Caller: “My iMac won’t turn on.”

I try the usual suggestions to unplug it and plug it in again, etc. Just on a hunch, I ask:

Me: “Does your home have power?”

Caller: “It does! It’s questions like this that are getting me more and more upset at your crappy product and horrible service! Send someone out to fix it!”

That’s not something we do at this point in troubleshooting. At this point, I’ve asked all the usual questions, but then she claims she is having trouble seeing because it’s kind of dark. So, I ask again:

Caller: “Yes, I have power!”

So, as most tech support people do, I distrust her responses at this point. It’s time to test the outlet.

Me: “Do you have a table lamp or something that can generate light nearby?”

Caller: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay, great, can you plug it into the same outlet the iMac is using? Replace one cord with the other.”

Sure enough, the lamp doesn’t work. She flips the switch a few times — nothing. She then blithely responds:

Caller: “Oh, yeah, power’s been out all day, but it should still work. I just bought it! I paid a s***-ton for it!”

A customer comes in with a laptop he purchased a month ago.

Customer: “Your warranty says you can fix my laptop if it’s broken within thirty days, yes?”

Me: *Looking at his receipt* “Yes, and today is day thirty, so you’re just in time! What issue are you having?”

Customer: “Your laptop is s***! You said it was fast, but it’s so slow! It takes forever to do everything!”

Me: “May I have a look?”

The customer hands his laptop over, and immediately, I know something is wrong. It’s hot to the touch, and the fans are going wild. I open it up, and the screen is an explosion of browser windows, pop-ups, and more open tabs than I can count.

Me: “Sir, you have a lot of tabs open!”

Customer: “What are tabs?”

Me: “You have a lot of websites open at the same time, sir. Why don’t you close a few?”

Customer: “You can do that? They’re not forever?”

Me: “I think I know why your computer is slow, sir…”

Related:
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 10
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 9
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 8
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 7
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 6

I work in cell phone tech support, servicing the southeast USA. This caller has an accent like he’s waist-deep in the Big Muddy, and he has been a perfect customer: using a different phone, all the information available, and sharp on following troubleshooting. I’ve lost track of whether the device is on or off.

Me: “What state is your phone in?”

Caller: “Mississippi.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Related:
Technically Correct: The Best Kind Of Correct, Part 2
Technically Correct: The Best Kind Of Correct

I once worked for a company as an IT technician. One morning, I got a call from one of our finance clerks, a lady who was pleasant enough to be around in social situations but became a little demanding when it came to IT-related matters.

Her phoning me up in itself was an IT no-no; users were supposed to use the IT self-service portal to log tickets, but that’s another story for another day. She described a relatively common issue with a relatively common piece of software — at least in our office environment.

I’d worked enough with this piece of software to know that the issue she was describing would be resolved quickly and easily.

Me: “That’s a simple fix. You just need to restart the computer.”

Clerk: “I’ve already restarted the computer. I’ve restarted it twice, in fact.”

I knew this to be false.

Me: “Can I restart it again for you?”

Clerk: “I don’t want you to do that because I’ve already done it twice.”

I remotely accessed her PC anyway and went to “Restart”.

Me: “Call me back if you still have the problem after this restart.”

She never called me back.

Related:
The Error Here Was Believing Them When They Said There Was No Error Message

I worked in tech support for a university about twenty years ago when we still had some 486 computers without CD-ROM drives in a few of our computer labs.

A young lady asked for some help getting her CD out of the computer. “No problem,” I thought as I grabbed a handy-dandy CD removal tool, commonly called “an unbent paperclip”.

Me: “Where were you working?”

She directed me to the lab with the oldest computers — those 486 machines without any CD-ROM drives I mentioned earlier.

I was a bit confused, but I soldiered on.

Me: “Can you show me the problematic computer?”

“This is going to be interesting,” I thought to myself. “The paperclip is NOT going to help.”

She had managed to put the CD into the five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk drive.

Me: “What did you do?”

Woman: “I was just following my teacher’s instructions.”

Me: “Why didn’t you use one of the labs with the newer computers with the CD-ROM drives?”

Woman: “I’ve never used a computer before.”

Me: “Why didn’t you ask for help?”

I did my best to explain that we would have to dismantle the computer to get her CD out and that it may not be usable once retrieved. She was upset by the prospect of losing her disk.

Well, not only did we have to remove the drive from the computer, a desktop case, but we had to destroy the drive in the process.

Related:
Their Knowledge Is A Bit Floppy, Part 3
Their Knowledge Is A Bit Floppy, Part 2
Their Knowledge Is A Bit Floppy