Computer Stupidities

[Nida]

About Clueless Computer Users : )

.....Email is one of the most popular applications of computer networks. It's yet another item that the general public raves about but doesn't really understand.....


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My friend called me up one night and asked me to help him with a problem he was having sending email.
• Friend: "I can't send any email to you."
• Me: "So what's the problem? Are you getting any error messages?"
• Friend: "No, but everytime I try to go to your email it asks me for your password, and you never gave it to me!"

It turned out he was trying to get into my Hotmail account to send me an email.

**

My boss never could get the hang of email. He only used email for one thing: sending weekly messages to his daughter, an English instructor in Saipan. We will call her Mary Smith, but that was not her name. Her address was simple enough, but every week he would call me over to the computer with another problem.
• Boss: "It's gone! The email I just spent an hour typing is gone!"
• Me: "What happened?"
• Boss: "I clicked 'Send,' and it just disappeared!"
• Me: "It's in your outbox, because you told the computer to 'Send' it."
• Boss: "Oh."
This happened almost every week. Either that or:
• Boss: "It won't let me send this message."
• Me: "You need to type her exact email address, not just 'Mary Smith' in the To: field."
• Boss: "Well, how many Mary Smiths could there be in Saipan?"
Or:
• Boss: "I send email every week, they ought to know who it goes to by now!"
Or:
• Boss: "I thought computers were supposed to be smart!"

He would always send his emails on Tuesday so they would get to his daughter by Saturday.

**

• Tech Support: "How may I help you?"
• Customer: "I'm writing my first email."
• Tech Support: "Ok, what seems to be the problem?"
• Customer: "Well I can get the 'a'. But how do I put the circle around it?"


**

[Nida]

Sometimes, especially when conversing on the phone, people misunderstand each other. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's frustrating......

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• Tech Support: "Customer Support, this is David, may I help you?"
• Customer: "Hello, yes, it's me."
• Tech Support: "Oh, it's me too." [chuckle]
• Customer: "No, Esmie. E, s, m, i, e."
• Tech Support: "Oh, sorry."


*


• Tech Support: "May I ask who's calling, please?"
• Customer: "You're joking."
• Tech Support: "No, I need to know so I can log the call. What's your name, please?"
• Customer: "You're joking!"
• Tech Support: "No, really! I need to know."
• Customer: "No...." (chuckles) "My name is Yuriy Jokin. I'm Russian. I know what my name means in English. It's very confusing!"


*


• 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'."

(At this point I had to put the caller on hold to tell the rest of the tech support staff what had happened. I couldn't, however, stop from giggling when I got back to the call.)

• Tech Support: "Ok, did you type 'click' with the keyboard?"
• Customer: "I have done something dumb, right?"


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In the late 1970s, my father worked in the technical support department of a computer company. This was the most memorable of his calls.

• Customer: "Right, this computer's gone all crazy. It's blinking, beeping, and doing all sorts of stuff!"
• Him: "What were you doing with the computer at the time?"
• Customer: "I was dusting it."

*


regds-Nida