It's time for.. Computer Stupidities! (hilarious real life IT posts)

[displacedtexan]

Today's Topic: Printers

* Customer: "I tried to print but the computer can't find the printer. Come over and fix it, NOW!!!"
* Tech Support: "Is it turned on?"

Silence.

* Customer: "It's turned on NOW, but it still doesn't print."
* Tech Support: "Did you let it warm up?"

Silence.

* Customer: "It seems to be working now. I guess you don't have to come over."

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Yesterday a well-known customer with frequent printer problems called me, saying: "It won't print anymore, just as usual."

* Customer: "It won't print anymore, just as usual."
* Tech Support: "Well, is the printer turned on?"
* Customer: "Well, yes, but...the PC ain't. Never mind. Bye."

* Tech Support: "Is this a local or a LAN printer?"
* Customer: "It's on my desk."

* Customer: "Could you please come over and assign my C:\ drive to the laser printer?"

***********************************

Asked of a student worker at the front desk of a university lab:

* "Do your printers have Adobe Reader?"

***********************************

Got a call from a woman said that her laser printer was having problems: the bottom half of her printed sheets were coming out blurry. It seemed strange that the printer was smearing only the bottom half. I walked her through the basics, then came over and printed out a test sheet. It printed fine. I asked her to print a sheet, so she sent a job to the printer. As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and showed it to me. I told her to wait until the paper came out on its own. Problem solved.

***********************************

I work in tech support for a specialist software company. However, as a lot of our customers are academics, we do get calls for a lot of weird and wonderful things and try to help out where we can. One of my customers I avoid like the plague. He once rang up and told me the printer (an ex-company machine) we sold him had run out of paper, so he asked if we could send him some more.

I just wish that I had thought of the proper response sooner and volunteered to fax him some.

Much more at...
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

1. My favorite 'brain fart' client

is a court recorder who uses his PC for transcription. One afternoon I got a panic call from him- he couldn't get any audio from his computer! I had to come over and fix it NOW!

I drove halfway across town in rush hour traffic, walked into his home and went to his desk, and pushed the power button on his speakers.

Oopsie!

[The Spirit of JFK]

2. Broken Cup Holder

One of my first jobs at "a major educational publisher" was to train all the editors on Macs. They had been using a mainframe system with terminals.

Anyway, many of these editors had been there for about 100 years and totally engrained in the old system...so some were a little slow on the uptake.

A few months after the traning was done, and I was on to other things, one of the editors calls me. She tells me the cup holder on her computer was broken and wanted to know what she should do. Naturally I was puzzled....a cup holder? So I asked her if it was a special promotion...etc, and she had no idea. But it seemed important to her (and she was a senior editor) so I went down to take a look. It was the CD tray. For several months she was pressing the little button...the tray would pop out...and she would put her coffee cup/water glass on it.

[Princess Turandot]

3. I'm not an IT person, but on a pet related board that I go to..

people sometimes ask simple PC questions and I will try to help out.
One of these posters is very nice, and well-meaning and beyond clueless. Just today, she posted abt a noise coming from her computer, which she thought might be the fan. She then asked if she should OIL it.

I left that one alone. Someone else tried to help her but it turned out that she had a small clock which had fallen behind the PC which was emitting a sound.