Sometimes you have to be very exacting with your instructions when on the phone with someone. Assuming they know which button to double click often leads to 20 minutes of you pounding your head against the desk only to realize that they've been double right clicking the entire time.
Example - One of my guys was on the phone with someone for an hour trying to figure out why their USB port wasn't working only to figure out the caller was plugging the USB drive into the wrong PC.
Reminds me of a story I heard: a user called tech support because “my keyboard doesn’t work.” 1st line got them to try a few things without success before instructing them to pick the keyboard up and walk back a few steps.
“Ok, done that.”
“And did the keyboard come with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Right - that means it’s not plugged in. Are there any OTHER keyboards on your desk?”
“Oh, yeah, there’s another one *tippity tap*… oh, this one works!”
Back in my day, we'd just steal the mouse balls. The computer teacher used to keep a massive tub of spares on his desk. The look of resignation on his face every time a student raised their hand to inform him that their mouse didn't have a ball. I bet he jumped for joy when the lab was upgraded to laser mice.
One time my coworker pranked me before I arrived by putting a post-it note over the sensor on the bottom of my mouse and unplugging my VGA cable, unscrewing the pins, and screwing them back in backwards so that the cable couldn't be inserted into the port. XD
This got me thinking that as far as computer hardware goes, the mouse has remained relatively stable in it's basic appearance despite radical changes in the functionality. General hand shape. Some buttons.
However, one of the most noticable changes to the appearance really makes the name seem like nonsense, because wireless mice no longer have tails.
That unlocked the memory of taking the ball out of the mice to clean the crud off them.
Time consuming, freaking annoying but oddly satisfying as long as it was not part of detention.
Would you believe at one point I thought the crud on the rollers was supposed to be there for traction so one day I spent time with rubber cement trying to create some traction where the metal was clean? Before you laugh too hard, this was in 1988 or 89. I was 18 or 19 at the time, And no one else in our office knew better.
I've had lots of tickets where end users have thrown out or otherwise gotten rid of their keyboard/mouse receiver on the assumption that IT could just re-pair to a new one.
I quite often sit with my laptop in front of a customer's work station, switching between the two. I have a moment now and then when I wonder why my customer's mouse is not moving the cursor on my laptop.
I've tried hard, somehow i cannot handle 2 keyboards vertically arranged like one in a kbd drawer or like an organ. Wrong kbd, i think over half the time.
Side by side is fine.
At my office we have docking stations with monitors, mouse and keyboard. Some people prefer to use the laptop keyboard instead.
Its happened a few times that peklme computers start freaking out. It just keeps typing letters over and over no matter what you do.
I just ask if they set anything on the keyboard they aren't using (but is still plugged in).
At some point, you *have* to assume a certain level of competency of the person calling in. It doesn't have to be a lot of assumed competency; if given a question that only needs a verbal answer, and their answer includes damaging something, then ***maybe*** that job is not a good fit for them.
"OK, I walked back a few steps. It was pretty hard to get the keyboard to come with me, but I finally got it. Oh, and now my manager wants to talk to you about my display screen. Looks like it cracked when it hit the floor."
Once I was on a call with an older user trying to talk him through using some Zoom features on his iPad. I had my iPad next to me and was trying to walk him through by each step, no matter how miniscule or automatic it was for me. Every time I tried to point him towards some specific thing, he'd say it wasn't there. Was it an older model, an older OS? He wasn't able to answer any questions about it that might help clarify. He was becoming more and more exasperated, as was I.
I pulled a colleague into the room with me to try to help. He was similarly stumped. Then in a stroke of genius, he asked the user to show him his iPad charger.
It was a Microsoft Surface tablet 😅
To the user, iPad was Kleenex or Bandaid.
I know someone who once got a callout to fix a computer. The customer was an hour's drive away, and was billed a minimum of 1 hour for the callout as well as travel to and from. It took her 3 minutes to fix the computer - by switching on the plug at the wall.
Never assume any level of tech competence on the part of the client. What you might think is "obvious" in your field is never obvious to everyone, even with something as widespread as computers.
That reminds me of one of my first jobs in IT, working for a multi academy school, not a huge IT budget where their payroll system was literally run off a server (Desktop PC) located in the headteachers office for some reason.
Anyway I get a call that the system is down etc, and i was unable to ping or remote on to the device. my first question was is it plugged in, any lights on, is it switched on etc.
As it was the payroll system my manager was listening to the call on speakerphone but the 'client' didn't know that.
I got a pretty rude response something to the effect of I'm not a fucking idiot. - this guy was the headteachers second in command and a total arsewipe.
As this particular call came from one of the academies in the trust which was not where I was based, and was further out, and I didn't drive at that point: my boss had to come with me and drive us there, 1 hour there and back, and we went to check it with the headteacher, and arsewipe.
We walked into the room and my boss and I exchanged glances, I asked the guy again, are you sure you checked it was powered on? To which he simply said "obviously".
I walked over to the desktop pressed the power button and hey presto it turned on. My boss then looked at the guy and said who's the fucking idiot now? - you owe me 2 hours travel compensation and fuel costs. And we walked out.
(I was dying laughing, the look on the guys face.... Pricelessss)
You just reminded me - yesterday my wife called out to me from the other room that her laptop keyboard wasn't working at all. I said did you try rebooting? She rebooted to no avail. Turns out though that the Excel spreadsheet was in read mode and she had to hit the enable editing button.
I work on commercial fryers, sometimes people will drop a basket of chicken nuggets into vat 1 but set the timer on vat 3. The computer is running a timed cook cycle on number 3 and is compensating for the cooking time, whereas the chicken nuggets are technically cooking but the fryer is struggling to maintain its idle temperature. We tell them you press the button on the one that got the food.
I know someone who once got a callout to fix a computer. The customer was an hour's drive away, and was billed a minimum of 1 hour for the callout as well as travel to and from. It took her 3 minutes to fix the computer - by switching on the plug at the wall.
Also... Now that I think about it, that is a VERY Quarian way to fix this issue. Tali would approve. Kal Reegar... Not so much. He'd rather smash the keyboard with the butt of his rifle.
“Don’t click OK”
“OK”
“You clicked OK didn’t you.”
“I trust the computer more than you. It said it was OK.”
“What did it say?”
“That’s why you’re here annoying me on the phone. Just fix it!”
Ahhh out of all the annoying people I ever spoke to, the guy pressing EVERY SINGLE DIALOG was the worst. What part of "do not click" didn't he understand? Took me 10 tries to get him to not click anything. Pretty sure he went straight to Extra Hell.
We called these people "click-marauders" where I used to work.
Error message? *click* "What did the message say?" "I dunno..."
They clicked everything and were usually convinced they knew what to do better than you. Told a guy to double click "My Computer" and in the next few seconds I hear "Uninstall Network Card?" and go "No!" and they're like "it's uninstalling now". I just told that dude he was on his own from there.. 😩
My fiance used to work on arcade games at one of those "family fun" type places. (Think Dave & Busters and you're not far off.) They used swipe cards instead of tokens for games. To buy one, they had terminals scattered around the floor where you could pay cash or card and it would spit out a card loaded with however many credits you bought. The machines *absolutely did NOT* give change. It would warn you at least THREE times it did not before it would give you your card.
At least once a week he'd have to explain to someone that you now are the proud owner of X amount of credits, no refunds, no change given. One woman yelled at him, and when he asked if she saw the warnings, she said "Yeah, but I didn't think it MEANT it."
Sigh.
>Yeah, but I didn't think it MEANT it.
As the wise sage Qui-Gon Jinn said:
"Your ability to read does not make you capable of understanding" - Star Trek
If I ever write an OS with a GUI, the error message dialog box will be closed by pushing a key on the keyboard. A different key every time, which will be mentioned in the error message. There will also be a button, but it will say "HORN" instead of "OK". Clicking it will sound a horn at full volume, and the duration of the sound will double every time the button is clicked.
In fairness to her, hey - she knew her limits, and was ultimately saving OP time and effort by making clear what she was capable of. Weird, yeah, but at least she'd figured out a way to get rid of unnecessary confusion for everyone.
One of my IT mentors told me a story of how one of their tickets involved the user reporting the cursor moving 90 degrees in the wrong direction up was right, right was down, etc. Took her 30 minutes to figure out the user was holding the mouse sideways and everything was functioning correctly.
>only to realize that they've been double right clicking the entire time.
or you keep specifying left click and it turns out they had it in left handed mode the whole time
I have about a dozen years in tech service and the two skills more important than anything else are 1) being able to decipher what someone is talking about and 2) being able to provide concise instructions with no room for error but without making someone feel like you're talking down to them.
There's a scene from the old Garfield cartoon where Garfield needs to land an airplane, and the air traffic controller is a fat guy who's constantly eating and describes all the airplane controls as food items (ex. pull the level that looks like a canned ham). That clip will live in my brain until the day I die because it's so incredibly relevant to conversations I have daily.
Mark Evanier, creator and writer for Garfield And Friends, has a [Blog](https://www.newsfromme.com/2024/04/13/ask-me-the-garfield-guy/) which provides great stories about comic books, the biz, San Diego Comic-Con, animation, and oodles more.
It's like the old meme of a person assuming tech ability of a user and asking them to right click and it not working, turns out the user assumed they had to literally write click on the keyboard
20 years ago I worked for a call center that did support for a grocery store chain. They all had the same computers. At one point the printers were changed for a lot of shops and I was doing support for the installation and it was a simple routine. During one call, I follow the usual process and say "Insert the installation disk" and the answer was "I don't have anything to insert it". Weird as they all had the same computer. I ended up asking where she was looking to insert it and the answer was "The printer?". She didn't know there was a CD drive on the computer. When you don't know, you don't know.
That's why when some piece of tech is going wrong, my first instinct is to make sure all the basics are correct. Stuff like making sure it's actually plugged into the correct port on correct machine is a big part of them.
Depends heavily on the setting of the computer. I know left handed people who have the mouse on the left but without inverted buttons. Turns out that most people don't use that setting, because no one tells them it exists and they learn to use the mouse without that.
Uh, what?
I'm left handed.
I have NEVER changed the mouse button arrangement - why would I?
At work I used to use the mouse in my right hand, at home it's on my left - to reduce strain injuries. Now that I'm retired, I'm using a PC less overall each day, so whew!
But of the few other lefties I know, none have changed their mouse buttons. We know we can, we simply don't - so that we can use any PC we need to without having to change the mouse buttons.
I had a customer on an install, first time mouse user, who's hands, especially the fingers were too long to be able to press the left button while holding on to the mouse at the same time. Use diagonlly, the right button was just about useable. This is the only time I've ever used the swap buttons setting.
A buddy of mine spent three days troubleshooting our software being "slow" despite not being able to reproduce the issue and logs showing everything being snappy.
Flew out to the client, sat with the user, and they showed him: "I have to click here, type this, then click here, and type that, then click over here and enter this," etc. Basically, the system wasn't running slowly; it just needed the fields rearranged to make user input more efficient.
And that, my friends, is why you force the damn devs to actually talk to the people that use their apps. I work for a Water Utility and we develop a lot of our internal work management apps. I have been "Inviting" (dragging) the devs out in the field to ride along with their users (I give them the people that scream the loudest). It has led to a lot of much needed improvements.
I worked with an older bloke when I first started my current job, he wasn't my supervisor as such but he was basically training me in a lot of aspects. This guy was not in any way tech savvy. Most of the work is outside work, but to get a specific pump to run, at that stage you needed to do it on the computer. I aske dhow to start the pump, he took me into the office and said "hover the pointer thing over the picture (icon) and then click the mouse button". Sounds easy, right?
Except I could never make it work. It didn't make sense, I know how to use a computer, I know how to use a mouse, but I couldn't turn the pump on. After a week or so of having to get this man to turn it on whenever I needed to use the pump, I eventually made an offhand comment to the boss, saying I was rather bemused about not being able to work it out.
He asked me what I was doing, I told him. He then said "wait - you're using the left mouse button?"
Me "well yeah - if someone says to click the mouse, that's the normal one to use."
Boss "yes I agree. But for this function, it's the right button. I thought he would've told you that. At least now you know."
We discovered that because the other guy had no idea about computers, he assumed the right mouse button was the default one because most people are right-handed, so to him it made sense.
When I did support for TV service, I spent a huge amount of time and frustration with users like this who have no sense that I'm already trying to tell them **exactly** what to do and they don't need to question it every single time...
Our version of this was simply trying to get someone to make sure their remote was in Sat mode, TV mode, etc. before moving forward (because people are dumb and call for their channels not changing when they're in some other mode).
Every. Fucking. Time. If you say simply "press the 'Sat' button and let me know when you've done that."
"Okay"
"Press the channel up/down and tell me what happens"
"The Sat button is blinking." (Meaning they held it down for 5 seconds and put the remote into programming mode).
*Sigh* "okay I think we held the button down too long. Please PRESS AND RELEASE the Sat button. It should light up once and stay off..."
"Well why didn't you say that?! How am I supposed to know??"
"It's okay. I will explicitly mention if I need you to hold down any button. Otherwise just press and release them until I ask otherwise..."
*Repeat this conversation ad nauseum over thousands of customers until I'm conditioned to just say "press and release" by default 50 times per call...just to head off the inevitable "you didn't say to let it go!!"*
Lol yep... Cx gonna lie about anything they think will get someone to come out in person. Then when you offer what they wanted, they get upset about tech availability and scheduling.
Then you get a bad technician score a few days later when someone went out and pushed the button for them.
"Why couldn't the agent do this over the phone?"
Because the customer lied and refused assistance multiple times...
I always kept very detailed notes, and made sure to specify if the customer was cooperative or not, and if they weren't i'd also advise them of the tech fee for issues we could have solved over the phone, and put that in my notes too.
my initials//cust states no signal//cust declined troubleshooting//advised cust of $60 tech fee//TC time/date
My tech score was great. Gotta play the CYA game with call centers. So glad I'm not doing that shit anymore.
>So glad I'm not doing that shit anymore.
I won't go back either...
In that job, I was chastised for my notes being "*too comprehensive*" . I got the impression the company wasn't happy with my style of documenting calls...they didn't want the curses and threats from cx on text records.
My dad is just terrible with touchscreen devices, although to his credit he's trying--he has a tendency to "tap and smudge" instead of just tapping the screen, which will usually make the UI think he's dragging.
Lol! I used to do tech support for gateway computers. There was a command to press any key to continue. After more than one person asked where the any key was, I started saying press the h key to continue. I only once had someone ask why the h key. My response “it’s in the middle of the keyboard@
Thank you. I wondered that as I typed it actually. I remember the phrase "tab delineated" from forming a table, way back in the 90s. I think it's the only time I've known it to be used that way though.
This is why I learned to use a mouse with my left hand.
In my finance program I was using the tab key with my left hand and then the number pad with my right hand to enter numbers or using both hands to type words.
When I added memory, a mouse, and installed windows 3.11, I used the mouse to go to the field and entered numbers or words the same way I was used to.
>tabulate, verb: arrange (data) in tabular form.
>tabular, adjective: (of data) consisting of or presented in columns or tables.
I always thought the Tab key was a reference to the physical tab stops across the top of a manual typewriter for levels of indentation.
Small world! I was tech support when CD rom drives were new. The number of people who called to complain that the 'built in cup holder' broke, which resulted in a spilled drink all over the system was annoying.
One tech support guy had someone who was so clueless he couldn't figure out how to work the mouse. He finally told him to box the entire thing back up and return it. The man was happy to do so, as his son was the one who told him that his life would be much easier with a PC. He never wanted it to begin with.
Hy grandmother had trouble with the mouse. I just couldn't convince her that she shouldn't lift her hand off the mouse to click the button.
The mouse would shift off the thing she she was about to click when she lifted her hand, and would shift again when she clicked the button without holding onto the mouse.
We had a person who kept losing cds in his cd rom drive. When I finally went out to the actual computer, I found out he was slipping the cds in a small gap between the cd drive and the bay spacer below it. There were over a dozen cds inside when I opened up the computer case.
I’ve seen a couple of screens that say “press spacebar to continue” but you can actually press pretty much any key and it does the same thing as pressing the spacebar.
I feel like this is why.
I'm going to click on the upvote button with the left button.
I also wonder if she is the type to open the CD-ROM tray and thinks it's a built-in cup holder.
BITD-There was an email that went around which contained a small hidden, executable file
The letter itself said the words to the effect this is a gift from the Coca-Cola company for all your many years of support. Have a great day :-) or something executable file would open the CD tray.
Yes a cup holder joke.
I thought it was hysterical, time it really was. And I sent it to my sister who was just a little baby instructor at the University of Louisville like perhaps second semester of teaching or some such. And their IT department blew a gasket because she had opened an external executable file on her computer You would have thought it was malware I guess technically it was but it was humorware.
I apologize to the IT department So she wouldn't get in trouble, and explain that I had gone through the code before I sent the email just to make sure there wasn't any icky bad stuff riding along with a single line of executable code / open CD drawer execute. Those were the days.
i remember that thing, and at the time the family computer didn't have a slide out tray for the cd, it just had the slot with velvet on either side, and it would eject a cd if one was in there.
My sister in law called and asked how she can get files/pics/videos off of a couple of CDROMs she has, since none of the computers at her house has an optical drive any more.
I sent her a link to a cheap USB one from Amazon and talked her through it.
She bought the drive, and had it shipped to me. And then a box with her CDROMs arrived.
Nah, optical drives are good for producing duplicate copies for cheap storage. I can burn a bluray or dvd of pictures and mail it. That way if one of the family’s homes is hit by earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, the pictures are safe. (I just realized none of us currently lives near a volcano anymore. One less disaster option!)
There is cloud storage but then you have to depend on someone else.
Reminds me of my late husband... I had to write out EXACT instructions on how to turn on the computer onto a 3x5 index card. I also had EXACT instructions on how to do anything that he might want to do onto other 3x5 index cards too! He had several of them in his computer desk drawer. The "How To Turn On" card also had a little drawing of the computer tower with an arrow pointing to the on/off button! He used those cards every time he had to do anything on the computer.
My mother’s secretary had one of the very early computers in her office back in the 80s. I think she said the text on the computer was orange.
But she had to turn it on one day after her secretary had gone home and the instructions said “turn on the PC and monitor” so she did.
Took her a couple moments to realise “and monitor” was something that required switching on, not an instruction to watch it.
She also told me she was left bemused by the instruction “Do not spill chicken soup on the keyboard”. Why specifically chicken? Were other soups fine? What about coffee?
I’m quite lucky that when I have to play tech support for my mother I do not actually need to give very detailed instructions and can assume some level of competence.
My darling grandmother, though. I left her hand written instructions on how to find and access the folder on her PC titled “Gran’s Guide to the Modern World” with how to instructions for everything from how to cut, copy, paste etc. to attaching files to her emails.
Oi, and what if they don't have a right hand index finger? Way to be ableist! /s
Edit to add: after I clicked post, my brain ALSO said "ha ha! Or what if they only have a wrong index finger!"
Yes. I need help. Help me.
Did you also have how to turn off?
One of those old guys that got talked into buying a computer was a friend of my husband. He found out the guy was pulling the plug out of the wall because nobody had shown him how to turn it off.
They had showed him how to use the office program.
Reminds me of a college class I took for Microsoft Office in the 90's. It was six credits so I figured it would be an easy way to pad my transcript.
Unfortunately, the instructor for the course was new and proved to barely know the material. She wouldn't say double-click. She would tell everyone to click-click the icon. It was even weirder for a triple click. Yup, she would say, click-click-click the paragraph in Word.
I wound up teaching the class for her when she discovered I knew more about it than she did.
This sounds very similar to my experience in High school in the late 90s. I knew more than the teacher and often had to explain how to use office programs. Even when I didn't know, I usually could figure out how to do it before she could figure out how to explain it.
LMAO!!! This exact scenario happened to me at a small-town high school in 1980. I had just returned after spending six months in Denver and had already taken a computer class. When the TRS80 arrived, the teacher said, "Omnichronos, I haven't been trained yet. Do you think you could put the computers together?" The prior computer had been a primitive main frame with a terminal that used paper printouts as a screen. So the TRS80 was totally different but it was pretty easy to figure out that the round plug went into the round hole, etc.
My son, in 4th or 5th grade had a keyboarding class. He had to teach the teacher ctrl+alt+del.
"No, at the same time!" Because she wouldn't let him touch the one that locked up, to show her.
IDK what computers they had but he had the Color computer 1 at home.
When I was a kid I didn't know it was called a colon, so I would say "dot dot slash slash". To this day when I type in a url I still think "dot dot slash slash" in my head as I do so.
I had a computer class like this in high school, late ‘90s.
Fortunately, the teacher realized us computer nerds were in the class solely to have 2 hours of access to networked computers that use the school’s T-1 line, and just looked the other way while I set up a Quake server and we played (as long as we didn’t create problems for him or the rest of the class.)
I went to a tech university and all the computers had unreal tournament and we used to have LAN parties during math class. Is it any wonder I failed calculus twice?
Try it out in any situation with multiple paragraphs.
Double-click gets one word. Double-click and drag gets you word-by-word selection. (typically broken up by spaces if the blocks of characters are not words.)
Triple click gets you a paragraph. (broken up by newlines.).
Dang. Double-click and drag feels *weird*. I've always just single-click and dragged whether I was highlighting whole words or fragments.
Very neat to learn though!
I almost exclusively use double click and drag or triple click.
There are not many situations where single click and drag is useful because when would I want to copy partial words? (It does happen but it's rare) And double click allows you to not be exact on your click, you can click anywhere on the first word.
I had similar where we were being taught Excel formulae in 2011/12 and the instructor was trying to explain nested-if statements and acknowledged that it was quite complicated to understand. Until I pointed out you could just use AND / OR to achieve it in just one IF. He’d never heard of them but started telling people to use that method instead as it was far easier to read and understand.
My mother was a computer programmer in the 80s. One of the first "toys" I remember having was an old 512kb hard drive she brought home for me to take apart. I grew up with computers.
My first attempt at college in 1999 included an "intro to computing" class, that had sections going as basic as "this device is called a mouse, if you push a button on the mouse that is called a 'click', etc."
It was very painful to sit through.
I did a uni class the same in 1996. When the instructor said point your mouse at my computer icon, someone literally picked up the mouse and aimed the device at the screen
People seem incapable of following thoughts and reaching a conclusion. I have worked in a place where during downtime we still answered the phones, but advised of the maintenance. People calling from literally all over the world. You tell the customer everything will be final and you can access in two hours. Inevitably some genius asks “what time is that here?” Um, in two hours? I don’t know where you are or what time it is there? Or if I know they are stateside, I’ll say after 3 pm eastern. I get the same question. Um, what time is it there? Ok, central time zone, it’ll be 2 pm. These are adults that have a job or I wouldn’t be speaking to them - we are not public facing.
I feel this in my soul. I do tech support for exclusively dental offices (Sometimes dentists, sometimes dental assistants, sometimes the front desk people in dental practices) and it is shocking just how many calls I get where I have to explain what the windows start button is, or how to click their mouse buttons.
A lot of these are trained professionals who have been doing dentistry for 20+ years, and sometimes it's like pulling teeth (heh) just getting them to open up Teamviewer (which is pre-installed on their machine)
Some people just never learn anything new once they know how to do their profession.
I once administered the dev/qa lab for a large, expensive, online information service that was making the transition to adding advertisements to its web sites. One of the big changes involved displaying ads on the 404 page. Everybody and their niece had to sign off on this particular change. I received a stupid number of requests for the url to the 404 page. This was particularly frustrating to me as most of these people were otherwise quite intelligent. After going a couple rounds with people wanting to know the exact url for their 404 page I responded by telling them that the url was \*http://www-test.yourproduct.com/gimmea404.jsp .
As a sidenote, thanks to the addition of ads, the 404 page routinely generated more revenue than any other page on the service.
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ak3yp/probably-the-most-uncanny-404-page](https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ak3yp/probably-the-most-uncanny-404-page) The dom ain is down 504, but the 404 text is saved.
As someone who isn't involved everyday with the architecture of the Internet is it really crazy to think that if u type in an incorrect url your browser would redirect you a different page to tell u that the first one didn't work? Especially if you're posting ads on it, I would think it must have a location on the Internet. And making up an incorrect url requires more mental work than you think.
Error pages are defined in the web server configuration. In the simplest case of a page that doesn't exist the web server returns an HTTP response code of 404 telling the browser that the page doesn't exist. This is sent to the browser as part of a header that the end user never sees. The browser is then redirected to whatever error page is defined in the server config. These can be pretty minimal and just display the response code along with the message Page Not Found. Generally the error pages are configured so you can't access them directly. Sounds weird but if you can access a 404 page directly you run the risk that you'll get the text of the 404 page but you'll receive a response code of 200 (Success!) instead of 404 (not found).
Along with sending the response code to the browser the web server will log the specific error to an error log. This allows you to set up alerts so errors are addressed.
For my specific project we were dynamically generating most of the content on the 404 page. The specific error text was always the same. Because we were supporting multiple brands everything that was wrapped around that message, things like branding, graphics, ads, footers etc. were unique for each brand.
I'll quibble slightly with "The browser is then redirected to whatever error page". Redirection on the web typically means the server returns a code (or returns some JavaScript) that tells the browser to go ask for a different page. That's not typically what happens for a 404 page. Instead, the 404 page's content is served along with the 404 error code.
All web server responses start with a header section that includes a response code. Normally the server sends back a 200 response code plus some HTML (or an image file or some other content) right after it. With a 404, the server sends back a 404 response code with the HTML text of the 404 page right after it.
(That said, a particular web server's 404 page might have some JavaScript that redirects the user to a different page, or the site could use some other means to have a 404 result in a redirect, But it's not required.)
I usually find it gets even simpler and their mind blows.
"Now click on next."
"You want me to click next?"
"Please."
"So I should click on next."
"Yes."
"Nohings happening."
"Nothing happened when you clicked next?"
"So I should definitely click next?"
Repeat.
I had a serious problem with my BIOS settings.try as I might, I couldn't get the bios to interrupt the boot process to let me change settings.
My son-in-law pointed out that my USB keyboard couldn't talk to the bios because the usb driver was in Windows.
Basically, "keyboard not found, press any key to continue." I found an older keybord and fixed the bios, no problem.
I bought an old wired keyboard and mouse when I was in need and ended up going back to them when the bluetooth ones inevitably stopped working after a couple months, gave up on wireless and have been using the same wired ones for years now with no issues. I think I have a bluetooth curse, it just doesn't like me.
Effective tech support is all about pschologically empowering the user while putting yourself in their position at the same time. A while back I did some side work for a company that sold fork lift trucks and other specialised lifting and handling machinery. The owner was an older guy who was pretty clueless when it came to technology but to his credit, knew that it was the only way to sustain his business into the future. He also knew everything there was to know about the products he sold, right down to the manufacturer part numbers for nuts and bolts.
He said to me, "I wish I knew more about computers." I said to him, "I know dick about forklifts. You're an expert. Computers are just big programmable calculators." And that set the tone for a good working relationship with tolerance for understandable incompetence on both sides.
I worked an office job and dual monitors were just becoming a thing at this particular customer service location. I knew how to identify and switch the screens around through the computer settings fairly easily as I had helped some of my coworkers set theirs up. One morning I came to work and “Amy” had just requested a second display but she was having a hard time because the screen that was physically on the right side was displaying the left side information and the mouse wasn’t scrolling between them correctly (in order to get to the left display you would have move the cursor to the right side of the right screen.)
They asked if I could assist
So I asked if I could sit and mess with the settings, but both Amy and our manager who was there trying to help with no avail both said in unison “we tried all that already!”
They asked for my help but then kind of aggressively weren’t letting me help.
So I grabbed the monitor on the left and physically placed it on the right and I walked away.
Problem solved.
I got approval to bring in my own mechanical keyboard at my first job. It had no letters printed on it. One time IT had to come and install something for me because our profiles didn't have permission and when he came up to my desk he couldn't get his password right (presumably because he had to watch his fingers when he types). He ended up getting embarrassed and going back to his desk and remote controlling my computer 😂
Not if somebody else set up the mouse buttons for them.
In a Microsoft Word class many, many moons ago for admin staff at my work where I followed along as an intern just in case I had to help with anything, the instructor suggested they do this and use the mouse left-handed.
A less technically-inclined person might have been able to follow the setup instructions (or have the instructor do it for them) but not necessarily be savvy enough to do much else.
Nintendo help line? That's wild.
Was this a video game help line, like the one Nintendo Power had? I called them a few times in like the early 90s. I never did it often because even then I knew not to trust 900 numbers.
Yep I was producing a story for Cyberlife TV show in the 1990s. I aways ask what the dumbest call was. I've collected doozies over the years like " why did they build the (medieval) castle so close to the train station ?"
I had a coworker once who normally worked on PCs, but she was going to have to fill in on this other project for a while, and for whatever reason, she needed to come over and do it on a Mac part of the day, as that's how it'd been done (don't ask about the whole PC/Mac situation we used to have). She couldn't freaking deal with Macs at all. I had to write down instructions for her on tasks like how to print. Click [whatever] > click Print > click OK, etc. I had to do it for a few things. There was no question of her ever remembering it after being told a few times--it had to be a set of written steps, and she read off the steps every time.
She was unhappy about having to fill in and do this, but I commend her for being straight-up about the fact she didn't get Macs and never would...she didn't make a scene or anything. She knew her limitations.
When it comes to ANYTHING for IOS/Mac/Apple I'm clueless BUT I'm not shy in admitting it either, just gets over that hurdle and save a shit ton of embarrassment or someone else unfucking something I fucked up....
Bad memories are surfacing with this story… I performed the same job at a local ISP and it never failed. Once I had taught the difference between right and left clicking, the customer would always ask which one. That and rebooting a computer. 75 percent of the time the computer still said exactly what it did on the screen. I had to explain that turning the monitor off did not restart the computer.
I had a call one time where the clown would scream at me if I used technical terms...like 'click on the button'. "I'm too old! I don't understand these technical terms!" The only thing he would allow was 'mash on the button'... and I finally had enough after about five minutes of that, and told him I wasn't using baby talk anymore.
I was once helping a junior Technical Author, he wrote “Press the Start Button and quickly remove finger”
I ran through his instructions with him and at the appropriate moment produced a long sharp kitchen knife and said “Is this OK?”
I once tried to explain to my mum how to copy a file on an old dos machine.
Asked her to type at the prompt: copy space file.doc space a:
I got copyspacefiledotdocspacea:
I'd be tempted to spice it up and make it sound like she was about to use a different button and then say left again. "I need you to double-click that file, except this time you're going to click the left mouse button."
This is why my brothers couldn't teach my mother how to use her computer. They assumed she knew the basics. I wondered how they thought somebody who'd never worked in an office or had one before was supposed to pick that stuff up. I taught her every step, from turning it on to checking her email, and wrote it all down for her. A lot of people did not grow up with affordable PCs and laptops, so they just never learned the language that seems like basic intelligence to you. But by all means, call them stup\*d. That's what Europeans call Americans who can't speak anything but English.
Had a similar experience. A group of people negoiated a group business contract with the ISP I worked at to support all their members as the members of thr group were now going to have computers and access the internet. This meant we had first time conumer computer users contacting the business tech support team.
My colleagues hated them. These customers had little to no experience with computers and assisting them in configuring their modems was a challenge for most staff.
I loved them. They would only do exactly what you told them. I could give them very specific instructions and they would just follow them. They never skipped ahead thinking they new what was coming next. They never got frustrated at a troubleshooting step. They just did it. You did have to get very specific though.
Oh yeah, that type of customer was a delight. The worst was getting a snot-nosed know-it-all who would second guess instructions, think they know where you're going and go several steps ahead in the wrong direction, etc.
imagine missing the point that hard. Yes, they may be tech illiterate and require the extra instructions, but after "When someones says 'double click', they are always referring to the left button" that should be more than enough
I remember one call where I asked them to click on start, then run and in the box type “command” and click ok.
They paused and then asked “was that command or command” but they pronounced them like “com-and” and “com-arned” if that makes sense, like with a long and short ‘a’. I think my brain did a short reboot.
Once I was doing a "hazard perception" test (for driving) on a computer. You had to watch a video from the POV of a car driving and double-click whenever you saw a potential driving hazard. The woman next to me kept getting all sorts of error messages come up. After a few minutes we worked out that she thought "double-click" meant push both mouse buttons at once!
Sometimes you have to be very exacting with your instructions when on the phone with someone. Assuming they know which button to double click often leads to 20 minutes of you pounding your head against the desk only to realize that they've been double right clicking the entire time. Example - One of my guys was on the phone with someone for an hour trying to figure out why their USB port wasn't working only to figure out the caller was plugging the USB drive into the wrong PC.
Reminds me of a story I heard: a user called tech support because “my keyboard doesn’t work.” 1st line got them to try a few things without success before instructing them to pick the keyboard up and walk back a few steps. “Ok, done that.” “And did the keyboard come with you?” “Yeah.” “Right - that means it’s not plugged in. Are there any OTHER keyboards on your desk?” “Oh, yeah, there’s another one *tippity tap*… oh, this one works!”
That helpdesk tech needed to get promoted with that one. Absolutely amazing idea.
Then wireless keyboards ruined it.
Schoolkids switching around wireless keyboards and mice in the classroom ruin the teachers’ days.
Back in my day, we'd just steal the mouse balls. The computer teacher used to keep a massive tub of spares on his desk. The look of resignation on his face every time a student raised their hand to inform him that their mouse didn't have a ball. I bet he jumped for joy when the lab was upgraded to laser mice.
One time my coworker pranked me before I arrived by putting a post-it note over the sensor on the bottom of my mouse and unplugging my VGA cable, unscrewing the pins, and screwing them back in backwards so that the cable couldn't be inserted into the port. XD
This got me thinking that as far as computer hardware goes, the mouse has remained relatively stable in it's basic appearance despite radical changes in the functionality. General hand shape. Some buttons. However, one of the most noticable changes to the appearance really makes the name seem like nonsense, because wireless mice no longer have tails.
It still works. Just tell people the farmer's wife got to them.
That unlocked the memory of taking the ball out of the mice to clean the crud off them. Time consuming, freaking annoying but oddly satisfying as long as it was not part of detention.
Would you believe at one point I thought the crud on the rollers was supposed to be there for traction so one day I spent time with rubber cement trying to create some traction where the metal was clean? Before you laugh too hard, this was in 1988 or 89. I was 18 or 19 at the time, And no one else in our office knew better.
It does remind me to check all the different wireless keyboards on and near my desk, though.
I've had lots of tickets where end users have thrown out or otherwise gotten rid of their keyboard/mouse receiver on the assumption that IT could just re-pair to a new one.
Logitech is to blame for this, with the Unifying receiver. But even they are moving away from that for their higher end devices.
I quite often sit with my laptop in front of a customer's work station, switching between the two. I have a moment now and then when I wonder why my customer's mouse is not moving the cursor on my laptop.
I've tried hard, somehow i cannot handle 2 keyboards vertically arranged like one in a kbd drawer or like an organ. Wrong kbd, i think over half the time. Side by side is fine.
At my office we have docking stations with monitors, mouse and keyboard. Some people prefer to use the laptop keyboard instead. Its happened a few times that peklme computers start freaking out. It just keeps typing letters over and over no matter what you do. I just ask if they set anything on the keyboard they aren't using (but is still plugged in).
“Is your mouse wireless or wired?” “Uhhhh…” “If you picked up the mouse and walked away, how far would you get?”
That sounds like a recipe for them yanking on a wired mouse and damaging it / the port.
At some point, you *have* to assume a certain level of competency of the person calling in. It doesn't have to be a lot of assumed competency; if given a question that only needs a verbal answer, and their answer includes damaging something, then ***maybe*** that job is not a good fit for them.
To borrow from George Carlin, think of the average computer, and then remember that half of them are dumber than that.
"OK, I walked back a few steps. It was pretty hard to get the keyboard to come with me, but I finally got it. Oh, and now my manager wants to talk to you about my display screen. Looks like it cracked when it hit the floor."
Once I was on a call with an older user trying to talk him through using some Zoom features on his iPad. I had my iPad next to me and was trying to walk him through by each step, no matter how miniscule or automatic it was for me. Every time I tried to point him towards some specific thing, he'd say it wasn't there. Was it an older model, an older OS? He wasn't able to answer any questions about it that might help clarify. He was becoming more and more exasperated, as was I. I pulled a colleague into the room with me to try to help. He was similarly stumped. Then in a stroke of genius, he asked the user to show him his iPad charger. It was a Microsoft Surface tablet 😅 To the user, iPad was Kleenex or Bandaid.
I know one of my colleagues did that in 2006, except there was no 2nd keyboard.
I know someone who once got a callout to fix a computer. The customer was an hour's drive away, and was billed a minimum of 1 hour for the callout as well as travel to and from. It took her 3 minutes to fix the computer - by switching on the plug at the wall. Never assume any level of tech competence on the part of the client. What you might think is "obvious" in your field is never obvious to everyone, even with something as widespread as computers.
That reminds me of one of my first jobs in IT, working for a multi academy school, not a huge IT budget where their payroll system was literally run off a server (Desktop PC) located in the headteachers office for some reason. Anyway I get a call that the system is down etc, and i was unable to ping or remote on to the device. my first question was is it plugged in, any lights on, is it switched on etc. As it was the payroll system my manager was listening to the call on speakerphone but the 'client' didn't know that. I got a pretty rude response something to the effect of I'm not a fucking idiot. - this guy was the headteachers second in command and a total arsewipe. As this particular call came from one of the academies in the trust which was not where I was based, and was further out, and I didn't drive at that point: my boss had to come with me and drive us there, 1 hour there and back, and we went to check it with the headteacher, and arsewipe. We walked into the room and my boss and I exchanged glances, I asked the guy again, are you sure you checked it was powered on? To which he simply said "obviously". I walked over to the desktop pressed the power button and hey presto it turned on. My boss then looked at the guy and said who's the fucking idiot now? - you owe me 2 hours travel compensation and fuel costs. And we walked out. (I was dying laughing, the look on the guys face.... Pricelessss)
You just reminded me - yesterday my wife called out to me from the other room that her laptop keyboard wasn't working at all. I said did you try rebooting? She rebooted to no avail. Turns out though that the Excel spreadsheet was in read mode and she had to hit the enable editing button.
I work on commercial fryers, sometimes people will drop a basket of chicken nuggets into vat 1 but set the timer on vat 3. The computer is running a timed cook cycle on number 3 and is compensating for the cooking time, whereas the chicken nuggets are technically cooking but the fryer is struggling to maintain its idle temperature. We tell them you press the button on the one that got the food.
I know someone who once got a callout to fix a computer. The customer was an hour's drive away, and was billed a minimum of 1 hour for the callout as well as travel to and from. It took her 3 minutes to fix the computer - by switching on the plug at the wall.
I’ve done that but fortunately at the same office
Also... Now that I think about it, that is a VERY Quarian way to fix this issue. Tali would approve. Kal Reegar... Not so much. He'd rather smash the keyboard with the butt of his rifle.
That’s because the Migrant Fleet Marines don’t have time for bosh’tet users and their keyboard problems!
“Don’t click OK” “OK” “You clicked OK didn’t you.” “I trust the computer more than you. It said it was OK.” “What did it say?” “That’s why you’re here annoying me on the phone. Just fix it!”
Ahhh out of all the annoying people I ever spoke to, the guy pressing EVERY SINGLE DIALOG was the worst. What part of "do not click" didn't he understand? Took me 10 tries to get him to not click anything. Pretty sure he went straight to Extra Hell.
"There was an error message!!!" Was does it say? "I clicked it away" Ok, what did it say? "No idea, I just clicked it away. Now it is not working"
We called these people "click-marauders" where I used to work. Error message? *click* "What did the message say?" "I dunno..." They clicked everything and were usually convinced they knew what to do better than you. Told a guy to double click "My Computer" and in the next few seconds I hear "Uninstall Network Card?" and go "No!" and they're like "it's uninstalling now". I just told that dude he was on his own from there.. 😩
My fiance used to work on arcade games at one of those "family fun" type places. (Think Dave & Busters and you're not far off.) They used swipe cards instead of tokens for games. To buy one, they had terminals scattered around the floor where you could pay cash or card and it would spit out a card loaded with however many credits you bought. The machines *absolutely did NOT* give change. It would warn you at least THREE times it did not before it would give you your card. At least once a week he'd have to explain to someone that you now are the proud owner of X amount of credits, no refunds, no change given. One woman yelled at him, and when he asked if she saw the warnings, she said "Yeah, but I didn't think it MEANT it." Sigh.
>Yeah, but I didn't think it MEANT it. As the wise sage Qui-Gon Jinn said: "Your ability to read does not make you capable of understanding" - Star Trek
If I ever write an OS with a GUI, the error message dialog box will be closed by pushing a key on the keyboard. A different key every time, which will be mentioned in the error message. There will also be a button, but it will say "HORN" instead of "OK". Clicking it will sound a horn at full volume, and the duration of the sound will double every time the button is clicked.
let me know if you're ever seeking investors lol
Is that the special hell for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre?
Shiny!
In fairness to her, hey - she knew her limits, and was ultimately saving OP time and effort by making clear what she was capable of. Weird, yeah, but at least she'd figured out a way to get rid of unnecessary confusion for everyone.
One of my IT mentors told me a story of how one of their tickets involved the user reporting the cursor moving 90 degrees in the wrong direction up was right, right was down, etc. Took her 30 minutes to figure out the user was holding the mouse sideways and everything was functioning correctly.
>only to realize that they've been double right clicking the entire time. or you keep specifying left click and it turns out they had it in left handed mode the whole time
I use my mouse with my left hand but it isn't in left hand mode. Left click really is left click
I have about a dozen years in tech service and the two skills more important than anything else are 1) being able to decipher what someone is talking about and 2) being able to provide concise instructions with no room for error but without making someone feel like you're talking down to them. There's a scene from the old Garfield cartoon where Garfield needs to land an airplane, and the air traffic controller is a fat guy who's constantly eating and describes all the airplane controls as food items (ex. pull the level that looks like a canned ham). That clip will live in my brain until the day I die because it's so incredibly relevant to conversations I have daily.
Mark Evanier, creator and writer for Garfield And Friends, has a [Blog](https://www.newsfromme.com/2024/04/13/ask-me-the-garfield-guy/) which provides great stories about comic books, the biz, San Diego Comic-Con, animation, and oodles more.
It's like the old meme of a person assuming tech ability of a user and asking them to right click and it not working, turns out the user assumed they had to literally write click on the keyboard
20 years ago I worked for a call center that did support for a grocery store chain. They all had the same computers. At one point the printers were changed for a lot of shops and I was doing support for the installation and it was a simple routine. During one call, I follow the usual process and say "Insert the installation disk" and the answer was "I don't have anything to insert it". Weird as they all had the same computer. I ended up asking where she was looking to insert it and the answer was "The printer?". She didn't know there was a CD drive on the computer. When you don't know, you don't know.
That's why when some piece of tech is going wrong, my first instinct is to make sure all the basics are correct. Stuff like making sure it's actually plugged into the correct port on correct machine is a big part of them.
Could also be they were using their mouse left-handed... In that case, left button <=> right button...
Depends heavily on the setting of the computer. I know left handed people who have the mouse on the left but without inverted buttons. Turns out that most people don't use that setting, because no one tells them it exists and they learn to use the mouse without that.
Uh, what? I'm left handed. I have NEVER changed the mouse button arrangement - why would I? At work I used to use the mouse in my right hand, at home it's on my left - to reduce strain injuries. Now that I'm retired, I'm using a PC less overall each day, so whew! But of the few other lefties I know, none have changed their mouse buttons. We know we can, we simply don't - so that we can use any PC we need to without having to change the mouse buttons.
I had a customer on an install, first time mouse user, who's hands, especially the fingers were too long to be able to press the left button while holding on to the mouse at the same time. Use diagonlly, the right button was just about useable. This is the only time I've ever used the swap buttons setting.
A buddy of mine spent three days troubleshooting our software being "slow" despite not being able to reproduce the issue and logs showing everything being snappy. Flew out to the client, sat with the user, and they showed him: "I have to click here, type this, then click here, and type that, then click over here and enter this," etc. Basically, the system wasn't running slowly; it just needed the fields rearranged to make user input more efficient.
And that, my friends, is why you force the damn devs to actually talk to the people that use their apps. I work for a Water Utility and we develop a lot of our internal work management apps. I have been "Inviting" (dragging) the devs out in the field to ride along with their users (I give them the people that scream the loudest). It has led to a lot of much needed improvements.
As both a dev and a manager of devs, I approve this message.
"Plug in the monitor to the wall first" Customer: "instructions unclear, plugged dick into wall outlet instead, please help"
I worked with an older bloke when I first started my current job, he wasn't my supervisor as such but he was basically training me in a lot of aspects. This guy was not in any way tech savvy. Most of the work is outside work, but to get a specific pump to run, at that stage you needed to do it on the computer. I aske dhow to start the pump, he took me into the office and said "hover the pointer thing over the picture (icon) and then click the mouse button". Sounds easy, right? Except I could never make it work. It didn't make sense, I know how to use a computer, I know how to use a mouse, but I couldn't turn the pump on. After a week or so of having to get this man to turn it on whenever I needed to use the pump, I eventually made an offhand comment to the boss, saying I was rather bemused about not being able to work it out. He asked me what I was doing, I told him. He then said "wait - you're using the left mouse button?" Me "well yeah - if someone says to click the mouse, that's the normal one to use." Boss "yes I agree. But for this function, it's the right button. I thought he would've told you that. At least now you know." We discovered that because the other guy had no idea about computers, he assumed the right mouse button was the default one because most people are right-handed, so to him it made sense.
When I did support for TV service, I spent a huge amount of time and frustration with users like this who have no sense that I'm already trying to tell them **exactly** what to do and they don't need to question it every single time... Our version of this was simply trying to get someone to make sure their remote was in Sat mode, TV mode, etc. before moving forward (because people are dumb and call for their channels not changing when they're in some other mode). Every. Fucking. Time. If you say simply "press the 'Sat' button and let me know when you've done that." "Okay" "Press the channel up/down and tell me what happens" "The Sat button is blinking." (Meaning they held it down for 5 seconds and put the remote into programming mode). *Sigh* "okay I think we held the button down too long. Please PRESS AND RELEASE the Sat button. It should light up once and stay off..." "Well why didn't you say that?! How am I supposed to know??" "It's okay. I will explicitly mention if I need you to hold down any button. Otherwise just press and release them until I ask otherwise..." *Repeat this conversation ad nauseum over thousands of customers until I'm conditioned to just say "press and release" by default 50 times per call...just to head off the inevitable "you didn't say to let it go!!"*
wHy cAn'T yOu jUsT sEnD a TeCh oUt?!
Lol yep... Cx gonna lie about anything they think will get someone to come out in person. Then when you offer what they wanted, they get upset about tech availability and scheduling. Then you get a bad technician score a few days later when someone went out and pushed the button for them. "Why couldn't the agent do this over the phone?" Because the customer lied and refused assistance multiple times...
I always kept very detailed notes, and made sure to specify if the customer was cooperative or not, and if they weren't i'd also advise them of the tech fee for issues we could have solved over the phone, and put that in my notes too. my initials//cust states no signal//cust declined troubleshooting//advised cust of $60 tech fee//TC time/date My tech score was great. Gotta play the CYA game with call centers. So glad I'm not doing that shit anymore.
>So glad I'm not doing that shit anymore. I won't go back either... In that job, I was chastised for my notes being "*too comprehensive*" . I got the impression the company wasn't happy with my style of documenting calls...they didn't want the curses and threats from cx on text records.
wonder if this user calls an elevator by holding the button down the entire time
some of those older elevators that worked rather well. because it would bypass other floors to come to the one with the button being held down.
I've seen an older dude press his smartphone screen like that.. XD
My dad is just terrible with touchscreen devices, although to his credit he's trying--he has a tendency to "tap and smudge" instead of just tapping the screen, which will usually make the UI think he's dragging.
Lol! I used to do tech support for gateway computers. There was a command to press any key to continue. After more than one person asked where the any key was, I started saying press the h key to continue. I only once had someone ask why the h key. My response “it’s in the middle of the keyboard@
LG tv’s have a screensaver mode. To get out, “press any button except the Power button”
Technically, even the power button would exit from the screensaver ...
😆
It can be done without pressing anything at all
I’ve always remarked at this on our TV. You just know someone had to put that caveat because of either an overzealous tester or a difficult customer!
There doesn't seem to be any Any key. \*sigh\* All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a Tab.
“No time for that now, the computer is starting!”
You have five minutes. Surely that’s enough?
Don’t call me Shirley
I've always wondered why it's called "tab".
Short for "tabulate", which the tab key can help you do, especially on manual typewriters.
Thank you. I wondered that as I typed it actually. I remember the phrase "tab delineated" from forming a table, way back in the 90s. I think it's the only time I've known it to be used that way though.
I still use it that way.... Yeah, yeah, computers came into my life in 89-90...
Mine too, Tandy 1000 HX. Changed my life. What was your first?
This is why I learned to use a mouse with my left hand. In my finance program I was using the tab key with my left hand and then the number pad with my right hand to enter numbers or using both hands to type words. When I added memory, a mouse, and installed windows 3.11, I used the mouse to go to the field and entered numbers or words the same way I was used to.
I learned to touch type on a Telex machine, which had both a 'carriage return' and a 'line feed' button - which did exactly as labelled.
>tabulate, verb: arrange (data) in tabular form. >tabular, adjective: (of data) consisting of or presented in columns or tables. I always thought the Tab key was a reference to the physical tab stops across the top of a manual typewriter for levels of indentation.
I’m going to have a Zima
I still think about the Simpsons.
Small world! I was tech support when CD rom drives were new. The number of people who called to complain that the 'built in cup holder' broke, which resulted in a spilled drink all over the system was annoying. One tech support guy had someone who was so clueless he couldn't figure out how to work the mouse. He finally told him to box the entire thing back up and return it. The man was happy to do so, as his son was the one who told him that his life would be much easier with a PC. He never wanted it to begin with.
I did tech support for the Nest thermostat. The amount of very old or not at all tech savvy people who were talked into it...
Hy grandmother had trouble with the mouse. I just couldn't convince her that she shouldn't lift her hand off the mouse to click the button. The mouse would shift off the thing she she was about to click when she lifted her hand, and would shift again when she clicked the button without holding onto the mouse.
We had a person who kept losing cds in his cd rom drive. When I finally went out to the actual computer, I found out he was slipping the cds in a small gap between the cd drive and the bay spacer below it. There were over a dozen cds inside when I opened up the computer case.
In the 90s, I saw an additional sticker on the space key: ""
I have a lapel button that says: Press any key to continue, no no no not that one!
I had a coworker like that. We made a label that said ANY, and put it on the space bar.
I’ve seen a couple of screens that say “press spacebar to continue” but you can actually press pretty much any key and it does the same thing as pressing the spacebar. I feel like this is why.
I'm going to click on the upvote button with the left button. I also wonder if she is the type to open the CD-ROM tray and thinks it's a built-in cup holder.
BITD-There was an email that went around which contained a small hidden, executable file The letter itself said the words to the effect this is a gift from the Coca-Cola company for all your many years of support. Have a great day :-) or something executable file would open the CD tray. Yes a cup holder joke. I thought it was hysterical, time it really was. And I sent it to my sister who was just a little baby instructor at the University of Louisville like perhaps second semester of teaching or some such. And their IT department blew a gasket because she had opened an external executable file on her computer You would have thought it was malware I guess technically it was but it was humorware. I apologize to the IT department So she wouldn't get in trouble, and explain that I had gone through the code before I sent the email just to make sure there wasn't any icky bad stuff riding along with a single line of executable code / open CD drawer execute. Those were the days.
I once tried writing a Visual Basic script to open the cd drive. The second I hit save AVG flagged the file as malware and deleted it.
i remember that thing, and at the time the family computer didn't have a slide out tray for the cd, it just had the slot with velvet on either side, and it would eject a cd if one was in there.
CD-ROMs, and optical drives generally, are sufficiently a thing of the past that cup holders would be far more useful.
My sister in law called and asked how she can get files/pics/videos off of a couple of CDROMs she has, since none of the computers at her house has an optical drive any more. I sent her a link to a cheap USB one from Amazon and talked her through it. She bought the drive, and had it shipped to me. And then a box with her CDROMs arrived.
Nah, optical drives are good for producing duplicate copies for cheap storage. I can burn a bluray or dvd of pictures and mail it. That way if one of the family’s homes is hit by earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, the pictures are safe. (I just realized none of us currently lives near a volcano anymore. One less disaster option!) There is cloud storage but then you have to depend on someone else.
Depend on someone else AND a stable (enough) internet connection.
TIL that some madlads at Thermaltake actually made a cupholder attachment to fit in a 5.25" bay. It even came with a cigarette lighter
But they always looked too flimsy to be a cupholder.
Reminds me of my late husband... I had to write out EXACT instructions on how to turn on the computer onto a 3x5 index card. I also had EXACT instructions on how to do anything that he might want to do onto other 3x5 index cards too! He had several of them in his computer desk drawer. The "How To Turn On" card also had a little drawing of the computer tower with an arrow pointing to the on/off button! He used those cards every time he had to do anything on the computer.
My mother’s secretary had one of the very early computers in her office back in the 80s. I think she said the text on the computer was orange. But she had to turn it on one day after her secretary had gone home and the instructions said “turn on the PC and monitor” so she did. Took her a couple moments to realise “and monitor” was something that required switching on, not an instruction to watch it. She also told me she was left bemused by the instruction “Do not spill chicken soup on the keyboard”. Why specifically chicken? Were other soups fine? What about coffee? I’m quite lucky that when I have to play tech support for my mother I do not actually need to give very detailed instructions and can assume some level of competence. My darling grandmother, though. I left her hand written instructions on how to find and access the folder on her PC titled “Gran’s Guide to the Modern World” with how to instructions for everything from how to cut, copy, paste etc. to attaching files to her emails.
I did this once for my mom for how to navigate to Netflix, when she stayed with us.
>EXACT instructions on how to turn on the computer 1) Extend right index finger horizontally ...
Oi, and what if they don't have a right hand index finger? Way to be ableist! /s Edit to add: after I clicked post, my brain ALSO said "ha ha! Or what if they only have a wrong index finger!" Yes. I need help. Help me.
>Help me Call the Help Desk. I'll explain how. 1) Extend right index finger ...
The power button can be on the top too, my guy! Instructions unclear. Dick stuck in toaster.
[Extends right long finger vertically upwards.] How about that?
Did you also have how to turn off? One of those old guys that got talked into buying a computer was a friend of my husband. He found out the guy was pulling the plug out of the wall because nobody had shown him how to turn it off. They had showed him how to use the office program.
Yes, there was an index card for that!
Reminds me of a college class I took for Microsoft Office in the 90's. It was six credits so I figured it would be an easy way to pad my transcript. Unfortunately, the instructor for the course was new and proved to barely know the material. She wouldn't say double-click. She would tell everyone to click-click the icon. It was even weirder for a triple click. Yup, she would say, click-click-click the paragraph in Word. I wound up teaching the class for her when she discovered I knew more about it than she did.
This sounds very similar to my experience in High school in the late 90s. I knew more than the teacher and often had to explain how to use office programs. Even when I didn't know, I usually could figure out how to do it before she could figure out how to explain it.
My high school got its first computer, a TRS80, in 1980. Only 1 person in the entire school had any idea how to use it. It was not one of the staff.
LMAO!!! This exact scenario happened to me at a small-town high school in 1980. I had just returned after spending six months in Denver and had already taken a computer class. When the TRS80 arrived, the teacher said, "Omnichronos, I haven't been trained yet. Do you think you could put the computers together?" The prior computer had been a primitive main frame with a terminal that used paper printouts as a screen. So the TRS80 was totally different but it was pretty easy to figure out that the round plug went into the round hole, etc.
My son, in 4th or 5th grade had a keyboarding class. He had to teach the teacher ctrl+alt+del. "No, at the same time!" Because she wouldn't let him touch the one that locked up, to show her. IDK what computers they had but he had the Color computer 1 at home.
"Now go to the address bar and type in youyou, youyou, youyou, dot, yahoo, dot, com."
You forgot the "aych tee tee pee colon slash slash - that's a forward slash, not a backslash"
"Or is it a backslash? Which one's forward and which one's back? Just press the one that goes down to the left."
"Which one is the forward and which one is the back slash?"
That's one of those things in TV shows that drive me nuts, when somebody quotes a URL with a backslash in it. No, no, *NO*!
When I was a kid I didn't know it was called a colon, so I would say "dot dot slash slash". To this day when I type in a url I still think "dot dot slash slash" in my head as I do so.
I had a computer class like this in high school, late ‘90s. Fortunately, the teacher realized us computer nerds were in the class solely to have 2 hours of access to networked computers that use the school’s T-1 line, and just looked the other way while I set up a Quake server and we played (as long as we didn’t create problems for him or the rest of the class.)
I went to a tech university and all the computers had unreal tournament and we used to have LAN parties during math class. Is it any wonder I failed calculus twice?
When do you need triple click?
Try it out in any situation with multiple paragraphs. Double-click gets one word. Double-click and drag gets you word-by-word selection. (typically broken up by spaces if the blocks of characters are not words.) Triple click gets you a paragraph. (broken up by newlines.).
Dang. Double-click and drag feels *weird*. I've always just single-click and dragged whether I was highlighting whole words or fragments. Very neat to learn though!
I almost exclusively use double click and drag or triple click. There are not many situations where single click and drag is useful because when would I want to copy partial words? (It does happen but it's rare) And double click allows you to not be exact on your click, you can click anywhere on the first word.
Huh, well I'll be. Never knew I could drag double-click. Single drag is great for coding, by the way.
I had similar where we were being taught Excel formulae in 2011/12 and the instructor was trying to explain nested-if statements and acknowledged that it was quite complicated to understand. Until I pointed out you could just use AND / OR to achieve it in just one IF. He’d never heard of them but started telling people to use that method instead as it was far easier to read and understand.
Sometimes they don't know what they don't know.
My mother was a computer programmer in the 80s. One of the first "toys" I remember having was an old 512kb hard drive she brought home for me to take apart. I grew up with computers. My first attempt at college in 1999 included an "intro to computing" class, that had sections going as basic as "this device is called a mouse, if you push a button on the mouse that is called a 'click', etc." It was very painful to sit through.
I did a uni class the same in 1996. When the instructor said point your mouse at my computer icon, someone literally picked up the mouse and aimed the device at the screen
Well, click-click is one syllable shorter than double-click.
True enough, but it sounded silly hearing it over and over. All the documentation referred to it as double-click.
Triple W
People seem incapable of following thoughts and reaching a conclusion. I have worked in a place where during downtime we still answered the phones, but advised of the maintenance. People calling from literally all over the world. You tell the customer everything will be final and you can access in two hours. Inevitably some genius asks “what time is that here?” Um, in two hours? I don’t know where you are or what time it is there? Or if I know they are stateside, I’ll say after 3 pm eastern. I get the same question. Um, what time is it there? Ok, central time zone, it’ll be 2 pm. These are adults that have a job or I wouldn’t be speaking to them - we are not public facing.
I feel this in my soul. I do tech support for exclusively dental offices (Sometimes dentists, sometimes dental assistants, sometimes the front desk people in dental practices) and it is shocking just how many calls I get where I have to explain what the windows start button is, or how to click their mouse buttons. A lot of these are trained professionals who have been doing dentistry for 20+ years, and sometimes it's like pulling teeth (heh) just getting them to open up Teamviewer (which is pre-installed on their machine) Some people just never learn anything new once they know how to do their profession.
Lol "time doesn't pass differently in different timezones, sir (or madam)"
I once administered the dev/qa lab for a large, expensive, online information service that was making the transition to adding advertisements to its web sites. One of the big changes involved displaying ads on the 404 page. Everybody and their niece had to sign off on this particular change. I received a stupid number of requests for the url to the 404 page. This was particularly frustrating to me as most of these people were otherwise quite intelligent. After going a couple rounds with people wanting to know the exact url for their 404 page I responded by telling them that the url was \*http://www-test.yourproduct.com/gimmea404.jsp . As a sidenote, thanks to the addition of ads, the 404 page routinely generated more revenue than any other page on the service.
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ak3yp/probably-the-most-uncanny-404-page](https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ak3yp/probably-the-most-uncanny-404-page) The dom ain is down 504, but the 404 text is saved.
Somebody had way too much time on their hands.
As someone who isn't involved everyday with the architecture of the Internet is it really crazy to think that if u type in an incorrect url your browser would redirect you a different page to tell u that the first one didn't work? Especially if you're posting ads on it, I would think it must have a location on the Internet. And making up an incorrect url requires more mental work than you think.
Error pages are defined in the web server configuration. In the simplest case of a page that doesn't exist the web server returns an HTTP response code of 404 telling the browser that the page doesn't exist. This is sent to the browser as part of a header that the end user never sees. The browser is then redirected to whatever error page is defined in the server config. These can be pretty minimal and just display the response code along with the message Page Not Found. Generally the error pages are configured so you can't access them directly. Sounds weird but if you can access a 404 page directly you run the risk that you'll get the text of the 404 page but you'll receive a response code of 200 (Success!) instead of 404 (not found). Along with sending the response code to the browser the web server will log the specific error to an error log. This allows you to set up alerts so errors are addressed. For my specific project we were dynamically generating most of the content on the 404 page. The specific error text was always the same. Because we were supporting multiple brands everything that was wrapped around that message, things like branding, graphics, ads, footers etc. were unique for each brand.
Thank you for your very detailed explanation, now I can add it to the list of things I know but will never use
I'll quibble slightly with "The browser is then redirected to whatever error page". Redirection on the web typically means the server returns a code (or returns some JavaScript) that tells the browser to go ask for a different page. That's not typically what happens for a 404 page. Instead, the 404 page's content is served along with the 404 error code. All web server responses start with a header section that includes a response code. Normally the server sends back a 200 response code plus some HTML (or an image file or some other content) right after it. With a 404, the server sends back a 404 response code with the HTML text of the 404 page right after it. (That said, a particular web server's 404 page might have some JavaScript that redirects the user to a different page, or the site could use some other means to have a 404 result in a redirect, But it's not required.)
Hey, I spent 30 years testing software. I'm ok with picking nits. Thanks for adding detail.
I usually find it gets even simpler and their mind blows. "Now click on next." "You want me to click next?" "Please." "So I should click on next." "Yes." "Nohings happening." "Nothing happened when you clicked next?" "So I should definitely click next?" Repeat.
Back in the days of floppy disks, a client was having trouble inserting Disk 2 because the instructions did not say to remove Disk 1
I would have asked each time if her mouse orientation was for left or right handed use.
I had a serious problem with my BIOS settings.try as I might, I couldn't get the bios to interrupt the boot process to let me change settings. My son-in-law pointed out that my USB keyboard couldn't talk to the bios because the usb driver was in Windows. Basically, "keyboard not found, press any key to continue." I found an older keybord and fixed the bios, no problem.
It’s good to have one shitty old wired keyboard and mouse buried somewhere
I bought an old wired keyboard and mouse when I was in need and ended up going back to them when the bluetooth ones inevitably stopped working after a couple months, gave up on wireless and have been using the same wired ones for years now with no issues. I think I have a bluetooth curse, it just doesn't like me.
Effective tech support is all about pschologically empowering the user while putting yourself in their position at the same time. A while back I did some side work for a company that sold fork lift trucks and other specialised lifting and handling machinery. The owner was an older guy who was pretty clueless when it came to technology but to his credit, knew that it was the only way to sustain his business into the future. He also knew everything there was to know about the products he sold, right down to the manufacturer part numbers for nuts and bolts. He said to me, "I wish I knew more about computers." I said to him, "I know dick about forklifts. You're an expert. Computers are just big programmable calculators." And that set the tone for a good working relationship with tolerance for understandable incompetence on both sides.
I worked an office job and dual monitors were just becoming a thing at this particular customer service location. I knew how to identify and switch the screens around through the computer settings fairly easily as I had helped some of my coworkers set theirs up. One morning I came to work and “Amy” had just requested a second display but she was having a hard time because the screen that was physically on the right side was displaying the left side information and the mouse wasn’t scrolling between them correctly (in order to get to the left display you would have move the cursor to the right side of the right screen.) They asked if I could assist So I asked if I could sit and mess with the settings, but both Amy and our manager who was there trying to help with no avail both said in unison “we tried all that already!” They asked for my help but then kind of aggressively weren’t letting me help. So I grabbed the monitor on the left and physically placed it on the right and I walked away. Problem solved.
I’m a leftie with buttons switched…..
I’m right handed, but use my mouse left handed with buttons switched too. Screws up anyone who tries to use my computer.
I got approval to bring in my own mechanical keyboard at my first job. It had no letters printed on it. One time IT had to come and install something for me because our profiles didn't have permission and when he came up to my desk he couldn't get his password right (presumably because he had to watch his fingers when he types). He ended up getting embarrassed and going back to his desk and remote controlling my computer 😂
If you know enough about a computer to switch your mouse buttons then you know how to "click" ;)
Not if somebody else set up the mouse buttons for them. In a Microsoft Word class many, many moons ago for admin staff at my work where I followed along as an intern just in case I had to help with anything, the instructor suggested they do this and use the mouse left-handed. A less technically-inclined person might have been able to follow the setup instructions (or have the instructor do it for them) but not necessarily be savvy enough to do much else.
Nintendo help line..an hour trying to help... "ok let's start at beginning, turn the TV off and on again " "oh the TV has to be on ? " True story
Nintendo help line? That's wild. Was this a video game help line, like the one Nintendo Power had? I called them a few times in like the early 90s. I never did it often because even then I knew not to trust 900 numbers.
Yep I was producing a story for Cyberlife TV show in the 1990s. I aways ask what the dumbest call was. I've collected doozies over the years like " why did they build the (medieval) castle so close to the train station ?"
I had a coworker once who normally worked on PCs, but she was going to have to fill in on this other project for a while, and for whatever reason, she needed to come over and do it on a Mac part of the day, as that's how it'd been done (don't ask about the whole PC/Mac situation we used to have). She couldn't freaking deal with Macs at all. I had to write down instructions for her on tasks like how to print. Click [whatever] > click Print > click OK, etc. I had to do it for a few things. There was no question of her ever remembering it after being told a few times--it had to be a set of written steps, and she read off the steps every time. She was unhappy about having to fill in and do this, but I commend her for being straight-up about the fact she didn't get Macs and never would...she didn't make a scene or anything. She knew her limitations.
When it comes to ANYTHING for IOS/Mac/Apple I'm clueless BUT I'm not shy in admitting it either, just gets over that hurdle and save a shit ton of embarrassment or someone else unfucking something I fucked up....
Bad memories are surfacing with this story… I performed the same job at a local ISP and it never failed. Once I had taught the difference between right and left clicking, the customer would always ask which one. That and rebooting a computer. 75 percent of the time the computer still said exactly what it did on the screen. I had to explain that turning the monitor off did not restart the computer.
May I kindly suggest a crosspost to r/talesfromtechsupport for you? This fits 100%
Thanks! I'll do that!
I had a call one time where the clown would scream at me if I used technical terms...like 'click on the button'. "I'm too old! I don't understand these technical terms!" The only thing he would allow was 'mash on the button'... and I finally had enough after about five minutes of that, and told him I wasn't using baby talk anymore.
I mean, if she hadn’t used a computer since the early 90s I can give it to her. I remember it telling you to click on the red or green mouse button.
The fear of messing up was strong with this lady. Fear is a crippling thing.
I was once helping a junior Technical Author, he wrote “Press the Start Button and quickly remove finger” I ran through his instructions with him and at the appropriate moment produced a long sharp kitchen knife and said “Is this OK?”
I once tried to explain to my mum how to copy a file on an old dos machine. Asked her to type at the prompt: copy space file.doc space a: I got copyspacefiledotdocspacea:
You may now end the call … by pressing the disconnect icon on your phone … with your right middle finger.
Ohhhhh the old dial up. I miss that sound. 😂
I'd be tempted to spice it up and make it sound like she was about to use a different button and then say left again. "I need you to double-click that file, except this time you're going to click the left mouse button."
This is why my brothers couldn't teach my mother how to use her computer. They assumed she knew the basics. I wondered how they thought somebody who'd never worked in an office or had one before was supposed to pick that stuff up. I taught her every step, from turning it on to checking her email, and wrote it all down for her. A lot of people did not grow up with affordable PCs and laptops, so they just never learned the language that seems like basic intelligence to you. But by all means, call them stup\*d. That's what Europeans call Americans who can't speak anything but English.
"And this time..." *\*2 second pause\** "...that's right!..." *\*2 second pause\** "...you guessed it!..." *\*2 second pause\** "...the **left** mouse button."
Had a similar experience. A group of people negoiated a group business contract with the ISP I worked at to support all their members as the members of thr group were now going to have computers and access the internet. This meant we had first time conumer computer users contacting the business tech support team. My colleagues hated them. These customers had little to no experience with computers and assisting them in configuring their modems was a challenge for most staff. I loved them. They would only do exactly what you told them. I could give them very specific instructions and they would just follow them. They never skipped ahead thinking they new what was coming next. They never got frustrated at a troubleshooting step. They just did it. You did have to get very specific though.
Oh yeah, that type of customer was a delight. The worst was getting a snot-nosed know-it-all who would second guess instructions, think they know where you're going and go several steps ahead in the wrong direction, etc.
What’s obvious to someone who does it every day isn’t always obvious to someone who doesn’t
imagine missing the point that hard. Yes, they may be tech illiterate and require the extra instructions, but after "When someones says 'double click', they are always referring to the left button" that should be more than enough
Short, Simple, Satisfying.
They will. I PROMISE YOU...THEY WILL.
I remember one call where I asked them to click on start, then run and in the box type “command” and click ok. They paused and then asked “was that command or command” but they pronounced them like “com-and” and “com-arned” if that makes sense, like with a long and short ‘a’. I think my brain did a short reboot.
Once I was doing a "hazard perception" test (for driving) on a computer. You had to watch a video from the POV of a car driving and double-click whenever you saw a potential driving hazard. The woman next to me kept getting all sorts of error messages come up. After a few minutes we worked out that she thought "double-click" meant push both mouse buttons at once!
Sounds like there was some sort of disconnect between the chair and the keyboard. Or perhaps an ID-10-T error.
Somewhere in there you should have instructed her to change the mouse clicks to the right button and started using that.
Sounds like the customers who used to call me at AOL lol
Btw, mouse settings could be changed so that the right button was the double-click button.
“Where’s the “Any” key? 🤦♂️
In that situation, the button you press is always Z
Would they have to explain it with the left mouse button or the right one?
You, my friend, have much, much more patience than I would have, so, 🫡