"You know, like Kane in Kung Fu..."

I just took a call from a woman who just had her email client upgraded to Notes 6.5

She says to me, "I'm not really sure if you can help me with this, but I thought I'd try anyway." She goes on to ask me to go into Lotus Notes and try to select letterhead, specifically the one labelled "Pony Express"

So I opened it up like she asked me, and then she says "Now is it just me, or does that look like an Oriental gentleman to you?"

At this point, I had to just start laughing. So... how do you like my new 'Oriental gentleman' letterhead?

It's sad really... just sad...

I just took a call from a gentleman who'd lost his vertical scroll bar in his email client.

I remoted to his computer to find that he only had 4 email in his inbox. Where the hell did he think he needed to scroll to?!?

Still 'tarded

Caller: My laptop isn't turning on. It flickers and just turns right back off again.
Me: Okay, do you have power connected?
Caller: Well, that's the problem. I think it's my power cord.
Me: Okay, what's wrong?
Caller: Well, it got cut, so I tried to repair it, but I don't think it worked.
Me: *slaps forehead against desk*

Damned English humor...

I was just on the phone with a gentleman with an British accent. I was walking him through a procedure which required him to pick out his own name from a list of others. While doing so, he quietly marvelled at the number of people who shared his last name, "only they don't spell it as posh as mine."

I don't know why, but that elicited a laugh from me

Sometimes people scare me...

It's frightening... I just told the gentleman on the phone to type in "an opening parenthesis, that's a shift and the number nine".

His reply? "This is going to be tricky...

...

...

...

...got it!"

Was it really that hard?

Learn to talk people!

The biggest obstacle to overcome in remote technical support is communication. Trying to convey message and meaning from one point to another is the bottleneck that inhibits all assistance, no matter how qualified the representative. If you're talking to someone who can't express their issues in understandable terms, then you're up the creek.

It's the internets!

It always surprises me when I take a call from someone who thinks that just because they can't reach one particular webpage, that the whole internet is offline. Geez, haven't they listed to the president? It's the internets! Plural! :-p

'Tard of the Day!

"I'm trying to send an email to www.apexlightingsolutions.com but it won't send"

That old excuse?

Talk about your uncomfortable moments. A guy just blamed forgetting his password on the fact that his wife just died. Oof.