The day in the life of a tech

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After reading another thread I was wondering if anyone had any funny stories from your days working as a tech, I thought it would be great to get a collection of them here.

So, have you got any stories of idiot users, rediculious call center calls or just general laugh a minute scenarios from the world of a tech. Come on, tell all.

 

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Ok, can't remember if I've posted this before but it had me laughing my arse off for days. This is from a friend of mine who works in a large hospital



The ladies in the general office had a paper jam this morning in the back of one of our large report printing laser printers.

So they dismantled it: completely. And I really mean completely completely.

Leaving it still attached to the mains they used a cunning combination of a butter knife and a fork (both metal) and some brute leverage to disgorge the innards of the printer across several desks.

Having dismantled it (and not electrocute themselves or perform localised eye surgery with the laser) they removed the offending paper and then proceeded to rebuild it, with said knife and fork. Having figured out where all those pesky springs and rubber roller things went, they dropped the toner cartridge which ejected a small, black mushroom cloud of toner across the office.

The next decision was truly inspired; rather than waste what toner was left in the cartridge they'd dropped, they levered it open with the multi-use, leading edge technological device specially designed for this purpose (a fork), then got a new cartridge, levered that open as well and tried to empty the remnants of the toner from the old cartridge into the new one using a simple but effective rigorous shaking technique. Never has so much toner been spread so far across so many desks.

Having quickly come to the conclusion that this was a bad idea, they opted just to get another new one from the store cupboard before borrowing the cleaner's hoover to remove the layer of black dust which seemed to have coated just about everything to the near horizon.

Finally slamming the back flap shut whilst plonking it on the duplexing paper bin, a small plastic component and spring fired out of the back of the printer across the room. Nobody knows what it is, nobody is quite sure where it came from but everybody is quite sure that the printer probably needs it to continue functioning.

I have been asked to log a support call with a service engineer and somehow explain the mangled screw heads, strained and scuffed plastic, the dense coating of toner all over the inside and how a small but crucial component that should very definitely be on the inside came to find itself on the outside.

Brings a tear to your eye it does. Some would say it was initiative and Dunkirk Spirit.
This isn't a joke, this was my morning. F*cking surreal

 

A slight variation on a theme, but here goes anyway...


Week before last, I got a Tech Support call from a rather distraught woman calling from her work, who was desperately trying to book a Ryanair flight for the next day.

I listened calmly as she explained that she could "access your site OK, but had a problem with the connection". Rather perplexed, I asked her how come she could view our website, yet be having a problem with connecting. She kept on though, and despite me asking for her details, username, etc, she seemd vague on what I was asking, and I could find no such person on our systems

Eventually she said she had set up her account with us from home, yet clearly she was using the internet at work. I suggested that maybe she was talking to the wrong people. Patiently, I asked her for the exact url of the site she was having the problem with.

I was literally speechless when she replied:

"Your site - www.ryanair.com. I cant get a connection from Belfast to Paris... "
I kindly informed her that she had a wrong number.....

 

Hi,
As some background, I work as second line support for a university, so I help profs, doctors etc day in, day out, but this guy really takes the michael!
He is a doctor of pharmacy, so he is licensed to give out nasty meds as he see's fit. One day the helpdesk get a call from him and he is not happy, he has been 'without' a PC for two days now and demands we fix it right now! When asked what the problem is he says that his 'TV' will not display coloured text, and he cant find word. I get the ticket and walk over to his office, knock on his door to the reply of "that better be the PC guy". I walk in, see "NTLDR is missing" on his 'TV' , while getting a fair amount of verbal abuse as I am walking to his PC, I eject the floppy disk, do a three fingered saulte (ctrl-alt-del) and walk out again, all the time being berated about how he has not had a working PC for days. My boss got a thank you email from him two days later.
Jamin.

 

Ah life would be dull if we didn't have users

I received a complaint about a CDR drive not recording CDs so I armed myself with a test CDR and went a fault finding. I arrived at the users desk, stuck the CDR into the drive and opened the burning software. Sure enough the error appeared - CDR drive not found. OK, drive has power, normal CDs can be read OK, I'll try reinstalling the software. I removed my disk from the PC and just as I was putting another in I noticed the front of the drive only had CD-ROM on it and not CD-Recordable...

Just another day in user land.

E.

 

Last week, called to private address. WIFI not working on paperwork!!
Hi, says Kat, customer- we just cant get the laptop upstairs to connect to the internet wirelessly... Umm, well you would if you had a wireless router Kat says looking at the Tiscali Sagem USB modem!!!!!

Kat

 

Customer ringing through to help desk,

Saying "there's a error message on my screen, it says the computer can not see the printer"

Help desk: Is the printer Switched on?

Customer :- "Yes and I have picked up the printer and put it next to the PC and it still say's it can't see it"

The best one I heard was " My monitor is not working?"
Have you tried switching it on?
Yes and there's still no lights?
Is it plugged into the wall?
Err...no does it have to be?