(It is the early days of the Internet. The Internet provider for which I work is fairly small and only provides dial-up service. Customers have the option of telnetting into a shell account to connect. We also provide Internet service for a couple of local Internet cafes.)

Me: “Welcome to [ISP]. May I help you?”

Cafe Owner: “Hi, this is [Cafe Owner] at [Internet Cafe]. I have a customer who has an account with you and needs help getting into their shell account.”

Me: “Sure, just put them on the line.”

Customer: “Hi, can you help me?”

Me: “No problem.”

(I walk her through the not-too-complicated steps of opening a telnet session and signing in. This takes quite a while, as the customer isn’t familiar with the process at all.)

Me: “And now you’ll enter your username.”

Customer: “I don’t know what that is.”

Me: “Uh. Okay, well, it’s often the first initial and last name.” 

Customer: “All right.”

Me: “And then the password.”

Customer: “It’s not working.”

Me: “Are you sure you entered the password correctly?”

Customer: “Yeah. Oh, I know what it is. My account is at [Rival ISP].”

Me: “Sure. Uh, I’m not familiar with their information, but try [Rival ISP] dot net for the host?” *total stab in the dark*

Customer: “Oh, that worked. Great! Thank you so much!”

Me: “No problem, I’m glad to help. In the future, though, you might want to consider calling [Rival ISP] when you need help? They’re your provider and will have all the information you need.”

Customer: “WHAT?!”

(The customer abruptly flipped out on me, yelling and cursing, even though I had been nothing but polite throughout the whole transaction, and so had she, up until then. I had to put my manager on the phone, and he told her that she should have called her ISP in the first place!)

I have started a new job and am receiving logins for various computer programs. One requires me to provide answers to security questions in case I forget my password.

I pick a question: “What is your favourite colour?” I type, “Blue.”

“Your answer must be at least five characters.” 

So, for a question you’re supposed to give an answer to that you’ll remember, answers including “Red,” “Pink,” or “Blue” are not allowed. Other questions were “Mother’s maiden name” and “Favourite cousin” — let’s hope your favourite isn’t Jane or Max!

In the time of Windows 3.0, my family’s computer has a word processing program that we use regularly.

One day, my mom is working on the program when one of our more assertive cats jumps up onto the desk, landing square on the keyboard. My mom quickly shuffles the cat out of the way and discovers that the word processing program has closed on her.

Soon enough, we find that the program has actually uninstalled itself. The cat apparently landed just right so its paws hit the sequence of keys needed to start and confirm the uninstall process. That cat really wanted some pets from my mom!

(My partner is doing something involving computer code.)

Me: “What ‘cha doing?”

Partner: “Just a course on image analysis.”

Me: “What language is it in?”

Partner: *looks at me like I’m stupid* “English.”

Me: *laughing* “Man, you only know English; that wasn’t the question.”

Partner: “Oh! Matlab.”

Around 1999 or so, I was a brand-new IT manager in a conglomerate of radio stations. We had a sleeve of “account executives” who thought they were all that.

One called my office one day saying that her data was gone and she couldn’t work, and that her computer was dead. I asked her to bring the box to me, and she did. I rebuilt it with the backup data. The next week, it died again. I rebuilt again. The next week, yet again.

She emailed the GM, VP of operations, my boss, and the owner of the company saying that I was unable to do my job. I was annoyed, at least. The next week, she had the same complaint about her desktop box. I went to her cubicle and retrieved a tower with no fewer than twenty fridge magnets affixed to it. I was vindicated.