Totally OT

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

For everyone who has to work with THE PUBLIC.......

Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can you help?".

Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?".

Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre".

Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours".

Samsung Electronics

Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"

Operator: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about".

Caller: "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?"

Operator: "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall".

RAC Motoring Services

Caller: "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"

Operator: Doesn't the product give you a clue?

Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France):

"If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?"

Directory Enquiries

Caller: "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please".

Operator: "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"

Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B' fell off".

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.

Operator: "Woven ? Are you sure ?"

Caller: "Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland".

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator:

"I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on".

Computer Capers

Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop".

Customer: "OK".

Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?".

Customer: "No".

Tech Support: "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"

Customer: "No".

Tech Support: "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?".

Customer: "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'".

Tech Support: "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?"

Customer: "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"

Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just

realised that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?".

There's always one. This has got to be one of the funniest things in

a long time. I think this guy should have been promoted, not fired.

This is a true story from the Word Perfect Helpline, which was transcribed

from a recording monitoring the customer care department. Needless to

say the Help Desk employee was fired; however, he/she is currently

suing the Word Perfect organization for "Termination without Cause".

Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee.

(Now I know why they record these conversations!):

Operator: "Ridge Hall, computer assistance; may I help you?"

Caller: "Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."

Operator: "What sort of trouble??"

Caller: "Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."

Operator: "Went away?"

Caller: "They disappeared."

Operator: "Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?"

Caller: "Nothing."

Operator: "Nothing??"

Caller: "It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."

Operator: "Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out??"

Caller: "How do I tell?"

Operator: "Can you see the C: prompt on the screen??"

Caller: "What's a sea-prompt?"

Operator: "Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?"

Caller: "There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."

Operator: "Does your monitor have a power indicator??"

Caller: "What's a monitor?"

Operator: "It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on??"

Caller: "I don't know."

Operator: "Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that??"

Caller: "Yes, I think so."

Operator: "Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."

Caller: "Yes, it is."

Operator: "When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one??"

Caller: "No."

Operator: "Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable."

Caller: "Okay, here it is."

Operator: "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."

Caller: "I can't reach."

Operator: "Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is??"

Caller: "No."

Operator: "Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over??"

Caller: "Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle - it's because it's dark."

Operator: "Dark??"

Caller: "Yes - the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window."

Operator: "Well, turn on the office light then."

Caller: "I can't."

Operator: "No? Why not??"

Caller: "Because there's a power failure."

Operator: "A power... A power failure? Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"

Caller: "Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."

Operator: "Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."

Caller: "Really? Is it that bad?"

Operator: "Yes, I'm afraid it is."

Caller: "Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them??"

Operator: "Tell them you're too F stupid to own a computer

Yep, Totally OT but thought it would make a few of us laugh, superb

Nige

[BogMonster]

Priceless

Many a true word spoken in jest though....

[western]

Love the last one, excellent as we're right off the beaten track, just got this from a mate

Little Garry on Math:

A teacher asks her class "If there are five birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?"

With no volunteers answering the question, she asks Little Garry to answer.

He replies "None, Miss. They'll all fly away with the first gunshot."

The teacher replies "Well in fact the answer is four; but I like your thinking."

Then Little Garry says "I have a question for you Miss. There are three women sitting on a bench having ice cream. One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?"

The teacher, blushing a great deal, replied "Well, I suppose the one that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone."

To which Little Garry replied, "The correct answer is 'the one with the wedding ring on', but I like your thinking."

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Nige

[FridgeFreezer]

Good stuff, here's some of mine...

At the Kart track:

Customer pulls into the pit lane mid-race and gestures wildly to the marshal

"Oi mate! Oi! The front brakes are well out of balance! I want a new kart!"

"Sir there are no front brakes..."

Largely similar situation as the last one

"You want to get the mechanic on that one, mate, it's not firing on all cylinders"

"OK Sir, which cylinder of that single-cylinder engine isn't firing then?"

Customer walks up and down a row of 8 identical karts in pitlane, inspecting them as if one can tell by looking that one's quicker than another. Finally picks one (which happened to be due for a rebuild and one of the slower ones) then gestures to son, points to the kart in front and says

"You get in that one, Son, it's slower"

Customer sat in kart in pit lane, waiting to go onto the track calls the marshal over, points to the slick tyres and says

"Can I swap karts, these tyres are bald!"

Customer comes up to the office and asks is he can use his mobile whilst driving the karts. Is told that it's rather tricky to fit a mobile phone inside a crash hat and still operate the buttons. Customer says he has a hands-free kit. He is told that it's impractical to use a mobile phone whilst racing go karts and the phone stands a very high chance of being damaged. Customer is insistent that he's a doctor on call and must have his phone with him at all times. Customer triumphantly leaves the pits in a kart with earpiece running up to crash hat and phone clipped to belt...

2 laps later marshalls are sweeping the remains of one very expensive Nokia phone off the track, and doctor is no longer on call.

During a heated race meeting, the drive of one team comes screeching into the pits (losing his team's lead in the process) and explodes with rage about his kart being a piece of sh**, slower than all the rest, knackered, etc.

The mechanic is in the pitlane, and realising the kart is one he's just rebuilt and actually in very good condition, graciously pulls a kart from the workshop queue and exchanges it with the "bad" one. Customer goes on his way chuffed to nuts with his new kart which handles like a dream (due in no small part to a cracked chassis) and is overtaken one lap later by the mechanic "testing" the "bad" kart.

He is overtaken a further 2 laps later, ongoingly for the next 60 laps, by the mechanic testing the entire fleet of karts. The team do not reach the podium.

A few from the wacky world of BT:

Attended a construction site on the report that the BT box was "dead", went into the (still being built) comms room to find, sure enough, the BT NTE was indeed dead - as was everything else in the room. I asked the IT guy why none of their equipment (the very kit that required the BT box in the first place) was turned on, he replied "well we're on generator power at the moment, if we plugged it in it'd blow up every time they switched generators"

Called to a repeat fault report for a very irate customer who had demanded a complete end-to-end check of their fibre optic circuit - many pages of notes stating the customer had been to site, had checked their kit was all OK, there was a signal going into our box, etc.

So I went into the comms room, found our box, phoned the customer and said "When you checked all your connections, did you plug them back in to our box?"

The line went very quiet...

Two of my colleagues were called to a water reservoir monitoring circuit, aparrently the water board were unable to determine how much water was in their reservoir. Upon arrival they found the village under 2 feet of water and the surrounding fields under about 6 feet due to flooding.

Not much they could do so they called the control to let them know the situation:

"Hi, I think we've found the problem - the cable is wet, the whole area is under 6 feet of water"

"Well, can you pump it out?"

"Not really, we'd have to pump out West Sussex first"

"So you don't think you can pump it out then?"

"No, but tell the water board they've got plenty"

[Ben Reedy]

Excellent!

Then there was the bloke who thought there was a town in China called Vitreous....

[snailracer]

As part of my teaching course I was given some case studies of accidents and incidents in school science labs. My Favourite is this one:

A teacher was demonstrating the high voltage transmission line as follows. An ac power supply, set at about 14 V, was connected to a step-up transformer, resulting in an output of about 240 V. This supply was connected by crocodile clips to bare parallel wires held along the length of a metre rule. at the other end of the wires was a step down transformer and suitable lamp. The teacher wanted to show the effect of varying the length of wire on the brightness of the bulb. She took hold of both crocodile clips, forgetting they were live at about mains voltage. She was unable to let go.....

[siggy]

My lecturer at college did that whilst talking about 3 phase synchronous motors

lecturer " when working on three phase always keep one hand in your pockets it saves you from" it was at this point that he took hold of two of the 3 phase wires (which were live)"sssaaavvveeesss yyyooouuu ffffrrrrooomm dddoooiiinngggg thhhisssss ccccccoooouuuulllllddddd sssssooooommmmeeeeebbbbbboooooddddyyyy hhhhhhiiiiitttttt tttthhhheeee kkkkkkiiiiiiilllllll sssssssssswwwwwwwiiiiiiitttttccccccchhhhhhhh "

switch hit

lecturer "thanks ..................... oh sh*t that F******g Hurt"

[FridgeFreezer]

I've just been on a great one, thought I'd share:

"Customer has had a fire at their premises, suspects some comms equipment may have been affected, fibre link to switchboard is down"

OK thinks I, toddle off to the premises expecting maybe some part of the building has caught fire and smoke/water has got near the comms room, or power is out, etc...

No - the switchboard CAUSED the fire! The cable came out of the BT box and went into a pile of melted plastic and metal that used to be the switchboard.

Got the fibre link working again and told them all they need to do now is peel the switchboard off the floor and plug a new one in

[Guest MJG]

I've just been on a great one, thought I'd share:

"Customer has had a fire at their premises, suspects some comms equipment may have been affected, fibre link to switchboard is down"

OK thinks I, toddle off to the premises expecting maybe some part of the building has caught fire and smoke/water has got near the comms room, or power is out, etc...

No - the switchboard CAUSED the fire! The cable came out of the BT box and went into a pile of melted plastic and metal that used to be the switchboard.

Got the fibre link working again and told them all they need to do now is peel the switchboard off the floor and plug a new one in

Some of the above posts got me thinking about a conversation I had with somebody at work a while ago. Whilst calling at one of our hospital premises I got chatting to a guy who had his hand encased in a blood soaked hankerchief and was waiting to be attended in one of our casualty depts. He proudly showed me the rather nasty laceration he had sustained to his hand/fingers.

How did you do that ??? I enquired. "Model aircraft propellor" came back the reply, ........."I was teaching safety techniqies to some of our younger model aircraft club members........"

Even he saw the funny side of what he was saying and burst out laughing........nor did he object when I did.....

[McS]

A friend of mine ( a not-so-subtle Regimental Sergeant Major) wrote the following letter of complaint (suitably censored!)..... Blunt, u might say!

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.

Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat @rse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website....HOW SHOULD I DO THAT PRAY TELL?

I alleviated the boredom by playing with myself for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later,

although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem

arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and I begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm -midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend. I am

still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled b0ll0ck jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't

care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustration's in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were carp, that they had attained the holy pizz-pot of godawful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to

their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless

shower of b@st@rds you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order.

British Telecom - w@n&&rs though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of tw@ts.

John

McS

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

PMSL, Set me up for the day

Nige

[JimAttrill]

I must say that Sergeant-Majors seem to be more literate than they used to be

Must be all the water-skiing and sailing that does it...

Me on the 'help desk'

Helpee: "My printer is printing but it's not printing"

Helper: "Put the phone next to it and I'll listen to it" pause as I listen to printer. Noisy (it was a chain printer) and I can hear the page throws. Can almost tell what report it is by the sound.

Helper: Your ribbon has fallen off

Helpee: Oh

I once received on of those big floppy disks through the post, folded in four, with the following message stapled to it: "Can you fix this disk?"

[Niall_CSK]

Absolutely brilliant, can't get anywhere near that.

It's not just dealing with the public, I had the following conversation with one of our senior ships captains a few years back when we were still using DOS. This happened over SW radio so it was simplex, you can imagine there were one or two pregnant pauses before my responses.

Capt : I have come on the bridge this morning and I can't get the menu on the screen.

Me : What does the screen show?

Capt : Just blank with an arrow.

Me : Type DIR from the keyboard then press ENTER.

Capt : Done.

Me : What is listed on the screen now?

Capt : IO.SYS etc...

Me : I didn't hear you say MENU.COM are you sure that file is not listed?

Capt : I think so.

Me : Type DIR *.COM and press ENTER.

Capt : Done, only COMMAND.COM listed.

Me : OK type cd \DOS and press enter.

Capt : Done.

Me : Type COPY MENU.COM C:\ and press enter.

Capt : Done.

Me : Type CD .. and press ENTER.

Capt : Done.

Me : Type DIR *.COM and press ENTER.

Capt : Shows MENU.COM and COMMAND.COM now.

Me : Type MENU and press enter.

Capt : It's working now, what do you think happened.

Me : I think someone has been playing around where they shouldn't and deleted the file.

Capt : Can't be, I haven't used it since it was working yesterday and the Mate says nobody has touched it while he has been on watch. We had some really rough weather last night & were bouncing & slamming around a lot. It's probably just shaken the files around on the disc or they might have fallen off completely. Shall I get the Mate to open it up and have a look for them?

Me : Noooooooo!

[FridgeFreezer]

We've been officially banned from forwarding that NTL complaint at work

A mate is an "Orange phone trainer" he gets people phone up and ask where to put the film in a camera-phone