Clueless Computer Users
Stories about luser questions, contributers listed at the end. These
are taken directly from postings on the news so the style varies quite
a lot.
Note this is a rarely posted list and has not been updated for a
while.
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(user) I'm having trouble with this editor
(admin) Which one are you using ?
(user) Um, I dunno.
(admin) Emacs? Which version are you running ?
(user) Umm, I'm running version vi, and having heaps of
trouble. Is vii out?
(admin) (mental grind) *duh*
(user) Have they done anything new?
(admin) Well, yeah, they're up to xv now, but that needs a special
graphical interface.
(user) Oh, well, thanks anyway.
(admin) *shudder*
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The start of the new school term always brings out the most
interesting questions for computer consultants on campus. The
predominant questions this term pertain to "getting into" E-mail and
how to access the "Information Highway".
An obviously distraught student came into the consulting office
yesterday complaining that his E-mail wasn't working; his attempts to
get tickets for an on-campus concert kept resulting in returned mail.
He showed me the mail address he was attempting to reach- I asked him
where he obtained such an unusual mail address.
He replied, "The sign told me, 'begins@7:30 P.M.'"
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A secretary in our office (years ago :-) was trying to save her data on a
floppy. She kept complaining that the (single sided) 5 & 1/4 was losing
her data. Well, I was asked to investigate. I unwilling approached the
gallows.
I asked her to show me what she did when she saved her data. She took out
a new disk, inserted it into the drive, formatted it, saved her data,
and removed the diskette without a hitch. She then proceeded to peel off
a new label, and carefully applied it to the disk.
No problems so far.
She then took the disk, inserted it into the typwriter, scrolled it
through the roller, and neatly typed her label.
I found the problem on the first try.
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A user called the PC Support line of the university having trouble with
her Mac. It was handed off to one of the Mac guys...
"What seems to be the problem?"
"It's not working."
Eyes roll. "What's not working?"
"My Mac."
<- Five minutes of drawing the problem out of the woman deleted ->
"Okay, to access the files on the disk click the mouse on the picture
of the disk."
Pause. "Nothing happened. I told you, I've already tried this."
Support guy makes as if he is strangling the phone.
"Okay, do it again. Is the mouse moving?"
"Yep."
"On the screen?"
"Yep."
"Now click twice on the picture of the disk."
Pause and the consultant hears the two clicks again. "Nothing."
"Maam, double-click once more for me."
Clink-clink.
"Maam, are you hitting the screen with your mouse?"
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Of course this sounds stupid to us, but how many secretaries are familiar
with mass storage techniques? A friend of mine fixed his mother's TV by
connecting the antenna. After explaining the problem, she asked:
"How far away is the TV station?"
"From here? About 20 miles."
"You mean that picture can travel 20 miles to get to the antenna, but it
can't go another 3 inches to get to the TV?"
How do you explain that (in less than four years)?
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I overheard a nice conversation one day in a computer shop:
customer: I'd like a mouse mat please.
assistant: certainly sir,we've got a large variety.
customer while looking at said mats then asked:
"But will they be compatible with my computer?"
All i could do to keep a straight face was walk out of the shop.
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A friend of mine works at Word Perfect in Orem UT. He had a lady call
up and tell him she couldn't figure out how to install the program.
He told her "Insert Disk1 into the disk drive and type "INSTALL WP".
He then proceeded to have her insert disk 2 through 4 in sequential
order. She then stop him to ask if it would be alright to remove the
previous four disks because the fifth wouldn't fit.
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I personally love the reaction of some people to the screen savers on
the Macintoshes in our computer lab. I was sitting next to a blonde
(at that point I didn't place any significance on this fact) who was
typing a paper, and by the way she was doing it, it was clear that
this was just about her first time. Well, a friend of hers sat at the
computer across from hers, and they started chatting... and yup, the
screensaver kicked in.
The scream was heard, I was told, around two corners in the hallway.
But there's more... after she'd nearly passed out, her friend just
told her to move the mouse to get back to what she was doing, that she
didn't lose anything, in fact.
She didn't count on the fact that when her friend jumped up in
hysteria she'd bumped the keyboard/mouse connector out of the
socket...
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There was an big, athletic-looking guy fooling with one of our brother
(IBM) printers. He was opening it up, shaking it a little, and trying
to jam a paper into the manual paper feed. When I asked him what the
problem was, he said, "Your copier isn't working."
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- Hey, can you help me? my program doesn't work...
- What is the problem, are you using Turbo Pascal??
- Yes, the program just blocks the machine...
- Well, does it compile?
- I don't know, it just doesn't run...
I went to his computer and he told me:
- You see? there's the .EXE file, if you run it it blocks the machine...
- And where is your source, the .PAS file???
- I wrote it and renamed it to .EXE so it could run...
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"Remove the sleve, and insert the floppy disk into the drive."
[hours of technical support later]
"You know -- these vinyl covers they put on disks are really hard
to get off..."
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A bank clerk friend told me this the other day:
An elderly customer came into the bank complaining the ATM wasn't
working. She had been waiting for half an hour after "requesting a
new cheque book" and it still hadn't come out yet!
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On another occasion, a lady came into the store, apparently interested
in buying a home computer. After surveying the models on display, she
walks over to one and points the the monitor and keyboard saying, "I
think I need one of these, and one of those, ..." She then points to
the CPU and continues, "... but I don't think I need one of those.
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This one just happened.
User walks into the office. "This disk doesn't work."
Computer literate non-staff: "You have covered the disk slot with the
label."
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Customer: Where can I get a BIOS upgrade for by 286 computer?
Tech: The unit should have been shipped with the latest bios.
Customer: Well I upgraded the processor myself, and my computer
doesn't seem to work.
Tech: What did you upgrade the processor to?
Customer: I upgraded it to a 486DX-50.
Tech: Sir... The 286 chip is soldered on the motherboard!
Customer: I know, I took out my handy soldering iron and took it out and
put the 486 on myself.
Tech: Sir, the 486 is bigger than the 286.
Customer: I know, I had to use quite a bit of solder to solder the
extra pins together.
Tech: Sir I have to put you on hold for a second.
the Tech laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair.
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In my first *real* job, I was not only responsible for programming but
I also did customer support and training. Our company used to sell time
on our computers so very small companies that couldn't afford computers
at the time could do their bookkeeping, etc. One day, a new woman came
in to use the trash-... i mean TRS-80 (boy I'm really dating myself ;-)
She fumbled about for about 10 minutes but I paid no attention to her.
Finally she came out & grumbled something about how the computer wouldn't
turn on. I grilled her with the usual obvious questions: Did you turn the
switch on? Did you plug it in? Did you turn on the switch on the power
strip? She was sure she had done everything right. I was sure she neglected
to plug one of the power cords into the power strip.
So, I went to investigate and she was *RIGHT*, she *HAD* plugged everything
in to the power strip... including the power strip's own power cord - talk
about a ground loop!
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We had a customer call us once, saying that they were having problems getting
their new disks to work in the machine. It turned out that the customer thought
they had to TRIM THE 5.25" DISKS DOWN to fit in their 3.5" drive... fortunately
the 3.5 drive wasn't damaged...
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And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved int he
diretion oposite the movement of the mouse (when she moved her mouse left, the
cursor went right, etc.) She also complained about how hard it was to hit the
buttons. She was quite embarased when we asked her to rotate the mouse so the
tail pointed AWAY from her...
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>First revision of user manual includes :
> Insert disk A
> Press ENTER
> Wait for reply LOADING EXECUTED
> Insert disk B
> .
> .
>Following a complaint by a user, the second revision reads :
> Insert disk A
> Press ENTER
> Wait for reply LOADING EXECUTED
> Remove disk A
> Insert disk B
> .
> .
When I worked for Reuters, I saw some truly idiot proof user manuals
along these lines. Reuters has a lot of rack-mounted PCs all over the
world in places where the local tech-level is zilch. The field
service guides for these things explain how there are 7 wrong ways but
only one right way to insert a 5 1/4 inch disk into the right slot
(let's not talk about the wrong slots!).
They also explained techno-babble such as 'disk-drive door' so that
people wouldn't interpret instructions such as 'Insert disk A into
drive and close door' as an instruction to close the door of the room
they were in.
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Contributed by:
MMCHUGH@delphi.com
al297692@academ01.mty.itesm.mx (Gerardo Nevarez Moorillon)
anil@cessna (Anil V. Narwani)
awhite@unislc.slc.unisys.com (Alan White)
babar+@pitt.edu (Jonggu Moon)
barry@temss2 (Barry Hollander)
bwillan4@mach1.wlu.ca (Brian Willan)
cary@staff.circ.gwu.edu (Cary Abend)
checkers@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Alison Rosenstengel)
cs884@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steven Lam)
desrosde@oasis.gtefsd.com (Donald Desrosiers)
ed@bcvms.bc.edu (Edmund C.Greene)
eeibht@eeiud.ericsson.se (Brendan Hassett)
ega015@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Robert Edge)
hamekenn@cwis.isu.edu (HAMELIN_KENNETH_J)
harrison@lclark.edu (Mark Harrison)
hebert@abaddon.b24b.ingr.com (Shane Hebert)
hutton@pluto.dev.promis.com (Don Hutton)
hymowitz@panini.cs.jhu.edu (Hymie!)
i3423@newsie.dc.dk (Bobby Billingsley)
jack@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (Jack Cooper)
jjf@inri.com (Josh J Fielek)
johnson@sleipnir.pb.wes.mot.com ("Johnson")
jseary@fac.cabot.nf.ca
jseary@fac.cabot.nf.ca
kmunn@tudor.com (Kristofer Munn)
mechalas@expert.cc.purdue.edu (John Mechalas)
mycroft@monolith.utexas.edu (Alex Currier)
neil@Smallworld.co.uk (Neil Pawson)
peterc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Peter Chapman)
pfrench@crl.com (Pat Brouillette)
rdictus@vnet3.vub.ac.be (Roy Dictus)
record@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
richard@alaska.et.byu.edu (Richard B. Christensen)
root@belvedere.sbay.org (David E. Fox)
sholmste@novell.com (Shawn Holmstead)
sshah@ucrengr.ucr.edu (steve shah)
thompson@space.honeywell.com (jt -- John Thompson)
tsurikov@phakt.usc.edu (Michael Tsurikov)
@amtvtec.UUCP (Brian T. La Rose)
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