Helpdesk hell: Your reader comments

Earlier this week we wrote about some of the tales of helpdesk woe that plague the put-upon desktop support teams the length and breadth of the country (http://www.silicon.com/a55051 ).

We asked the question: "Are people really this stupid?" - and it seems you think they are. We've had a flood of reader comments. Here are some of the best of them.

Business card problems
By Andrew Taylor

One user was visited by a company rep who presented them with a business card CD ROM that contained a PowerPoint presentation of the company etc. The rep had told them to insert it into the PC when they returned to their desk.

The user happily did so but nothing happened. A call to the help desk followed and they checked the CD ROM over the network but access was denied, indicating that the CD was not in the drive. Confused conversations followed ending up with the line, "It appears to be stuck."

Hardware engineers were dispatched post haste (It was the accounts department after all).

The engineer could not find the business card in the CD ROM drive and asked the user where it was. The user pointed to the 3.5" floppy disk drive and inside was the business card CD ROM.

Press F1 for help
By Nicolei Zuraw

One IT Director I know visited a user who had complained to her Director that no one from IT was helping her, nor even acknowledging her requests. Upon investigation, it was found that every time she had a problem, she hit the 'F1' key for help. Ignoring the dialogue boxes that appeared on screen, she would then look around for an IT person to appear!

Worst case scenario
By Nick Castleton

I'm just waiting for the call.
'My printer stopped working and now there's a funny smell'
'What happened before this occurred?'
'Well the display came up with FEED JAM, so we did, and now...'

It'll happen, you just know it!

It's not just broken...
By Nigel Forward

A branch office reported they couldn't access anything on the network. The server had dropped off the map, so I asked someone to reset it. After 10 minutes trying to explain what it looked like, they fetched the person who normally changed the backup tape. "Oh yes, that's where it normally is..."

While no one was looking someone had walked off with the server (well, it must have been two people given the size and weight of it!). The call was passed from the Helpdesk to the local Police.

And who are we to doubt our readers... but when this one reached us at Silicon Towers we treated it with more than pinch of salt...

Delete, delete, delete...
By Richard Hurst

One lady phoned to complain that when she was sending a small doc to print, it was coming out with words on it that shouldn't be there. After some investigation at her machine it turns out that instead of using the delete key to rid of the words not wanted, she had used Tip-Ex on the screen! And yes... She was a manager.

Whatever you say Richard.