Many years ago, I was working in IT Support for a major manufacturer. I needed to call someone who worked for a software company. I don’t remember why, but I only had an 800 number, not an address.

Employee: “Hello, this is [Employee] at [Software Company].”

Me: “May I speak to Mr. [Contact]?”

Employee: “He’s at lunch. He’ll be back at 1:00.”

Remember, I only had an 800 number, not a location.

Me: “What time zone are you in?”

Employee: “I don’t know what you mean.”

Me: “What time is it right now?”

Employee: “12:30. Mr. [Contact] will be back at 1:00.”

Me: “Thank you. For future reference, you’re in the Eastern Time Zone.”

I’m following up on an online posting for a job. The client offered $20 (I assumed an hour) to manage his tech support team. However…

Client: “Okay, so that’s $400 per month and a bonus for performance.”

Me: “What? I couldn’t even afford my cable and electricity bills on that.”

Client: “Oh, so, you’re one of those foreigners that think we should all just pay at American pay rates. No way. If you were American, maybe, but—”

Me: “I live and was born and raised in Texas. You’re in Illinois, right?”

Client: “Oh, never mind. I only hire Filipinos.”

Me: “I’m actually Filipino, too.”

Client: “I meant poor Filipinos.”

I was working for a company that provided integrated dispensing and till systems for pubs in the UK. Often, the main unit was based in the cellar where the beer barrels are kept (along with the pump lines).

One morning, a customer called.

Customer: “I can’t get my tills working!”

I ran through a couple of options with them.

Me: “You’re going to need to reboot your computer.”

Customer: “I can’t. The basement is flooded.”

They seemed surprised when I suggested this might stop the tills from working.

I worked in tech support during the dial-up era, circa 2002. This guy called, furious.

Customer: “I caught my young teenage son looking at adult content on the computer! He’s not supposed to be able to do that!”

After at least fifteen minutes of arguing and walking him through parental controls, I was pretty confused as to how his son could have possibly gotten to any adult content. I started to ask the customer questions like if he had another computer in the house.

It turned out that his son was on his friend’s computer.

I had to face-palm. The guy literally thought the parental controls worked on any computer his son was on.

Me: “Sir, the controls only work on the computer they are installed on.”

He still didn’t understand and got even more furious.

Customer: “I am cancelling my account with you! I’m going to call [Competition] because their parental controls work the way I want them to!”

A client’s twelve-year-old hard drive dies on me while I am transferring his files to a new computer.

Client: *berating.* “You broke my hard drive!”

Me: “I didn’t break it, sir, but it was very old. Do you have backups?”

Client: “I have backups of the hard drive. I’ll bring them in for you to finish transferring the files, but I’m not happy about this!”

The next day, he came in with a stack of CDs.

Client: “I’ve been backing up all my documents every week for the last few years.”

I pop in the latest “backup” and all it contains are a few kilobytes of shortcuts. I check the next disk, then the next one, and the one after that. Every single disk has the same few shortcuts saved.

Me: “Sir, can you demonstrate your backup procedure on my computer?”

He inserts a blank CD, waits for the d: drive to show up in My Computer, then drags the icons for Word, Excel, IE, and his financial software onto the d: drive. He assumes that this process is saving all his documents, spreadsheets, favorites, etc.

Me: “Sir, you have not actually been backing up any data.”

I try to politely mention that he’s not been backing up for years and years.

Client: *Furious.* “You did this! I’m going to sue you! You lost all my home business data!”

A month later the same customer came in with his new computer like nothing had happened and I (awkwardly) had to teach him how to use Skype.