It Support - Stories From The It Support Industry

For those who work in the IT support industry there is a constant flow of funny and sometimes hilarious cases of clients who really do have no clue at all. Before you laugh too hard however please remember that not everyone is IT proficient. Often they come from a generation where machines had gears and if you did something wrong; it was a fast way to lose a finger.

In an attempt to counter the thousands of mindless phone calls they get daily, software writers are considering removing the 'press any key' command in installation software. This is because so many people take the time to ring IT support services to ask the question, where is the 'any key?'

One IT support worker remembers a client who had rung with a pretty generic problem. The worker told the client to right click on the Open Desktop; the client duly did this and told the IT support technician that nothing had happened. After repeating the process with no success the technician asked the client to tell him exactly what he had done. The answer came that he had written the word click on his notepad twice and was astounded that nothing had happened.

Another legendary anecdote from the IT support industry is of clients who call to enquire why their documents are not printing. It is only with a close inspection that technicians find the user has been playing with the font colours and inadvertently changed the type colour to white. IT support technicians now check this as a matter of course before further trouble shooting.

A classic from the annals of IT support stories is of users complaining their computer will not register mouse or keyboard movements. On hearing this, the technician often says that the computer is 'frozen.' Usually the next day the tech guy rings to enquire how the computer is doing; responses range from some clients covering the CPU with a coat to some placing the CPU by the fire and melting all the internal components.

During the infancy of email, IT support companies were sadly inundated with calls enquiring if emails needed stamps. Of course those who are somewhat behind the forefront of the technical revolution are going to query such matters. It makes the IT support industry interesting and occasionally frustrating to work in.

It is amazing considering the cost of IT support that people phone in with such foolish queries. One phone operator received a call from a client who had just inserted an instillation disk and the prompt screen had come up; apparently they had rung just to ask what to do next. The rather tiresome client was subsequently told, 'Have you tried hitting the 'next' tab'?

The frustration that some IT support workers inevitably feel occasionally spills out and clients must take the brunt. One story of a man who had spent over an hour with a user trying to solve a relatively simple problem snapped. When asked for advice he said 'Turn off your PC, pack it in its box and take it back to where you bought it.'

When the user went on to ask what he should tell the shop staff the frustrated technician told him to say, 'I have brought it back because I am too much of an idiot to use it.' Unsurprisingly the tech guy was sacked the same day after a barrage of complaints.

The level of stupidity amongst service users is understandable in some cases. Those of us without detailed knowledge of computers are usually wary of delving into things we do not understand. That said some of the requests that IT support workers receive are beyond a joke, a little common sense should always be applied to a problem before ringing the technical support team.