Re: Dumb Things People Do -- MIDRANGE-L

This is not realted to computers but it made me shake my head in wonder.

A friend of mine is a super in an apartment building. He got a call one day from a tenant complaining that it was too cold in their apartment. When my friend got there he discovered that they had all the windows in one bedroom wide open.

It turns out they had two big dogs and didn't feel like walking them in the cold weather so they let them do their thing in the bedroom. They had to keep the windows open because of the smell.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark S. Waterbury" <mark.s.waterbury@xxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Dumb Things People Do
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:00:23 -0400

Hi, Scott:

After reading your story, a famous quotation springs to mind:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm
not sure about the the universe." - Albert Einstein

Cheers,

Mark S. Waterbury

> Scott Klement wrote:

Hi Folks... I'm looking to compile a list of (hopefully
humorous) "Dumb Things People Do" to be published in System iNEWS
magazine.

For example...

---

One day, several years ago, I was sitting at my desk at work when
I received a call from one of our computer users who works in the
same building that I do, but one floor down. She told me that
Microsoft Word was not working, and asked me if I could come down
and take a look.

Call me lazy, but I wanted to try a few simple things over the
phone before going down. So I asked her what problem she was
having, and she told me that the screen was blank. Now, usually
when a user says that, the whole screen isn't actually blank,
just the window they want to use. So I asked her if the mouse
worked when she moved it, she said no. I asked her if she had
tried turning the computer off and back on again to see if that
would clear up the problem. She said she hadn't tried, but would
try it while I was on the phone. A minute later, she said it
wouldn't work. She pressed the power button, but nothing
happened. Naturally, I thought the computer was locked up, and
she just needed to hold the button in longer to make it power
off. So I explained that, and she tried again, to no avail.
Then, I suggested unplugging it, and that didn't work either!

At that point, I said I'd be right down to look at it. I walked
down the stairs to find that the floor was dark. The power was
out, and that's why her computer's screen was blank.

--

So that's the sort of thing I'm looking for (it doesn't have to
be as wordy as my description -- in fact, mine might be too
wordy!) I'm looking for stories of dumb things that come up on
the job. These *do* need to be IT related things, but it can be
either a "dumb user" or just a "duh!" mistake made by an IT
person. Any sort of amusing story about IT would be useful.

Thanks!

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