We’ve Come A Long Way, But Those Days Were Dark

In the mid-1990s, I work in tech support for a Swedish company that manufactures and sells a system for time registration (employee clock-in and out) and computer software to handle the data. I have some calls that I will never forget. Remember, the computer is quite new, and most of the users have no experience. Most customers can handle the computer and hardware (the clock), but then there is this customer.

Customer: “The clock doesn’t work properly. I get an error trying to get the data.”

Me: “You must reset the clock.”

Customer: “How do I do that?”

Me: “First, you go to the clock.”

Before I have time to tell her the next step, I hear a clatter as she puts down the headset and footsteps when she walks away toward the clock.

A couple of minutes later, I hear steps again and an embarrassed client asking:

Customer: “What am I supposed to do with the clock?”

Another day, I get a call from the same customer. The computer, running MS-DOS, is locked.

Me: “You must reset the computer.”

Customer: “How? I have never done that before.”

Me: “Just press Alt-Control-Delete.”

Customer: “Wait, what?”

Me: “First, press and hold ‘Alt’ on the keyboard.”

Customer: “Okay.”

She puts the headset down, walks away, and comes back. I hear a lot of giggling before she picks up the headset again.

Customer: “Okay, and now what?”

Me: “Excuse me, but what exactly did you do?”

Customer: “Just what you said! I got two colleagues to help me press ‘allt’ on the keyboard.”

The Swedish word “allt” sounds like “alt” but literally means “everything”. She and her colleagues pressed everything on the keyboard.

These two calls weren’t the worst.

The customer is having issues with the data, and we need to clear a folder of files to restart the process. Remember, this is pre-Windows, so everything is like only using the command prompt in Windows.

Me: “Okay, can you see the text ‘C:\[application]\[data folder]’ before the blinking cursor?”

Customer: “Yes!”

Me: “Are you sure?”

Customer: “100%.”

Me: “‘C:\[application]\[data folder]’ before the cursor?”

Customer: “Yes!”

Me: “Okay. Type ‘DELETE’ and press enter.”

I hear clicking sounds and a long beep.

Me: “What happened?”

Customer: “A message appeared: ‘Unknown command or file name’.”

I get a bad feeling.

Me: “Are you sure that ‘C:\[application]\[data folder]’ was just before the cursor?”

Customer: “Yes!”

Me: “Really sure?”

Customer: “Yes! I’m sure. ‘C:\[application]\[data folder]’ was five lines above the cursor!”

Me: “Can you please read the whole line where you typed ‘DELETE’?”

Customer: “A ‘C’, a colon, a slash, and an arrow pointing right.”

So, the line said, “C:\>”.

Me: “Okay. You have to tell the local IT crew to send someone to reinstall your computer. You have just managed to wipe the root folder.”