Worst.....Repair....EVER!
 

After reading through some posts and seeing other technicians on this site, I am curious about something. What is the worst repair you ever had to do on any kind of system?

I once had a user bring me a flat bed scanner at my old job for repair. When I opened it up there was an ant colony inside it. You could see all the ants in there running around. I told her that her warranty was pretty much void, and that buying a new one is what I recomend.

I am sure we all have some sort of horror story that is pretty funny. So post what the worst thing you ever had to do to fix a computer or computer related device.

I've got tons more but I'll start with the scanner story.

Not a horror story, but one of my most annoying ones..

I once had one of my users call me and tell me his laptop was dead. No networking/no booting/no nothing. I told him I had an opening in 3 hours and I could come take a look at it quickly. I went over to that lab at the 'appointed' time (fashionably late of course) and took a peek at the laptop. Blinking ? icon. Threw in my OS 9 CD and booted. Everything was gone, it was a blank disk. 'Where's all your stuff? What happened here?' I asked. 'Well, I didn't want to wait, so I figured I could fix it myself. I put in some CDs I had lying around and went to Drive Setup and initialized the disk... This won't take long to fix, right?'

this doesn't quite fit, but are two of the more amusing things that happened to me.

I work at a newspaper as a graphic artist....

ONE

I get a call from an elderly gentlemen, asking me about a full page graphic I'd done about the internet.
(this was about 6 years ago).
Man: I was reading your graphic about the internet, and I wondering.....how do I get on the internet?
Me: well, you'll need to contact a service provider, there's AOL, or ....
Man: no, no, I need to get on the internet
Me: (perplexed), well, like I said, you'll need to set up an account with an internet provider...
Man: Oh. well, how would I do that? I want to get on the internet....
Me: well...a lot of times, they hand out free AOL CDs, or you could go to where you bought your computer, I'm sure they'll...
Man: computer! no, don't have a computer...
Me: (silence, trying to think of a response)
Man: I mean, I want to get to the internet from your graphic...from this page right here in my hand. Now how do I do that?


TWO

We had a..well, can we say...less than competent art director at one time, who had come to newspapers from being a design professor. Macs were relatively new, and the program in use was MacDraw.
She was sitting down at the mac and cursing up a storm. Finally, I had to ask her what was wrong...
"I keep rotating this circle but nothing happens!".

About 4 years ago, I opened up a Mac performa 6400 that was not booting properly. The smell was terrible, like urine! Called the customer (at a college dorm), and asked if he knew what might have happened. He told me that he was keeping a beaker with a mix of water and urine on a shelf above his computer desk, ('why? why? why?' I thought) and had spilled it on the desk and computer a few days before, (that is what happens next, right?). I'm glad to say that he got his computer back unrepaired. (I had no technician willing to go further!!)

Ah.. that brings back college memories.. hahaa!

LMAO man i am rolling!

If I had a dime for every 'I have a PhD in Physics and/or a MD, therefore I must be intelligent enough to fix my own computer when it's broken; But here it is 5 hours later and I've made it much, much worse so now I must call Jacques and explain that I've made even more work for him to clean up when I should have just left the computing to him like he leaves the treatment planning to me'.. I'd have a $h!tl0@d of dimes.

While I don't have any good stories regarding Mac repairs, I do have _tons_ of stories regarding funny hosting incidents. Most often, we get calls from clients wondering where their site went. :) I take a look and of course, it's gone. Nothing in their DocumentRoot at all! I ask them if they have "done anything" to the site recently. Almost unbelievably, most of the time, their "new" developer has deleted everything in order to start "fresh". These are live sites mind you. I check the logs and of course, their developer had just logged in earlier that day and deleted everything...without even downloading it first! :)

Another great one... One of our former clients used to love to break their Win2k boxes. They'd call up and say "...can you pull up my server and see if something is wrong?". Upon pulling up the server, I'm greated by a Windows installation screen. The foo "forgot" that he had rebooted the server and started to reinstall Windows! He then tries to con me into sitting there and walking through a Windows install! They did this about 11 times - literally. :)

- G!mpy

A woman at one of the places I work asked me to come take a look at odd behavior on her W95 set-up. She thought she had a virus because she was unable to access any menu options. The menu bar was all black, with no options showing; you'd click where File or Edit should have been, you got a drop-down menu, but it, too, was all black. After puzzling over the problem awhile, I decided to check her Display Control Panel and sure enough, someone had played a little practical joke on her: fonts, menu bars--everything was black. We changed the settings and all was well. They thought I was a genius and I was happy to not contradict them. :D

now there is an april fools joke in the making!

Let's understand -- I do NOT work in MIS. I am not responsible for fixing users' computers.

A year or so ago a user poked his head into my cubicle. Could I help? He couldn't get hold of an MIS person, but his computer had been locked up for most of the morning.

I sighed and walked back to his cube. Jiggled the mouse -- no positive results: the cursor didn't move a millimeter.

So I poked the escape key a couple of times. Everything promptly came back to life.

I'm a genius, I tell you. I have the testimony of my co-workers to attest to that. (You may bow if you feel so inclined.)

Breen

Not Sure about the most humours or painful now but one of the more common ones I run
 

Not Sure about the most humor or painful now but one of the more common ones I run into...

I Get a call periodically about computer that "just not working all of sudden keyboard wise" Grab they keyboard and sloshing out of it is Coffe.. Well Duh of course it works much better with coffe spilled all over it.... Er "well Yeah it worked fine until I spilled my Coffee on it, should I have told you..."
-------------------------


Meanwhile, Now that I think of it Well Actually, Luckiest Mac user, albeit one of the more hygene afflicted... The Radiolgoist in ? add just gotten a Contour shuttle to go with his Nikon Coolscan, 1/2 dozen Firewrie drives, Kensington Mouse etc... So I diecided to neaten his desk up a little to make some space.....

I start moving things out of the way and I see black powder and then tan cougulated pools of sludge and Some peripherals have to be wrested free of the bonds made by the sludge (at this moment Dr. walks into his office) and I ask about the sludge and says "So thats where the Coffee went".

The poweder was obviously Coffee that had been there so long, it turned back into powder, the milk and sugur the Sludge....

A lot of Ispropl Alcohol and his desk was steril again. Thing is, there was Coffee sludge and black powder under the speakers, the CoolScan, the Kingston mouse, etc. and yet other then my disgust, it actually did not hit any electronics.

Lucky user.

Oh man....get to the internet from your add...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That was a good one

I once had a user bring me a computer for repair. It was an HP running win98. The problem description on the work order said: "Restore hard drive" Simple enough I thought. I'll just run the restore cd and boom its done. So I restore it, the user comes in to pick it up, and about 2 hours later I get this phone call.

me: Hello
user: Yes I just picked up my computer from your service dept. and I can't find any of my data anywhere.
me: Okay do you have the work order number?
me: Okay, lemme look here. Yup in the notes it says the technician restored it (not telling him it was me right away).
user: Restored it? What in the hell does that mean?
me: Well, you computer is basically reloaded to the factory defaults. Everything else was wiped clean.
user: What? Who in the hell authorized this?
me: Well, according the problem description you did sir.


....and then comes the story of how he had 5 million dollars of realestate deals on his computer that were lost. Yeah right, 5 million dollars of realestate deals with no back ups? Needless to say we ended up offering to send his drive to data recovery, but he never took us up on it.

That was a long time ago, needless to say I no longer assume users know what a restore is.

Once this lady brought me in her son's computer. Her son was out at college and had dropped it off the previous weekend for us to look at. It was an imac I think. System started up with the flashing question mark. No problem I thought. Booted off DW, rebuilt HD, and it was fixed. The HD remounted, and I rebooted into the OS to run a final check. Well the computer finally booted into the OS, and there was a rather nude/crude pic for the desktop background. So there I am standing with some kids mom beside me only to find porno right smack on the desktop. I think I might have been a bit more embarassed than her at first. Then I realized it was rather funny. I only wish I could have been at the next family dinner to hear the conversation.

I'm sure you've all been through this one:

Person: I can't log into my account.

Me: is the caps lock key on?

Person: no.

*troubleshoots for a while*

Me: are you sure the caps lock key isn't on?

Person: no it isn't.

Me: is the little light on that key on?

Person: yes.

Me: kill, death, torture.

Or it has also happened that they play it off innocently:

Me: is the caps lock key on?

Person: err... no... of course it isn't.... oh hey wow it just worked, what a coincidence, thanks for your help.

---

I've also noticed that for some reason people have a tendency to respond to your questions with what you want to hear, even if they have no clue what the question means or what you are referring to.


v

Yeah I found the same...people always answer what they think you want them to... not necessarily the truth..

I found the best way is not to prompt the person with possible answers...

--Zed :cool:

SOOOO true!! We have multiple medical research labs where 90% of the researchers are from a very large asian country. Well, their English isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot better than my Chinese, so very often I get conflicting answers within a 30 second period from the same person, or answers that I know cannot be true for the problems described. Man I need to learn Chinese.

Or when users call you up to tell you that their modem is fried, and you think, well so you don't need a modem. They are on a network and would never need to gain remote access to a dial up connection. Then after they describe the problem further, by modem, they mean the computer. I think I hear the computer being called either a modem, or a hard drive the most. Like my hard drive won't come on. Is it external? I ask. No I am hitting the power button and the hard drive won't come on.

"I turned the computer off and on and it's still frozen. What gives?"
 

I see this problem most often in users attempting to think on their own and having difficulty differentiating between the monitor and the CPU. Turning off the monitor is NOT the same as turning off your computer, people!! :)

Here is kind of a scary one. Back when the iMac first came out and we had to repair them not a lot of us had tons of CRT experience. Well this co-worker of mine and me were pretty much the only mac techs. So we got stuck repairing all the iMacs (and I have repaired probably over 1,000 easily since they have been out). One thing you may notice about some techs, or the more experienced they get they will sometimes skip small precautions or steps. For example, I pretty much never wear a static strap anymore. They just seem to get in my way. Well, he didn't discharge the CRT (which I am guilty of as well, I didn't discharge every CRT I ever touched). I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I believe he took the anode cap off and brushed the metal connection of it along a metal heatsink. I saw him convulse a few times and fly back about 6 ft. He was okay, but still a bit scary. After that I discharged the crap out of every CRT that I have fixed. Especially the apple studio ones, remember the big old tank 22" studio monitor that weighed like 90lbs?

A wise Choice:)
 

A wise Choice:)


What did you dislike more Flat Imac or Imac from a disasembly perspective....
-------

I know some of the Power Computing ones while not intricate were more like Razor Cases (as were all low cost cases from far away).

well, the crt imac I have disassembled reassembled countless and countless times. Most common replaced part was the PAV (power analog video) board in the CRT iMacs. The flat panels are okay, but I hate replacing or removing the neck for any reason. If you have to replace the neck or the screen (or any of the screens componets like the bezel, etc.) its really annoying due to how they route the cables from the neck down to the rest of the imac. Sometimes I will spend like 30 minutes making sure all the cables will reach every port they plug into since they are routed and harnessed kinda awkwardly from the neck. Plus apple just recently changed the design of the flat panels, so what I was finally used to, is now different. I can't say I dislike one more than the other. I must admit a lot of times it is kinda fun to take them apart. Emacs aren't that bad since the PAV/CRT is all one assembly so troubleshooting them is a bit easier. I think the most annoying apple product is the ibook. Great machine, but designed poorly from a take apart view. You have to completely take an ibook apart to replace the HD. Most laptops you just have to get to a certain point or there is even an access panel right to the HD, but not in the ibook.

Thanx
 

Thanx... For Sharing...
-----------------------------------

I had sudden Flash about the Movie with the Robot Johnny 5 (forgot the movie name).

Johnny 5 /Disasemmble No Disassemble Routine:)

... If you play with hardware and you have seen the movie it hard not to muse about it sometimes...

Short Circuit

Yeah Yeah
 

That. That. You Pegged it.

I turned Off the "Hard Drive" (which is always the monitor or Computer:)

okay...how bout this one

Los locos kick yer @zz!
los locos kick yer face!
los locos kick yer balls into outer space!

....From short circuit 2 baby

hmm no one has anymore stories?
 

Out of all the admins, web designers, techs, etc we don't have anymore funny/horror stories?


I remember a few years back we got the feliz navidad virus in our email server. Its mostly harmless virus, just annoying. It opens the maximum amount of windows that you can on your desktop so you can't really do anything else, cuz more random windows pop up. It was easily fixed just by running the latest NAV on the system. The only problem is that it was one of those mass mailer ones. The ones that attached themselves to every email in your address book and would send itself out. Well I would clean off one of the bosses machines (I got stuck cleaning off all the bosses machines) and 15 min later the virus would be back in their inbox. Well our email server is at our home office, which is many many miles away from our location. So I thought I would call MIS.

MIS: hello MIS
Me: Hi, this is tom from location ____ and we found that there is the feliz navidad virus on the email server, and it keeps copying itself from everyone's address book. Could you shut down the email server for a few minutes so we can clean all the machines of the virus.
MIS: Um, no shutting down the email server won't help, and we know, we have known about the virus for about 5 hours now.
Me: 5 hours? Why didn't you contact us, so I could have kept everyone out of their email.
MIS: We'll contact you once we have fixed it.
Me: Okay thanks.....I guess

About an hour later I get a call from one of the bosses.

Boss: Hey tom, come back to my office I can't get my email, and I need to send out this report its due today
Me: Okay I'll be there in a sec

I get back there and sure enough SMTP, and POP3 fail to connect to the server. So I call MIS (and this is almost 2 1/2 hrs after I first talked to them)

MIS: Hello MIS
Me: Yeah, is the email server down?
MIS: Yeah we had to shut it down for a sec and reboot it to get rid of that virus
ME: Ah okay, so eta on when it will be back up?
MIS: 30min approx

My conclusion MIS = worthless

great stories
 

I love hearing these stories. I think no matter what field we work in, we all have those kinds of stories. I know I do. I work in optical and i have worked in retail and i have way too many "stupid people" stories to post. I like reading these so i'll know what not to say to a tech. so they don't think i'm a complete idiot! ha ha ha I know I have asked some pretty stupid questions but each time i learn something knew and have the common sense not to make the same mistake again. Keep those stories coming. They are great!
Teri

This is the coatroom, go ahead and share some stories.

v

I've not got the quality stories of everyone else, I only work for a small company, but I've had some right funny requests:

*phone rings
ME: Hello?
USER: My keyboard needs rep-programming
ME: Re-programming? <what the hell does that mean, does he know?>
USER: Yep, re-programming, all the buttons have lost there settings.
ME: Right what is happening? are you getting any output from the keyboard or error messages?
USER: The keyboard is printing stuff but only little stars!
ME: Just type in your password and click ok!!

I once had this iMac from this user and she said she had problems surfing the internet, and got error messages. Well I hooked up the little rig to our network and started surfing through our proxy just fine. So I called her up and asked her to come in and show me exactly what it was doing so I could fix it. So she came down to the tech shop and I showed her it browsed the internet just fine. She then told me it was on certain websites. So I asked her to show me what the error message was. She made her kids leave the room, and I was kinda nervous to exactly see what the problem was. She pulled up some bondage pr0n site and got a java script error. It was really hard to keep a straight face after that. Not to mention this lady looked like your typical soccer mom.

Had a similar problem with a 98 box, but the real embarassing problem was it was my mums!

She complained the pc was real slow, so I went round to have a look and first of clear down the cache and cookies. She watched me and asked what was going on. I explained what cookies were and how they get there, I decided to just randomly click on one. Whoops, cookie from SexTracker with my younger brothers details in it. My mum was now very interested and wanted to see some more, appears my brother was getting very busy on the pc and had clogged it up with p0rn!

Here's one that happened just the other day. I was working on a PC for once and the powersupply immediately started smoking when you powered it on. So I quickly turned it off by pulling the plug out. I opened it up (and it smelled awful, I hate electrical burn smell) and to my surprise there was some kind of spider colony in there or something and they caught on fire or burned up the powersupply or something. I really hate spiders too. Some were still alive so I quickly threw the powersupply outside in the dumpster with the spiders in it. I have no idea what kind of spiders they were, and I don't care I just don't want them in my work space.

Called up the end user and found out he had this computer in his work shed to run some kind of mill thing that drills out ceramics (or something to that effect). I told him to bug bomb his work shed.

so much hate! :D

and bugs are good; without them we'd be up to our eyeballs in goo. spiders are good bugs because they eat bad bugs. old saw: killing spiders brings bad luck.

electrical equipment needs a fairly clean/cleanable, environment, not chemical warfare.

we will lose any war against bugs.

Should've charged him extra for the debugging! :D

--Zed :cool:

Yeah but spiders are scary. I like them when they are off not bothering me catching bugs when they start jumping out of a power supply at me I don't really appreciate it.

Yeah bugs that kill and eat other bugs are good I agree, but bugs nesting in your electronic equipment is bad.

I just don't like spiders I have had some bad experiences with them. Got bit by a brown recluse once and it was not good.

I have a few stories I could share...

I used to work for a junior high school fixing/repairing a bunch of their Macs. I would do routine jobs like installing software and new RAM, as well as fixing the multitude of problems that existed all over the two computer labs.

One time, after installing some RAM, I created a little AppleScript and placed it into the startup items folder of the teacher's computer. So next time it started up, it displayed a little message that said, "The RAM that was recently installed was bad, and you must have it replaced!", or something to that effect. I made it blatantly obvious that it was a joke (especially since I said as much in a subsequent dialog), but the teacher took it seriously and I almost got a student in trouble at the school. :p Even the most humorous teachers seem to have an aversion to technology that makes them go ballistic when someone plays a harmless joke on them.


Before I became one of the repair guys for the school (I actually went to that school), I did some cracking of Foolproof. Anybody know that security program? I think schools used to like it a lot, but one of the funny things in the early days was that it didn't really know that much about AppleScript (or maybe the administrator just set it up wrong). In any case, I made a little AppleScript (called the Handy Dandy Script) that did all sorts of unauthorized actions that were prevented by FoolProof, and since FoolProof wasn't AppleScript-aware, it didn't really care.

The script itself was harmless, and it just did things like getting info on a file, and things like that. The one thing that it did do that was potentially harmful was that it replaced the Finder with a modified version of the application. The only thing I used that for, though, was to change the startup picture of the Mac OS smiley face to one that was a frowny face. :D I don't think the administrators ever figured out how I did that (though they didn't know that I, personally, had done that).

That was kind of off-topic, since that wasn't really a repair or anything, but I thought I'd share. :)



Let's see, what's a good repair story.... reeepair story... *thinks* .

I know that I had a lot of the repair stories of the kind where just your presence makes the problem goes away. Obviously, that's not the case, and it's just that the user couldn't reproduce the problem, but I got the reputation that I only need be present in the room for a problem not to assert itself. It's kind of annoying when users don't remember exactly how they got the problem to occur. :rolleyes:

I'll get back to you guys. I'm sure I can eventually think up some good stories. :)

And this guy wants to run for a political office?! :eek:

Voter beware! :cool:

those are qualifications, Phil :D

Haha no, that never worked out. (Stupid PayPal.) Thanks for the vote of confidence, though. ;)

Well I had this user bring me in her tangerince imac a few days ago. She had shipped it out for repair and just received it back from fed ex or whoever shipped it. The box had been dropped, there was a huge dent and cracks in the plastic chasis and the CRT had imploded. I am still waiting for the claims adjuster to call me about pricing it out for repair. So I get to fix this rig now because the shipping company dropped it. I wonder if some loaders were playing catch with it? I have had some friends work in that business and believe me, stuff gets broken. So buy the insurance when they ask you if you want it.

So I get this flat panel imac in the shop today. Problem description simply says "permission problems" on the work order. I don't know how the end user did this, but they made their whole HD read only. They had logged in as root and were trying to change permissions for some reason and ended up changing the whole HD to read only. If the whole HD itself was not read only then almost all the directories were.

Then like 15 minutes later some lady comes to me and wants me to tell her how much ram she has in her macintosh computer. She then hauls in this CRT iMac. It was the cd/dvd model. I told her that upgrading the ram from 64megs would help her computer run faster. She asks if its hard to install and I tell her no, you just access the ram slots from the bottom and pretty much pop it in. I then tell her I can install it for a resonable price (ran install special for august was only 12.95 plus tax) she decides not have us do it. She told me she would buy the ram and try to install it herself. So I put her computer back on the service counter and hand her the ram she needs. Next thing I know she is in our support diagnostics room (its a seperate room from the shop that has a back up station and some static free work benches) trying to install the ram herself, and not doing a good job at it. I very politely tell her that only employees can be back here and that those work benches were for company use only and not available to the public. This lady flips out and starts yelling at me and the other techs and then starts yelling at my boss. Calling us jerks, telling us that we are rude for not letting her use our equipment for her own personal use. Needless to say she was not very computer savy. I ended up installing the ram for her so she wouldn't break her machine on our porperty with our equipment and I did not charge her. She just yelled and screamed and was difficult so she could save a whole whomping 13 dollars. This is why I hate people and their computers.

Tonight = drinking whisky after work

some testers at a company I worked at had another April Fool's joke but since most of them were fairly computer literated it didn't work, but I bet it could work on some others out there (as I promote torture of innocent (or not so innocent) users.)

Take a screen shot of the desktop then make that the background and hide all icons and dock/start menu bars... then see how long it takes the user to open something up.


As for worst repairs, someone in my firm returned an older (PC) laptop on which the system was corrupted (since they had deleted, not uninstalled, various program files they no longer felt were necessary on the firm-owned machine, you know, simple things like Norton Anti-virus.) They had done that so that they could install games. Well they also lost the floppy drive and the bios was too old to recognize the cd-rom at boot, and they expected the machine back to them relativly quickly. My boss and I were dying, we were stuck in a floppy drive syndrome.

Otherwise, when the most important man in our office spilled coffee into his laptop and I had to dismantle it and clean it with q-tips and alcohol. At least if i couldn't have cleaned it I knew that another machine would just get purchased.

Kal

this thread is too good to let die
 

I can't believe no one brought up the classics. There was the time a guy called his IT person and complained that his coffee cup holder wouldn't come out anymore.

I also remember hearing a recording from Compaqs help line like six years ago. Some college student did his entire thesis on his laptop and never backed up once. From his fury I take it compaq just replaced the machine. It went something like, "Hi, this is so and so and I just got my laptop back and my master thesis that I was working on for (changes to screaming) FOUR *****ING YEARS, IS GONE. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU *****S DID BUT I WANT MY FILES BACK (really screaming) R-I-G-H-T-F-*-C-K-I-N-G-N-O-W.." He went on a for about a min more and it was equally hillarious.

As for things that actually happened to me heres two quickies:

I come home about 1am on a Friday after a bit o drinkin to see my answering machine lit up. Theres about 5 messages on it from my co-workers and bosses.
First Message:
"Uh, hey Joel, I was tring to print so posters and cant get the server (win2k machine running a poster plotter) to come on. Call me back if you get this."

mind you this an office full of mac users
Message 2:
"Uh, hey Joel it's Jerremy again, just wondering if you were home yet."

3rd message and still no appology for calling me at home.
"Hey Joel, this is Marc (my boss). Jeremy is tring to get out of here and really needs your help, could you please call us back." (like I'm just sitting there screening calls or something)

4th message (accusitory):
"Hey Joel, we're really in a bind here. You need to call us back!"

by this point I'm drunk and pissed
5th message:
"I don't appreciate you leaving us hanging like this Joel, wtf did you do to this machine!?"

livid, I call back.
office: "Hello?"
me: "Jerremy?"
jerremy: "Yah?"
me: "What the hell is going on down there!?"
jerremy: "Well Marc isnt here anymore but he thinks you sabbatoged us and left town."
me: "WHAT? Whered he get that idea!?"
jerremy: "We were standing here waiting for you to call back and I sorta joked about it and he ran with it."
me: "Thanks a *****ing lot dude, what is the problem anyway?"
jerremy: "We cant log into the print server, we tried every password we could think of."
me "DID YOU TRY JUST HITTING ENTER!?"
jerremy: "oh, uh I never tried that."

I didnt get in trouble but it marred my rep and probably helped get me fired when I really did screw up.

Well, I am not a computer tech, but I do work as a product specialist for a major musical instrument manufacturer in thier hard disk recording group. These machines are dedicted all-in-one DAW's using a proprietary OS. Keep in mind that the sole use of these machines is the recording and manipulation of audio.

Probably the winner of all calls was the fella that couldn't understand why he couldn't install Photshop on his machine.

Even if you could, what would you do with it?

Priceless

I agree that spiders are good, and Daddy Long Legs are fun to watch. But my 4 year old daughter is recovering from a Black Widow bite, so for right now, I am with larkin on this.

Ouch I hope your daughter will be okay. My little brother got bitten by a brown recluse once when he was in middle school, ironically he was in the computer lab when it happened. Luckily for him the hospital was 1/2 a block from his school, so he got the anti-venom shot fairly quickly.

Hmm…

I work at AppleCare, and we get a fair share of calls from less-than-experienced users.

Calls I have taken:

A person insisting that Apple help configure his Windows computer to hook up to an AirPort base station, and getting completely and utterly irate when I explained that I can't do that…

User: "Hi, my computer won't do $FEATURE."
Me: "Did you reboot?"
User: "No."
Me: "Please reboot your computer"
User: "Hey, it works now…"

User: "My $PORTABLE went off and won't go on."
Me: "Is the sleep light flashing?"
User: "Yes."
Me: "Is it plugged in?"
User: "Umm…Nevermind"

I had one user who was unable to grasp any of the normal methods for booting to a CD…Startup manager, holding down "C". I had to manually select the CD in Startup Disk and then reboot…40 minutes to reset the password.

I overheard one tech explaining to a user that Bill Gates does not own Apple…

One person tried to convince me that an iMac (Summer 2001) came pre-installed with the iMac (Flat Panel) software bundle, including Otto-Matic…

User: "I've been using a Mac for 35 years…"

From other people:

One user called in and started ranting about how David Pogue was:

• Her husband
• Cheating
• A paedophile
• Had lots of confidential info about Apple mainframes
• Had helped develop the Finder
• He had access to Apple internal docs
• Did I mention paedophilia?

I found out a few years ago that sony calls that imaging. That wasn't cool. i didn't lose anything important, but it kinda sucked.

Okay,

You ever have that experience that just puts you into denial? You think to yourself, there is no possible way this just really happened, did it? You are in denail so bad you don't know whether to laugh, or cringe at how stupid the situation is. Well, this story I am about to tell you did just that to me. Infact this peticular client put me in denial a few times all within a two day period.

So, I am working with this client. She has HP desktop. Its like maybe two years old. It was one of the first WinXP, P4 series that ever came out. It only has 128mb of RAM installed in it, which is the minimum requirement to run win XP. So I clean a ton of spyware, and viruses off her system and then proceed to recomend my client a RAM upgrade. She okays the RAM upgrade, and she okays for me to wipe out her HD and reload the OS clean to get rid of the viruses/malware/spyware/etc. When she comes to pick up her system she tells me she does not want the RAM because her daughter told her it would not make her internet connection any faster. This was because she had dial up. I told her, thats correct it does not speed up the internet connection, it actually...... Before I could finish she said, my daughter is an egineer at (some local large corporation, which I will not name) and she told me it would not speed up my internet connection and that I did not need it. So I tried to explain to her that she was running the bare minimum amount of memory to run win xp but she just would not listen. So I uninstall it, and give it back to her.

About an hour rolls by

<phone rings>

Me: Service dept, how can i help you?
User: Yes this is ______ and I just picked up my system about an hour ago or so and well its fixed, but its not fixed. I can't get on the internet with this thing.
Me: Okay, well since we did a wipe and reload of the OS you will have to reinput those settings for your dial up account.
User: Yeah well I am trying to but its not working.
Me: Okay, okay, who is your provider?
User: Earthlink
Me: Okay, great they should have sent you an earthlink CD, that should set everything up for you.
User: Yeah, I tried that and it doesn't work.
Me: Thats weird your dvdrom drive worked fine an hour ago. Okay, so did you place the cd in the drive?
User: Yes
Me: Okay, well auto play is just probably disabled... Open up my computer and try double clicking on the cdrom drive icon
User: It says not accessable...
Me: Ummm....<straching head>....well, can you just describe to me how you are trying to do this and perhaps I can figure it out.
User: Well I grabbed the cd and lifted up the lid and put the cdrom in the drive, and it doesn't work?
Me: Lifted the lid? Wait.....Your system is an HP right?
User: Yes
Me: Oh, well you see that lid just opens up a cdrom holding tray, its not actually the drive. You have to hit the drive button on the top front of the machine and the tray will open. Place the cdrom in the tray and hit the button again and it will close. Then wait for it to auto play and follow the instructions.
User: Oh, wow it works now, thanks

<hangs up phone>

Okay, seriously? I can't believe this was a real call. This same client was back in the next day for more problems. They installed a firewall, told the firewall to block all internet access to all applications and then wondered why they could not browse the internet. Of course I got yelled at a few times.

This put me in denial.....I mean can someone really do this?

Thought I would share.

It is amazing sometimes just how fast you can go from being the most amazing person in the world to just "the hired help" in a few minutes in some clients eyes.

I had a client ring me after a routine job to berate me for "making his computer worse" - every time he tried to move his mouse in a left direction the arrow on the screen would go right, and every time he would move the mouse up, the arrow would go down, I am somewhat proud to say that I was able to ask him quite quickly which direction the cord on his mouse was facing, yep it was down - the mouse was upside down.

I've also had (male) clients point out invisible objects under the computer desk that I'm sure they know can only fit one person and then have the "helpful" client squeeze in next to me to show me how mistaken he is...I think most people know that accidental brushing up against someone is OK but a hand creeping up your leg is unmistakenly "not job related".

dosser

Hey.. that's a 'perk'!

It's not a Mac-based one, but I thought it was pretty good - although I'm not sure how absolutely true it is...

I work in print, and once one of my staff came to me and told me that a client had asked if we could fax a paper sample to them...

...

On a more techy note, I also teach in the Art department of a University, and because I used computers in my own work, it seems that I'm called on whenever there a problem with any machine that uses electricity. Chances are, 9 times out of 10 the problem is that the machine just hasn't been turned on, but even though it's a pain to be called away from what you're doing to answer a simple techy question, isn't it a glorious feeling to be able to walk away having fixed a problem with a whole room of people thinking you're some kind of magician?

Case in point: A few weeks ago, I was sat in my office doing very important things (reading Megatokyo.com) when one of the students came running in claiming that one of our TVs wasn't working. I walked into the studio to find a group of 30 people hovering round the TV, all discussing what was wrong, went up to it, pushed the ON button and walked out.

Not a major thing I know, but I felt good about myself for the rest of the day :)

This is my favourite thread so far!

Don't have any stories myself, but I was wondering if there were any amusing tales where hard-core UNIX geeks (like the people who haven't used a GUI since the day they bought their computer) have done something utterly silly to their machine because they're lacking a little in the commonsense department? I bet there are a few.......

Why do people who know UNIX have to be geeks? And why must they lack common sense? :(

What Yellow said.

I'd say making blanket assumptions about other people's skills is where a lack of good sense (apparently not so common after all :p ) is being displayed. :rolleyes:

I knew you'd say that ;) It was meant in a totally harmless and affectionate way - I have great respect for all the guys here, and can only aspire to the level of generosity, skill and patience you all display.

My own experience of one or two computer scientists (my dad especially) tells me that although they may be perfectly comfortable doing mind-boggling things from the command line, when it comes to adding RAM, opening hardware cases, wiring a plug, etc, etc, they occasionally need to be looked after!

This is a light-hearted comment - please don't take it the wrong way. People who know UNIX certainly don't have to be geeks, and the same people almost certainly know more about their hardware than I do. I love this forum, and would hate to cause a flame war!

In trepidation...

No worries.. no flaming.. just call me a wet blanket.

Yellow, you're a wet blanket. :D

Sheesh.. I waddled into that one! :)

Dosser,

I would assume you are a woman. I have had similar experiences with women clients. Like ones that invite me out for drinks, or over to their place after I get off work. I must admit a few times I have taken them up on the free drinks. I mean how often does a guy get to be taken out by a girl? For me, not very often.

The worst part of all of this, is that 90% of them were married. People are people is all I can say I guess. Its our nature to not have good (or balanced) morals.

However, you should not take that crap at your work. If you were actually one of my female friends and I knew about it; I would put a stop to it.

Woo-Hoo... what a great thread!

So here's mine:
Some years ago I took over a busy print & repro studio. Three days in & the Quadra server suddenly stops working. It's the gateway to the RIP, therefore absolutely all work grinds to a halt. Power supply is ok, but the box doesn't even chime. Panicking, I try to call the previous manager but guess what - he's on holiday in Ireland. I call assorted Mac shops but it's obviously not an easy prob to fix, they're talking DAYS to sort it out. So now I'm tearing out big clumps of hair. Next day, I manage to get the previous manager's mobile number.

Me: Really sorry to bother you but the server's stopped working - any ideas?
Old Manager: oh, yeah, this used to happen quite often.
Me: sowhatcanIdo????
Old Manager: get a ruler, and measure six inches down from the left hand side of the case.
Me: ok....
Old Manager: now measure eight inches down from the top.
Me: ok....
Old Manager: where those lines cross
Me: YES?
Old Manager: give it a HUGE thump with your fist.
Me: Really?
Old Manager: yep.
BANG.

Quadra chimes and boots.

Self "Repair"
 

While this thread (really great) has focused on the idiocy of others, I thought I'd admit that I had met the enemy when it was me.

The scene: check e-mail on B&W G4 late one evening. Put full glass of beer on table next to me and next to an XP laptop, fortunately not running.
1. Wireless phone rings. I fumble handset and drop it in beer glass, which tips over on ThinkPad with lid up.
2. Snatching the cables from the back of the ThinkPad, I flip it over face down on the carpet so the beer won't run in. Same with Vtech phone.
3. I remove all removable back panels from ThinkPad, pull out battery, WiFi card, etc., clean out beer, and figure I can get the last of the beer out from under the keys with a shop vac.
4. Shop vac successfully removes last of beer but also removes at least ten key covers and deposits them in large quantity of sawdust in shop vac.
5. One hour later, I have found all the key caps and the little scissor mechanisms that go with them.
6. Three hours later, I have replaced all but one. With all others there was an edge free - I can't figure out how to get the last one in. To hell with it.

I am now the proud owner of a ThinkPad missing one key, and no one to blame (or laugh at) but myself. Still, not quite as bad as the time I knocked a running Tektronix portable oscilloscope off the deck of a boat into 25 feet of salt water (and later got it working again).

Hahaha thats a good one. I once saw an ibook that had cough syrup spilled all over the keyboard, that was gross.

Salt water ain't great either. The 'scope I mentioned was on and when it landed in the harbor it blew out the power supply. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I took the covers off the case and put the whole scope in a bathtub full of water for two days. Changed the water a couple of times, let it dry for a week, replaced the power supply chips and one filter cap, and voila: it worked! Of course to do that to a whole laptop you'd have to remove all the drives first, and maybe the screen too - they breathe. On some though, the keyboard is actually fairly easy to get off.

We used to get soft drinks out of sticky student lab keyboards by soaking them in water for a day or so then drying them in a low-humidity machine room for a couple more. Worked every time.