Me: “Thank you for calling technical support, this is [my name]. May I get your company’s phone number or ticket number, please?”

Customer: “My company’s number is [number].”

(This number pulls up her company, but it’s an inactive account. I then look it up by the company’s name, and find the active account under a completely different phone number.)

Me: “Alright, ma’am, it actually looks as though we have the account under this phone number.” *gives her the new number*

Customer: “That’s the number I gave you!”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry about that; I thought you had given me [first phone number].”

Customer: “No, no! I gave you [second number], not that other one. You typed it in wrong!”

Me: “Oh, okay. So I just happened to mistype the phone number into a completely different number, which also happened to pull up your company, just by chance?”

Customer: “YES!”

(I am a student worker at a college IT department. Most of our calls come from older professors who often have trouble with their machines. This call comes from a student.)

Me: “Hello, this is [school] IT department. What can I do for you today?”

Student: “Hello, yes, I’m trying to give a presentation in [classroom] but the projector won’t connect! It won’t show any image, you have to come right now!”

Me: “Thank you for calling, I’ll be right over.”

(I go to the classroom, and indeed, the projector says it can’t find any source. I check all the wiring, double check the projector, all while the class is waiting and the student is ranting.)

Student: “I can’t believe this! IT never gets anything right! I’m going to send out an email to the whole school about this! Why can’t you get it to work? I have to give this presentation!”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry, but everything is hooked up correctly, it should be working.”

Professor: “Well, I guess we’ll just have to push all the presentations back.”

(I suddenly realized I just assumed that someone my own age would know how to operate a computer, so I fall back on what I would do if this were a professor problem and go to open the cabinet where the computer tower is. I start to laugh as I realize the computer isn’t even turned on! I press the power button, and sure enough, the projector shows the start-up screen.)

Student: “You got it to work! What did you do? What was wrong with it?”

Me: “You didn’t turn on the computer.”

(The rest of the class laughs and the student sheepishly thanks me and logs on to the computer as I leave.)

Related:
PEBCAK, Episode V

Me: “Welcome to tech support. How can I help?”

(A very drunk man speaks, very slowly.)

Man: “They were supposed to come fix it between 1 and 2 today, and never came.”

(It’s nearly 4 pm, and while we don’t do those kind of time windows, sometimes someone gives incorrect information. So, I ask for his account information, during which I find out that he is having issues with his TV service, which is not with us.)

Me: “Sir, who is your television service with?”

Man: “I. Don’t. Know.”

Me: “Do you have a bill from them?”

Man: “I. Don’t. Know.”

Me: “Well, who did you call for the service repair?”

Man: “I. Don’t. Know.”

(He then starts drunken rambling about his TV not working, and no one showing up between 1 and 2 pm. He then says the company name in the middle of the ramble!)

Me: “Sir, your TV service, is it with [company]?”

Man: “Yes, they were supposed to come fix my TV today between 1 and 2!”

Me: “Yes, sir, but you called your phone and internet company, not your cable company.”

Man: “Oh, can you transfer me to them?”

Me: “No, you’ll need to call them.”

Man: “I don’t know their number.”

Me: “Sir, look in your phone book.”

Man: “I. Can’t. Find. One.”

Me: “Then call 411.”

Man: “That costs money!”

(We loop around this for a while. I can see he calls us all the time to make us look up phone numbers for him, which the company doesn’t like. Finally it ends with him accepting this.)

Man: “In case I don’t talk to you again this season… Have a holly, jolly Christmas / It’s the best time of the year…”

(He proceeds to sing, in drunken off key slur, the entire song of ‘have a holly jolly Christmas’. My company doesn’t allow us to disconnect calls, for any reason, so I had to listen to the whole thing!)

(At my ISP, we offer rental modems for wireless connections that come pre-encrypted with a 26 character long password. Many customers mistake zeros for O’s; I’m speaking to one such customer after correcting it for him.)

Customer: “I just couldn’t figure it out. I tried several times, but it didn’t want to work.”

Me: “Well, it looks like we found the problem. Just remember that there are no O’s in that password—only zeros.”

Customer: “That’s gotta be it. I know the first time I tried it I used O’s, and then I tried circles. Guess I didn’t think to try zeros!”

(I work in a technology help desk fixing computers. A preteen girl brings in her laptop. The entire left side is damaged, and quite badly.)

Girl: “My laptop isn’t working and I don’t know why.”

Me: “Well, it may have to do with the damage on the side.”

Girl: “What damage?”

Me: “The entire left side of your laptop is smashed up.”

Girl: *surprised* “Oh! When did that happen?”

Me: “Have you dropped it recently?”

Girl: “Well, yeah, I’m really klutzy, so I tend to drop it out of my car when I go to school.”

Me: “Okay. Well, we can take a look at it and try to fix it for you so your laptop works again. In the future, try not to drop your laptop so much.”

Girl: “Oh, is it bad to drop it a lot?”

Related:
Laptop Flop