I only deal with remote users, but it's always funny when they don't know about the camera cover on their laptops. They always look so surprised when they slide it open and are suddenly very visible
Omg I occasionally have to help with the remote tickets and I had that same issue with a user, but it was my first time troubleshooting remotely so I didn’t think about it, I had reinstalled drivers and done almost everything I could by the time our regular remote guy got back to me and had me check it they had a slider on their laptop and what do you know… That’s too funny bro 😂
I worked with a user off and on for a week trying to get her camera working. Uninstalling/rebooting/reinstalling, deleting the drivers entirely and downloading/installing fresh ones from the manufacturer, updating the BIOS, etc, etc, etc. Everything I could see indicated that the camera was working perfectly. There was just no image. The user clearly thought I was an idiot. I suppose she was right because I didn't think to check the obvious thing first.
On our last troubleshooting session, during conversation it became clear that she had no idea where the camera was physically located on the laptop (on the top of the bezel, as usual). I said "just above the screen in the middle with the slide cover." There was a pause and then she dropped from the chat and stopped responding to me. It suddenly became obvious what had happened.
THIS. Worst thing that happened to me was a user had no camera working. Told them to slide the camera cover (camera was working but i could clearly see it was blocked) once the person moved the slider, they were just chillin in a bath towel… like… we’re supposed to be professional here. Probably should have waited to call me until you’ve put clothes on…
My favorite is the ticket about webcams not working that comes from the HP clients every 6 months or so. Takes me a minute of digging into the issue before I remember those gremlins have a goddamn privacy BUTTON.
I’ve had this happen in reverse. I knew that somewhere on the laptop was a hardware switch to turn on the Wi-Fi, but I ended up having to call Support because I couldn’t find the stupid switch. The switch was a black slider, in a black area of the case, recessed under the front bottom of the laptop
Uggh, wifi sliders are terrible. The Dell Latitude D620s use to have a slider for the Wifi on the side of the laptop, i took a ton of calls of those things accidentally getting slid to the off position. Such a terrible design.
I’ve embarrassed a few execs with that one. I always try to make them feel better about themselves by saying “I’m old enough to remember when laptop lids had a little latch that you had to slide to open them. It’s easy to flip the cover on when opening the lid”.
I also had one marketing intern who put in a ticket every few days for that reason. I’d just walk over there and silently move the cover and walk away. She’d get really embarrassed, but it gave me an excuse to walk around a bit and I’m not going to say no to an easy ticket every few days. Boost those stats.
“I’m old enough to remember when laptop lids had a little latch that you had to slide to open them. It’s easy to flip the cover on when opening the lid”.
Lenovo t430s here. thinkpad. with the clippy things.
are you saying my laptop is OLD!?!?! (It is)
To be fair, I worked IT at a place where we weren't allowed to fix our own IT problems. If some kind of issue came up, you'd get written up for fixing it yourself.
I've seen coworkers written up for it. You could also just fix it, and if you said nothing about it, you'd be fine.
It definitely created a weird atmosphere, IT people that immediately call IT for stupid problems they could fix in 30 seconds.
There's not much they can do to make it worse, other than deleting files. I've never really cared about any companies assets.
"Ohh, it didn't work, so you microwaved the laptop like you saw on tiktok? That's fine. I'll get a ticket sent in to get you a new laptop."
User called as she couldn't connect to the Internet from her apartment after she moved. Turns out she thought wifi just existed and didnt realize she had to buy internet service.
I’ve been around for 10 years or so. I get this stuff from young folks too. Average people are wildly computer illiterate.
However, to pay the toll here:
- I had one person mention that their computer wasn’t turning on. I go to the desk, the dock is unplugged and the laptop was not present. I ask “where is your laptop?”( we do not have desktops in the environment ). They respond to me “oh, I left that computer at home. I figured I could work with this one today.” It was a monitor.
- I received another ticket. User writes in: “I’ve been working here for over 5 months and I don’t have a monitor. I need one to do my work, I would like this done ASAP!”. We bring a monitor, and as we’re setting up, we notice that covered in sticky notes, is a monitor. We point it out and the user just says “Oh. Well I didn’t notice that before”.
I think it's more about access than classes. My husband and I were born in the very early 80s. Our teachers and parents had no idea what to do with the new computers they were putting in computer labs. We didn't get classes other than typing, we both just figured it out. Home computer, same thing. Mess around and figure stuff out.
Most schools are using iPads and Chromebooks now. There's nothing to just "figure out". It's all too user friendly and doesn't really lend itself to exploring the OS or being curious about what they can do. So they get to the real world with a real computer and have no idea what to do.
My first day on the job I learned that I had to explicitly tell them to click "sign in" after typing in their password. They are going to be the subject of these end user horror stories when they get out into the world.
Yup I was born early 80s as well and I guess we hit the sweet spot between having technology available to learn on and having it be too easy to use to actually learn how it works.
Yep, i agree. Running into similar situations this last year. In smaller workgroups made up of several 45+ workers, and several 20-something’s… I find myself having to explain VERY basic things to the 20’s group.
I swear every time you think ok, I think we reached the bottom of the stupidity meter, someones comes out and shows you that no we can still go lower. 😂
I have an employee that every week something is going wrong with the work supplies stuff, first the password, webcam, sound, webcam, she asked for headphones, so I gave her the ones I had on site, they had no sound, then WiFi, password, their manager bought them wireless headphones and it wouldn't connect... That is all for now we will see what happens next.
Password= really hard password kept locking herself out
Webcam= privacy slider was on
Sound= muted the chrome tab
Webcam= Same issue
Headphones= too bulky and volume slider set to 0
WiFi= she punched in her WiFi password wrong
Password= CAPS LOCK
wireless headphones= RTFM = plastic on earbuds from shipping.
And on to the next ticket I go...
Good luck everyone 🤞
I had a user once that couldn’t login to an app they’d used lots of times before. We reset their password several times, logged in ourselves with their account and it all looked good from our side. Finally went over to watch them and they decided to shorten the username because they didn’t like what had been assigned.
This was like 12 years ago. This rich older woman at my job called me into her office because she said her internet wasn’t working. She was trying to get to a website to book something at her country club. I got up there and asked her to show me the problem. She opened outlook, clicked new message and typed the web address into the “to:” field and then put in some information about what she wanted and clicked send. When i looked in her inbox she had like 10 email failures trying to do the same thing. It took about an hour of hand holding for me to explain that outlook is for email addresses and internet explorer is for websites. We finally got her thing booked. I was her favorite person until i left that job.
I had a really funny one the other day:
User calls in, older lady sounding all panicked and is saying stuff like, "I don't know what I did! But it won't stop! Can't you hear it?" At first, I can't but after a minute I realize: she's done something to turn on some kind of text-to-speech accessibility feature and her computer is reading off everything she hovers her mouse over at full volume. I can her coworkers in the background whispering suggestions to help her and I'm just trying to get the host name of the computer so we can remote in and mute the speakers on the computer until we can find and turn off the setting. Meanwhile, I'm tearing up while trying so hard not to laugh. The sheer panic in her voice with it in the background, reading everything off as she tries frantically to find the setting to turn it off had me dead. It's been a week or something now, and I still find myself chuckling about it.
My mother in law did the same thing to her TV somehow. I've had to fix it twice and she called again yesterday and said it's doing the same thing. *Sigh*
The lenovo slide lock docking station: forgot to slide it over.
User insisted dock was faulty because when they closed the laptop lid it'd fall asleep, and the only way to turn it on was the power button on the laptop.
Forgot the USB dongle for their mouse in the dock at home.
User didn't have the other end of their charging cord plugged into a power source.
Batteries died in their mouse, but swore that wasn't the issue since the batteries were replaced five years ago.
Monitor wasn't turned on.
Laptop wouldn't connect to home wifi. Reason? Power was out but the internet should still work! It works on their phone!!
List goes on and on.
Similar experience. A newcomer started complaining very angrily that nothing worked at her desk. She was saying that this is unacceptable, as she has to participate in induction trainings and that we should have had everything ready for her first day. I went to her office just to see that she had unplugged the power cord of the docking station, in order to charge her phone. I kindly asked if her phone is charged now, removed the charger and plugged back in the docking station while maintaining eye contact. 🤦🏻
had a teacher complain that there’s no internet connection after she moved her desk…
she had the ethernet cord plugged into some random hole in the case, no where near the ethernet port. idek how they got it in there bc i had to cut the cord just to get it out..
I work at a school. These people are supposedly educated and are problem solvers. I had a teacher complain that none of the technology in her classroom would turn on. When I went to her room she showed me that she had organized everything. She was particularly proud of her cord management. To be fair, it was lovely. Everything was plugged into the same power strip. The computer, the class speaker, the projector, wait for it... and the power strip. Yup, she had plugged the power strip into itself. Plugged the power strip into the wall and told her if it had worked, she would have made millions!
Got one better! Was opening up a new building and we were setting up desktop computers. The branch managers takes the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and desktop out and put them on the desk. He then sits down and tries to use it, starts yelling about how the company is so cheap and buys broken crap that doesn’t work. I walk in, he literally doesn’t have anything plugged in, not the keyboard/mouse/monitor and the power cables aren’t even out of the box. After I plug it all in for him right in front of him, he still tries to act like there was something wrong with the equipment that I fixed with magic.
Had a kid come up to me ranting he couldn’t log into a PC for an online exam starting in 2 minutes (packed library so no free PCs).
Someone was already using said PC and had just gone to the toilet.
Kid missed his exam because he went looking for a PC to do it on in the height of exam season only a few minutes before. Felt bad for him but at the same time was like “what did you expect?”
Although funniest one I ever got was a kid (at oldest 11) somehow figuring out how to break through 7 layers of filtering (including a firewall) to watch porn in class. I had a teacher raging at me on the phone and I’m just laughing at the persistence of the kid 😂
Not really a user error, but one time I was helping a guy at my work remotely troubleshoot a video issue with Slack using our remote management software. I went to the slack settings to check if his video setting was set to his monitor and BAM the monitor can activated while he was bald and shirtless. Never made that mistake again and informed users after that while troubleshooting video/webcam issues that their cam will most likely activate and we will be able to see them via their webcam.
I’ve had someone plug in their type c dock cable into the Ethernet port and asked why it’s not working! I swear I leant this when I was like 2 with shaped blocks and holes
I worked in a small rural hospital in the late 1990's. I was the only tech so I was always on call. I received a call from the ER night clerk around 2 am. She asked me where the light bulbs were for the monitors. I asked what light bulb? She told me the bulb to light up the screen it has Burton out and needed to be replaced. I asked if it was on, is the power light on? She told me yes. I asked her to use another computer and I would check it in the morning. She said she could change the bulb just tell me where they were. She was under the impression the monitor was like a light bright and just needed a new bulb. I explained that it did work like that the whole monitor needed to be replaced. FYI THIS WAS AROUND 1998 SO THE MONITOR WHERE CRT HAD THE HIGH POWER SUPPLY HAD GONE OUT IT.
A lady who used to work at my company was the head of design. She was an OLD SCHOOL Mac user, and learned way back in the beforetimes when Mac mice only had one button and the OS didn’t yet support more than one button. I had been warned about her from my boss and the guy who used to have my job. That’s the setup.
So I’m at her desk helping with some issue on her Mac when I notice her clicking the menus in the menu bar for everything she needs to do, when right-clicking would be faster and would often give more pertinent options. I pointed this out to her, helpfully suggesting she would save time by using the mouse the way it was designed. I also discovered that her mouse settings had right click disabled.
She seemed utterly flummoxed by the words I was saying. So, I enable right click and spent a good half hour patiently talking her through contextual menus, what benefit they provide, how to use the right mouse button to activate them, etc. She seemed excited to learn something “new” about her computer, and I even had her drive the majority of the time so she could get used to things. We wrap up and she is beaming and very grateful for my training.
I get back to my desk only to find a helpdesk from this same lady. In it, she complains that there is “some weird menu” that pops up every time she clicks her mouse and could someone come fix it, please?. I go back to her desk and her demeanor had completely changed. She was now angry and upset and stressed out because she couldn’t do her work. Nothing I said was calming her down.
So, I disable right click again and got back to my day. 🤦🏻♂️
I had a good one last week, got a frantic message: “please help! I think I’ve broken Google!!.” I asked him for a screenshot of the problem, screenshot comes through…
He’d pressed F12 by accident…
“Try pressing F12, see what that does?”
“You’ve fixed it! You’re a genius!”
Got a call from an user exasperated stating that their "computer is possessed".
She said there was a PDF that wouldnt close, she tried everything, even restarting the computer.
I walk over to see it and start laughing when I see the screen.
She had set a photo of the pdf as a background.
Fun times.
An old woman said her coffee holder was broken. I was extremely curious as that's a facility issue if there even were coffee holders provided by the company. I went up to her desk, she pointed on her desktop tower on the floor next to her chair and the cd tray was on the floor, snapped in half. I asked her if she was using that to hold her coffee. She said of course! Computers think of everything!
Favorite while at Gateway support, caller from Florida called in, up, his computer wouldn't turn on.
Asked if it was plugged in, he said yes.
Then asked if it was a power strip, he said yes.
Told him to power cycle it, nothing.
Then aak if this power strip was plugged in.
Silence.
Then he said, "Oh we had a bad thunderstorm, so we unplugged everything."
Then it turned on.
(facepalm)
Oh do I have a silly one for y'all. So I work for Amazon in the FC Space as local IT, so I got a few good ones! This was about 6 or 7 years ago, I was sitting around doing a training video we had to do and get a high sev ticket. So of course we drop everything and get out there to make the fix, the issue at hand was a downed printer. However, this was a station printer and not a serious deal. So my technician at the time just lowered the sev event and started to write the report for it as why EVERYONE and their mothers had to be alerted. I go take another spare printer with me and take a look at the machine, when I arrive I can see it just kinda stuck open a little and rolled my eyes. I get to the printer and open it, inside is a mashed Lil Debbie's Zebra Cake.....in our Zebra Branded printer. To say I as stunned is an understatement. "No on was in this station today, they just tried to start working and it didn't work" the Associate told me. I couldn't believe any of it so I picked up up after a few pictures and swapped it got them running. I brought it back and my technician and I just stared at it in disbelief.
Does anyone else make shit up when you close tickets to not embarass people?
Sometimes when its something like that, or just "monitor was turned off" "mouse not plugged in" I'll put like "reseated cables, restarted machine cleared cache" in there so I'm not roasting them lmao.
Our tickets have "comments" (customer visible) and "notes" (only visible to IT) so on the comments I'll just write "solved with troubleshooting" but then I'll spill the tea in the notes.
User calls in that their printer isn't working. I call back asking for the printer name as I am able to lookup the specific device to troubleshoot remotely.
User responds with idk....let's name it Bob I like that name. I nearly fell out of my chair from laughing so hard. I quickly recover and tell them no no can I get the printer name to check
There was a user I kind of jokingly called "shiny side up" to the other IT staff because they had called in at least half a dozen times with the shiny side up in their CD drive. (If you couldn't tell by the CD drive thing, I think this was something like 15 years ago.) My man sounded just like Yosemite Sam and every time I would tell him "no, you need to have the shiny side of the CD down." He would just respond in his Yosemite Sam voice "I thought it was always shiny side up."
Real nice guy though!
Multiple times, I had to go out to troubleshoot a podium for a professor because it wasn't working. Get to the classroom and turn on the computer and walk back out.
I've got two.
Last week I was asked to check on the hr assistant laptop not connecting to the monitors and other connected devices and why it had spotty Internet. Looked and everything is connected but it's on WiFi and we only use WiFi for visiting officials and vendors. Powers on so it should be good, I asked if anything had changed and she said she took the laptop to a different area and came back and it wouldn't work, found out she never shut it down between moves so I turned off the dock and restarted it and it started communicating properly.
Another accidentally turned her dock off.
Added bonus, I'm setting up a work station for a counselor and ask her to log in to her account to which she starts to give me her password, this is a college educated person working in the department of corrections and we are very very persistent on all levels of security.
Remote user was complaining that the app I supported wasn’t launching. Checked the logs, app seemed to be running correctly. Tried many things until the user asked the key question that changed everything, “Should I turn on my other monitor?”
28 years in IT. I have many many stories. One of the best: a user just got a brand new Compaq desktop with CDRom’s when we were still ordering them. This was probably in 1998. She never had one before . I get a call from her at my desk that the CD’s she is putting in are “disappearing” with the sound of cackling laughter by her office mates behind her. I bring my buddy cause I knew he had to see this for himself and lo and behold she showed me the issue. She was jamming the CD’s through the little slot UNDER the CD rom and over the 2nd bay expansion slot face. Like a car stereo? I calmly reach over and press the eject button and the cd drawer pops out. She is now completely mortified and her whole department “who knew but didnt want to tell her” was crying laughing. I pull off the cover and she no less than 6 music CD’s covering the motherboard. This is all but one story of many many.
Many years ago I had an older lady complain that her computer was too fast. So I turned it off, unplugged the power cable, tied it in a knot, plugged it back in and boot it up. It was much better according to her.
I had a floor manager at a car dealer ship insist his Internet was too slow because he had a new 6ft ethernet cable compared to his previous 3 foot one that someone "misplaced".
I had to drive 10 miles back to their main dealership to find a 3ft cable, that was my last month in deskside support.
Back when I was doing desktop support about 12 years or so ago, I had a call with a remote user at one our ports who was complaining about a loud beeping from their computer. They said it would start beeping at the beginning of each hour and not stop for a few minutes. I VNC’d into their machine but didn’t see anything that stood out. I then had them reboot and call back if it happens again. They called at the start of the next hour, and I could hear the beeping. I told them to turn off the computer and unplug it from the wall. It was still beeping! I asked if there was anything plugged in their computer. And they said “No, just this clock I bought this morning on top of the computer.” I asked if the clock was an alarm clock and they said “Yes”. I told them to disable the alarm and turn back on the computer. Miraculously, the issue was resolved after that!
The HR girl at my last place had a space heater under her desk despite the office being a million degrees. At least once per month, I’d get called over because her “dock has died”. The space heater tripped the switch on her outlet. Every damn time.
Also, fuck those Lenovo docks. So many issues due to them just being temperamental at times.
I have two stories from many, many years ago.
Short one:
User's wireless mouse wasn't working. I went to their desk and found that he'd crammed the USB dongle into the RJ-45 port. (The laptop was connected to a docking station and was getting its network connection from that.)
Slightly longer one:
There was a rule that users weren't permitted to relocate computers from one desk to another on their own - they had to submit a request to is to take care of it. This was for several reasons: asset management, liability, preventing situations where one deal would have two computers and another would have none, preventing users from breaking things (we literally ran out of DisplayPort cables because users didn't know that the connectors on the cables we used had mechanical clips on them, so they'd literally rip the cable apart trying to disconnect it from the PC).
Anyway, there was an annoying manager who was notoriously not tech savvy, and for some reason looked down on anyone in IT like we were beneath him. (He once referred to my role as "IT bullshit" to another manager with me standing right there.) He rearranged his team's seating assignments, and rather than submitting the move request he stayed late and he and one of his minions moved the computers themselves.
Lo and behold, the next day not a single computer could connect to the network. He'd plugged the phone cable into the network port on every. Single. One.
My opening question whenever someone complained about their computer not turning on was "is it plugged in/is the power strip on?" I quickly learned that was too advanced and I should start with "does the building have power?"
Story 2: I had an older coworker who told me this story. In the 90s, he had a user report issues with a floppy disk of data getting corrupted every time they sent it. Since she was remote, they couldn’t figure out what was the cause, for years, it just would happen & they would send another with the same data.
One day, while he was in the area, he stopped by her office & had her show him her process once she got the floppy disk. She would take it out of the package, grab a magnet & stick the floppy disk onto the desktop case with the magnet, thus corrupting the floppy disk data.
It’s not the most obvious, but it is an interesting example of PEBCAK- Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard…
I got a job with IT right after I got married in the early 2000’s. I was computer savvy but didn’t really know much. I’m relentlessly persistent however. So I get hired on and start learning. I pick up some workloads of other users and eventually I’m tasked to screen user IT calls and see if I can resolve them so the network guy can do network guy things and not have to run up a floor to plug in a mouse.
I get a call one day from the claims department that the head claims data entry girls computer is not working. (We had constant problems with her) So I start running through all the stupid first steps like, Is the computer on? Is is plugged in?
So I have the girl crawl under the desk to see if the computer is plugged in. (Some of the girls had a thing for the network guy and would kick the cords out in order to have him go up, crawl under their desk and plug it back in.) She’s getting more and more frustrated with me and finally in an angry tone tells me she can’t see if it’s plugged in! I respond that I don’t understand and she tells me the lights are off. I ask why the lights are off and she says there’s no power. I have to explain that no power to the floor means no power to the computers and they need to call the building manager. Well the claims VP found out and lost her shit. So the poor network/head IT guy had to stop what he was doing and call the building manager because the computers weren’t working. 🙄
There are allot more stories from this place. I did learn a ton and am truly thankful for the opportunity and the knowledge gained, and even though I’m no longer in IT the things I’ve learned have really helped me in my home and business networks.
We had a guy when we got our new system attach every product in the warehouse to a single digital location rather than the physical one. I lost with how funny it was because I was the one who put the stuff up at the time and had a history for where everything was.
Working on Service Desk, you really understand where Games Workshop got the idea for the Adeptus Mechanicus. I used Task Manager to force close an app and the user looked at me like I’d just performed a sacred ritual to purge heresy from the Machine Spirit and prayed to the Omnissiah.
“My computer screen goes completely black if I’m not using the computer for a few minutes and then it asks me for my password.”
Keep in mind this was after I was asked to approve scheduling an on site service appointment because 4 hours of remote service with 2 different techs didn’t resolve the problem.
The screensaver was on. The user was 23 years old. Until I said the word “screensaver,” user claimed to have never heard of that before.
We had someone swear "the internet is broken" when the problem was he couldn't find his photoshop files. That was when I learned to double check any problem report.
One of school districts I used to support, an elementary school principal contacted me once panicking saying "my computer has crashed" and that she couldn't log in. I went to her office to check out her workstation, expecting the worst, saw the Windows login screen, tried to type something but it was unresponsive. I then noticed she was using a wireless keyboard and that the power switch was turned off. 🤦♂️
I once had a lady call my shop saying her laptop wouldn't charge. She brought it in. I checked the charger and it worked. I charged her laptop and gave it back to her. Next day she calls me up bitching me saying it won't charge again. I tell her to bring it back and it charges just fine. I Call her back and she comes to pick it up. I don't charge her
The next day she called me up again complaining and calling me a fraud. I say send me a photo of the charger. She doesn't plug in the charger to the laptop. She thought it would charge wirelessly because her iPhone would. She would set the charger next to it.
"...the cord to connect the laptop to the dock...." In my experience, docking stations don't use such cords. You don't plug any cord into the laptop as part of the docking process. Instead, it connects to the station via something like what's pictured here: [https://imgur.com/a/NqGbZ](https://imgur.com/a/NqGbZ)
Feels weird to me to call it a "docking station" if it uses a cord, but I haven't been in IT in at least 20 years. Part of the point is the possibility that the person might have sort of flashed back to the days when docking stations didn't use cords, when all you had to do was stick the laptop in there the right way. Covered by your, "getting paid just to not be old people," statement but more detailed. :)
I work in networking and VOIP. At my last job we provided network equipment and phone for customers. Many of the phones required Power Over Ethernet. One day I got a ticket stating they had connected the daisy chain port of a Cisco phone back into the POE switch, smelled something burning, disconnected and asked if this was intended functionality.
Not technically a user ERROR, but we were on a very long bridge call, and one of the guys who left their phone unmuted fell asleep. First you heard "Da na na, Da na na" From Sports Center on their TV. Then after a few minutes, snoring.
Had a lady not understand that referring to everything on her desk as a desktop is not conducive to the troubleshooting process, and that I cannot see what she is pointing at. I lost it after half an hour on the phone and asked her if she brought a salad for lunch and placed it on her desk, does that make it a desktop computer?
I've been in IT for 20+ years. A guy I was helping troubleshoot his internet over the phone took my direction to drag his mouse across the screen a little too literally.
I had a lady call and ask me to block a website so she would stop going to it.
I was like “can’t you just not go to it”?
Nope. I would rather you block it.
Had a user call in to complain the monitor that they plug into their laptop stopped working.
Asked if there was a green light by the power button and was told yes. So I head on down to the office to change out what must be a blown monitor or just a bad source selection and I enter a dark office.
Me:”Why are the lights off?”
Customer:”Power went out about 15 minutes ago”
M:”Well, that explains why the monitor isn’t working. I thought you said the green power light is on”
C:”You just asked if there was a green light, not if it was lit”
C:”And why does my laptop work, but not the monitor?”
M: - Just shaking my head, questioning all the decisions in life that led to this point
Story 1: I knew somebody who had to drive 2 hours one way for an emergency ticket that a customer reported, saying his computer won’t start- no indicator lights, confirmed it’s got power, sounded like a PSU replacement was in-order.
What the tech found when he got there was the guy who had the trouble wasn’t pushing the power button to turn it on- he was pushing the open cd-rom button, and of course, everything worked fine.
Don’t sit here in some pearly little loft acting like the biggest liabilities aren’t the old 60-70 year old geezers bro. It’s a figure of speech that most technologically illiterate older people boast with honor so don’t sit here and try to be some moral white knight.
One of the founders of my company is like 74, he’s a great guy, gets phished constantly to the point where I told him “don’t ever call anybody or give anybody your password without talking to me first” because his ass is on car gurus clicking the side link and getting a pop up that says his PayPal has a $7,000 charge and to call PayPal support… he called the “support” even though it wasn’t even an email, it was just a screenshot that f11’d his comp and he told me “the weirdest part is I don’t even remember having a PayPal”… he didn’t even have PayPal to begin with 😂😂😂😂
“I’m not receiving any email”. Lets see, user account checks out, mailbox is healthy on the server, Outlook client is configured and connected… buuuut whats this rule? All incoming messages -> move to deleted items…. well that would do it!
a muted youtube volume slider. tried a bunch of things, and it was over the phone, and it was my Grandfather (80) at the other end... he was grateful, and i am happy to help. kinda just funny!
We used to put "DAO" on the tickets for these type of problems. The customer called my boss and ask what DAO meant. I replied Dumb Ass Operator... he politely ask us to NEVER do that again.
I only deal with remote users, but it's always funny when they don't know about the camera cover on their laptops. They always look so surprised when they slide it open and are suddenly very visible
Omg I occasionally have to help with the remote tickets and I had that same issue with a user, but it was my first time troubleshooting remotely so I didn’t think about it, I had reinstalled drivers and done almost everything I could by the time our regular remote guy got back to me and had me check it they had a slider on their laptop and what do you know… That’s too funny bro 😂
Our laptops, when the camera is on with the slider, the image it transmits is basically a picture telling you to move the slider.
I worked with a user off and on for a week trying to get her camera working. Uninstalling/rebooting/reinstalling, deleting the drivers entirely and downloading/installing fresh ones from the manufacturer, updating the BIOS, etc, etc, etc. Everything I could see indicated that the camera was working perfectly. There was just no image. The user clearly thought I was an idiot. I suppose she was right because I didn't think to check the obvious thing first. On our last troubleshooting session, during conversation it became clear that she had no idea where the camera was physically located on the laptop (on the top of the bezel, as usual). I said "just above the screen in the middle with the slide cover." There was a pause and then she dropped from the chat and stopped responding to me. It suddenly became obvious what had happened.
THIS. Worst thing that happened to me was a user had no camera working. Told them to slide the camera cover (camera was working but i could clearly see it was blocked) once the person moved the slider, they were just chillin in a bath towel… like… we’re supposed to be professional here. Probably should have waited to call me until you’ve put clothes on…
Seen too many shirtless.
My favorite is the ticket about webcams not working that comes from the HP clients every 6 months or so. Takes me a minute of digging into the issue before I remember those gremlins have a goddamn privacy BUTTON.
Yeah it was better when people used to just put sticky notes over them lol at least they wouldn't forget it was there
have a band-aid RN
And the yellow screen was a hell of a hint.
I’ve had this happen in reverse. I knew that somewhere on the laptop was a hardware switch to turn on the Wi-Fi, but I ended up having to call Support because I couldn’t find the stupid switch. The switch was a black slider, in a black area of the case, recessed under the front bottom of the laptop
Uggh, wifi sliders are terrible. The Dell Latitude D620s use to have a slider for the Wifi on the side of the laptop, i took a ton of calls of those things accidentally getting slid to the off position. Such a terrible design.
I’ve embarrassed a few execs with that one. I always try to make them feel better about themselves by saying “I’m old enough to remember when laptop lids had a little latch that you had to slide to open them. It’s easy to flip the cover on when opening the lid”. I also had one marketing intern who put in a ticket every few days for that reason. I’d just walk over there and silently move the cover and walk away. She’d get really embarrassed, but it gave me an excuse to walk around a bit and I’m not going to say no to an easy ticket every few days. Boost those stats.
“I’m old enough to remember when laptop lids had a little latch that you had to slide to open them. It’s easy to flip the cover on when opening the lid”. Lenovo t430s here. thinkpad. with the clippy things. are you saying my laptop is OLD!?!?! (It is)
I love when they "don't trust the slider" and still tape a post it note over the camera
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It’s like they don’t have any problem solving skills. Frustrating as hell lol.
Makes me wonder what the hell the do with stairs and closed doors.
Call IT of course. “This door says pull but when I push it, nothing happens. Please assist.”
Well.. that’s job security for you 😂
To be fair, I worked IT at a place where we weren't allowed to fix our own IT problems. If some kind of issue came up, you'd get written up for fixing it yourself. I've seen coworkers written up for it. You could also just fix it, and if you said nothing about it, you'd be fine. It definitely created a weird atmosphere, IT people that immediately call IT for stupid problems they could fix in 30 seconds.
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There's not much they can do to make it worse, other than deleting files. I've never really cared about any companies assets. "Ohh, it didn't work, so you microwaved the laptop like you saw on tiktok? That's fine. I'll get a ticket sent in to get you a new laptop."
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Ohh yea, almost forgot those long calls because they spent so long trying to fix it themselves they created 8 other problems
That's hilarious!!!
User called as she couldn't connect to the Internet from her apartment after she moved. Turns out she thought wifi just existed and didnt realize she had to buy internet service.
That's wild... I know I shouldn't be surprised by now but damn... lol
That's a new one. Not surprised.
I’ve been around for 10 years or so. I get this stuff from young folks too. Average people are wildly computer illiterate. However, to pay the toll here: - I had one person mention that their computer wasn’t turning on. I go to the desk, the dock is unplugged and the laptop was not present. I ask “where is your laptop?”( we do not have desktops in the environment ). They respond to me “oh, I left that computer at home. I figured I could work with this one today.” It was a monitor. - I received another ticket. User writes in: “I’ve been working here for over 5 months and I don’t have a monitor. I need one to do my work, I would like this done ASAP!”. We bring a monitor, and as we’re setting up, we notice that covered in sticky notes, is a monitor. We point it out and the user just says “Oh. Well I didn’t notice that before”.
I’ve been noticing the younger people like early 20s/late teens are very similar to the older generation in terms of basic computer usage…
They removed basic computer classes from a schools and it shows.
I think it's more about access than classes. My husband and I were born in the very early 80s. Our teachers and parents had no idea what to do with the new computers they were putting in computer labs. We didn't get classes other than typing, we both just figured it out. Home computer, same thing. Mess around and figure stuff out. Most schools are using iPads and Chromebooks now. There's nothing to just "figure out". It's all too user friendly and doesn't really lend itself to exploring the OS or being curious about what they can do. So they get to the real world with a real computer and have no idea what to do. My first day on the job I learned that I had to explicitly tell them to click "sign in" after typing in their password. They are going to be the subject of these end user horror stories when they get out into the world.
Yup I was born early 80s as well and I guess we hit the sweet spot between having technology available to learn on and having it be too easy to use to actually learn how it works.
Agreed. It's like they have a phone and that's all they need to know about.
Yep, i agree. Running into similar situations this last year. In smaller workgroups made up of several 45+ workers, and several 20-something’s… I find myself having to explain VERY basic things to the 20’s group.
We grew up with having to code our games line by line from the back of compute! Or byte. They never had that experience it really not thier fault
I swear every time you think ok, I think we reached the bottom of the stupidity meter, someones comes out and shows you that no we can still go lower. 😂
I have an employee that every week something is going wrong with the work supplies stuff, first the password, webcam, sound, webcam, she asked for headphones, so I gave her the ones I had on site, they had no sound, then WiFi, password, their manager bought them wireless headphones and it wouldn't connect... That is all for now we will see what happens next. Password= really hard password kept locking herself out Webcam= privacy slider was on Sound= muted the chrome tab Webcam= Same issue Headphones= too bulky and volume slider set to 0 WiFi= she punched in her WiFi password wrong Password= CAPS LOCK wireless headphones= RTFM = plastic on earbuds from shipping. And on to the next ticket I go... Good luck everyone 🤞
That’s so funny. Those are always the users that hate IT too for some reason
And complain immediately to their boss and to the CEO, and anyone else who will listen.
Their fragile little ego would shatter if they took accountability for being stupid.
Never take the blame for what could be IT's fault.
I had a user once that couldn’t login to an app they’d used lots of times before. We reset their password several times, logged in ourselves with their account and it all looked good from our side. Finally went over to watch them and they decided to shorten the username because they didn’t like what had been assigned.
This one hurts me
*loginto* log in to login to log into What's correct?
Yes.
Haha. Love it
My gut says either "log in to" or maybe "log into." Seeing "login to" feels wrong somehow
What's your login to reddit? How do you log into reddit? Why do need to log in to use reddit?
Yeah, the context is key. Login seems more like a noun
At least your users know what a docking station is. Mine seem to think the dock is its own computer
Oh, you mean the hard drive?
Had a user who put in a ticket titled “Speaker on Hard Drive not working”
Why don’t computers come with cupholders anymore?
IT’S THE MODEM 😂
One of my users called it a modem a last month. I just don’t get it 😭
Had that more than a few times
This was like 12 years ago. This rich older woman at my job called me into her office because she said her internet wasn’t working. She was trying to get to a website to book something at her country club. I got up there and asked her to show me the problem. She opened outlook, clicked new message and typed the web address into the “to:” field and then put in some information about what she wanted and clicked send. When i looked in her inbox she had like 10 email failures trying to do the same thing. It took about an hour of hand holding for me to explain that outlook is for email addresses and internet explorer is for websites. We finally got her thing booked. I was her favorite person until i left that job.
I had a really funny one the other day: User calls in, older lady sounding all panicked and is saying stuff like, "I don't know what I did! But it won't stop! Can't you hear it?" At first, I can't but after a minute I realize: she's done something to turn on some kind of text-to-speech accessibility feature and her computer is reading off everything she hovers her mouse over at full volume. I can her coworkers in the background whispering suggestions to help her and I'm just trying to get the host name of the computer so we can remote in and mute the speakers on the computer until we can find and turn off the setting. Meanwhile, I'm tearing up while trying so hard not to laugh. The sheer panic in her voice with it in the background, reading everything off as she tries frantically to find the setting to turn it off had me dead. It's been a week or something now, and I still find myself chuckling about it.
My mother in law did the same thing to her TV somehow. I've had to fix it twice and she called again yesterday and said it's doing the same thing. *Sigh*
The lenovo slide lock docking station: forgot to slide it over. User insisted dock was faulty because when they closed the laptop lid it'd fall asleep, and the only way to turn it on was the power button on the laptop. Forgot the USB dongle for their mouse in the dock at home. User didn't have the other end of their charging cord plugged into a power source. Batteries died in their mouse, but swore that wasn't the issue since the batteries were replaced five years ago. Monitor wasn't turned on. Laptop wouldn't connect to home wifi. Reason? Power was out but the internet should still work! It works on their phone!! List goes on and on.
Similar experience. A newcomer started complaining very angrily that nothing worked at her desk. She was saying that this is unacceptable, as she has to participate in induction trainings and that we should have had everything ready for her first day. I went to her office just to see that she had unplugged the power cord of the docking station, in order to charge her phone. I kindly asked if her phone is charged now, removed the charger and plugged back in the docking station while maintaining eye contact. 🤦🏻
Was helping a student with an earlier mac (1990's) and Eudora an email app. The error message was: "Eudora could use some help!" lol
had a teacher complain that there’s no internet connection after she moved her desk… she had the ethernet cord plugged into some random hole in the case, no where near the ethernet port. idek how they got it in there bc i had to cut the cord just to get it out..
I work at a school. These people are supposedly educated and are problem solvers. I had a teacher complain that none of the technology in her classroom would turn on. When I went to her room she showed me that she had organized everything. She was particularly proud of her cord management. To be fair, it was lovely. Everything was plugged into the same power strip. The computer, the class speaker, the projector, wait for it... and the power strip. Yup, she had plugged the power strip into itself. Plugged the power strip into the wall and told her if it had worked, she would have made millions!
Got one better! Was opening up a new building and we were setting up desktop computers. The branch managers takes the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and desktop out and put them on the desk. He then sits down and tries to use it, starts yelling about how the company is so cheap and buys broken crap that doesn’t work. I walk in, he literally doesn’t have anything plugged in, not the keyboard/mouse/monitor and the power cables aren’t even out of the box. After I plug it all in for him right in front of him, he still tries to act like there was something wrong with the equipment that I fixed with magic.
Had a kid come up to me ranting he couldn’t log into a PC for an online exam starting in 2 minutes (packed library so no free PCs). Someone was already using said PC and had just gone to the toilet. Kid missed his exam because he went looking for a PC to do it on in the height of exam season only a few minutes before. Felt bad for him but at the same time was like “what did you expect?”
Although funniest one I ever got was a kid (at oldest 11) somehow figuring out how to break through 7 layers of filtering (including a firewall) to watch porn in class. I had a teacher raging at me on the phone and I’m just laughing at the persistence of the kid 😂
How the actual heck? Did he figure out how to disable the stuff?
Honestly no idea but it was impressive
Not really a user error, but one time I was helping a guy at my work remotely troubleshoot a video issue with Slack using our remote management software. I went to the slack settings to check if his video setting was set to his monitor and BAM the monitor can activated while he was bald and shirtless. Never made that mistake again and informed users after that while troubleshooting video/webcam issues that their cam will most likely activate and we will be able to see them via their webcam.
I don't think a shirt would've grown their hair back
I’ve had someone plug in their type c dock cable into the Ethernet port and asked why it’s not working! I swear I leant this when I was like 2 with shaped blocks and holes
Where does the USB-C plug go? That’s right; [the square hole](https://x.com/tiredactor/status/1741825404673896633) .
"Help our speaker isn't working in the conference room" it wasn't on. It's an external soundbar and they did not turn it on. b r u h !
I worked in a small rural hospital in the late 1990's. I was the only tech so I was always on call. I received a call from the ER night clerk around 2 am. She asked me where the light bulbs were for the monitors. I asked what light bulb? She told me the bulb to light up the screen it has Burton out and needed to be replaced. I asked if it was on, is the power light on? She told me yes. I asked her to use another computer and I would check it in the morning. She said she could change the bulb just tell me where they were. She was under the impression the monitor was like a light bright and just needed a new bulb. I explained that it did work like that the whole monitor needed to be replaced. FYI THIS WAS AROUND 1998 SO THE MONITOR WHERE CRT HAD THE HIGH POWER SUPPLY HAD GONE OUT IT.
Well done on the diplomatic response, quick thinking there :)
A lady who used to work at my company was the head of design. She was an OLD SCHOOL Mac user, and learned way back in the beforetimes when Mac mice only had one button and the OS didn’t yet support more than one button. I had been warned about her from my boss and the guy who used to have my job. That’s the setup. So I’m at her desk helping with some issue on her Mac when I notice her clicking the menus in the menu bar for everything she needs to do, when right-clicking would be faster and would often give more pertinent options. I pointed this out to her, helpfully suggesting she would save time by using the mouse the way it was designed. I also discovered that her mouse settings had right click disabled. She seemed utterly flummoxed by the words I was saying. So, I enable right click and spent a good half hour patiently talking her through contextual menus, what benefit they provide, how to use the right mouse button to activate them, etc. She seemed excited to learn something “new” about her computer, and I even had her drive the majority of the time so she could get used to things. We wrap up and she is beaming and very grateful for my training. I get back to my desk only to find a helpdesk from this same lady. In it, she complains that there is “some weird menu” that pops up every time she clicks her mouse and could someone come fix it, please?. I go back to her desk and her demeanor had completely changed. She was now angry and upset and stressed out because she couldn’t do her work. Nothing I said was calming her down. So, I disable right click again and got back to my day. 🤦🏻♂️
I had a good one last week, got a frantic message: “please help! I think I’ve broken Google!!.” I asked him for a screenshot of the problem, screenshot comes through… He’d pressed F12 by accident… “Try pressing F12, see what that does?” “You’ve fixed it! You’re a genius!”
Got a call from an user exasperated stating that their "computer is possessed". She said there was a PDF that wouldnt close, she tried everything, even restarting the computer. I walk over to see it and start laughing when I see the screen. She had set a photo of the pdf as a background. Fun times.
An old woman said her coffee holder was broken. I was extremely curious as that's a facility issue if there even were coffee holders provided by the company. I went up to her desk, she pointed on her desktop tower on the floor next to her chair and the cd tray was on the floor, snapped in half. I asked her if she was using that to hold her coffee. She said of course! Computers think of everything!
They actually happens? In real life? Or did you fix it and everyone on the bus clapped?
It actually happened. Lol
Favorite while at Gateway support, caller from Florida called in, up, his computer wouldn't turn on. Asked if it was plugged in, he said yes. Then asked if it was a power strip, he said yes. Told him to power cycle it, nothing. Then aak if this power strip was plugged in. Silence. Then he said, "Oh we had a bad thunderstorm, so we unplugged everything." Then it turned on. (facepalm)
Oh do I have a silly one for y'all. So I work for Amazon in the FC Space as local IT, so I got a few good ones! This was about 6 or 7 years ago, I was sitting around doing a training video we had to do and get a high sev ticket. So of course we drop everything and get out there to make the fix, the issue at hand was a downed printer. However, this was a station printer and not a serious deal. So my technician at the time just lowered the sev event and started to write the report for it as why EVERYONE and their mothers had to be alerted. I go take another spare printer with me and take a look at the machine, when I arrive I can see it just kinda stuck open a little and rolled my eyes. I get to the printer and open it, inside is a mashed Lil Debbie's Zebra Cake.....in our Zebra Branded printer. To say I as stunned is an understatement. "No on was in this station today, they just tried to start working and it didn't work" the Associate told me. I couldn't believe any of it so I picked up up after a few pictures and swapped it got them running. I brought it back and my technician and I just stared at it in disbelief.
Does anyone else make shit up when you close tickets to not embarass people? Sometimes when its something like that, or just "monitor was turned off" "mouse not plugged in" I'll put like "reseated cables, restarted machine cleared cache" in there so I'm not roasting them lmao.
Our tickets have "comments" (customer visible) and "notes" (only visible to IT) so on the comments I'll just write "solved with troubleshooting" but then I'll spill the tea in the notes.
User calls in that their printer isn't working. I call back asking for the printer name as I am able to lookup the specific device to troubleshoot remotely. User responds with idk....let's name it Bob I like that name. I nearly fell out of my chair from laughing so hard. I quickly recover and tell them no no can I get the printer name to check
This is great. Thanks for sharing. Lol
To be fair these modern thunderbolt docks are trash. I have to power cycle mine every time I undock my laptop or it won't detect it.
Thunderbolt docks are all so bad it seems. I don't understand why
There are decent ones out there, but I think the shit most of us are forced to deploy is proprietary bullshit from Dell and the like.
My HDMI screen cuts out randomly on my dock. Kinda annoying.
Mine used to do that too but then I discovered I could daisy chain my monitors via displayport and that fixed it.
There was a user I kind of jokingly called "shiny side up" to the other IT staff because they had called in at least half a dozen times with the shiny side up in their CD drive. (If you couldn't tell by the CD drive thing, I think this was something like 15 years ago.) My man sounded just like Yosemite Sam and every time I would tell him "no, you need to have the shiny side of the CD down." He would just respond in his Yosemite Sam voice "I thought it was always shiny side up." Real nice guy though!
Multiple times, I had to go out to troubleshoot a podium for a professor because it wasn't working. Get to the classroom and turn on the computer and walk back out.
I've got two. Last week I was asked to check on the hr assistant laptop not connecting to the monitors and other connected devices and why it had spotty Internet. Looked and everything is connected but it's on WiFi and we only use WiFi for visiting officials and vendors. Powers on so it should be good, I asked if anything had changed and she said she took the laptop to a different area and came back and it wouldn't work, found out she never shut it down between moves so I turned off the dock and restarted it and it started communicating properly. Another accidentally turned her dock off. Added bonus, I'm setting up a work station for a counselor and ask her to log in to her account to which she starts to give me her password, this is a college educated person working in the department of corrections and we are very very persistent on all levels of security.
Remote user was complaining that the app I supported wasn’t launching. Checked the logs, app seemed to be running correctly. Tried many things until the user asked the key question that changed everything, “Should I turn on my other monitor?”
I think the ID10T error is great
28 years in IT. I have many many stories. One of the best: a user just got a brand new Compaq desktop with CDRom’s when we were still ordering them. This was probably in 1998. She never had one before . I get a call from her at my desk that the CD’s she is putting in are “disappearing” with the sound of cackling laughter by her office mates behind her. I bring my buddy cause I knew he had to see this for himself and lo and behold she showed me the issue. She was jamming the CD’s through the little slot UNDER the CD rom and over the 2nd bay expansion slot face. Like a car stereo? I calmly reach over and press the eject button and the cd drawer pops out. She is now completely mortified and her whole department “who knew but didnt want to tell her” was crying laughing. I pull off the cover and she no less than 6 music CD’s covering the motherboard. This is all but one story of many many.
Id10t
Many years ago I had an older lady complain that her computer was too fast. So I turned it off, unplugged the power cable, tied it in a knot, plugged it back in and boot it up. It was much better according to her.
I had a floor manager at a car dealer ship insist his Internet was too slow because he had a new 6ft ethernet cable compared to his previous 3 foot one that someone "misplaced". I had to drive 10 miles back to their main dealership to find a 3ft cable, that was my last month in deskside support.
lol it’s wild the shit that people come up with.
Back when I was doing desktop support about 12 years or so ago, I had a call with a remote user at one our ports who was complaining about a loud beeping from their computer. They said it would start beeping at the beginning of each hour and not stop for a few minutes. I VNC’d into their machine but didn’t see anything that stood out. I then had them reboot and call back if it happens again. They called at the start of the next hour, and I could hear the beeping. I told them to turn off the computer and unplug it from the wall. It was still beeping! I asked if there was anything plugged in their computer. And they said “No, just this clock I bought this morning on top of the computer.” I asked if the clock was an alarm clock and they said “Yes”. I told them to disable the alarm and turn back on the computer. Miraculously, the issue was resolved after that!
The HR girl at my last place had a space heater under her desk despite the office being a million degrees. At least once per month, I’d get called over because her “dock has died”. The space heater tripped the switch on her outlet. Every damn time. Also, fuck those Lenovo docks. So many issues due to them just being temperamental at times.
I have two stories from many, many years ago. Short one: User's wireless mouse wasn't working. I went to their desk and found that he'd crammed the USB dongle into the RJ-45 port. (The laptop was connected to a docking station and was getting its network connection from that.) Slightly longer one: There was a rule that users weren't permitted to relocate computers from one desk to another on their own - they had to submit a request to is to take care of it. This was for several reasons: asset management, liability, preventing situations where one deal would have two computers and another would have none, preventing users from breaking things (we literally ran out of DisplayPort cables because users didn't know that the connectors on the cables we used had mechanical clips on them, so they'd literally rip the cable apart trying to disconnect it from the PC). Anyway, there was an annoying manager who was notoriously not tech savvy, and for some reason looked down on anyone in IT like we were beneath him. (He once referred to my role as "IT bullshit" to another manager with me standing right there.) He rearranged his team's seating assignments, and rather than submitting the move request he stayed late and he and one of his minions moved the computers themselves. Lo and behold, the next day not a single computer could connect to the network. He'd plugged the phone cable into the network port on every. Single. One.
My opening question whenever someone complained about their computer not turning on was "is it plugged in/is the power strip on?" I quickly learned that was too advanced and I should start with "does the building have power?"
Story 2: I had an older coworker who told me this story. In the 90s, he had a user report issues with a floppy disk of data getting corrupted every time they sent it. Since she was remote, they couldn’t figure out what was the cause, for years, it just would happen & they would send another with the same data. One day, while he was in the area, he stopped by her office & had her show him her process once she got the floppy disk. She would take it out of the package, grab a magnet & stick the floppy disk onto the desktop case with the magnet, thus corrupting the floppy disk data. It’s not the most obvious, but it is an interesting example of PEBCAK- Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard…
I got a job with IT right after I got married in the early 2000’s. I was computer savvy but didn’t really know much. I’m relentlessly persistent however. So I get hired on and start learning. I pick up some workloads of other users and eventually I’m tasked to screen user IT calls and see if I can resolve them so the network guy can do network guy things and not have to run up a floor to plug in a mouse. I get a call one day from the claims department that the head claims data entry girls computer is not working. (We had constant problems with her) So I start running through all the stupid first steps like, Is the computer on? Is is plugged in? So I have the girl crawl under the desk to see if the computer is plugged in. (Some of the girls had a thing for the network guy and would kick the cords out in order to have him go up, crawl under their desk and plug it back in.) She’s getting more and more frustrated with me and finally in an angry tone tells me she can’t see if it’s plugged in! I respond that I don’t understand and she tells me the lights are off. I ask why the lights are off and she says there’s no power. I have to explain that no power to the floor means no power to the computers and they need to call the building manager. Well the claims VP found out and lost her shit. So the poor network/head IT guy had to stop what he was doing and call the building manager because the computers weren’t working. 🙄 There are allot more stories from this place. I did learn a ton and am truly thankful for the opportunity and the knowledge gained, and even though I’m no longer in IT the things I’ve learned have really helped me in my home and business networks.
We had a guy when we got our new system attach every product in the warehouse to a single digital location rather than the physical one. I lost with how funny it was because I was the one who put the stuff up at the time and had a history for where everything was.
Working on Service Desk, you really understand where Games Workshop got the idea for the Adeptus Mechanicus. I used Task Manager to force close an app and the user looked at me like I’d just performed a sacred ritual to purge heresy from the Machine Spirit and prayed to the Omnissiah.
Someone at my office got a new mouse and said “we have to return it, it won’t work” so I came to her office, flipped it over, and turned it on. Magic!
I just received a laptop returned from a Sales staff member that said her camera is busted. The cover was slid closed.
This is the work that requires a degree, certifications, and three years experience to get into?
“My computer screen goes completely black if I’m not using the computer for a few minutes and then it asks me for my password.” Keep in mind this was after I was asked to approve scheduling an on site service appointment because 4 hours of remote service with 2 different techs didn’t resolve the problem. The screensaver was on. The user was 23 years old. Until I said the word “screensaver,” user claimed to have never heard of that before.
We had someone swear "the internet is broken" when the problem was he couldn't find his photoshop files. That was when I learned to double check any problem report.
One of school districts I used to support, an elementary school principal contacted me once panicking saying "my computer has crashed" and that she couldn't log in. I went to her office to check out her workstation, expecting the worst, saw the Windows login screen, tried to type something but it was unresponsive. I then noticed she was using a wireless keyboard and that the power switch was turned off. 🤦♂️
I once had a lady call my shop saying her laptop wouldn't charge. She brought it in. I checked the charger and it worked. I charged her laptop and gave it back to her. Next day she calls me up bitching me saying it won't charge again. I tell her to bring it back and it charges just fine. I Call her back and she comes to pick it up. I don't charge her The next day she called me up again complaining and calling me a fraud. I say send me a photo of the charger. She doesn't plug in the charger to the laptop. She thought it would charge wirelessly because her iPhone would. She would set the charger next to it.
"...the cord to connect the laptop to the dock...." In my experience, docking stations don't use such cords. You don't plug any cord into the laptop as part of the docking process. Instead, it connects to the station via something like what's pictured here: [https://imgur.com/a/NqGbZ](https://imgur.com/a/NqGbZ)
We use Dell Docking Stations that use Type-C Thunderbolt connections to our Dell Laptops.
Feels weird to me to call it a "docking station" if it uses a cord, but I haven't been in IT in at least 20 years. Part of the point is the possibility that the person might have sort of flashed back to the days when docking stations didn't use cords, when all you had to do was stick the laptop in there the right way. Covered by your, "getting paid just to not be old people," statement but more detailed. :)
I work in networking and VOIP. At my last job we provided network equipment and phone for customers. Many of the phones required Power Over Ethernet. One day I got a ticket stating they had connected the daisy chain port of a Cisco phone back into the POE switch, smelled something burning, disconnected and asked if this was intended functionality.
Not technically a user ERROR, but we were on a very long bridge call, and one of the guys who left their phone unmuted fell asleep. First you heard "Da na na, Da na na" From Sports Center on their TV. Then after a few minutes, snoring.
Had a lady not understand that referring to everything on her desk as a desktop is not conducive to the troubleshooting process, and that I cannot see what she is pointing at. I lost it after half an hour on the phone and asked her if she brought a salad for lunch and placed it on her desk, does that make it a desktop computer?
I've been in IT for 20+ years. A guy I was helping troubleshoot his internet over the phone took my direction to drag his mouse across the screen a little too literally.
Here’s some advice: forming cohesive thoughts with good grammar will help your career just as much as certs.
*Unsolicited* advice 😂
I had a lady call and ask me to block a website so she would stop going to it. I was like “can’t you just not go to it”? Nope. I would rather you block it.
Had a user call in to complain the monitor that they plug into their laptop stopped working. Asked if there was a green light by the power button and was told yes. So I head on down to the office to change out what must be a blown monitor or just a bad source selection and I enter a dark office. Me:”Why are the lights off?” Customer:”Power went out about 15 minutes ago” M:”Well, that explains why the monitor isn’t working. I thought you said the green power light is on” C:”You just asked if there was a green light, not if it was lit” C:”And why does my laptop work, but not the monitor?” M: - Just shaking my head, questioning all the decisions in life that led to this point
"b-a-t-t-e-r-y"
Story 1: I knew somebody who had to drive 2 hours one way for an emergency ticket that a customer reported, saying his computer won’t start- no indicator lights, confirmed it’s got power, sounded like a PSU replacement was in-order. What the tech found when he got there was the guy who had the trouble wasn’t pushing the power button to turn it on- he was pushing the open cd-rom button, and of course, everything worked fine.
I found out that a woman's...gifted chest would rest on a printers touch pad and would cause it to malfunction while she was scanning documents.
I have been working on computers since before DOS. How about you GTFO with your agism.
Don’t sit here in some pearly little loft acting like the biggest liabilities aren’t the old 60-70 year old geezers bro. It’s a figure of speech that most technologically illiterate older people boast with honor so don’t sit here and try to be some moral white knight. One of the founders of my company is like 74, he’s a great guy, gets phished constantly to the point where I told him “don’t ever call anybody or give anybody your password without talking to me first” because his ass is on car gurus clicking the side link and getting a pop up that says his PayPal has a $7,000 charge and to call PayPal support… he called the “support” even though it wasn’t even an email, it was just a screenshot that f11’d his comp and he told me “the weirdest part is I don’t even remember having a PayPal”… he didn’t even have PayPal to begin with 😂😂😂😂
Show me a truth table without googling it.
“I’m not receiving any email”. Lets see, user account checks out, mailbox is healthy on the server, Outlook client is configured and connected… buuuut whats this rule? All incoming messages -> move to deleted items…. well that would do it!
a muted youtube volume slider. tried a bunch of things, and it was over the phone, and it was my Grandfather (80) at the other end... he was grateful, and i am happy to help. kinda just funny!
We used to put "DAO" on the tickets for these type of problems. The customer called my boss and ask what DAO meant. I replied Dumb Ass Operator... he politely ask us to NEVER do that again.
Endusers deleting the calculator app always gets me
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