Stupid Things I Have Heard At Work 6

[AnotherHiggins]

I've been thinking about starting this thread for a long time....

My company has recently gone through some pretty major layoffs. As a result, a lot of my reliable sources of stupid-things-I-overheard-at-work stories are now gone. But I have collected some pretty outstanding stupid-people stories.

I don't have time to list them now, but here is something from an email that was just sent out to literally thousands of users in the company.

.... All and all, we are on track....

This is followed by five paragraphs that seem to have been lifted straight out of a Dilbert cartoon, replete with more buzzwords than you can shake a stick at (stick-shaking is a common standard of measurement here in the South).

Any good examples you'd like to share?

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
[tab]-George Bernard Shaw

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[BJCooperIT]

My father used to be the head of maintenance for a manufacturing company. They had one "toolbelt" fellow (who was one battery short of a full charge) that I will call Willy.

One day my Dad and Willy were called for a leaking sink in a laboratory. The pipes had developed a hole there was about four gallons of dirty water on the floor. Dad got busy disassembling the pipes and tasked Willy with the mopping chore. After taking the drain apart, Dad returned to the shop to get repair parts. He re-entered the lab just in time to witness Willy dumping the bucket of mopped water down the sink! Willy was none to happy about having to mop the water up again, but at least he remembered to dump it outside the 2nd time around.


[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant Developer/Analyst Oracle, Forms, Reports & PL/SQL (Windows)
My website: Emu Products Plus

 

[SantaMufasa]

Willy reminds my of a member of our "Office Intelligensia" that I encountered one time:

We had just released a new version of software that we had thoroughly tested, even against idiots (we had thought). Sure enough, the morning after the release, we got a call from an office across town from a user that complained that although the software "worked fine yesterday, it doesn't work today...It won't even come up on the screen."

So, I copied the new version to another 5 1/4" floppy (high tech media at the time), tested the floppy for proper behaviour, and couriered him the new copy. When he received the software, I had him call me to confirm that it worked properly, which he did and it did.

Then, the next morning, he called to say that the program no longer worked. I said, "Okay, since insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, I'm coming over with fresh software to get to the bottom of the problem."

I drove to his office with a freshly tested copy of the software. After arriving, I asked him to please show me how he invoked the software. So far, so good...everything worked fine. Next, I asked him to shut down the program, and his computer, and pretend that it was the next day. Then to re-start the program. He did so, and everything still worked fine.

He said, "I can't understand it. It never works for me the next day."

I asked him, "So what do you differently from what we just did?"

He said, "The only difference is that I put the diskette away each evening."

I asked, "Okay, then let's do that, as well...Put it away then run it again like it was the next morning."

Sure enough, he put it away for "safe keeping" by attaching it to the side of his filing cabinet with a refrigerator magnet.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[

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[gmmastros]

Oh, those 5 1/4 inch floppies. Many years ago, I was doing support work for a company with many customers. A customer calls me up and tells me that she cannot get the data off the floppy disk. Each week, she would save her data to a floppy, drive it to another office, and merge it with other data (from other offices).

After a lengthy discussion with her, she told me that she re-uses the floppy each week. To label it, she would staple a post it note to the floppy because sometimes the post it notes would fall off.


-George

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. - Fortune cookie wisdom

 

[GwydionM]

I heard of a case before PCs were common. An office worker was asked to copy an old-style floppy disk. When they had trouble and looked for the 'copy', they found a piece of paper with the image of the disk on it!

Worse, it was an old-style photocopier with high voltages, so the original disk had also been wiped.

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[elanor]

I once worked for the federal government (I was young! I needed the work!) in the Internal Audit department of a (ahem) leading taxing authority. I will never forget two stories about a legendarily suspicious internal auditor...when auditing the processes in the computer room, he spent hour upon hour unreeling computer tape to make sure that no taxpayer data was visible to the eye, and, when auditing another area, spent days methodically verifying that the stack of blank audio tapes in the area were actually blank - he listened to every one.

Thanks!
Elanor

 

[tgreer]

I used to sell computers, retail. Yeah, well, what's a recently married high school drop-out to do?

I sold a Mac to a sweet, frail older lady. Hard drives were new, and had to be explained by analogy. It's "like" 20 3.5" floppies. I mistakenly explained that the 20MB Hard Drive could "hold" several floppies... doesn't the story just write itself?

Sure enough, after a few days I got a call that her hard drive was full. She couldn't install any more software. The look on the technician's face is one I'll never forget. We wondered how this delicate woman managed to force that 2nd disk into the drive... it was wedged in so tightly, we couldn't pry it out.



Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[zarkon4]

Some of these are reminding of a tech support call I received once.

The user could not find the "any" key on the keyboard.

Another, the cup holder is broke.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

This sounds like an urban legend, but I swear that it is true.

I used to work in a call center that supported photo-processing machines in retail stores. The guy who sat beside me got a call one day from a store operator who said the machine wouldn't come on.

Jim (my work-neighbor) asked if the "little red light beside the 'ON' button was illuminated".

It wasn't.

Jim asked the caller to press the 'ON' button.

Still nothing.

Then Jim described to the caller how to find the breaker on the right side of the machine and asked if the breaker was 'up' or 'down'.

The caller said, "It's hard to tell. I can't see it very well."

You have probably guessed by now, but when Jim asked why he couldn't see the breaker, the caller reported that the lights in the store weren't working. Yep – they were in the middle of a power outage.

The amazing thing is that it never dawned on the caller what was going on. Jim actually had to get back on the phone (after putting the caller on hold to laugh for a while) and explain that the machine doesn’t work without electricity.

Seriously. I probably wouldn't have believed him if I hadn't been sitting there listening to the call unfold.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.

 

[SamBones]

I once read about a support guy getting a call from a user. She said her computer's not working. The conversation went kind of like this...

User: "My Computer's not working"
Tech: "Do you have any error messages on the screen?"
User: "The screen's black"
Tech: "Is the little power light on the computer on? Can you hear a fan?"
User: "No, I can't hear a fan"
Tech: "Is it plugged in?"
User: "I can't tell"
Tech: "Can you climb down behind it and check for me?"
User: "I can't really see back there, it's pretty dark"
Tech: "Can you move a light over and look?"
User: "No I can't"
Tech: "Why?
User: "We're having a blackout"
Tech: " ... " (rendered speechless!)

The user figure that the phones were working, the computer should be working too.

 

[gmmastros]

We recently moved offices. After we were 'almost' settled, one of our programmers was helping the receptionist set up her computer. She was very adamant about getting the same monitor that she used at the old office because, "the text is too small on the other monitors".

-George

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. - Fortune cookie wisdom

 

[Toshilap]

It is not just 'sound' like an urban legend...I know the end.
...Then tech support guy said 'Please, grab your PC and throw it out the window'
User asked 'So it is not repairable?'
'No' tech support guy said 'you are just too *** stupid to use a computer!'

I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.

 

[tgreer]

The "blackout" story comes from the good old days, pre-windows, and is usually set at WordPerfect.

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[Toshilap]

Which reminds me how I called support and I sensed from beginning that support person wasn't too bright. I thought he was reading off screen with ennormous restrain.
So he asks me how long is my electrical cord.
I said 'what do you mean?'.
He said - 'you have to measure it'.
???
'Can you get down and measure it?'
??? My eyes started to pop a little...and I yelled 'how in the world measurement of cord will help me?'
And be ready - he said - he SAID it I am telling you:
'Your electrical cord should be long enough to reach the wall where your electic outlet is'

I am LMAO remembering it.


I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.

 

[sleipnir214]

I'm still trying to figure out who was the stupidest person in this story.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1297922&page=1

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[AnotherHiggins]

SamBones, Toshilap, tgreer et al:

OK, so it exists as an urban legend. That does not change the fact that we actually got that call. Sadly, some people really are that stupid.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

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[2ffat]

I used to work for a company in Michigan. One Friday, we started to have some severe thunderstorms. This was waaaaay back when the high-tech computers where the original IBM PCs and XTs. The CFO ordered everybody to turn off their computers and unplug them.

That night the thunderstorms turned into a blizzard. The next morning the CFO when into the office very early since he couldn't get any work done the night before with the computers off.

At 6:30am I got a call from him. His XT wouldn't boot up. He insisted that I come immediatly. He didn't have time for me to diagnose the problem over the phone. He just said "Get here," and hung up.

I crawled out of a warm bed, got dressed, and climbed into my cold car. I then drove the 2 miles through 6 foot snow drifts to work. (The snow plow hadn't plowed our street yet.) I went into his office, crawled under his desk, plugged the computer in, and went home.


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[SamBones]

Wow! I posted my blackout story without reading yours! I wasn't trying to double post!

I do remember hearing the story a very long time ago. Mid 80's maybe.

 

[tgreer]

During the Y2K pseudo-crisis, I was VP of a mid-size commercial printing company. I did indeed have to re-write some code. However, I also had to spend the night of December 31, 1999, in the plant. I just can't imagine what I was expected to do in the case of any true catastrophe.

Another Y2K phenomenon was the ubiquitous "compliance" statement all our customers wanted us to provide. We had just rolled-out a large e-Commerce application, which was getting some big clients. One of them, a Fortune 500 company, sent us a many-paged questionnaire about our Y2k preparedness. If they committed to use our system for placing print orders, what would they do in the event of a disaster? What was our contingency plan, in mind-numbing, nit-picking detail, if you please?

I took a couple of stabs at the thing. Finally, I wrote "N/A (see footnote)" to all of the questions, and on the last page was my footnote:

"In the event of a catastrophic failure of the (name of our system) please call your salesperson instead."

The Account Manager did NOT want to send it in, but I was done with it. I later got a call from the customer's IT Manager, who praised me for the submitting the one plan he thought could actually be implemented. We got the business.


Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[tsdragon]

The earlier statements about youthful and not-so-youthful stupidity remind me of the most commonly heard redneck's last words: "Hey, y'all! Watch this!"

(Or, if you prefer: "Hey, y'all! Hold my beer and watch this!")


Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[kojootti]

Corporations true Helpdesk stories:
Phone: Can you help, my computer is totally bank, nothing...
Help: about fifteen minutes she gave advice, all was checked out, nothing, customers computer was dead.
Then woman asked: What about electric...
Phone:.... hangup


Kari Kosonen

http://www.jessnet2005.com