PC generation has already learned the hard way and the younger generations grew up with computers.

Or the customer complaining about her 5.25 floppy drive being bad... She would take her work home. When she was done she would stick the floppy on the refrigerator with a magnet so she could remember to take it back to work with her.... Took a couple of days to figure out what was up with that one....

I also had the issue with the "third drive"... Back in the day, I was unfortunate enough to be the "chosen" one to handle the service calls at our corporate office... Included were the CEO and numerous VP's, etc.... The VP of Service (my bosses, bosses, boss) did the dirty deed of sticking the floppy disk between the two drives.... I had a "controlled" smirk on my face when I showed him the problem... He threatened to fire me if I told anyone.... Luckily he had a sense of humor since I told everyone that would listen....

We recently had a discussion about this within our team and the consensus is that the 'clueless user' will not completley disapper. One particular story makes me smile and whilst it is about a clueless user it is also about just desserts.

One senior guy had set up a meeting with a boardroom full of colleagues and peers, my team had been asked to provide a projector and he would set it up because it was 'straight forward enough'.

5 minutes after the meeting was due to start I had a call from the meeting organiser who in an irrate manner slated the equipment and said that it was unfit for purpose as he couldn't get the image to focus correctly. I went straight to the meeting room where everyone was waiting, the organiser continued to berate the equipment, flexing his authority and showing off in front of his audience.

With great delight I leaned across to the projector and took off the opaque lens cap and what do you know, clear picture. I swear as the giggling of the audience started I could hear this guy deflate like a balloon. I asked if there was anything else to which he replied, ashen faced, no thanks.

It doesn't happen too often but sometimes it's good to put people back in their box.

is todays computer guru

The infosphere has gotten so robust with regards to the user interface and underlying information compatibility that stuff doesn't break much and if it does it does so gracefully. Older users had to deal with a more brittle interface with sometimes catastrophic consequences to their actions. Thus they learned fear and how to "Fix or Repair Daily".

So I wouldn't say the "clueless" user is gone, it's just that they have been replaced with a younger crowd that isn't afraid of making mistakes with technology. They may not know what they are doing, but neither are they as afraid of the consequences as the technology protects to a certain extent.

I've had software developers trying to boosts the USB storage capacity, by inserting the really thin USB flash drives into the USB (male) of another full-sized USB flash drive. they some how jam it in, the look around for help, when neither of the drives work!

I worked in a contact centre, and the team leaders had been provided with a spreadsheet to work out their team's sales figures. It was very nicely set out, and had cells which did the calculations for them.

I had a phone call from one team leader who stated that the spreadsheet wasn't working, it wasn't calculating the figures for her. I went to visit thinking maybe she had somehow deleted the formula... Only to find her writing her figures on a hard copy of the spreadsheet.

I had to walk away before I said something sarcastic.

when I was first starting out, I worked for a repair company. I had to go do a home repair for a guy who stated his computer would not start up. When I got there I found where he had managed to make an adapter so he could plug the computer up into a 220 outlet to make it faster. Fried everything.

My favorite IT MISnomer was poor Jen, who knew nothing about computers but reading e-mails and was made IT manager.
Example: In a department heads' meeting, she warned everyone not to Google Google, or it would crash the Internet.

Roy on the pilot episode wore a shirt that said, "RTFM"

Somehow, I felt that that show should not have been classified as a "Comedy" but as a "Documentary".

Paul
non-IT but trying to learn.

Hello Paul.

I liked the high-tech devices they were using - a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I wish you well learning IT. It sounds like you already have the geek mindset.

You youngsters with your 5.25" stories. This goes all the way back to 8". I asked the lady if she made backup copies every day as per the manual. She said yes and pulled out a file.... of photocopied diskettes.

These stories remind me of one particular incident that happened to me. One day a frantic executive-level user runs over to my desk declaring that soembody was hacking his laptop and ordered me to his office immediately. Sure enough, random words were just appearing on his open MS Word document just like somebody was typing them in from a remote terminal. It turned out that he had inadvertently enabled dictation mode while working on that document and it was picking up conversations outside his office. It was quite hilarious.

This was from many years ago, when I worked for a university helpdesk. Any student could get an account on the Unix system. Usually, when students were asking for this, they had been given instructions from professors on the programs they needed to run and how to use the software. Why else would they even WANT a Unix account? The day I realized that wasn't always the case was when somebody came in and confidently said she needed a Unix account. I created the account and explained how to login to one of our main Unix hosts, named 'cbs'. She sat at a nearby lab machine and says "it's not working". I started to get up to help and asked "what do you mean?". She responded "it just says 'cbs%'".

Talking my mother-in-law on how to use her new computer I explain the little arrow on the screen is a mouse pointer controlled by the mouse. To move the pointer, move the mouse up, and she lifted the mouse 'up' off the mouse pad.

One of our Help Desk guys got a call from a remote user who said that his computer was smoking and wanted to know if he should turn it off. Our guy told him that yes, he should turn it off and asked if it just started happening. The user said that it had been happening for about a week. When he was asked why he hadn't called a week ago he said, "But it was working until this morning."

I work with a youger guy who's not had a lot of "help desk" type experience. The other day I got called to a user's desk becuase of a problem caused by the user's, errrr, issues. Once corrected and back at the office the co-worker asked me what the issue was and I told him it was a I-D-10-T problem. He was perplexed so I wrote it out on the white board, ID10T. He got it then....

Usually involves Photoshop around here. Be mindful of people taking your picture randomly while you are working. It may seem like a nice friendly thing at first but next thing you know there are pictures of your head on a donkey all over the office. What an ass! Geek jokes are easy to share when they are blown up and printed out.

I was installing a work station emulator on an IBM AT for use as a terminal for an IBM S/34 for a coworker. She was used to being a touch typist and not familier with PCs. The installation got to the point where it displayed a message "Press any key to continue..." and I told her to press any key; her response was "I did!!". I had her do it again and watched her press the shift key. As a touch typist the shift key was the safest key to press to avoid a typo; but in this case was not considered an "any key".

I had a new client where I was asked to run some cable and setup a Internet connection for the staff. No LAN just a Network that allowed the staff to access the net.

The guy that brought me in there I had known for ages and he had just moved there a few weeks previously. He talked them into bringing me in as I needed the money and didn't have enough work. His words not mine and not something I really needed either. They eventually buckled under his attempts and asked me to have a look and give them some idea of how much.

Anyway the very first time I was there I gave them a cheap quote to run the cable and hopefully I would never be back so they wanted it done immediately. So latter that day when I had returned with the hardware necessary I started to run some cable from the Modem at the Reception Desk to the different offices.

Then the guy who insisted that I be brought in asked me to look at his computer it was too slow for him. As I was then running a cable into the Owners Brothers Office I said shortly and finished that cable run. When I got to his office he had just finished selling a Big Dozer and was quite happy. He claimed that the Computer he was given to use had driven him crazy and he had thrown it out the window.

OK no big problem there I just walked outside thinking that's it's a NB and I can pick it up dust it off and see what if anything was wrong with it. Not quite so lucky there though as when I got outside there is this guy and the person he had just sold the dozer to hanging out the window and giving the Hot & Cold Directions to where I would find this computer. It was under the left hand track of a 40 Ton Excavator and I quickly decided that maybe it's wasn't an option to even consider repairing this poor thing which incidentally was a desktop. I found it as part of the keyboard was sticking out from under this track.

With words along the lines of Mad Bastard the only sensible thing to do was laugh at the insanity of the entire situation and I couldn't stop laughing mainly because of the way that these two people where caring on. Anyway not being good enough destroying the computer he then set about trying to crack me up in front of everyone there and I very quickly worked out that Laughing at the destruction of a computer with a new client the very first time you met them wasn't particularly a good look so I beat a hasty retreat or at least I tried to. The owner wanted the rest of the cables run that day and didn't want me to leave till I had finished so I spent the next few hours under the building pulling cable and ignoring the quips coming from higher up.

When I hit the owners office I placed a bag of Wall Clips to mount the Wall Plates with down and proceeded to punch a hole in the wall where i had run up the CAT5 Cable. When I turned around the clips had disappeared and I was sure that I had brought them in but none the less I went looking for them. Needles to say I never found them and I had to hit one of the local Hardware Stores for a replacement and as it was the last one I wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Anyway I eventually finished that off thinking there is no way known that I'll ever be asked to return after the unprofessional conduct that I had displayed and as I was was leaving the owner hit me with what was I going to do about the crushed computer.
I just explained that it couldn't be repaired and that they would have to buy a new one which was pretty simple as far as I though. His response was to ask what I had to offer.

I have since replaced all of the systems there several times over and have been going there whenever I'm asked for quite a few years now. Whenever they have a issue they ring me and say words to the effect that this Steam Powered computer is Pi$$ing them off and if I'm not there quick smart I'll find the thing under something very heavy.

Oh and those clips showed up at the next visit when I was asked what I knew about these as they had been found on the owners desk under something he had placed there and he didn't know anything about them. The smile he had on his face sort of made me think he was having a go though.

Col

Thanks for sharing. I can just picture a keyboard sticking out from under that huge yellow machine! Sounds like a fun client to work with.

One of my favorites is the user (this has happened several times) who comes over concerned because their computer is beeping. When I check it out I find that the keyboard tray has been pushed back so the bottom of the desk is pressing a key. Pull out the drawer and the problem is solved!

I worked for a compnay that manufactured IBM compatible equipment.One common compleint we had from users was that the keyboard keys were either too hard or too soft to press when pressig the keys. Well, our keyboards had what was called a clicker coil (basicallly a solenoid with an armature) that clicked when you hit a key. If it felt too hard to press a key, we would bend the armature closer to the coil which would reduce the amount of noise the clicker would make. If it was too soft, we would bend it further away and hence the armature was louder. Needless to say the customer was very happy with the keyboard after making this adjustment. Nothing was done to change the keys themselves. It was amazing to see how easy people can be fooled.

When I got my first wireless keyboard, Win2K (I think) seemed to lose it - or maybe it was the BIOS.

Several times, on bootup, I got the message "No keyboard found - press ESC to continue"

This fits in the 2nd category.

Just last week I got a text at 7am from a friend.
Her - My 10 yr old has broken my computer. Can you come over now as I've got an essay I have to finish?
Me - What exactly is the problem?.
Her - I've got no sound.
Me - Is it working ok other than that?
Her - Yes.
Me (not being a morning person) - I think that having no sound on your laptop is not an omen that the end of the world is nigh.

No reply. 2 days later she rang and meekly asked if she could bring the laptop over. Her 10 yr old had managed to delete the volume icon after muting it. Not a big problem, and definitely not a 7am one.

Shortly after one of my clients, a world-renowned author and lecturer, installed a VOIP phone system at home, he called me to complain that the phone would alternately be working and then go dead for long periods at a time. To the client's chagrin, everything was working perfectly when I arrived, a thorough check revealed no faulty connections, and I finally had to tell him there was nothing I could do but come back when it isn't working again. Upon reaching the door to leave, I turned to watch him flip a switch for the outdoor light but it did not turn on. At that same moment, though, I just happened to notice the lights on his phone adapter go out and I realized that he had plugged the phone adapter into a SWITCHED wall outlet. Clueless, he then flipped the switch next to it, the outdoor light went on, and he remarked: I'm always doing that, flipping the wrong switch!

This was related to me by a fellow GTA.

He was in lab and a student came up complaining that the pascal compiler was broken. "how do you figure that?" my friend asked. "no program output" was the reply. Upon examination of the code he discovered that the student had commented out the entire program! When this was pointed out, he stated matter of factly that was the only way to get it to compile without errors...

In the past I had lead a very sheltered life as the Service Manager of several firms who sold Mainframes, crowds like IBM, Wang and so on and was used to dealing with Professionals who knew what it is that they needed.

Well that ended and I setup the business that I now run which was supposed to help small business as I saw a gaping hole between Domestic Users and Large Business that was not being serviced.

Anyway to cut a long story short I was approached by one of the staff of a Real Estate Office that I did work for, a smallish place with only 50 Computers so it was way too big for the Home Tech of the day and Way too small for a Professonal Tech, this was when Dial up first started.

I was asked for a Modem by this guy who had told me that the major Telco here had given him a CD so he could connect to the internet. He was very pleased and thought that this was great when it really was just a way to get new customers on what at the time was a reasonably Slow and Expensive Internet Connection.

Anyway being willing to push out a bit of Good Will I sourced a decent Modem for the guy and sold it to him at my buying price. After all he did work for a very good customer and it was no skin off my nose so to speak. Well he came up picked up the modem and went home, as I didnt have to go out of my way at all it hadn't cost me anything and I was happy to help him.

Next morning he was on the phone telling me that it didn't work, as I gave it to him in an unopened box I though well its possible that its faulty and we where talking about a 14,500 Baud Netcom which where reasonably good but I suppose anything is possible. After all I had worked with some really expensive hardware that sometimes just didn't work when you pulled it out of its packing so no biggy. I told him to drop it up and I would sort it out. When his wife brough it up I tested it on a system I had at home and didn't have any real issues once I had run the setup program properly. The destructions where a little vague so I explained to the guys wife who had brought it up what to do and to ring me if her Hubby had any problems.

Next morning he rang me again and demanded that I come down and fix it for him. Again no big problem there well at the time I didn't think there would be so I got the address phone number and arranged to meet him at his home after he finished work for the day. What I didn't know at that time but I suppose I should have realized as he worked for a decent sized Real Estate Office was that he lived in a New Development.

Anyway I didn't think about this just shoved the Address into my pocket and come the late afternoon I pulled the Street Directory out and looked for his address. No Listing well again no biggy the street directory wasn't the newest and as I had not got around to getting the newest one which had come out about a Month Previously I just dropped into a Shop and grabbed a new Street Directory. Again no listing so I asked for directions to the Area where this guy lived thinking no problems it can not be that big and I should be able to find the street when I get there fairly easily.

Well when I hit the place I found it was massive with no street signs. So I started looking for a public phone, as this was way before Cell Phones where even dreamed of let alone being made available to anyone but the Uber rich. Well as it was a new development no Public Phones or shops or anything. I ended up driving about 20 miles back up the road to the closest shop I could find with a Public Phone an d ringing him for directions.

Then I headed off again only to find out that his directions where not correct in any sort of form. Only took about 40 minutes to find my way back out and back to the same shop where I rang him again and went over the directions again. He was very specific that I had to turn onto Street X then take the second Left and on from there. I just pointed out that is exactly what I had done but after I took the First turn off that he told me about the streets just didn't exist that I was supposed to use so I sort of Insisted that he come down and I would follow him back in. Well that worked sort of but he came to a different location to where I told him to meet me and then when we finally linked up I followed him home. When we got there I sort of suggested that the second left was in fact the third left and he replied no that right the second left is a dead end so it doesnt count.

Anyway I was there and when I walked into his home I was greeted with the Modem that I had supplied sitting on top of the TV with a ISP CD siting on top of it. When I picked up the Modem & Disc I asked where his computer was to which I got a Blank Look and he said What Computer? He then pointed to the Destructions printed on the ISP CD that clearly said all you need to connect to the Internet is this Disc and a Modem which he took literally. I suppose the TV was supposed to give a display but I have no idea of how he thought he would input any instructions.

Anyway I just grabbed a Check Book wrote him out a check for the cost of the modem and as far as I was concerned gave him his money back. He wasn't overly happy with this and wanted to be recompensed for his and his wifes travelling expenses which I would have been happy to do if I had of made anything at all on this instead of being a massive waste of my time. I just pointed out to him that I had done nothing wrong and if he wanted to take this any further he should deal with the ISP who had mislead him so badly and left as dipomaticaly as possible.

I'm not sure what happened next but the Telco in Question Issued a recall of the CDs that they had sent out to all addresses as a Freeby and reissued them to any customers who asked for one. I was handed one of the new CDs and the only difference was on the printing on the face which was changed to b]All you need to connect to the Internet is a Computer a Modem and this CD.

He was never happy whenever I went to that customer and until he found another job I was always blamed for not properly explaining that he needed a Computer to do what he wanted.

Things have not improved with Home users ever since as far as I'm concerned.

Col

Blonde Female Customer: My cup holder is stuck, AGAIN. I have pressed the button so many times and the light keeps on blinking.

Support: Ma'am, did you put a oversize cup in the holder.

The cup holder is of course the cd-rom and how do we know the customer was blonde. Its always the stereotype.

Aren't all the 'clueless user' anecdotes examples of 'laughing at someone else's ignorance/naievity'? Clueless-user war stories ARE schadenfreude, and (as was pointed out in the punchline to 'Stranger in a Strange Land') 'funny' IS when it happens to somebody else. And it's good that we CAN laugh, after all; implicit in the humor is the realization that it'll be our turn to be the one who slips on the old banana peel soon enough.........

I have encountered a few users who could definitely be classified as clueless.

Back in the days of Windows NT, one user took it upon himself to "clean up the hard drive" by moving all the directories into separate directories that would be more "organized". He moved the "WINNT" directory, BSOD'd, and then proceeded to panic. Luckily it was recoverable (just booted to a DOS disk and moved the directory back).
One other story is when we'd first implemented software to take over control of a user's desktop. We had sent an e-mail a few weeks previously about the implementation and asked users to be prepared for it. A user called in with e-mail issues, and so I took over the PC to take a look at what I could do remotely. The user proceeded to panic, shut down his computer, unplugged everything from the back of it while yelling repeatedly "I HAVE A VIRUS GET IT OFF NOW!"

There are also the users who are in the high turnover positions at one company I worked at. The receptionist was always filled by temps and so when those temps found other jobs, they moved on. Well, one temp called me in early in the morning stating she can't print can't print. Well, we'd had issues with the printer before with a specific program so I thought that was the case this time. I walked over there, saw no light on the power for the printer, pushed the power button, and stifled my laugh. This would be a typical story except that not two weeks later, they were training a new receptionist, and once again, I was called for a printer issue. Lo and behold, the lady training was the previous user, but it was the new employee who had the issue. So, TWO people missed the power button. Sometimes I wonder if "clueless" is the right word.

A long time ago in a computer room far, far away, we had recently received an IBM 1403 printer. You old-timers might remember that as a large, fast line printer whose hood would open at the push of a button, OR when the paper ran out (usually spilling somebody's cup of coffee or at least the stacked printouts inevitably parked on top).

One day shortly after installation, the hood would not open despite pushing the 'open' button or cycling power. Although I wasn't a hardware tech, before calling for service, I glanced thru the service manual and noted that the hood-opening relay was located along a particular side of the unit.

I figured, what the hell, maybe the relay was stuck or got some crud in its contacts, so I administered a gentle kick to the side panel. Much to my surprise and the awe of bystanders, the hood opened and never failed again!

I should have back-billed IBM $100; $1 for the kick, $99 for knowing where to kick (that was real money in those days).

I set up a "trouble ticket" system when I was IT manager and it provided many a good chuckle. It could only be accessed from a networked PC and it identified both user and the sending PC. My favorite; in reply to a user message from her own PC my hard drive seems to have crashed, support sent back it may be just upset; hug the monitor and got the reply, after an interval you were right. Thats amazing.

I enjoyed reading each and every one of them.

Before I started working at my current employer 24 years ago on the mainframe, an order was placed for a 1000-card-per-minute reader. (Yes, Hollerith cards.) The vendor was out of stock on them, so instead shipped two 500-card-per-minute readers. I'm not sure if they intended us to load every other card in the readers, then start them a split second apart, or what.

(As it happened, however, the faster machines were prone to jamming, our needs were not as pressing as a large company's, and it gave us a backup unit in case one failed.)