Subject: More Tech Support

For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and 
our computers were facing away from each other. A few minutes into the class, 
she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched 
the inputs for the keyboards.
 
She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her 
face.
 
She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, 
nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding 
behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.
 
I started to type, "Leave me alone!"
 
They both jumped back, silenced. "What the . . . " the teacher said. I typed, 
"I said leave me alone!"
 
The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I swear!" It was all I 
could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and 
HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.
 
Me: "Don't touch me!"
 
Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that hard."
 
Me: "Who do you think you are anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I couldn't contain 
myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing.
 
After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red.
 
Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.
 
-=+=-
 
Customer: "Your sound card is defective and I want a new one."
 
Tech Support: "What seems to be the problem?"
 
Customer: "The balance is backwards. The left channel is coming out
of the right speaker and the right channel is coming out the left.
It's defective."
 
Tech Support: "You can solve the problem by moving the left speaker
to the right side of the machine and vice versa."
 
Customer: (sputter) (click)
 
Tech Support: (snicker)
 
-=+=-
 
This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied" message
every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and
password in capital letters.
 
Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."

 == 
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet division
for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just
couldn't solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would
print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are
cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of
cyan and yellow, but green printed fine.  Every color of the rainbow
printed fine except for yellow. I dad the customer change ink
cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers.
Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers for help; they offered no new
ideas.
 
After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the
customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked
quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of
this yellow construction paper?"
 
-=+=-
 
An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows
installation that had gone terribly wrong.
 
Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my
home computer."  (Training stresses that we are "not the Software
Police," so I let the little act of piracy slide.)
 
Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
 
Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't
initialized."
 
Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"
 
Customer:(proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a Macintosh disk.
Would you like to initialize it'?"
 
Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
 
Customer: "After they were initialized all the disks appeared to be
blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can't read them in
the A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set
of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?"