Unfiltered Story #193957

I was Tech Support Manager at a software company dealing with Fortune 500 companies and their over-paid, unqualified DBAs. One day I noticed two of my people ( tech support and a programmer) dealing with a customer issue. I stepped in to help.

Customer: Your [product piece] is wrong. It isn’t programmed right. You need to fix it. I have spent days figuring this out already!

Me: Well, that is unusual, since we have hundreds of customers using this piece, but explain what we mean.
{customer explains rewriting piece, I start getting brilliant idea}

Me: Is your system setup XYZ? Or ABC?
Customer: ABC.
Me: I see, well you are looking at something that only shows data if your system is XYZ (thus the name XYZ_blah). You need to be using ABC_blah. See the code from that is exactly what you have been trying to change XYZ_blah into.
Customer: well, how would I have known that?
Me: If you look at our on-line help, which you created for the users, if specifically says what I just told you.
[crickets]