Ridiculous IT Requests The Early Years.

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Elizabeth Beasley
8 years ago
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1 Ridiculous IT Requests The Early Years

2 Ridiculous IT Requests The Early Years In the days of yore when Cloud computing meant browsing a copy of PC Pro in Economy class, a Smartphone was one that didn t require winding up beforehand, and the humble tablet was something you took to rid your decadent soul of a hangover it wasn t all clockwork teapots and steampowered draft excluders. Technology was creeping into the public consciousness, and once it had escaped the hands of boffins and found the hands of buffoons, the IT Service desk would ring to the music of incredulous laughter evermore. It s these early years of external modems, fax machines and bendy disks that we at LinuxIT, the leading name in commercial Linux Support services, have chosen to plunder for the latest in our series of Ridiculous IT Requests. 2

Technology was creeping into the public consciousness, and once it had escaped the hands of boffins and found the hands of buffoons, the IT Service desk would ring to the music of incredulous

3 User: The CD-ROM drive is jammed. Helpdesk: Is there a disk in the defective unit? User: Yes. Three. Helpdesk: Beg your pardon? User: It s a 4x unit. It s got three CDs in it right now. I thought it might be defective, because it never accepted the fourth User: I m having trouble with this new fax machine. Helpdesk: What seems to be the problem? User: Well, I sent a fax and the recipient called back to say all she d received was a cover sheet and blank page. I tried again and got the same response. Helpdesk: How are you loading the sheet? User: Well, it s a pretty sensitive memo and I didn t want anyone else to read it by accident, so I folded it in half. User: I just got my copy of the software you sent us and the disk has become stuck. Helpdesk: You mean when you lift the latch, the disk doesn t pop out? User: That s it. Helpdesk: I don t suppose there was a disk already in the drive when you put this one in? User: Of course not! What do you think I am? Stupid? Helpdesk: Can you pull the disk out? User: No, it s too far back to reach. Helpdesk: Too far back? User: It s smaller than the disks I usually use. It s just too far back. Helpdesk: How big is the disk? User: Around three inches, give or take. Helpdesk: So, you placed a three and half inch disk in a five and quarter inch disk drive? User: Yep... And now it s stuck. How do I get it out? 29 3

User: Well, I sent a fax and the recipient called back to say all she d received was a cover sheet and blank page. I tried again and got the same response. Helpdesk: How are you loading the sheet?

4 User: I want to lodge a complaint about this modem of yours. Helpdesk: I m sorry to hear that, sir, what seems to be the problem? User: One of your reps, who claimed to be technical, sold me this modem, a cable and even convinced me to buy some antivirus stuff, telling me it s all I d need to access the internet. Helpdesk: You might have been sold the wrong type of cable. What s type of computer do you have? User: That s the problem! I wasn t told I needed a computer! User: I want to leave AOL. I m planning to switch to Netscape. Helpdesk: Erm... Netscape won t get you onto the internet; it s what you use to look at it once connected. You ll still need an ISP such as AOL or Demon. User: Oh. I guess I ll get Internet Explorer then. User: I m using Windows Thirty One. Helpdesk: Right. The program requires either Windows 95 or Win32s. Is Win32s on your system? User: No. I told you, I m using Windows Thirty One, not Thirty Two. Helpdesk: Let me explain. Windows 3.1 is your operating system. Win32s is a program that makes your computer faster like Windows 95. User: What s Windows 95 got to do with it? Helpdesk: You need either that or Win32s to run this program. User: I have Windows Thirty One. Why doesn t it work? Helpdesk: I m afraid your machine is too old. Buy a new one with Windows 95 installed. User: I ve heard there s a Windows Three Hundred and Eleven. Won t that be better than Ninety Five? User: I m getting an error message when I try using the MSDOS mode in Windows 95. Helpdesk: What is it? User: I get a black screen and the message reads, C:\WINDOWS>. 4

Helpdesk: You might have been sold the wrong type of cable. What s type of computer do you have? User: That s the problem! I wasn t told I needed a computer! 30 31 User: I want to leave AOL.

5 User: I ve a complaint about this CD-ROM drive I bought. Helpdesk: Really? What seems to be the problem? User: It reads the first side fine, but when I turn the CD over it just says Drive not ready User: I keep getting a failure message when I try to write new files to floppy disk. Helpdesk: Okay. Have you got a disk in your drive at the moment? User: Yes. Two. Helpdesk: Excuse me? Did you say two? User: Yes. Helpdesk: Two disks in the one drive? User: Yes. Helpdesk: May I ask why? User: Well, I was out of high density disks, so I thought I could use two low density ones instead. User: I tried installing the Windows disks from work on my home computer. Helpdesk: Okay. Not strictly legal, but carry on. User: When I put the disks in, it said they weren t initialised. Helpdesk: Right. Do you remember the exact message? User: Yes. I wrote it down so I wouldn t forget. It said: This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialise it? Helpdesk: Oh... What happened next? User: After initialising them, it said the disks were blank. I took them back to work and now the computer here won t read them. It says they need formatting. It s the only set of Windows disks the office has. Did I do something wrong? 36 LinuxIT leads the way in offering commercial Linux support and systems management for organisations that live and die by the power and reliability of their IT systems. We provide effective solutions to the most demanding of service requests. In building, migrating and maintaining cost-effective and flexible Linux systems, LinuxIT is the number one Linux Specialist. 5

Did you say two? User: Yes. Helpdesk: Two disks in the one drive? User: Yes. Helpdesk: May I ask why?

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Technical problems. Taking notes. Mentioning documents. Answering questions. Problems with the questions. Asking questions. Tips and language for telephone interviews What tips could you give someone about each stage of telephone interviews written below? Starting the telephone call Technical problems Taking notes Mentioning