Tech Support: 'I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.'
Customer: 'OK.'
Tech Support: 'Did you get a pop-up menu?'
Customer: 'No.'
Tech Support: 'OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?'
Customer: 'No.'
Tech Support: 'OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?'
Customer: 'Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'.'
Tech Support: 'OK. At the bottom left hand side of your screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?'
Customer: 'Wow! How can you see my screen from there?'
I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax the document back to the sender when I was finished with it, because he needed to keep it.
Tech Support: "All right...now double-click on the File Manager icon."
Customer: "That's why I hate this Windows - because of the icons I'm a Protestant, and I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well, that's just an industry term sir. I don't Believe it was meant to-"
Customer: "I don't care about any 'Industry Terms'. I don't believe in icons."
Tech Support: "Well...why don't you click on the 'little picture' of a filing cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"
Customer: [click]
Customer: "My computer crashed!"
Tech Support: "It crashed?"
Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."
Tech Support: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."
Customer: "No, it didn't crash-it crashed."
Tech Support: "Huh?"
Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before. I crashed my Spaceship and now it doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"
Customer: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn't solve.
She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow.
I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new ideas.
After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?"