Our local cable company is Comcast. I was having high-speed Internet installed at my apartment, and a Comcast guy showed up. He started spouting off technical jargon about "bouncing signals" and stuff that I knew was complete nonsense, all so he could buy time to have a smoke and talk on his phone.
I was starting to get very frustrated that he'd been at my house for a couple of hours and wasn't finished with the install. I'd specifically requested that he not install any software on my computer, because I knew it was not necessary for using the Internet. My roommate, however, had not made the same request.
After some time, my roommate had to leave, and I was left to supervise the Comcast guy. I went into my roommate's bedroom to find him scratching his head as he fiddled with her Mac. He was kinda sweaty and really mad and looked up at me and asked, "What kind of computer is this??"
"It's a Mac," I said.
"What kind of Windows are you runnin' on this thing??"
I tried telling him that it did not run Windows, and he refused to believe me. He got so frustrated that he actually ended up cussing at me and comparing me to his ex wife.
He got fired.
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My boyfriend and I were sitting in my dorm room, when there was a power surge, causing my computer to reboot. Unfortunately, it never got very far and popped up an error message about a missing file. Panicking, I reboot again, and the same thing happened. Foolishly, I decided to call my computer's tech support line, and after struggling with their automated system, I finally got through to someone.
I suppose this doubles as a stupid user story too, but you'd think a tech support person would have checked for that early on, instead all the other dumb things he had me do.
I was starting to get very frustrated that he'd been at my house for a couple of hours and wasn't finished with the install. I'd specifically requested that he not install any software on my computer, because I knew it was not necessary for using the Internet. My roommate, however, had not made the same request.
After some time, my roommate had to leave, and I was left to supervise the Comcast guy. I went into my roommate's bedroom to find him scratching his head as he fiddled with her Mac. He was kinda sweaty and really mad and looked up at me and asked, "What kind of computer is this??"
"It's a Mac," I said.
"What kind of Windows are you runnin' on this thing??"
I tried telling him that it did not run Windows, and he refused to believe me. He got so frustrated that he actually ended up cussing at me and comparing me to his ex wife.
He got fired.
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My boyfriend and I were sitting in my dorm room, when there was a power surge, causing my computer to reboot. Unfortunately, it never got very far and popped up an error message about a missing file. Panicking, I reboot again, and the same thing happened. Foolishly, I decided to call my computer's tech support line, and after struggling with their automated system, I finally got through to someone.
- Tech Support: "Thank you for calling tech support. How may I help you?"
- Me: "Yeah, um, I just had a power surge in my dorm room, and my computer won't reboot. It's giving me the error message: [error message]"
- Tech Support: "Have you tried rebooting?"
- Me: "Yeah. Want me to try again?"
- Tech Support: "Yes, go ahead. Tell me when Windows comes up."
- Me: "Ok...it's giving me the same error message. It's not even getting into Windows."
- Tech Support: "Ok, let's try rebooting again, but this time, hold the button down for longer."
- Me: "Er...how much longer?"
- Tech Support: "About five seconds."
- Me: "All right. Holding it down now...ok, it's rebooting."
- Tech Support: "Good. Tell me when Windows comes up."
- Me: "Same error."
- Tech Support: "Ok. Let's try a hard reboot. Turn your computer all the way off, then unplug the power cable."
- Me: (??) "All right, it's out."
- Tech Support: "Ok, now hold down your power button and plug it back in. But don't let go of the power button yet."
- Me: "Er. Ok. Tell me when to let go."
- Tech Support: "Ok, let go. Tell me when Windows comes up."
- Me: "Same error message. Windows isn't coming up."
- Tech Support: "Ok, let's try looking at your BIOS."
- Me: "All right."
- Tech Support: "Reboot your computer, and when it's coming up, hit F1 as many times as you can."
- Me: "Can't I just hit it once?"
- Tech Support: "No, your computer should start beeping. I want to make sure it beeps."
- Me: "All right, it beeped. BIOS came up a while ago."
- Tech Support: "Ok, let's walk through some things...."
- Tech Support: "Ok, let's try bios one more time."
- Me: "All right."
- Tech Support: "Now, when it's rebooting, I want you to hit the F1 key as many times as you can. It has to beep for this to work."
- Me: "I really don't think my computer 'beeping' has anything to do with the problem."
- Tech Support: "I think I know a little more about computers than you do, ma'am."
- Me: "All right, fine, I'm hitting it. My computer is beeping."
- Tech Support: "I don't believe you."
- Me: "...Excuse me?"
- Tech Support: "I think you're lying. I need you to hit it as many times as you can. This is very important."
I suppose this doubles as a stupid user story too, but you'd think a tech support person would have checked for that early on, instead all the other dumb things he had me do.
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