Aggravating stories from tech illiterates

[Engert]

English dude, english. And these are stories about people who dont understand technology, not poets corner.

That poem was actually directed at know-it-all types who think that higher access means higher knowledge and when spell check fails them, it's quite amusing.

 

[Catastrophic]

There are a few technical farts I had that I can think of. I once fixed laptops for 3 of my classmates and the first one had apple marmalade on the touch pad, took like 10 minutes to properly boot up and another 5 minutes to start a program. And sometimes it crashed for no specific reason. I reinstalled XP, wiped it clean and it was STILL unbearably slow. The second computer was missing keys from the keyboard, had a glitchy Windows overall and had folders of porn stashed in unhidden places titled "Tom and Jerry". I reinstalled Windows 7, installed whatever programs that are good to have and then ran Windows Update to install Service Pack 1 and other necessary updates. Once it was done updating, nothing. Nothing happened upon boot-up whatsoever and the computer was pretty much bricked. And I had no idea what went wrong. So I reinstalled Windows 7 for the second time using the boot menu and it still had strange behavior afterwards. The third computer was ungodly. The keyboard was completely dead and no keys worked. At first I tried to free up some space and even after deleting almost all unnecessary files, it had limited hard drive space. After scratching my head in confusion I finally found out that a utorrent folder, which for some reason was hidden, contained about 30GB of useless data. I opened up his utorrent and saw that he attempted to download like 10GB large movie files which never finished downloading. I just ended up reinstalling Windows and it ran decently afterwards with a working keyboard.

Here's another one. I used to share a lot of files such as movies with my classmates by trading USB sticks. As a result I often had to connect my hard drive and the stick to my laptop to move files over. One day, my files and folders wouldn't show up on my hard drive. I then figured that they were hidden. But no matter what I did, the files would always hide themselves. Eventually MSE found a virus named Dorkbot something which apparently infects portable drives and is contagious to other drives except the main laptop drive for some reason, and this virus was found on BOTH of my HDDs containing around 200GBs data. I told MSE to delete it but it didn't work. I used many different virus scanners and I tried deleting the virus off the drive manually in safe-mode, but no matter what I did the virus came back like it was nobody's business. There was a high chance that the virus wrote itself to the boot record and my last resort option was to format the drives and rewrite the MBR. My only other source of space was the laptop which had like 50GBs of space free, and since I couldn't have both drives connected at the same time as they would reinfect each other, I had to pick 50GBs to salvage on one of the drives then throw out the rest. The formating worked and the drive was clean, but this meant that in order to fix the other drive, I had to copy 50 gigs from it to the laptop and then from the laptop to the clean drive and I had to do this for all 200GBs. That's about 500GBs of transfer time total and let me tell you, it took AGES to finish. But you know what the worst part about it is? I most likely got that virus from one of my classmates and I, along with plenty of others, passed around that same USB stick to many other people. Just the thought that many people might've been infected with the virus along with the laptop owners above made me feel like skewering my nuts.

Needless to say, I never connected shared USB sticks to my computer along with drives ever again.

 

[Taleweaver]

Okay...I'm digging this one up because it's a sharp one.

First off: our company isn't in the best of weather. You know the drill: the CEO telling everyone we have to be cost efficient, and all users who immediately think they're the lone exception. One guy even managed to weasel in a trade-in for the regular (aka: embarrassingly slow) laptops for a new, high end model...because he convinced the director of ICT somehow that it was crucial for when he displayed powerpoint presentations (I WISH I was making this up).


It's this very same guy that called me today (while I was in the middle of a business meeting with my boss and our spokesman of the ICT deliverer).
He wanted me to install the drivers of his new mouse.

I was a bit confused. Mice are standard. The drivers are already on all the images.
No, he said. This was his own mouse. He had just purchased it. With his own money.
Me: I'm sorry. We don't support hardware that isn't purchased through our own vendor. Who gave you permission to buy this?
(keep note: we have quite a lot of spare mice. Not even the standard mouse we give with each laptop in addition to the touch pad on the thing).

This is where he got vague. Instead of giving me a straight answer, he halfheartedly tried to tell me that it wasn't about hardware but about software (drivers). Of course I replied that it's about a MOUSE, and that a mouse is HARDWARE.
Then he went with the intimidating "Do you know who I am?" route.

Alas for him...

Me: yes. As a matter of fact, I DO know who you are.

What I didn't say: "a simple teacher who jerks off on computer specs and thinks the sun shines out of his ass".

You can guess the rest: he hadn't ordered anything. His superiors most likely didn't know anything. Whether or not he was going to declare the cost of the mouse as a work cost is something I'd rather not speculate upon (in other words: you can bet your ass on it), but he never figured that normal users don't have the right to install just about any fucking USB device ever.
I noted that I was in an important meeting*, and suggested to bring it to their discussion. He'd rather not.
I wanted to talk to his supervisor. He wouldn't tell me who it was.
He ended the call almost crying. The "I don't want to be talked to in this fasion " kind of tone.


*if the phone was in the same spot, I would have put it on speaker. And thinking of it, I'm kinda sorry that I didn't gesture everyone outside the meeting room around the phone.

 

[Taleweaver]

Here's a conversation with a colleague of another department. A system administrator, mind you.

Him: hi there.
Me: hi. (note: I was exhausted when I picked up the phone...it was a terribly busy day).
Him: I have a question.
Me: yes?
Him: how do you use active directory?
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: ok.
Me: go to google.
Him: *fumbles a bit* okay. Now what?
Me: type in: "how do I use active directory".

As you can guess, he wasn't quite happy with the answer.


(in his defense: he was only recently promoted to the function. And he has a clear advantage in understanding computers over his direct peers. Still...when I told him "when you have a question, just give us a call"...this isn't what I meant).

 

[Taleweaver]

(note: user is calling from her office. From behind her PC)

Caller: hi. I'm calling to say that my mouse is broken. When I move it, it's kind of iffy.
Me: not a problem. I'll come right over to replace it.

(this is normal. We just replace the mouse, clean the thing, test it for five minutes and put it in the stock with spare mice. Never argue with user opinions)

Me: oh...just to make sure...You do have a standard HP mouse, right?
Caller: I'm not sure. How do I tell?
Me: a standard mouse is black and has grey mouse buttons.
Caller: erm...I'm not sure. Is this black?
Me:...

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I got asked if we had Mario for the Playstation 2 at work today.

It wasn't the stupidest thing I was been asked today.

Did you tell him about the NES and SNES emulator for the PS2? lol probably would have just gave you that deer in the headlights look.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Taleweaver, I love your stories. And I hate that this is very likely the field I might want to go in, but I love it at the same time.

Anyway, story of a while back, computer store owners are geniuses.

So one of my best friends has me build a computer for him. He doesn't have his own, save for a shitty laptop, and I really need to be studying right now but I forgot that this topic existed.

SO we looked on Newegg, priced some parts; decent but still low-mid range computer, it can game, but you're not gonna be running Crysis on max resolution or anywheres near that on it. Ordered everything, AMD CPU with an AM3 socket bundled with a mobo, typical when I order from Newegg, RAM, HDD, case, etc...

Parts come in, he has me come over a few days later to put it together.

"...Kevin, these were all the boxes, right? I didn't open one and put a part of it somewhere else...?"

"No, why?"

*looking all around his bed and his room* "I fucking ordered you an OEM processor, not a retail one. There's no heatsink for the damn thing."

So I start thinking of all the electronics stores around that carry heatsinks. There's a few computer stores, two of which were closed, most/any big box retailers I know do not carry heatsinks by themselves, so that left one other computer shop about 20 minutes down the road. No big deal.

I drive us there, walk in, I've seen the place before, owner is in there and I ask him if he has any AM3 socket heat sinks since I accidentally ordered an OEM CPU instead of a retail one.

"Uhh... I don't know... does it have a clip or does it use those push pin things?"

"A clip."

"Yeah I'm not too sure, you can take a look through the cabinet here."

"...Thanks. Have a nice day."

And boy was I fucking pissed.

 

[Taleweaver]

Taleweaver, I love your stories. And I hate that this is very likely the field I might want to go in, but I love it at the same time.

Thanks. With "the field"...you're talking about tech support, or ICT in general?

If the former...please loosen your attitude. Going by your story, I'd say that store owner is one of the good kinds. It's way better than having someone with no skills and goes for stalling time (I'll go get you our technician!) or tries to sell you the wrong product.


Another tip: get a good boss. That's not optional: get a boss who knows his stuff. The reason: ICT gets underrated to the ridiculous level. The result is that people will call you for all sorts of programs or hardware errors. Things will always be urgent, the error message will be vague at best and they will wander off at the moment you need them to enter their password. If you're not careful, they'll have you do parts of their job (beware of signs like "but you're the specialist" or "I'll leave you to it"). And they WILL complain if you screw up or do things like being busy with someone else.

Here are two examples (also from yesterday):

-while searching for lost print cartridges (the department who was responsible tried to blame us), some guy approached me, showing off his phone. Apparently, he had installed a few dozen (or hundreds?) mailboxes in his contact list. He asked if I could delete them for him. I told him he could probably handle his personal cell phone better than I could.

-I had to swap a laptop with someone. This would have been done the day before, but (as everyone else) she didn't like our company policy that made us deliver the older models instead of the new ones (these older models are used six year old laptops, so it's actually a miracle some people don't complain). So after some fuss, our boss gets into the routine of allowing a newer model. Problem: she has some confidential mails that should be deleted. I told her that she used citrix, which basically means that the mails are on a different computer anyway. Yes, she said. But they are stored locally as well. I told her our guys would format the laptop before giving it to someone else. Still she insisted on deleting them first. I told her I would format her pc prior to that even BEFORE I gave it to them. Still she insisted on deleting. I asked her if she was sure that she was only deleting the offline folder. That it wasn't syncing with the server at that time. Yes, she was sure. She even demonstrated it by going into citrix and showing that all her mails were still there.

It worked fine...until all her mails were gone.


This is the sort of situation that you have to be professional. Just call for a backup, ignore the laughter on the other side of the phone and don't go pointing fingers in front of her*. Just get the fucking thing fixed and be grateful that it's exactly that sort of user thinking that gets you a steady paycheck at the end of the month.
(extra note: I was home an HOUR later because of that).




*yeah, the fact that she was a cute and pregnant woman sort of helps.

 

[mechadylan]

I used to work on the second floor of a building with a few other businesses; my front door (which was always open) was a couple of feet from the elevator door so I constantly saw my neighbors coming and going. One day, this cool "Fonzy"-type goes strutting past my front door holding a beige box tower on the way to the elevator. He hits the elevator button and doubles back to say:

Dude (hoisting up box): Hey, man. You need a new computer? It's in great shape! Hehehe.
Me: Sure, let me take a look (reaching for my cordless screwdriver.)
Dude (walks into my office): This is our old computer, but I already bashed up the hard drive pretty good.
Me: Why'd you bash up the hard drive? Just remove it, dumbshit.
Dude: Nah, I heard it's best to just take a hammer to it and throw the whole thing away.

I open up the case and examine the motherboard and all of the parts that are still intact. There's a Maxtor 40Gb hdd in pristine condition still attached to the IDE and 4-pin power supply harnesses. I point to it and say:

Me: Hey! Can I have this part?
Dude: Sure. What is it?
Me: It's your hard drive.
Dude: WHAT?!?! This thing had 2 hard drives?!?!
Me: No. Just one.
Dude: Then what's THIS shit (pointing) that I took a hammer to, genius?!?!
Me: That's your DVD drive, Einstein!

 

[Sicklyboy]

Another story from a month or two ago that I don't think I posted.

A coworker moved, garage had a bunch of stuff in it, stuff containing two old computers. Knowing I'm into computers, he asked me if I wanted them since the previous owner said to do with it what he wants. Of course, I oblige, as I like scrapping computers for parts (hard drives and PSUs primarily)

So I had it sitting in my room for a while, and eventually decided to take it apart. Pick it up and "oh god... this smells like a smokers computer..."

Open it up, go to take out the 80mm exhaust fan, and see the tons of nicotine gunked up dust clogging it. I promptly closed it back up without taking a single part, took the thing, and hurled it one handed into the back yard out the back door of my house.

Not that it's really a story from tech illiterates, but annoying nonetheless.

 

[no_chocobo]

Everyone thinks that because I am a programmer, I can fix every know problem with every computer ever. I can code websites, I don't know why your router is broken!

 

[Taleweaver]

Someone: my pc is from HP. The (broken) printer as well. Can I connect a Cannon printer to it or do I have to stick to HP for the printer?
Colleague: erm...that really doesn't matter.
Me: (after trying to keep a straight face)

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

An older man came up to me as I was lounging on my porch yesterday. This is an incredibly nice man who lives down the street from me and likes to help everyone with their home improvement problems. He helped me out with a plumbing problem once, so I owed him something in return. Yesterday was the day.

He asked if I could help with his iPod Nano and I obliged. Five minutes later, he was back with a Dell laptop I learned ran Windows 8...and his wife. I politely corrected him that it wasn't an iPod Nano, but a laptop. "I thought it was a tablet." After some fiddling, I found that it was one of the newer laptops with the screen that can flip around and be used as a tablet, then politely explained that it was a laptop / tablet combo. He seemed to understand this, but wrote this down in a notebook he brought along with the laptop.

So I went to work, and he spoke as I was inspecting the laptop. He told me the last tablet he had was a Windows 9, and he got it in '92. His wife chimed in that she thought it was an Android. I quickly figured out what was going on, and told them the problem: they hadn't charged the laptop. The man told me he didn't know it needed to be charged.

After explaining some things to them, the man says this: "That's a cool color for a Microsoft Vita." I politely correct him once again.

20 minutes after he leaves, he comes back asking what to do, as his dog has chewed up their charger cord. I referred them to the local electronics store. Alessa sat down next to me and tried to advertise the local game shop. I literally pulled her sock off and stuck it into her mouth before she got out more than "Hey, you could come buy games at..." and told her that would be something to explain on another day, as they didn't have a charged laptop at the time.

TL;DR: Older man thinks he has an iPod Nano tablet, was only half right. His wife thinks they had an Android. They both think the computer they had in 1992 was a Windows 9. My DS gets complimented as a Microsoft Vita. Two older people get extremely embarrassed.

---------

Update) I got a knock on the door a couple of hours ago. He's back, with an old, beat up first generation iPod. He told me he found it on the side of the road and thought it was a cell phone at first. I told him what it was and asked the normal questions (i.e. "Did you find this with anything else", "Do you know who owns this", etc) and he didn't know a thing about it and had decided he'd keep it. I gave him all of the necessary information about the device and helped him turn it on to see if it still worked. It had a near-full battery (It was around 95%, I think) and was filled with nothing but songs from all the Twilight Movies, Hannah Montana, One Direction, and Rebecca Black. He requested I take everything off of it and I obliged, seeing as if it had all that then the previous owner would probably get a new one anyway. He then told me to load some songs onto it.

My library of songs is nothing he'd want, but I let him sample some songs out of it to pick a few he wanted in the meantime. He actually picked every Ronald Jenkees song I had, one song from a Tales of Symphonia / Tales of Phantasia remix album that I've been told sounds like some old 80s song, a couple of songs from Utada's Exodus album, Castles in the Air by Chage and Aska, and (surprisingly) some of the songs from the Nier soundtrack. He told me it was something fresh and nice on the ears to listen to.

However, he then told me he'd like his own music too. I told him that when his computer was fully charged he could come back with that and his CDs and I would help him get all of the music onto the computer so he could load up the iPod. I didn't check how big the storage was, so I don't know how much would fit on it. I'll have to check that next time.

The man left with our iPod charger dock (we have that and the USB cable and charging plug, but lost the plug so we had no choice in what to loan him as he has no computer to plug the USB cable in; this is all measures in case the battery is bad, not that the device actually needs charging right now) and a random extra pair of iPod headphones, and will return the the dock tomorrow, after he and his wife return home from getting the computer charger and (now) stuff for their new iPod.

...though before that happens I'll have to go and show them how to hook the iPod to their car. The man really likes some of the music I put on that iPod (he gave Ashes of Dreams / New from Nier and Castles in the Air two thumbs up, which surprised me as I always hear him yelling at other people to turn on something he likes instead) and apparently wants to show his wife before they get to the store. He's promised to pay me back for the extra help with a large bag of cookies. I declined, but I think he's going to bring them anyway.

TL;DR: Older man finds an iPod. Gets me to load some of my music on it so he can use it immediately. He compliments songs that older people usually don't like. Offers me some cookies.

 

[BORTZ]

I would like to see more of these.

I took some time out of my night the other day to explain to my mom that when I wiped her phone that her emails were still there. And how they werent stored on her work computer, laptop, or our old one.

Then she threw a hissy fit when she lost all of her contacts after the wipe.

 

[retKHAAAN]

I've recently taken over some IT duties for the company I work for. At the moment it's working with a coder to get a program ready for company-wide use and testing a few devices to gauge their usefulness in our accounts. However, I'm now fielding calls for all other "computer issues" and, mind you, 24 of the 28 supervisors contacting me are in their 50s/60s and are computer illiterate...

Yesterday a gentleman called me saying he couldn't find a folder on his desktop. I remotely connected to him and the entire desktop was covered in folders, 22 of which named "New Folder(8)" etc... I open one and inside is a folder titled "New Folder"... I almost hung up on him... We spent the next 40 minutes organizing his desktop (the folder he was looking for was buried 4 folders deep in "New Folder (19)"...

I sent out some software to everyone a few weeks ago to be implemented immediately with explicit, idiot-proof instructions that required .NET 4.0 be installed on some computers. Monday my boss calls and tells me redacted needs help, .NET won't install. I call the guy up, remotely connect, and have him show me exactly what he's doing and where he's getting stuck. He proceeds to follow the steps correctly (ie; click on a link I provided and click "Download") only he's using IE and the "IE has prevented downloading...blah...Click here to download" comes up. I asked him if he "Clicked there to download"... He says "It wasn't in the instructions..."

 

[BORTZ]

Lol people are idiots. My dad tells me to go into IT, and i ask him how long he would like to see me alive before i hang myself.

 

[retKHAAAN]

Lol people are idiots. My dad tells me to go into IT, and i ask him how long he would like to see me alive before i hang myself.

Thing is, I want to hang myself during the actual conversations but I'm getting paid damn good money for it ($22/hr). Can't really complain about that. I seriously wonder though how some people even function at their jobs when they can't figure out "drag & drop" or "right-click"...

 

[BORTZ]

wow thats not bad at all.

Dang. I mean imagine what it was like before "copy" and "paste" and how people go without using it out of ignorance every day.

 

[mechadylan]

Here's a jewel from my inbox that I just can't bring myself to deleting.

Spoiler

 

[BORTZ]

Hooory shiz.

Hooory shiz.

Someone was asking me for advice on what laptop to buy. She said her girlfriend had a "really cool Dy laptop". I was like seriously WTF. Ive never heard of them. Dont bey laptops and shiz from knockoff brands lol.

Turns out her friend had an HP something or other and she read the label wrong.