At least as old as 15-Jan-1992 15:53
My vote for dumbest user in the galaxy goes to the soul who called the dial-up consulting lab with this problem:
USER: I was told I needed a modem to use the campus mainframes… Well I bought a modem. Now how do I use it?
CONS: First you have to hook it up to your computer, or install it in one of the card slots.
USER: Computer? I need a computer?
This was chuckled over for months.
My favorite manual was shown to me by my brother. He was working for HP in Corvallis OR on the HP-85 and somehow got a copy of the HP-85 operations guide that the docs people had done as a gag. The guide had a particularly memorable photo that was captioned:
Figure 1. View of ON/OFF POWER switch as seen while leaning over from front of machine looking at back.
Above the caption was an *upside down* picture of the rear of the HP-85, just as the caption explained.
I damn near fell over laughing while reading that manual.
In article Terry Kane writes:
How about a user, confronted by a typical “press any key” message, calling tech support complaining… “But I don’t have an ANY key on my keyboard!”
Yes! I’ve had a user complain about not having an ‘ANY’ key. So, I said to her “Pick a key .. any key you like!”
She pressed the SHIFT key … and (you guessed it) nothing happened.
I had to then try and explain to her why she couldn’t use the SHIFT, CTRL and CAPS LOCK keys.
And of course, after you reflect on it there is hardly any reason to be so ‘helpful’ and make the program so general, instead of simply having it read “And then hit the space bar” and be done with it — no ambiguity, no confusion, no nothing…
My favorite story from my days selling PCs on the phone was the guy who called up and wanted to order a _slot_. After some cross-examination, he finally explained that he’d bought a bus mouse, and the box said “requires one slot”.
I worked as a computer lab monitor while I was attending college. We had an IBM PS/2 Model 25 out front, running a “Welcome” message. Taped to it was a sign that said “You must give your I.D. to the monitor”. So, the new users, eager to demonstrate their new-found computer knowledge, did just that. They gave their ID to the “monitor” by putting it in the drive slot!!
Some other good ones:
- The guy who kept losing his disk, so he decided he’d stick it to the fridge with a magnet…
- The guy who was running an application, and got an error message “door open”, so he got up and closed the office door….
- The guy who tried to format 6 disks at once by stuffing them all in the drive..
-
The guy who read in the manual that he needed a ‘clean disk’, so he put one in the dishwasher…
I don’t look at these little anecdotes as derogatory (for the most part), after all most of us have made a silly mistake or two.
Here’s a dialog, related to me by one of my co-workers, who was helping a novice unix user, and needed to check a configuration file..
support-engr> …ok, do a “more” on /etc/hosts.
customer> it says, “moron: command not found“.
The topic on credit cards in macs, etc. reminds me of a story I heard (on this net? probly). A support type gets a call from a customer having problems with booting their system. They said it sure was a pain getting the floppy out of the cardboard wrapper and why did they package them that way? (He was trying to remove the floppy from its case!)
*many* years ago I worked at Datapoint Corporation in San Antonio, TX. We received a call one day (tech support) from a customer who said that he couldn’t get his system to read a particular diskette. Our rep asked the guy to make a copy of the diskette, send it to us, and we’d see what we could do. Well, a few days later, an envelope arrived from the customer. When we opened it, there was a copy of the diskette — a nice, 8-1/2 x 11 Xerox copy. THIS IS A TRUE STORY!!! Kind of scary, isn’t it…
ported