The ultimate collection of 'dumb user' stories

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Those things could be deadly
"I had a client who said her keyboard didn't work right. She would try to type, and it would type all the wrong letters. I replaced the keyboard, and then she said that one did the same thing. So I started thinking it was possibly a bad motherboard, but she said that when other people logged on to the network and were using the computer, it worked just fine, but for her, it typed garbage. Now, I know that there is nothing in a login script that will do this, so I asked her to show me what it was doing. While she was typing, I noticed her lovely sculpted fingernails, which were over an inch and a half long. So of course as she would try to hit one key, her fingernails were hitting the keys above. I recommended that as the office manager, maybe she should delegate typing tasks to her secretary."

It's raining cats and dogs
"Arriving at a private home to fix what was described as the erratic behavior of the family PC, I tried to question the owner as to exactly what was happening. 'Well, the only thing I know for sure,' she said, 'is that every time our dog starts barking at the neighbor's cat, the computer goes crazy.' It took me a few minutes to shake off the stupid look I must have had on my face and start the troubleshooting. I avoided asking any more questions fearing the answers would be as strange as that last one. About a half hour into the job, the monitor started flickering and the system hung up. Almost immediately, I heard the barking of a dog and had a hard time coping mentally with what was happening. At this point, the lady entered the room and said, 'yes, that's what it does'.

"I was about to pack it in and for the first time give up when her husband came in and said, 'it's a good thing we have that electric fence or that cat would be a goner by now.' After making some inquiries, I discovered that when the dog spotted the cat, it would run to the edge of the property and activate the electric fence, which was controlled by a transmitter that was very conveniently located on the corner of the desk, beside the computer."

Beta or VHS?
"I work at a company that provides support for a number of different titles, one of which is a CD-ROM multimedia presentation that contains many AVI and video files on how to perform certain tasks. I received a call from a woman who was quite upset and complaining that the videos were not working at all. After a few minutes of gathering some information from her, I asked about her computer system information. The woman replied, 'oh, my computer isn't working right now. I put the disk into my VCR so I could watch the videos'. This is truly one of the most unusual calls I've received in almost 10 years of doing technical support for software."

It's all in the handshake
"We recently hired a new sales rep to sell Internet enterprise software. Last week he asked me a question about our product and wanted to know what a browser was. Unless he is one hell of a sales guy, I don't see him doing well in this business." -- Dennis B.

Where does the thread go?
"A woman working for us kept complaining that her mouse would only move an inch or two on the screen and then just stop and she said the buttons on the mouse were impossible to use. After several visits by our on-site support people, who swore there was nothing wrong, and two mouse replacements, I insisted the technician have her demonstrate the problem. (We are a 24-hour operation Hotel/Casino, and the user wasn't usually on-shift when the technicians were available to work on the equipment). The tech called me back absolutely hysterical. Turned out the woman, who works in the middle of the casino, had the mouse on the floor and was pushing it around with her bare foot because she thought it looked just like her sewing machine peddle. She works with at least three other people who use mice on their workstations within five feet of her but she apparently never thought to use her mouse the way they used theirs." -- Patricia F.

Alphabet soup
"I had a call from a user who wanted to clean his keyboard. I applauded his self-reliant nature and told him to just use any standard cleaning solution with a damp rag, and to be sure and dry it thoroughly. Well, I guess I am the dumb user because I was not specific enough about what type of cleaner to use. The particular user grabbed the nearest can of brake cleaner and managed to melt his keys together into one big grotesque deformed alphabet palette. He called me back shortly to ask if I had any spare keyboards lying around. I knew right then... something was wrong. He would not admit to anything; I had to find out from his cubicle neighbour. Needless to say it required an email to the entire staff explaining the perils of brake cleaner on plastic." -- Darrin McL.

Where's my modem?
"I work at an Internet help desk and get calls you wouldn't believe. One lady called and said she had been signed up for Internet access for over a month and was wondering when I was going to send her modem to her. Once I explained that she had everything she needed and walked her through the settings, she was online within minutes." -Vicki W, information technology consultant.

Train the trainer
"Dumbest user? Well, we had a trainer on site training users on the new billing system we use here and she was completely neurotic, any slight problem and she wanted you there within milliseconds. Anyway after about three days of plodding backwards and forwards I got a call: "I'm trying to log in and the cursor is just whizzing across the screen! "Anyway, I arrived to be greeted with the cursor, sure enough, whizzing across the screen, and the trainer foaming at the mouth saying she had about 11 people to train and if it was not working then she would only be able to train 10, to which I replied: "Well, take your notepad off the spacebar then", which was greeted with rapturous laughter from the training group. That's what I call justice! And, funnily enough, I didn't get another call." -- Paul N, PC support analyst.