More Ignorant computer users...

The Loony Bin ( loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk )
Sat, 4 May 1996 13:15:29 +0100


Hiya Loonies...

This would appear to be a trend...

Wishes & Dreams...

- ANDREA
        xx
-- 
************<andrea@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk>************
******************<ajc6@ukc.ac.uk>*******************
***                                               ***
***                THE LOONY BIN                  ***
***          loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk         ***
***                                               ***
******************Internet Goddess*******************
*********************ANDROMEDA***********************

  ------- Forwarded message follows -------

MORE BLINDLY IGNORANT COMPUTER USERS


I overheard a nice conversation one day in a computer shop:
customer: I'd like a mouse mat please.
assistant: certainly sir,we've got a large variety.
customer while looking at said mats then asked:
"But will they be compatible with my computer?"

A friend of mine works at Word Perfect in Orem UT.  He had a lady call
up and tell him she couldn't figure out how to install the program.
He told her "Insert Disk1 into the disk drive and type "INSTALL WP".
He then proceeded to have her insert disk 2 through 4 in sequential
order. She then stop him to ask if it would be alright to remove the
previous four disks because the fifth wouldn't fit.

Man comes in, in a panic.  He had typed a document the day before, and
now it was all gone.  "Have you saved it properly?"  was of course my
first question.  Yes, he said, it was saved properly.  But all the
text had mysteriously disappeared.  On his disk, I found a completely
empty document.  Indeed it was saved, apparently, and indeed it did
not contain text.  Of course, he had saved the document right BEFORE
he started typing.  When it was finished, he took out his disk and
shut down the computer.  And now all that text was gone, even though
he had SAVED!!! .......  To top it all off, he got mad at ME when I
told him the only thing he could do was retype the whole thing.  Was I
nuts or something???

Someone comes in and asks me how to print a document.  I explain about
the Page Setup (making sure the user selected "A4 Letter" as his
document size, the one for our LaserWriter) and then selecting the
Print command in the File menu.  Happy, the user walks away.  Comes
back in two minutes.  Still no document with his name on our spooler.
"Make sure you have selected the Info-Groep Laser Spooler, I said.  He
had checked.  It WAS selected.  "Have you issued the Print command
yet?"  Of course, what did I think he was, a fucking dummy?  So I went
over to have a look.  The "Print" dialog box was still on his screen.
I clicked on the "Print" button....  "Oooooooh, you have to click on
Print!!!"

Another incident I remember froma a few years ago when I worked at 
the computer center of the University:  a student came in a complained
that she saved a file (Mac) earlier that day, but now she can't find it.
Computer assistant:  And which Mac did you use earlier when you saved
it?
Student:             Oh, this same one.
Computer assistant:  Perhaps it's on the harddrive...
Student:             No, some other assistant saved it on my disk for
me.
Computer assistant:  (Looks for disk icon, looks in drive, can't find
the disk)   Where's the disk?
Student:             In my bag...

I was in the computer lab sitting next to a blonde who was typing a
paper, and by the way she was doing it, it was clear that this was just
about her first time.  Well, a friend of hers sat at the computer across
from hers, and they started chatting... and yup, the screensaver kicked
in. The scream was heard, I was told, around two corners in the hallway.
Her friend just told her to move the mouse to get back to what she was
doing, that she didn't lose anything, in fact. She didn't count on the
fact that when her friend jumped up in hysteria she'd bumped the
keyboard/mouse connector out of the socket...

Tech support to a lady having troubles getting her computer to turn on.
He asked her, "What happens when you turn the computer on?".
She replied, "The screen just stays black".
He then asked, "Is the computer plugged in?".
She replied, "I took it to a repair shop last week and they apparently
fixed it so it doesn't need a power cord anymore."
He asked, "Is the computer a laptop computer?".
She replied, "No, but they never gave me back the power cord so they
must have fixed it so it didn't need it."
He said, "Go back to the repair store and get back your power cord.
They just forgot to give it to you."

A foreign gentleman came in needing help using a word processor to
write a letter.  I took him over to a Mac and gave him a brief
overview of its capabilities and commands and left him at a point
where he could just start typing.  He looked at me, puzzled.  See, he
didn't know how to type.  Not just that he didn't know how to type
well, but it was like he didn't understand the concept of typing (the
's' key puts an s on the screen).  Eventually I ended up typing it for
him bacause it was easier than arguing with him.

Another gentleman came to us frantic.  The day before he had saved a
very important document on the hard drive of one of our Macs and he
could not find it.  He was yelling at me that our lab employees must
have deleted it and we need to have more respect for users, etc.  (We
have a policy of allowing documents to remain in the hard drives for 7
days before being erased by the staff.)  I helped him look for his
paper, but when I couldn't find it, I explained our policy and the
fact that we can't control what other users might do with a document
left on a computer.  He was *not* happy.  Then in a sudden flash of
genius I asked him, "You were using *this* particular Mac, weren't
you?"  to which he responded, "No, I was using one in the other room."

There was an big, athletic-looking guy fooling with one of our brother
(IBM) printers.  He was opening it up, shaking it a little, and trying
to jam a paper into the manual paper feed.  When I asked him what the
problem was, he said, "Your copier isn't working."

- Hey, can you help me? my program doesn't work...
- What is the problem, are you using Turbo Pascal??
- Yes, the program just blocks the machine...
- Well, does it compile?
- I don't know, it just doesn't run...
I went to his computer and he told me:
- You see? there's the .EXE file, if you  run it it blocks the machine...
- And where is your source, the .PAS file???
- I wrote it and renamed it to .EXE so it could run...

"Remove the sleve, and insert the floppy disk into the drive." 
[hours of technical support later]
"You know -- these vinyl covers they put on disks are really hard
to get off..."

[45 minutues of trying to fix a terminal -- including a process kill
and a full shutdown (UNIX)] "Oh -- wait a second..... Oops, the
intensity was just down. I have a login prompt now."

A bank clerk friend told me this the other day:
An elderly customer came into the bank complaining the ATM wasn't
working.  She had been waiting for half an hour after "requesting a
new cheque book" and it still hadn't come out yet!

A customer (wife of an obnoxious history professor, none the less)
comes into the store with a Macintosh which I had just replaced a bad
drive in a few days previously.  She complained that it wasn't working
again, implying that I didn't fix it right the first time.  So, I get
out the diagnotic tools, but can't find a thing wrong with it.  I then
checked some of the diskettes she brought in with it, and find that
they are loaded with viruses.  After cleaning up the diskettes, I
explained to her that her computer probably got the virus by trading
diskettes with someone whose computer was also infected.  She then got
a very sullen expression on her face and asked me, "Can a person catch
this virus from their computer?"