Won’t Spoon-Feed You That Solution

(I work as an IT Support person, answering phone calls and emails about IT problems. We work remotely so we are never physically at a customer’s site.)

Me: “Hello. How can I help you?”

Caller: “Hello! Our printer won’t stop printing! Please help! It’s going through a lot of pages!”

Me: “Okay, can you tell me which computer the printer is connected to? Has the print queue been cleared?”

Caller: “I’m not sure. I think it might be PC1, but we’ve stopped it for the moment.”

Me: “No worries. I’ll connect. You say you’ve stopped the printer; have you unplugged the printer?”

Caller: “No, we’ve put a spoon in it.”

Me: “Sorry, you’ve put a what in it?!”

Caller: “A spoon! We jammed it in the front. The paper isn’t moving now… Was that bad?”

Me: “Well… To be honest, it’s not great…”