Fortunately, most of mine have not been quite that bad.

Of the ones that have made me shake my head . . . or bang my head on my desk, 98% of them are from the same lady.

Like . . .

Her: Hi, what address should I send the payment to?

(She's asked this question multiple other times)

Me: Did you get the invoice I sent?

Her: Yes, I have it right in front of me.

Me: Doesn't it have our address right there on it?

Her: Well, yes, but I was not sure if that was the address I should send the payment to.

Me: Yes, the address on the invoice is the address to send the payment to.

Her: Ok, thanks! :)




My all time favorite from her so far has been an IM chat that went like this ...

Her: Hi, are you there?

Me: Yes, I'm here

Her: Are you busy?

Me: Yeah, I've got some stuff going on here

Her: Oh, ok.

Her: Got a minute for a question?

Me: Yeah, sure, what's up?

Her: How do you spell [I don't remember what the word was]?

Me: When I'm trying to figure out a word, I go to http://dictionary.com

Her: Yeah, I knew you'd say that, I'll try that.







-- Edited by WebGuy at 23:27, 2007-09-13

I have a good one, and I'm the culprit od stupidity in this one. Keep in mind that this was 6AM and well before my first cup of coffee, so have mercy on me. {{lol}}

I was setting up for a training group to start at 7AM and the computer in the conference room wouldn't turn on. The power button didn't work, and neither did the remote. I checked all the cords and made sure they were plugged in right. I called the facilities coordinator and he did the very same thing. His buddy from IS stopped in to see how we were doing, right about the time the coordinator and I were both staring at the computer and scratching our heads, not knowing what to do. The IS tech chuckled and said, "Dan, betcha $20 I can fix it in under 10 seconds." Dan took the bet. The IS tech walked over to the computer table and flipped a power switch - located on the table itself - to "on" and the computer fired right up. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. It never occurred to me the table would have a switch, and I never noticed it before because it was black, like the table. I felt dumb, nonetheless!

-- Edited by garougal at 23:38, 2007-09-13

I have some stories of my own, both as support and as the customer (not all computer related).

When I was an account manager for a publisher, I had the "star password" one. This lady called in and said her password wasn't working. I changed her password several times, and she said none of them worked. So I asked, "What does the error message say when you try your password?" She replied, "It doesn't say anything, I just get a bunch of stars."

My brother-in-law is a mechanic. One time the dashboard lights in my car went out, and it was starting to get annoying not being able to see any of that at night. I checked the bulb and the fuse, but I couldn't figure it out, so I took it to him. He also checked the bulb and the fuse and the wires. Then he turned up the knob that controlled the dash light brightness, and guess what, my dash light came on! I felt like such an idiot.


But the best one involves 2 other people as well at my last job. (I've told this story before.) The lady who sat at the front desk told me she kept hearing something beep, and she thought it was coming from the server room. I figured it was a power strip whose back up battery was going out. So I checked all the power strips, and they all seemed fine. So I sat in the server room for 5 minutes and didn't hear the beep. I told her that I couldn't find it, and to tell me if it happened again.

A few minutes later she rang me and told me it beeped again. I had another coworker in my office at the time, and she had the idea to time the intervals between beeps, then we can go listen for it. So I did, and there was 5 minutes between beeps. So, 4 minutes later, I stand in the server room for a couple minutes, but don't hear a beep. I go back out, and the lady at the front desk told me she did hear a beep.

So I wait another 4 minutes, and the front desk lady, the other coworker, and I are standing in the lobby area listening to the beep. It takes us about 4 tries of, "I think it's coming from this direction," "Is it coming from that office or this office?" etc., before we finally figure out that it's coming from the hallway leading into the warehouse.

At the next beep, we realized it was coming from the automatic air freshener above the warehouse door. Somehow, it became my job to fix it. So I got a ladder and got the air freshener down. There was a red light flashing that said it was out of the aerosol freshener stuff. So I got the new can, put it in, and it was still beeping.

I figured it probably had to reset. So I turned the power switch off, waited a couple seconds, then turned it back on. The thing started beeping and the lights blinking like crazy. Jokingly, I said, "Oh no, I think it's going to blow up!" and leaned in to see if I could find another button to push. At that moment, the beeping stopped, and I got a puff of air freshener right in my face!

I did find the reset button after that, but I smelled like vanilla air freshener for the rest of the afternoon.