Think Your Coworkers Are Dumb?
#1
I worked with an idiot who plugged her power strip back into itself
and for the life of her could not understand why her system would not
turn on.
#2
A friend had a brilliant idea for saving disk space. He thought if
he put all his Microsoft Word documents into a tiny font they'd take
up less room. When he told me I was with another friend. She thought
it was a good idea too.
#3
One of my coworkers asked me, "If I had a color monitor, would my
printer print in color?"
#4
A friend had to go over to a bank and set everyone's software up.
Since all the internet software his company supports runs under MS
Windows, he asked the manager "Do you have Windows?" The manager
stared at him blankly and said, "No, but we've got air conditioning."
#5
An office mate of mine has her typewriter plugged into the same master
powerstrip as the computer. Her typewriter started beeping one day and
she couldn't get it to stop.... so she hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot the
computer. Needless to say, the typewriter didn't stop beeping.
#6
This happened about 10 years ago to my father who was the manager of
a company's publications department. A couple of data-entry clerks
were instructed to do a large amount of word processing for an urgent
project. By the end of the day, the work had been completed and the
clerks saved the files to 5.25" diskettes. To make certain that the
manager would find the diskettes, they neatly clipped the diskettes to
the source documents using their magnetic clipboards.
#7
There was a fellow who set his type color to black, just after
setting the background color to black. Took him a couple days of blind
typing to get things back again.
#8
I gave a disk to a secretary so that she could make copies forsome
students. She wrote down the instructions on a memo, then PAPER
CLIPPED THE MEMO TO THE FLOPPY! It was a 5 1/4 floppy, and
became creased and useless. I was flabbergasted!
#9
I had a user who needed to keep some confidential information on
disk since we didn't trust network security. I showed her how to copy
files to a diskette using one of my own, and told her to do what I did
but to store the diskette in a safe, cool, dark place. The next
time she went to use the disk, she couldn't read the disk. She'd
stuck it to the underside of her desk drawer with a magnet.
Fortunately, I still had the copy I'd made. (whew)
#10
I work as a Systems Analyst for a Government contractor, my previous
boss was illiterate as can be with computers. While arguing over the
type of home PC he should buy, I was asked what the difference was
between a 286 16Mhz and a 386 25Mhz processor was. Upon explaining
about clock speeds and processors, my boss asked me and I quote "IF I
GET A 386 25MHZ I should be able to type faster isn't this correct
to assume ????"
#11
I work Olidata in Italy, and a few years ago we were out of ISA VGA
cards. Our sales manager asked us, "Couldn't we plug VLB card into
ISA slots?" Even without CUTTING the end part. To make him happy
we tried!
#12
I work at computer reseller, and we had a new secretary. We were
talking about how we needed to get faster computers for the office and
what we needed to get things set up properly. Then she said, "Well all
we really need are faster monitors."
#13
A friend of my dad's bought a computer through the class they were
taking, and she couldn't figure out why she couldn't get a desktop
publishing program to work. I typed "mem" and sure enough she had
the basic memory and no extra simms. When, I explained it to her,
she explained how everyone else's computer could run it. Oh well, like
nobody has a different type of computer than you, huh?
#14
My dad uses Netscape 1.0, and I don't know if it's supposed to
support forms, and I *finally* talked him into upgrading. I found
the location, and started downloading. When the progress indicator
stopped for a second (slow ISP), my dad picked upthe phone to see
if everything was ok....
#15
I get this call from my friend who just installed a new game. He
tells me it won't load because there isn't enough memory. Then
he says that he deleted some things from his hard drive and it still
says not enough memory. After a brief explanation of what memory
and hard drive space is he says, "but the game said it needed 4MB
and I have 39MB left".
#16
One day at school I see the teacher putting grades onto her
computer. I laughed as she used a metal clip to attach the 5.25 inch
floppy to her other disks. I wanted to see her explain that one to
the principal.
#17
At a computer peripheral manufacturing company I used to work at, I
was appalled one day to hear one of our salesmen telling customers
that RISC meant "reduced instruction set" which meant to him that there
wouldn't be so many confusing commands to remember, thereby making
computing even easier!
#18
A student walked up to a lab assistant and complained that his disk
didn't work in the computer. The lab assistant asked for the disk so
that he could try it in the machine on his desk. The student took out his
wallet, removed the 5.25" disk, and after unfolding it, handed it to the lab
assistant.
#19
This is god honest truth of something that happened in a shop I used
to work for, about three months ago...
Customer walks in and asks the sales-rep if we had First aid for
Windows. The sales-rep replies, "No, but we do have the History of
Medicine on CD-ROM."
#20
Something funny once happened in class last year. One of the
'blonde' girls asked "How many Internets are there?" It turns out she
was confused with the number of services that provided internet
access.
#21
I have a friend who was trying to get a game to run on his PC. He
did not have enough base memory to load the game so decided to try
removing some TSR's.
He typed "MEM" and selected a TSR that was taking up almost exactly
the amount of memory that he needed. He couldn't see where it was
loaded in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT so he deleted it from his hard
disk. This is foolish enough, but it's even worse if the file in
question is COMMAND.COM!!!
#22
Several years ago, we hired a "computer expert" to work in my
department. On his first day, this guy tried to insert a 5.25 inch
floppy (remember those?) into the tiny gap between the 5.25
inch drive and the 3.5 inch drive. He then spent the remainder
of his first day disassembling the computer in order to remove it.
#23
A friend of mine who does tech support for a hospital in Chicago
told me this one when we were exchanging horror stories:
The hospital has a client/server network, and my friend gets a call
indicating that one of the stations can't access shared directories on
the network. My friend Steve walks down to the station to take a look,
and something seems wrong.
He said: When did you move the computer?
The caller answers: I didn't move the computer.
Steve: You did move the computer. I installed it over there. You
moved it over here.
Caller: Well, yeah, I moved it earlier today.
The caller had picked up the system and moved it, ripping out the
network connection and half the NIC in the process. Needless to
say, Steve made it clear that if someone needed a computer moved,
call him and he'd do it. Then he went back to his office and laughed
for about 10 minutes.
#24
I got a call from a friend who asked, "My modem is in my computer,
so I don't need a phone line right?"
#25
Tech: Hello, Tech Support.
User: Hello this is Rodney.
Tech: Hello Rodney.
User: My "screen" isn't working.
Tech: I'll come around.
**Tech Arrives to find Windows is up but apps not working.**
Tech: Hello Rodney... Hmm, you haven't logged in properly. Has it
asked you to change the password recently?
User: Yes, a few days ago.
Tech: OK let's try logging you in... Type your password in now...
PC: Incorrect password. Access denied.
User: That's what it says...
Tech: OK, try the password again
User: The new one or the old one?
Tech: Let's try the new one...
User: I can't remember what it is.
Tech: OK let's try this...
Tech types in: "RODNEY"
User: Oh yes, I remember it now...
#26
And last week to me, a quick conversation with one of our
secretaries:
Three weeks ago we upgraded her to a nearly new IBM Pentium 90 with
16Mb of Ram that sits under her desk. She spilt water on it this week,
and unbelievably it lived...
Me: Kim what happened to your PC? How did you spill water in it?
Kim: Oh I knocked over a glass of water and it went down the hole
the cables go through. But it is alright now.
Me: Yes I know that was a lucky escape.
Kim: Yes well it could have been worse. It could have gone in the
keyboard. That would have been a tragedy....
I tried to explain the relative cost differences, but it turns out
she really likes the feel of keys on the keyboard!
#27
I was talking to a person today about the case-sensitivity of his
password, and he asked me in his best confused voice, "Is that
a capital zero or a small zero." I didn't know what to
say after that...
#28
My mom was typing a paper for school, (she's getting her Master's)
and she had written six pages. She was trying to undo a mistake, and
she clicked on "Clear All" instead. She erased all six pages of her
work! But there was a good side to her mistake: She paid me
$10 to retype her paper for her!
#29
We recently had an Apple Powerbook in for repair and, unfortunately,
a cup of coffee was spilt on it. The laptop no longer worked, and we
were racking our brains to find a way of breaking the news to the
customer. Eventually, the manager phoned the customer and
said that the laptop had gone dead on us. Much to our amazement, the
customer is now swearing blind that this is all his fault because he
tried to repair the laptop himself a few months ago. Sometimes I really do
believe is a God up there!
#30
I remember when I worked at a hospital. I was in PC Support, and we
were helping people install software. Well, according to one of the
trouble calls we answered, someone needed "Word for Windows 6.1"
installed. (We have Word for Windows, and Word Perfect 6.1.)
Another person put a password on her machine (in CMOS) and forgot
it. She spent the rest of her time asking us to guess it for her.
#31
Last Year, I had to help a young lady that didn't have enough RAM:
Lady: Sir, I need 10 megabytes of RAM to run Photoshop, and I only
have 5 left, Can you tell me how much I need to spend to buy 5 Megs of
virtual memory?
What would be your Answer? We have a great deal on RAM Disks???
#31
This one happened a few years back when I worked on mainframe
computers. At that time we used reel tapes. In order to save some
dollars, the company switched to tapes whose casings were made of
recycled plastic. They were much cheaper and lighter than the old
heavy duty ones. We had a number of the programmers comment on how
light the new ones were. We just kept telling them that it was because no
data had been written on them yet. The scary part is that a number of
people really believed this. All of the operators were having a real laugh
about this one until the night the data center manager did a surprise visit
on a night shift. He pulled a couple of the tapes off of the drives.
They happened to be the new ones. He then accused all of us of not
working as hard as we should be. If we were the tapes would be full...
he could tell by the weight of them that we had been slacking off.....
#32
Here's something that might have made it to your archives already.
This comes from the time when I was working as an lab assistant
at a west coast university (name withheld -we don't want to spoil it
for upcoming generations of lab assistants.) The main computer
lab of the campus was equipped with Macs and printers, two IBMs, a
large reference section, and one or two lab assistants (often a
volunteer comp science student). Many students would do the
"obvious" (to them) thing of coming in, sitting down, starting the
computer right up, then proceeding to do their work as if they were
sitting at a plain typewriter. Sometimes they would ask
semi-intelligent questions ("Which is the default printer?") and
sometimes incredibly stupid questions ('Can I get this on paper to turn
in?') but almost always in the case of the latter, they would be
verbally abusive, short-tempered,and act like their problems were the lab
assistant's fault. In one case, a grad student came in, sat down at one of
the Macintosh computers, and began typing what we would have
guessed to be a thesis paper - spending a few hours muttering, cursing
under his breath, asking questions - the stupid variety - in a short, sharp
barking tone that did not exactly endear him to us. He wasn't saving his
work, not even to the hard drive - any power outage would hose his
efforts completely, but he was a little unclear on the whole "save" thing.
At one point, after about two hours of constant input, he poked several
times at the keyboard, muttered, and then said, 'Hey - hey!! Which is the
damned 'any' key?!??'
The senior lab assistant blandly looked up and said, 'It's that big
red one on the side.'
#33
In 1995 our ad agency installed Macs throughout. I was passing the
Creative Director's office where I heard him shouting 'OPEN FILE,
OPEN FILE DAMNIT!'. He was holding the mouse like a microphone
and shouting into it.
#34
I am a director of information systems for an up and coming company
who shall currently remain nameless. But in an earlier incarnation I
worked as a plant engineer for a rather large (Fortune 100) company
at one of their many facilities. Part of my job required me to
maintain all network and PC hardware (token ring): anyway one day I
was informed that my life was to be made easier as the company
had hired an MBA in computer science to administer our network.
Shortly after her hire she called me to her office and asked me if I
could help because she couldn't access the network. When I queried
her she stated that she had had an error with an '.".exe"' file so she
re-logged-on as the administrator and typed 'fdisk f:' to "fix the
disk", after the partition she had gotten several calls as to the network not
working.
Needless to say she had no idea as to when the last backup was so we
had to recreate several weeks of data.
(arghh) Two months later I !!! got my walking papers. I wish them
luck.
#35
Last month I went to Babbages to see if I could get some answers to
a problem I was having with QEMM 8. So I ask this guy named Jorge
if he knows about any problems running QEMM 8 on Windows '95.
He told me that he runs it on his PC and it works fine.
Then he ask me how much RAM I have in mine and I told him that I
have 16 MB of RAM. (Now comes the weird part) this guy look at me
like if I was stupid or something and told me, "You see that's your
problem, QEMM 8 only works for computers that have 8 MB of RAM, you
should buy QEMM 16."
I said to myself, "How can this guy be working here?" I asked him to
see if they have (the non-existent) QEMM 16 he was talking about and he
told me, "No we are sold-out of that item right now". I thanked him and
walked away laughing.
#36
Officer: My Word Document won't print. Me: I'll come take a look at
it sir. Me (on arrival): Where's your printer sir? Officer: I thought
I'd just print it on your printer!
He hadn't brought a disk, just thought he could press print, and
presto, through the air it comes! This guy's a F-15 pilot. Give him
a multi-million dollar jet, what a good idea!
#37
This is a true story that happened to my friend's sister:
The mouse on her computer was not tracking well, so she decided to
clean the ball. After washing the ball with soapy water, she put it
back in the mouse --STILL WET!! She then plugged the mouse back into
the computer and turned it on, thus frying the mouse. Ever hear of the
saying, "Don't mix water and electricity"?!
#38
This is about my high school librarian. She knows nothing about
computers, and is still mastering the mouse. Anyway I'm a library
aid and work in the library with her. She's always looking for blank
disks.
When we received a couple AOL disks, I explained to her that we could
format them, and then use them as blank disks. She violently
disagreed and insisted that the school couldn't afford any more online
services and so on. I did my best to explain to her that we would not be
signing up with AOL, but rather just using the disks they provided.
She got mad at me, and said I should know what I'm talking before I
argue about it. I program games in my spare time, and I'm pretty
sure I know what I'm talking about. She ended up throwing the
disks away, but not after physically breaking the metal part off
the disk just so that I wouldn't have any more ideas about using it.
#39
The situation: A new computer lab. 40 Brand new computers,
installation of software is going fine, so Op leaves. Janitor passes
(Ooops). Looks into new room, and sees lots of new machines,
whirring, grinding (disk accesses). The janitor knows what to do with
noisy machines - you oil them. Op returns to find janitor pouring oil in
back/floppy drives. The janitor explains that he fixed the machines -
they don't grind any more.
Well he was right - they didn't grind anymore- they didn't do a lot
of things anymore...
#40
My company recently purchased all brand new computers for our
customer service department. Within a day of their being set up,
I get a call from a young woman saying that I needed to return her
monitor because of a chip in the screen. By the time I got over to her
desk, she had gone to lunch, but a visual inspection showed no chip.
In an effort to assist, one of her co-workers came over and pointed
out the "defect". Sure enough, as I ran my hand over the screen, I
felt something out of the ordinary. I explained, however, that a chip is
an indentation while this was instead something "protruding" from
the screen. A little saliva on the finger quickly removed the
foreign substance at which time I even more quickly ran to wash my
hands.
Her co-workers got a roar out of this and proceeded to harass the
poor woman for the next few weeks. Needless to say, this woman
no longer works for us, but is going to Law
School instead. Scary thought!
#41
A fellow technician told me about this.
Customer: This PC sure is a lot quieter when it's turned off.