Why did I agree to do this?
A non-profit organization contacted me to update and redesign their web site. The VP explained what he wanted done and he told me how much they could afford. Since they were a non-profit and I was feeling fluffy that day I said "Yes. That would be fine.". I looked at the site which was a true product of haste. I started by updating their contact list with a hand written list from a meeting that not everyone attended. Some people listed on the site were no longer involved but I didn't know which ones. This is still ongoing; the last email arrived this morning. The following is taken from our emails:

Me:
"I have been updating the site. So far I have made some improvements to the contacts....
There are also a few things on the list from the meeting that I cannot read: names, email addresses....
I would also like to know which names are no longer involved and can be deleted."

(The VP responds by telling me to email everyone for their correct info. I roll my eyes and give it a shot. Out of 55 emails, 10 get bounced back to me. I continue with redesigning the site. One week goes by without me hearing from him then I get this email.)

VP (in the format as sent, all in one line):
"Steve,at this time would you send a e-mail out about the fee for the league.If you contact jJack Spencer from peq. he can tell you the details. thanks j miller I also will contact Jack so he knows that this must be done."

(At this point I am completely baffled about what he is talking about.)

Me:
"I am somewhat confused by your email.
When we first spoke I agreed to redesign and update the league web site. It appears that you are under the impression that I will be doing administrative duties for the league. I have no problem with putting items on the web site. Sending correspondence to all the league members is not part of what I thought my duties would be.
We should really sit down and discuss what are my actual duties. I have a completely open calendar until Jan. 5. Please call me so that you, Jack and I can work out a time to meet."

VP:"Steve i will call you after i speak to jack to find out the details."

Did he read my email or is he still talking about the details for the "fee for the league?" I am not looking forward to that call.
(StinkyCheeseMan, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 16:12, Reply)

Watermeloning idiot users...
I do a fair bit of system building/upgrading/repair to stave off boredom. One of the thing that really pisses me off is when I get asked for a quote by someone who then decides to buy the cheapest e-machine / time / tiny piece of shit, and *expects me to support the bloody thing*.

One such case was Lee. He got a system from the retailer that rhymes with Vomit. It's a packard bell shitpile. Anyway after a year he decides he wants to obtain a CD-Writer. At the time IDE writers were retailing for about £70.

I shopped around and got one for £65 at a local computer fair. I then went to fit it. For some reason (probably related to the size of the drives) I decided not long after I opened the machine that the original rom needed to fit in the bottom bay and the burner above it.

Unscrewing the original rom, I then started to slide it out of the bay. Then I saw the front of the device. You've guessed it, a burner was supplied on this machine.

Lee was adamant that it was not a burner. Insisted that his mate, who "knows about computers" (a phrase I have come to dread) had told him it was not a burner. Took a copy of his 'my documents' folder to make him accept the fact.

He's since gone on from strength to strength. He's ditched a perfectly good 98se twice, once for ME and once for Win2k. No problem there, but he doesn't get backup discs and he doesn't install antivirus software. His habits of installing pikey dialler software to view pr0n mean that his self-installed OSes last no more than a week or two.

He's asked for a new mouse as his existing one is worn out. You've guessed it, the rollers were crammed with dead skin cells and probably dried spunk. He's asked me how you get a windows 98 install on a single floppy.

What's really aggravating is that Vomit and Packard Bell made money out of this irritating cretinous fuckbadger and I keep getting the fallout.

Still, I have had the old axiom 'never assume anything' reinforced greatly. Never assume your client would know if they had already bought a CD burner.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 16:09, Reply)

Odd phone call
Here's one I had a month or two ago. I still don't know what the point was.

Customer: "I'm just restarting my computer."
Me: "Okay."
Customer: "It seems ok so far."
Me: "Right."
Customer: "I'm back in Windows."
Me: "Fine."
Customer: "Shall I call you back if there's any problems?"
Me: "That would be lovely."
Customer: "Bye."

The man is a tit.
(TheArsemonger, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 15:16, Reply)

.
apparently, according to a customer i had at jessops, in British Columbia they have the World Wide Web instead of the internet. Its much bigger apparently

(i fear he just saw a bigger monitor), cranberry

he also claimed that APS is better quality than 35mm ( noone else may care but i do, its my pet hate)

also lots of customers were convinced that APS was in fact digital (grrrrr...)

But i did enjoy watching a customer requeue after picking up his photos because he thought a girl couldn't possibly know anything about digital cameras. What is great is that he waited for half an hour to see my boss who refuses to learn anything about digital (he's too important)
( Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 14:53, Reply)

Whilst working at a travel agents...
...selling round-the-world tickets to a couple of (rich) gap year students:

Customer A: "So we'll be in Sydney for new year then?"
Me: "Yes"
Customer A: "Is it their summer then?"
Me: "Yes"
Customer B: "So when do Australians celebrate Christmas?"
Me: "July"
Customer B: "Really?"
Me: "No"
(Top chumps, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 14:51, Reply)

Fun, brought to you by the DVLA
I work in a certain car parts/bike shop...Sod it, I work in Halfords. We get so many stupid customers, I'll try to limit myself to a few stories.

As many of you may know, the DVLA changed the law on numberplates at the beginning of the year, there are certain things you have to bring with you, a conversation with a customer normally goes:

Them: I'd like a number plate, please
Me: Do you have all the things you need to bring?
Them: Like what?
Me: Well, you need a bank statement/utility bill and driving licence to prove who you are and the V5 to prove the car is yours
Them: WHAT? THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS! I HAVE THE CAR WITH ME!
Me: It's the law, if I do anything else then I get fined £2000. Besides, you could easily have stolen the car.
Them: Well, I've got the V5 and my driving licence, what about my blockbuster card as proof of address?
Me: No, it MUST be a bank statement/utility bill
Them: What about my -
Me: No

My favourite number plate customer, though, was a particularly picky lady. Her registration was **** UPJ. She'd read up and made sure she brought everything, we put it through the computer, she paid and we started making the number plate. When we were done, we showed it to her...
Her: God, no. I can't have that!
Us: Why, the letters are right, there is nothing at all wrong with the plate.
Her: Yes there is, look, it looks like it's saying something rude!
Us: Where?
Her: it looks like it's saying UP J, I can't have that, make it again, but move the J in a bit.
Us: We can't do that, it's against the law to mispace letters on the plate. Besides, what exactly is 'J'?
Her: I don't know, but it's very rude. *points to her illegal plate on the car* that doesn't say it
Us: That's because it's an illegally made plate, now are you going to take this one?
Her: No, goodbye

Sorry to be really long, but I have one more short one. A customer came in for some jump leads to start his 3 litre diesel car. I pointed him to the heavy duty leads, because the normal leads would not take the load needed to power such a large diesel engine. He had a huge go at me, claiming "You're just paying for a fancy box there, aren't you?" and bought the cheapest ones. The next day I was working again and he came in, looking furious. He slammed the cables onto the desk and proclaimed "These shoddy cables melted when I tried to start my car, I demand my money back"
(SpookTheHamster, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 14:25, Reply)

I used to work at a local college
I have removed all manner of material from floppy drives. Paper clips, rubbers, student cards and once a credit card from a confused lady who was trying to buy on-line.

My favourite isn't one of mine, but someone who used to work at Doncaster Council.

Client - I've spilt coffee in my bosses keyboard.
IT - Was sugar in it?
Client - no
IT - OK swill some cold water in it, this will remove the coffee - then hang it to dry for the day.
Client - OK I have a sink in the office.

After this, a very irrate manager rang up

"Which nobhead told my secretary to put my laptop in the sink then hang it to dry?"
(baboon, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:54, Reply)

our managing director....
....who I guess is one of my clients, as I provide him with my IT skills.....anyway, he has just enough grasp of some technical terms to make him feel as though he knows everything about what I do.

On being told the Exchange (email) server had crashed horribly and would be down for the rest of the day until we fixed it :
"Can't you just copy the hard drive onto another computer?"

On being informed that it would cost £12000 to cable a new office :
"Can't we just take the existing cabling with us?"

I love my job.
(Osiris, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:47, Reply)

"Yes madam, this is DIRECTORY ENQUIRIES"
I used to work as a BT 192 operator, possibly the must soul destroying job you can imagine. Approx 200 calls per hour, 8 hours a day for just over a fiver an hour (BT used to employ the majority of their call centre via an agency as it saved them on employment costs ... that is until they realised they could save shed loads more money by fucking off their UK call centre staff and opening call centres in India ... GENIUS)...

Anyway, the only thing that kept you going was the occasional bizarre call (that and taking the piss out of thick callers ... one of my favourite ways to amuse myself was to give the number of the manchester city FC switchboard to callers asking for manchester united)

One day I received a call and the following conversation ensued:

CALLER: Hello is that directory enquires?
ME: Yes madam
CALLER: I wonder if you can help me, I'm baking a cake and need to know how many grams there are in 6 ounces

Need I say more? In fact, the job gave me quite a frightening insight into the inherrant and amazing stupidity of humanity....
(No6, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:42, Reply)

Other stupid people
I was discussing user requirements for an online form with a programmer from another team in our IT dept. I was laughing about the fact that our marketing team want to reject forms that are submitted with fake names (i.e. Don Johnson with an address in Miami or Dot Cotton, Albert Square). Thinking I was sharing a wry observation with her I expected her to laugh, but she looked confused: 'Can we not do that then?'...far be it from me to explain to her that we would need a database of every fictional character ever created.


I should say that they also wanted us to reject forms with names of famous people - because they must be joke ones, right?
(Kazza , loathing myself so you don't have to, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:41, Reply)

Maybe a tad hypocritical.......
I work for a company that provides certain b2b services, and one of our clients is a large (one of the biggest) arms manufacturer...

...as part of our excellent service and in the wake of 9/11 we offered all of ours clients an additional service whereby members of our staff would work out of normal working hours in the event of a major terrorist attack or major military conflict (such as the invasion of Afghanistan / Iraq / A.N Other Oil Rich Country). To cover the expense of staffing and other overheads we said we would be charging our clients for the service (the price was negligibly different from what it was going to cost us .... ie we weren't offering the service primarily for profit)...

...anyway, all of our major clients welcomed the service with open arms ... apart from the aforementioned arms manufacturer (one of the BIGGEST ARMS MANUFACTURERS IN THE WORLD don't forget) who told us ... and my jaw dropped when I heard this ... that they thought it was imoral that we were trying to profit from a conflict situation !!!
(No6, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:27, Reply)

oh dear oh dear oh dear....
Did my work experience at the local theatre. Some of it was moderately interesting, but there were large chunks of very dull things, like answering the phones. Other than the apparent inability of anyone to LISTEN to the automated system (press one to go to the box office... that's 'one'... 1!!! No, I can't sell you any tickets. No, I can't tell you ticket prices. Just putting you through, madam...), there were dozens of identical phone calls that I was left to deal with... There'd been some bug with their new billing system, and lots of people had been charged twice for their tickets. However, this was refunded directly into their account 2 days later. Cue lots of irate people ringing up going 'You've charged me twice! It says so on my credit card statement! This is outrageous!' etc etc etc... and me going 'Erm, yes, but if you just look a little bit further down your statement you'll see where we've refunded you...' Most people were nice when they realised, but some decided to lay into me about the cheek of it all. I comforted myself with the fact I only had another week or so to put up with it, and also with one sweet old lady who brightened up the whole experience: 'Hello? Yes, you've given me some money! Why are you giving me money? I don't like to complain, but I do worry that you're being rather wasteful, dear...' Bless her, I had to explain the whole billing problem to her in reverse.

Also memorable was holiday work as a secretary in a tiny tiny company... The same woman kept ringing back, about six times in the course of one morning. EVERY time, she would ask to speak to who she had been speaking to before. EVERY time, I would explain that I was the only person who would be answering the phones. EVERY time, she was mistrustful of me, and seemed to truly believe I was lying. Thing is, all she ever wanted was transferring to somebody else. Why would it even matter if she got some other initial phone monkey!?
( kikilookeylikey, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:17, Reply)

Trainees... sorry if this is long but this should be recorded...
This is ALL true. *shudder*

In a previous job I managed a store selling materials for loft conversions. There was only one staffer per store but occasionally I was sent a trainee, so they were, in a sense, customers of mine. One in particular was monumentally stupid... here is a *very* short list of his worst foibles...

In the first week, he ran out of fuel 3 times on the way to work. His petrol guage was broken and instead of keeping the tank topped up (or fixing it), he tried to calculate his fuel consumption for each journey and bought accordingly. He was bad at maths. Monkey.

He could not work out how to put staples into a stapler, nor figure out the safety catch on a hole punch. He honestly thought that credit card machines worked by braille, reading the card number, not the magnetic strip and almost broke a customer's Visa card by trying to force it.

He went to another branch to collect a long weight (wait) and still hadn't figured it out when they sent him back THREE hours later.

We had display staircases and loft ladders that needed varnishing. He did a staircase starting on the bottom step and worked his way up! At this point I had given up on him and just let him do it. Later that day I said he could go early if he went to the local DIY superstore for some stripey paint *it had to go from top right to bottom left* to decorate our store room. He appologised the next day and said he had tried 3 other stores but none could help. It took me 10 minutes to then explain why you couldn't get stripey paint.

I know this is long but I'm nearly done.....

Finally I got shot of him and sent him to another store. (The background here is that I banked each day's takings at the Girobank in the local Post Office). The other manager needed a wood sample sending to a customer and gave the addressed package plus stamp money to our friend. He promptly walked past the GPO in Richmond and into the bank, queued up and asked the teller how much his parcel would cost to send. Bank clerk looked for hidden cameras and said that he would have to go next door (where the Post Office was). Monkey boy instead queued at the next window in the bank, got the same answer and then had a barney saying they were taking the piss. He then returned in a strop to the store, past the post office and when asked why replied "they said it was a bank". Stupid cranberry thought if you could bank in a post office the reverse was true.

The worst thing? He had a 2.i degree. From the University of North London (Tottenham). I fear for the future.

Thanks for your patience. I feel better now *sigh*
(Forecast Monkey, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:06, Reply)

I once worked at a paging service.
People would call to leave messages which I would type and send on...
...around 600 times a day.
People redirected their mobiles to this service (why did they have both a pager and a mobile phone?)
More often than not:

- Thank you for calling [company], can I take your message for John Smith?
- Hello John?
- No, this is Mr Smith's paging service. I can take a message and pass it on.
- Is John there?
- No, sir. This is...
- Where is he?
- I have no idea, I do not work with Mr Smith. This is...
- What are you doing with his phone, then?
- I don't have his phone, but I can leave him a message.
- Oh, this is a message service? I see... Tell him I rang so. *click*

My headset, phone and keyboard all had teethmarks.
( helmetcream, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 12:04, Reply)

Eledrly people are lovely
but often unintentionally funny.

I work as a health care assistant in a hospital. Quite often the elderly patients have dementia and think they should be getting up for their breakfast at ten at night, or tell me there's plenty of food in the cupboard if I'm hungry, when I'm telling them I've just brought their dinner.

One of the most memorable patients was a lady who thoughtfully warned a nurse and I, "You folks don't want to hang around me, I've got terrible wind".
(DoctorJ last upset some twat who doesn't like swearing on, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 11:57, Reply)

ready meal moron, runny poo woman
I once worked in a frozen food supermarket and had to help a customer who was looking for frozen LASANGE.

I took him to the ready meals section and pointed out the Lasagne.
"No no no," he said "That's Lasagne, I want Lasange" I tried to point out that his wife had made a spelling mistake on his shopping list but he was having none of it, so I told him the Lasange would be in next week. He never returned

All manner of bottom-feeders shopped there including the woman who suffered a bout of explosive diahorrea in the middle of the veg aisle and continued shopping with fresh cack running down her legs.
(bez_lightyear, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 11:51, Reply)

A well known . . .
. . . telecommunications (i.e. phone) company did not have their own printing department, so the company I then worked for used to receive their data, format it for them, and print and mail their billing statements.

The statements used to contain a Bank Giro Credit Slip for people (who were so inclined) to pay their bills in such a way. It was a legal requirement for the phone number of the company who printed the Giro Slip to be printed on the slip itself, so if a complaint was made to Girobank about a slip, they were able to contact the company who printed them.

As I was the developer who wrote the program that generated the statement and slip, my work phone number was the one printed on the slip. It was nothing to worry about as it was in a 6pt font, and printed vertically and completely unobtrusively at the very bottom of the slip.

Obviously the customers of the phone company - should they find anomalies with their bills or accounts - would never ring this unobtrusive little number, instead using the number printed in bold, 12pt, at the top of the bill, along with helpful hints such as "For any enquiry about this statement, please ring . . ." ?

Right?

Er, no.

A typical complaint would run as follows:

Me : Hello, [Bloggs] Print & Mail?
Bozo : Hello, I have a problem with my bill.
Me : Ah, are you a customer of [phone company] ?
Bozo : Yes, I rang the number on the bill.
Me : The one at the bottom?
Bozo : Yes.
Me : Yes - well, you need to ring the helpdesk number printed at the top of the bill.
Bozo : I'm not ringing someone else. Why can't you help?
Me : We're the company who just print the bills, and are not part of [phone company]
Bozo : Yes - it's you I need to speak to then, it's the bill I have a problem with.
Me : What seems to be the problem?
Bozo : You've charged me for some calls to a number I don't recognise. I want a refund.
Me : You need to phone the helpdesk. We're not part of [phone company], we just print the bills.
Bozo : [sigh] can you put me through to the helpdesk?
Me : No, we're a completely separate company. I can't connect you.
Bozo : Why can't you just get me a refund?
Me : I don't work for [phone company]. I work for [Bloggs}. We just print their bills.
Bozo : IT'S THE BILL I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH!
{and so on in an infinite loop]

It soon became clear that [1] people could not understand that the phone bills were not printed by [phone company] but by a completely separate company and [2] people thought their bills are individually prepared by employees who look carefully at their accounts and then lovingly type out their bills personally, instead of being generated by computer systems and printed in a quarter of a second.

Eventually, after a couple of months I gave up explaining, and simply dealt with every complaint (whilst making suitable typing noises on my keyboard). 0% success but 100% satisfaction - no one ever called me back.

Also once a woman phoned me at work and asked to cancel her doctor's appointment for Tuesday, which I duly did. Or rather didn't.
(SneakyPete, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 10:50, Reply)

Dodgy Wiring.
I used to work for Maplin Electronics, back in the nineties before it became all Tandy-like. For those of you who don't know Maplin (including our Forren readers), it's a bit like Radio Shack - selling electronic parts, electrical items, tools and gadgets.

I have seen some of the most stupid, reckless and downright dangerous examples of wiring you can possibly imagine. The expression "the customer is always right", if we had stuck to it, would have resulted in deaths.

Some of the stupidity is difficult to explain unless you know anything about electronics/electrics, so I won't go into too much detail, but there was one example that warrants a mention:

We sold a vast range of kits, for people with soldering irons to make anything from amplifiers to oscilloscopes.

One of the most complex kits was an Analogue Synthesiser keyboard. It had a staggering component count, consisting of a dozen tightly packed circuit boards which needed assembly - including a "diode board" for decoding the 49-key piano keyboard switches which had a count of about 350 components on it's own. Needless to say this kit was intended for expert kitbuilders only, and advertised as such with words like "advanced" and "expert constructors only".

We offered a "get you working" service for kits, where our HQ techies would fault-find and reconstruct where things had been built wrong, but this was quite expensive. We had one of these keyboard kits returned for this service, as some of it wasn't working.

The customer had constructed the synth meticulously, but only certain sections of the complicated circuitry worked.

Giving it the once over, before sending it away to HQ, he had SUPERGLUED every component in place, rather than soldering. It had taken him WEEKS. He eventually paid three times the price of the kit for one of our techies to solder all of the components in properly (in a well ventilated area, of course).
( Doctor When May your wife shat and chipper, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 10:44, Reply)

I work in a tourist-heavy area...
In a gift shop. Tourists must leave their brains at home. The shop I work in is connected to a full-service resturaunt, with the restrooms clearly marked, and yet time after time people come in from the resturant to ask me where the bathroom is. The best by far though had to be this woman that was apparently on vacation, and was attempting to purchase some expensive items via an unsigned credit card. I don't know how it is in other countries, but in the US, when a card is unsigned it's typical for us to ask for ID. When this happened the woman replied "I don't need my ID, I'm on holiday". Priceless.
(ShigTheNewt isn't funny. -_-, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 10:17, Reply)

I was a stupid client... ish...
Before packing myself off to useless college to do I.T, at about the age of 15 I decided it was time to upgrade my p.c

Software wise back then I was grand, knew what I was doing with WIN95, Dos, and all that. I was o.k with hardware, capable of installing new cards and blahdy blah blah

So I get this free Pentium Chip from my mate, and I'm like YEAH! rockin! So I take the damm p.c apart, remove the motherboard and place the new chip on it.

I put the p.c back together, and switch it on.

Nothing happens.

The screen is blank.

No error message. No nothing.

Except the hauntingly disturbing scent of smoke.

*shudders*
(visigoth, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 10:09, Reply)

email stupidity
I work in a govt. department, and besides being asked numerous times why 'this spreadsheet won't open in word' my personal favorite (and i've been asked this on occasions too numerours to remember) 'How much would i cost me to email someone in Australia?'

*bangs head repeatedly on desk and searches frantically for a new job*
(furious trout, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 9:44, Reply)

Disc Copy
Two examples from the grand old days when floppies were actually floppy of the 5 and a quarter inch variety.

(1) I asked a client to send me a copy of their disc and recieved an A4 photocopy of an outline of the disc

(2) when I rang and explained that I wanted the physical disc it turned up with a compliment slip stapled through it.
( Analogue Warthog, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 9:01, Reply)

And these people teach our young?
A couple of years ago I was working for the local council in the education department. My job, aside from the unoffical solving of any and all computer problems, was processing the Criminal Record Bureu Disclosures (CRB forms).

So around two years ago there was a lot of hassel over the system not being implimented properly because new teachers wouldn't have thier clearances back in time to start in September.

Cue me working my way through the forms.

Irrate teacher: My clearance hasn't arrived and I start work in a week.

Me: I take all their details and have no record of them and tell them this.

IT: But you must do I start work in a week.

Me: When did you send your form in?

IT: I have it right here.

Me: So I returned it to you?

IT: No I haven't had time to post it yet.

Then an argument would start over the fact that even if they delivered it to me by hand that day and I checked it all in front of them so that it didn't have any mistakes it would still take 4 months to clear. Having of course to be sent to Liverpool during the rush of every other education department trying to clear all thier teachers at the same time.I

It's sad that these are the educators of the future.
(saurbaum, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 8:49, Reply)

Spreadsheet Confusion
I once had a user call and tell me that a spreadsheet model I'd designed wasn't working.

The error message on screen did in fact tell him precisely what to do but he called anyway.

I told him that he needed to to put an "N" in column B, to which he asked "Where's column B?"

I couldn't help but reply "Well, it's in between column A and column C."

(I also once had someone ring me to ask why the Auto Sum button wasn't averaging the data - erm, because it's an Auto SUM you divvy!!)
( JugglerJAF It's curtains for you.Lacy gently wafting curtains, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 8:10, Reply)

DFU's
I work in the IT department and often have what we call DFU's (dumb f*&cking users) but none more than this one lady.

She recently got a CD Writer and we set it up that she could just drag files onto the cd writer icon. so i say to her, "just drag the files you want to copy onto the cd writer drive." so she looks at me and says "how am i supposed to get them down there", pointing to the actual cd writer drive in the computer.

she has won the DFU prize for 2003.
(Luxarama, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 6:57, Reply)

school computers
similar experience to me... i was the only person who knew how to work the school Mac computers.... consequantly anything that went wrong was "his" fault.

admitedly i did once record a sound file saying "error..error hard drive is now deleting" and put that on the "error" sound file...it totally fucked up the english master... (mr mullane)
(DrTchock reporting live from the White Chocolate Farm, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 4:24, Reply)

My IT teachers were worse than any client....
my best mate in high school had a naturally good ability with computers and so was constantly blamed [and punished] for anything that ever went wrong by the heavily underqualified IT staff...

the best ones were 'deleting a server' [fuck knows how they thought that one up], and 'removing hard drive system files onto his net user space' [despite all the hard drives being read-only]...he ended up leaving at the first available opportunity...don't blame him really.

i'm sure we learnt more from playing quake [those were the days] than we ever did from those retards...
(monofiopia, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 2:34, Reply)

My old career
sorry to post twice in a row but I keep remembering stuff from my old career, I used to be a sound engineer for touring theatre, mainly musicals, yes I'm glad I got out with my sanity, just try listening to Grease 8 times a week for a year....

I digress.

A common term amongst sound engineers is the DFA pot (Does F**k All) whenever a performer asks for something that they can't have, ie enough foldback to deafen everyone in a mile radius, we just used to pretend to turn a pot (knob) until they were happy. 99 times out of a hundred they went away happy despite us having done FA!

Another memorable time was when a particularly thick actor called in sick (this was before the whole 9-11 thing made this particular complaint more widely known)

Actor-I can't come in Today, I've got anthrax

Company manager-Oh god that's horrible

Actor-Oh it's just a twenty four hour thing ....I'll be in tomorrow

Company manager-....

she just hung up and recounted the story to me as i happened to be in the office at the time.

As far as I know the actor in question still works in musical theatre, I don't think the real world is ready for him.
(Attica, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 1:54, Reply)

F5 fool!
I have just started work as a helpdesk type bod for a training company, we send out ex-teachers with laptops and projectors to teach the teachers. Bear in mind that to become a teacher you have to take a degree and then a teaching qualification!

Trainer- I'm having trouble getting rid of the toolbars on my powerpoint presentation

Me-You need to press F5

Trainer-What, hold them down together?





I dropped out of Uni.
(Attica, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 1:30, Reply)

Bitter lemon and Driving tests
Having worked in a bar I can say that the 'Bitter Lemon/ bit of lemon' thing was a common Double Check question - in a loud pub it is quite difficult to hear what people say... there were many other examples but the barrier of time and alckyhol has made me forget. My point is, when bar staff ask you again what you want, it's not always because they are stupid, mostly because they are deaf.(due to massive 'BOMM BOOM BOOM type music.') And don't want to watermelon up your order coz they'll have to pay for it

Anyway. The first time I did my theory drving test I finished it alot quicker than anyone had any right to. For 20 minutes I sat there watching the arrow icon follow my finger around (It was a touchscreen affair) It was quite cool at the time, I never had seen such technology. Needless to say I failed.
A couple of months later I went in to do my Theory test again. Before I went in they warned me not to touch the screen for too long, because 'some idiot sat there playing with the monitor and broke it' I looked up and saw, on the wall, a sheet of paper documenting all the problems they'd had with this particular computer, which, you guessed it, dated from the computer I used the last time I took my test. Needless to say, this time I passed.
(Rondette, Wed 31 Dec 2003, 1:16, Reply)