Users from hell

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After reading a couple of comments about users and their incompetence I just wondered if any of you had any interesting or funny stories of users from hell or similar.

SimonV

 

I had a neighbour come to my door at the height of the recent MSBlast virus outbreak.

"My computer won't let me use the Internet", she says "I think I might have the virus I heard about in the news"

So I grabbed the disks with the various patches, Stinger, etc, crossed the road, looked at the error message on her screen, plugged her phone line back into the wall, and left thinking "well, it only a matter of time till she DOES get it now - Hee, hee !!!"

 

Recently enrolled a lovely old lady who had just bought a computer. Her son quickly set it up for her on a short visit and left her to it. She put the pedal on the floor and wondered why the damn thing would not go! The old dear was trying to use the mouse like a sewing machine - bless! :?

PS This one is no joke!!!

 

A funny story about a user and an IT techie...

I sit flying a helpdesk in Exeter. We have customers all over the UK. One day I had the usual call "your software is not printing a report"

Telnet to the server pinged the printer hey presto the printer is not responding.

Called the user and requested an onsite IT techie check the printer, my call was returned an hour later saying it had all ben done. Again checked the printer still not responding to a ping ask the user to get the IT techie back a REALLY check the printer. The user calls back says they NOT the IT techie had found that the JetDirect box (giving TCP/IP network printing) had been switched off...

Her commmet was how could you tell that from all the way down there... "Cos we are really, really good" I replied nicely

 

Well, I've got lots of stories about some of the monkey's that work at my place, but the one I always think of is this.

I came in one Monday morning (after a heavy weekend) and the customer service manager came running over with a print out in her hand. She proceeded to tell me that she had recieved an email from one of our suppliers informing her that they had sent us an infected email, and to check our system.

As she thinks that she is god's gift to computers (she tells me she knows she's got a good system at home cause she's got a 17" monitor, and an optical mouse!!!) she took it upon herself to search on a machine for the so called "infected" file, and when she found it, proceeded to go round every PC, find the file and delete it, thinking she was saving the day. By the time I got in (she gets in at 7.15, I get in at about 8.50), she and her assistant had been round 42 PC's, and very proud of themselves.

The name of the file she was finding and deleting was.........JDBGMGR.EXE


I guess the fact that I had sent everyone an email 2 weeks before informing them of this hoax didn't make me feel any better. :roll:

That day sucked, but she has never tried to "help out" since, so that's a good thing.

 

Many Moons ago, when the 386/486 was the bee's knees, I Work on a YTS course for a coputer software company called Huskie Software, we wrote a piece of software called 'TIMS' (Technical Information Maintenace System), one day we got a call from a customer saying that there was a problem with a recent upgrade so he talked us through what he was doing and we copied it on a machine in the office to try and dupicate the error, his machine kept producing the error time and time again but ours was fine, so we told him to send us a copy of his disks and we would install his system on a machine at our end and try to replicate the problem, a few days later we opened an envelope from the customer to find 8 peices of paper containing a photo copy of each instalation disk

 

LMAO

 

Not so long ago one of the members of staff had been telling me all about how he'd built his own PC and how it ran like a dream and he always sorted out his own problems etc etc. A few days later the CD drive on his office PC went down so I gave him a replacement CD drive and said "are you OK to fit it? If not you'll have to wait till after 2pm as I’ve got to complete this document" he replied "yeah, sure I'm OK, I built my PC...blah blah blah..."

About 10 minutes later he walked into my office with a piece of wire in his hand and said to me "I don’t think this wire should have been plugged into the CD Drive". I looked at the wire and he had plugged in one of the wires that came from the power pack (it was an old AT form factor PC) onto the sound connector on the drive. It has burnt the plastic coating to a crisp, I looked at him and said "no you’re right it shouldn’t" as the fire alarm started to ring in my ears from the smoke he'd made burning the wire.

:roll: