I worked with an individual who plugged their power strip back into itself and for the life of them could not understand why their computer would not turn on.
1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"
2nd Person: "A little. What's wrong?"
1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all
she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the
same thing happened."
2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?"
1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to
read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient would open it and
read it."
I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.
She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery for this?"
"Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.
"No, just this remote 'thingy,'" she answered, handing it and the car keys to me.
As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries...it's a long walk."
Tech Support: "What does the screen say now.." Person: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'." Tech Support: "Well?" Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"
Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. "What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386." He started to type it and paused, asking me "Where's the key for that line thing?" I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark." I replied, "You mean the letter "i"?" and he said, "Yeah, that's it!"
I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large new motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, then went in back to make a sandwich.
For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other. A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards.
She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face.
She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.
I typed in, "Leave me alone!"
They both jumped back, silenced. "What the . . .??? " the teacher said. I typed, "I said, 'leave me alone!'"
The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I swear!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.
Me: "Don't touch me!"
Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that hard."
Me: "Who do you think you are anyway?!" Etc.
Finally, I couldn't contain myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing.
After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red.
Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.
Tech Support: "What seems to be the problem?"
Customer: "The balance is backwards. The left channel is coming out of the right speaker and the right channel is coming out the left. It's defective."
Tech Support: "You can solve the problem by moving the left speaker to the right side of the machine and vice versa."
Customer: (sputter) (click)
Tech Support: (snicker)
Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."