| 1. A woman
called the Canon help desk with a problem with
her printer. The tech asked her if she was
"running it under Windows." The woman
responded, "No, my desk is next to the door.
But that's a good point. The man sitting in the
cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is
working fine." |
2.
Tech Support: "OK Bob, let's press the
control and escape keys all at the same time.
That brings up a task list in the middle of the
screen. Now type the letter 'P' to bring up the
Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard,
Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!" |
3. Overheard in
a computer shop:
Customer: "I'd like a mouse mat,
please."
Salesperson: "Certainly sir, we've got a
large variety."
Customer: "But will they be compatible with
my computer?"
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4. I once
received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax
the document back to the sender when I was
finished with it, because he needed to keep it.
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5. Customer in
computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet
onto this disk for me?"
|
6. I work for a
local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls that
start something like this:
Customer: "Hi. Is this the Internet?"
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7. Customer:
"So that'll get me connected to the
Internet, right?"
Tech Support: "Yeah."
Customer: "And that's the latest version of
the Internet, right?"
Tech Support: "Uhh...uh...uh...yeah." |
8. Tech Support:
"All right...now double-click on the File
Manager icon."
Customer: "That's why I hate this Windows -
because of the icons - I'm a Protestant, and I
don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well, that's just an industry
term sir. I don't believe it was meant to-"
Customer: "I don't care about any 'Industry
Terms'. I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well... why don't you click
on the 'little picture' of a filing cabinet... is
'little picture' OK?"
Customer: [click] |
9. Customer:
"My computer crashed!"
Tech Support: "It crashed?"
Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my
game."
Tech Support: "All right, hit
Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."
Customer: "No, it didn't crash-it
crashed."
Tech Support: "Huh?"
Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I
said before. I crashed my spaceship and now it
doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New
Game.'"
Customer: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how
to do that?" |
10. 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 went 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.
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11. I had been
doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet
division for about a month when I had a customer
call with a problem I just couldn't solve. She
could not print yellow. All the other colors
would print fine, which truly baffled me because
the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and
yellow. For instance, green is a combination of
cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every
color of the rainbow printed fine except for
yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges.
I had the customer delete and reinstall the
drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for
help; they offered no new ideas. After over two
hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the
customer to send the printer in to us for repair
when she asked quietly, "Should I try
printing on a piece of white paper instead of
this yellow paper?"
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12. A man
attempting to set up his new printer called the
printer's tech support number, complaining about
the error message: "Can't find the
printer." On the phone, the man said he even
held the printer up in front of the screen, but
the computer still couldn't find it.
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| 13. And another
user was all confused about why the cursor always
moved in the opposite direction from the movement
of the mouse. She also complained that the
buttons were difficult to depress. She was very
embarrassed when we asked her to rotate the mouse
so the tail pointed away from her. |
| 14. Customer:
"Hello? I'm trying to dial in. I installed
the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could
hear that. Then I could hear the two computers
connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I
picked up the phone to see if they were still
connected, and I got the message, 'No carrier,'
on my screen. What's wrong?" |
15. An
unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help
with a Windows installation that had gone
terribly wrong.
Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from
work to install them on my home computer."
Training stresses that we are "not the
Software Police," so I let the little act of
piracy slide.
Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns
out they weren't initialized."
Tech Support: "Do you remember the message
exactly, ma'am?"
Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This
is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to
initialize it?'"
Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
Customer: "After they were initialized, all
the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought
them back to work, and I can't read them in the A
drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is
our only set of Windows disks for the whole
office. Did I do something wrong?"
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16. This guy
calls in to complain that he gets an "Access
Denied" message every time he logs in. It
turned out he was typing his username and
password in capital letters.
Tech Support: "Ok, let's try once more, but
use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters
on my keyboard."
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17. My friend
was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon.
He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one
of the workstations with her arms crossed across
her chest, staring at the screen.
After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was
still in the same position, only now she was
impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she
needed help and she replied, "It's about
time! I pressed the F1 button over twenty minutes
ago!"
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| 18. The person
that sent the system administrator an email
message (his first) then ran to her building to
see if she got it and before she could check,
(all out of breath from running) told her what it
said... |
19. Email from a
friend:
"CanYouFixTheSpacebarOnMyKeyBoard"
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20. The person
that went into the system administrator's office
and asked, "Are you the Internet?"
|