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.