Some conversations that took place between Help Desk technicians and callers with a `problem’.
A caller to the Help Desk said the instructions he was reading said to “Press any key”. He asked the desk, “Which key is the `any’ key?”
A caller complained that her new computer wouldn’t work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked: “what power switch?”
An exasperated caller couldn’t get her new computer to turn on. After confirming that the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button.
Her response: “I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens.” The foot pedal turned out to be the computer’s mouse.
A caller complained that “her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on”. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
A customer called to say that he couldn’t get his computer to fax anything.
After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the send key.
A call came in from a man complaining that the system wouldn’t read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat, he failed to diagnose the problem.
It was found that the customer labeled the diskettes and then rolled them into the typewriter to type his labels.
The Help Desk asked a caller to send them a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the floppies.
Customer: “Hello, can you help me? The cup holder of my computer broke off”.
Help Desk: “Did you say upholder?”
Customer: “Yes, it’s on the front of my computer. It’s to put on your drinks. It broke off”.
Help Desk: “Was that upholder on your computer when you bought it or did you buy it later?”
Customer: “No. It was on my computer when I bought it. The name on it is 4X”.
At this point the Help Desk operator began to laugh. He realized that the caller was putting his coffee cup in the CD-ROM drive.