The Loony Bin
(
loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk
)
Wed, 8 May 1996 14:03:22 +0100
Hiya people...
Even more silly stories...
Wishes & Dreams...
- ANDREA
xx
--
************<andrea@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk>************
******************<ajc6@ukc.ac.uk>*******************
*** ***
*** THE LOONY BIN ***
*** loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk ***
*** ***
******************Internet Goddess*******************
*********************ANDROMEDA***********************
------- Forwarded message follows -------
EVEN MORE BLINDLY IGNORANT COMPUTER USERS
On another occasion, a lady came into the store, apparently interested
in buying a home computer. After surveying the models on display, she
walks over to one and points the the monitor and keyboard saying, "I
think I need one of these, and one of those, ..." She then points to
the CPU and continues, "... but I don't think I need one of those.
User walks into the office. "This disk doesn't work."
Computer literate non-staff: "You have covered the disk slot with the
label."
One of our lusers called me about a problem she was having with her
PC, she was using a vt220 emulator to connect to one of our
UNIX-boxes, and "half of her prompts were missing". Two days earlier I
had set up the emulation software for her, and had checked that
everything was ok, so I tried to get her to be a bit more specific
(fat chance!). Anyway, to cut a long story short, it turned out that
the screen on this particular PC was one of those fancy things where
you can adjust the height, width vertical and horisontal placement of
the screen image......she had accidentally shifted the whole image to
the left, so the first half of her prompts were off-screen. :-)
A tech support guy once told me that he got a call from someone saying
that the computer screen just went black and the computer wouldn't
respond at all. The tech guy (starting with the obvious) asked the
guy if the computer was still plugged in that maybe his foot had
knocked the plug out of the socket. The guy on the other end of the
phone said to hold on that he would be back in a minute with a
flashlight because the electricity had just gone out in his building
and he couldn't see under the desk without the lights....
On my previous job a user needed a program but didn't have a modem, so
I told him I'd overnight him a diskette. He then asked me if i could
*fax* the diskette to him! If I didn't need my job I would have told
him I would, but dominos was faxing me a pizza and he'd have to
wait a bit. :)
Customer: Where can I get a BIOS upgrade for by 286 computer?
Tech: The unit should have been shipped with the latest bios.
Customer: Well I upgraded the processor myself, and my computer
doesn't seem to work.
Tech: What did you upgrade the processor to?
Customer: I upgraded it to a 486DX-50.
Tech: Sir... The 286 chip is soldered on the motherboard!
Customer: I know, I took out my handy soldering iron and took it out and
put the 486 on myself.
Tech: Sir, the 486 is bigger than the 286.
Customer: I know, I had to use quite a bit of solder to solder the
extra pins together.
Tech: Sir I have to put you on hold for a second.
the Tech laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair.
Our company used to sell time on our computers to very small companies
to do their bookkeeping, etc. One day, a new woman came in to use the
TRS-80. She fumbled about for about 10 minutes but I paid no attention
to her. Finally she came out & grumbled something about how the computer
wouldn't turn on. I grilled her with the usual obvious questions: Did
you turn the switch on? Did you plug it in? Did you turn on the switch
on the power strip? She was sure she had done everything right. I was
sure she neglected to plug one of the power cords into the power strip.
So, I went to investigate and she was *RIGHT*, she *HAD* plugged
everything in to the power strip... including the power strip's own
power cord - talk about a ground loop!
A woman called the shop where she had bought a PC and complained that it
didn't work properly: Every time she switched it on the screen was
filled with characters. Two technicians were sent out and were met by a
woman with tits about twice the size of Dolly Parton's and glasses about
two centimeters thick. They asked her to switch on the computer. This
she did, and then leaned over the keyboard to read what was on the
screen...The problem was quickly solved.
We had a customer call us once, saying that they were having problems getting
their new disks to work in the machine. It turned out that the customer thought
they had to TRIM THE 5.25" DISKS DOWN to fit in their 3.5" drive...
And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in
the direction oposite the movement of the mouse (when she moved her
mouse left, the cursor went right, etc.) She also complained about how
hard it was to hit the buttons. She was quite embarrassed when we asked
her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed AWAY from her...
I was working for a computer retailer in Denver when my supervisor
received a phone call from a very irate customer. According to this man,
he had purchased his computer two days before, had read the instructions,
and had performed a backup of the hard drive exactly as instructed. The
problems started the moment he reformatted his hard drive to test his backup.
First revision of user manual includes :
Insert disk A
Press ENTER
Wait for reply LOADING EXECUTED
Insert disk B
Following a complaint by a user, the second revision reads :
Insert disk A
Press ENTER
Wait for reply LOADING EXECUTED
Remove disk A
Insert disk B