Tech Support Guy: *Explaining something to me.* “…do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

Me: “Yes. Thanks for explaining it so simply.”

Tech Support Guy: “I have to. It’s something you learn to do when you’re always the smartest guy in the room. It’s tough.”

Me: “Uh… I suppose.”

Tech Support Guy: “Yeah, it makes me feel like such a social piranha.” 

I was looking at him before (because we were talking, rude not to!), but now I am LOOKING at him. So are all my coworkers in the immediate area.

Me: “You mean social pariah?”

Tech Support Guy: *Turning red.* “Uh… yeah. That.”

Coworker #1: “I heard that social piranhas can consume a social cow in less than five minutes.”

Coworker #2: “That’s an urban legend. I heard that the social piranhas they used to show that had been starved of intelligent conversation for a long time.”

Coworker #3: “Yeah, the normal behavior of a social piranha would just be to nibble at social tidbits here and there.”

The tech support guy made a swift exit. He’s mostly a decent guy, but he does sometimes need to be brought down a peg or two…

I get a tech support ticket sent through.

Ticket: “Need help with the Outlook.”

That’s it. That’s the entire ticket. Most users are courteous enough to post screenshots or detailed descriptions. Not this person. Also, an executive.

Me: “I’m sorry, but your request is lacking in detail. Are you getting error messages? What are you trying to do exactly?”

User: “Outlook offline and spotty.”

Me: “Can you send a screenshot?”

A screenshot is sent. The issue, which he didn’t explain for crap, was that Outlook’s Work Offline toggle was enabled. Kind of important information to exclude, but whatever. That’s an easy fix.

Me: “Search for Work Offline in the search bar at the top of your Outlook window and toggle it under Actions. That will fix the issue.”

User: “No, it just returns results about offline emails.”

Fine. Maybe he didn’t notice it; the search results can be crowded. We can do the direct option instead.

Me: “Open the Send/Receive tab. The toggle is there.”

User: “I can’t toggle it.”

Me: “You click, and it does nothing?”

User: “Yes.”

Fine. Maybe Outlook glitches out. It’s happened to me.

Me: “Please open AnyDesk so I can troubleshoot.”

He opens it surprisingly fast, all things considered. I get connected, navigate to Send/Receive…and click it. It works without issue. Outlook returns to ‘Connected to Microsoft Exchange’ mode. 

Now, at this point, my blood was boiling because he had demonstrated a complete ineptitude at clicking buttons. Thank God this wasn’t a phone call, or my frustration would have been laid bare against my better judgment.

Me: “It’s fixed. Your mailboxes are updating.”

User: “No, it still says working offline.”

Naturally, that’s nonsense. I watched the Working Offline prompt switch to Connected to MS Exchange with my own two eyes. Maybe he didn’t see it yet?

Me: “It’s connected. It says so in this area.” *Hovers above the Connected text.*

User: “No, it still says Work Offline.”

That’s when I noticed. He wasn’t looking at the area I was POINTING TO, he was looking at the literal Work Offline toggle.

Me: “That’s just the toggle, sir. That won’t change in real time. The status below says Connected.”

User: “But why does it still say Work Offline? That means I’m offline.”

I’m fed up. I open my own Outlook. I sent him a message. Politely, of course.

Me: *Via Outlook.* “Your Outlook is working online now. This message would not have arrived otherwise.”

The user is still for a few moments.

User: “Thank you.”

We both disconnect. I’m still dumbfounded several hours later.

I was a small-time, rural small-town computer tech support. I get a call from a regular customer saying they have no Internet and they want help.

I drive out to their acreage and belly up to one of their computers. Yep, no Internet connection.

Me: “I’ll call your Internet Service Provider for you and ask what’s going on. Can I see your latest bill to get your customer number with it?”

Customer: “We don’t have one.”

Me: “You don’t have a bill for me to see?”

Customer: “We never got one.”

Me: “Have you paid them?”

Customer: “We never got a bill.”

Me: “But … have you paid them?”

Customer: “We never got a bill.”

Me: “YOU call them. I’m outta here.”

For some reason, this customer thought that they could get a service and not need to pay for it because they never received a bill. Turns out they changed ISPs (Internet Service Provider), asking the new ISP to send the bills to the e-mail address they had with their old ISP’s domain, which was, of course, cancelled when they terminated that service.

Why the new ISP let e-mailed bills “bounce” without contacting the customer in any other way makes as much sense as the customer giving an invalid e-mail address.

Many years ago, I was working as the sole IT person for a small business (twenty-five staff). I did everything IT-related, from servers, email, backups, computer setup and deployment, helpdesk, etc. If it plugged into an electrical outlet, it was considered IT (including the coffee pot).

We had a woman in Finance who was very pleasant but was completely technology-challenged. I got along with her just fine and, at one point, would have considered her a friend. However, she started having login issues at some point.

The first time this happened, I walked over to her desk and noticed her Caps Lock was on. I turned Caps Lock off and asked her to log in, and she was able to log in fine. The next week, she had the same login issue. I walked over, turned off her Caps Lock again, she logged in successfully, we had a little laugh, and went about our day.

Unfortunately, this started to be a weekly routine. Log in issue, Caps Lock on, turn off Caps Lock, login fine.

As time went on, she got more and more snarky and agitated about it. She started saying things like:

Coworker: “I’m having that issue again. Can you not fix it, so it doesn’t keep happening?”

Like it was my fault, she was consistently enabling Caps Lock on her computer. 

Fast forward about five months, with the Caps Lock issue cropping up at least once a week, sometimes more. On this particular day, our email server had crashed overnight, and I was frantically trying to bring it back up when this woman walked into my office saying:

Coworker: “I can’t log in.”

Me: “I’m extremely busy, but please verify that your Caps Lock isn’t on.”

She is obviously put out by my response and says sharply:

Coworker: “I need this fixed. It is your responsibility to fix my issue.”

Me: “I don’t have time for this right now; go check your Caps Lock.”

Coworker: “This has been a problem for months, and you seem to be incapable of fixing this problem.”

Me: *Frustration boiling over.* “You know what, I’m going to give you a calculator and take away your computer, because you are obviously too stupid to use a computer.”

Coworker: *Sound of disgust.*

She storms off to our CEO’s office. I knew I had crossed a line and feared being fired.

About twenty minutes later, the CEO comes into my office, shuts the door, sits down, and says:

CEO: “What happened?”

I told him the whole thing, apologized for losing my temper, and waited for his response. He took a while to collect his thoughts, me sweating the whole time. He looked me in the eye, gave me a little smile, and said:

CEO: “It’s taken care of itself.”

He then got up and walked out of my office.

Unknown to me, the CEO and HR had been building a case to fire her for quite a while. So, when she stormed into his office, saying it was either 1.) I got fired or 2.) She was going to quit, so he simply said, “We accept your resignation.” And that was it. I worked there several more years after this happened.

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual content.

I’m a customer at a phone shop’s helpdesk. The guy at the desk is helping me troubleshoot my phone, and I see a sign on the wall behind him.

Sign: “We will not troubleshoot phones that have explicit/inappropriate wallpapers.”

Me: “How often does that happen for there to be a sign?”

Employee: *Thousand-yard stare.* “Too many.”

Me: “Ouch.”

Employee: “Last week, I had a couple who handed me an iPad. The wallpaper was the two of them… going at it… from all the angles.”

Me: “Oh my God!”

Employee: “Yeah, I told them to change it, and I pointed to the sign. They told me it doesn’t count as inappropriate as it’s them, not a p*rn star.”

Me: “As if that makes a difference.”

Employee: “Right? But then they told me the reason they were here was that they didn’t know how to change their wallpaper, so I told them they were f***ed… even more so than they were in the wallpaper.”

I laughed and commiserated with him, and was thankful that my wallpaper was a cute picture of my sleeping cat…