BSMS Journal article - Spring 1999
Jon Perkins relates a few stories from computer support
personnel
Many organisations that have a large number of computers installed will usually
have dedicated support staff who initially try to offer support over the phone
and, if this is unsuccessful, will subsequently come and visit the user
personally. Most of the time the queries tend to be of the nature of "I
can't print" or "I've forgotten my password". Occasionally,
however, a call will come in which is recorded for posterity because it's so
humorous. I really don't want to instill a fear of calling support staff here,
but I thought I would relay a few of these stories to you.
" A lady telephoned Dell Computers to report that the coffee-cup holder
had broken. The puzzled support engineer informed her that none of the Dell
range included a "coffee-cup holder", so he suggested that perhaps
she should find out who fitted it and ask them to repair it. She assured him
that it was part of the computer, and it had been there since the machine was
unpacked so it must have been part of the Dell specification. Further analysis
revealed that the coffee-cup holder was in fact the CD drive.
" Somebody who ran their own business had purchased a new computer from PC
World and had taken it down to his company office. After unpacking and
assembling it, he totally failed to get it working. A phone call to the
manufacturer inevitably followed, during which a fairly standard list of
questions was asked of the customer, such as "are you really sure that
it's plugged in?" Assuring the support person that he had set up the
machine correctly, the purchaser then started to get ratty about the fact that
he had been sold a dud.
Trying to salvage the situation, the support person asked the customer to read
through the instructions that came with the machine.
"Oh, I can't read them at the moment" said the customer.
"Why?", asked the puzzled support person.
"Because there's not much natural light in the office, and I can't switch
the lights on because there's a power cut."
" Somebody was given a new PC that ran with Windows 95. As is often the
case no training was given so the user was left to figure it out for himself.
After a couple of days the exasperated user phoned the computer support manager
and asked if he could have his old computer back as he didn't think he'd ever
be able to get used to using the mouse. The manager said he would come and
visit the user to find out what the problem was - after all, nobody else had
had any serious problems. When the manager arrived he spotted the problem
immediately - the user had assumed that mouse was supposed to be used as a foot
pedal.
" The managing director of a small company could hear the noise of water
bubbling in his office. After failing to find the cause of the noise himself he
called other members of staff to come and help him. Eventually everybody in the
office was involved in the hunt for the source of the noise. This continued
over the course of a week. Eventually they called a plumber in to investigate.
The plumber said that he was called out on average about once a month with this
problem. He said that the problem would stop if the company installed a
different screensaver on their PCs.
" Some of you who have been using computers for more than 10 years might
remember the older five and a quarter inch type of floppy disk. These earlier
disks weren't encased in the sturdy plastic case that the modern ones are, so
they truly were floppy. One unfortunate lady at this time was having continual
problems with corrupt data on her disks. The support department sent her a
fresh batch of floppy disks to save her data to, but to no avail. They also
tried installing a new floppy disk drive, and eventually they swapped her
entire machine. None of these solutions worked. The problem eventually got to
the stage where the support department despatched a techie to come and sit with
her for the entire day to watch the problem manifest itself. Throughout the day
the support person intently watched the activities of the user, but could find
nothing wrong with what she was doing. On many occasions he borrowed the floppy
disk that she was using and placed it into his own machine and verified that he
could indeed read the contents of the disk without any problems whatsoever. And
so the day went on, until it was time to go home. As they were both packing up
the lady put her coat on, switched off her computer, withdrew the floppy disk
and plonked it onto her magnetic noticeboard.
" Occasionally, however, the tables are turned. I heard of an incident
recently in which a couple of IT managers had gone along to the premises of a
company who were selling a data management tool. After the sales person had
given a demonstration one of the potential purchasers asked how well the
program worked with large amounts of data. The sales person asked one of his
technical support staff to come and handle this request. The support person sat
at the keyboard, performed a few operations, and indeed produced a very long
report.
The customer then asked what the report actually was. The techie helpfully
replied "That's the product's bug list".
