Their Knowledge Is A Bit Floppy, Part 4

Canada, College & University, Students, Stupid, Tech Support, Technology | Learning | January 20, 2024

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.