Imagine how disappointed I was to see that heading, then not see my name mentioned once.

Mmmm... lunch.

Will he just go a place called Lunch?

Many years ago, I lived just down the street from a restaurant named Mexican Food, which, strangely enough, was what it served.

I work in IT. Those stories about clueless users - they're all true. I had a user who once pinched the network cable, causing an interruption in their network connectivity. I joked that the zeros could make it around a sharp corner, but the ones got caught. They just looked at me and asked if I'm going to have to clean them up out of the computer before they could use it.

Obviously a shy Cox Cable user.

Sometimes I just wonder.

Why do people give out the absolute LEAST amount of information when trying to disgnose a problem?

Each give-and-take just wastes time. All we want to do is solve the problem, and we end up just spending all of our time trying to get the information necessary to solve it, frustrating everyone.

Frustration is the intellectual equivalent of mechanical heat.

I'm in tech support myself...I stayed frustrated until I learned three things:

1) Trust in the knowledge that your product works.
2) Trust that fewer than 2% of your customers will read the manual.
3) Don't trust a word the customer says.

Oh, and when all else fails...reboot.

Hey, its not just IT ---

I am a paramedic, and I often have to dig and pry information out of people. For instance:

How long have you had this chest pain?
For a while, now . . .
How long is a while?
Not too long . . .
How long is that--an few minutes, an hour, a few days? WHAT? TELL ME NOW!
Oh, that's a while.

I've often joked I'd go into dentistry, after all the years I've spent "pulling teeth."

ok, but got his ip address right - you have to give him that. for some people that alone would be a monumental accomplishment.

Getting any info out of anyone over the phone in tech support is like dealing with the mentally impaired. Never mind that they called you, they won't give up the least bit of info if they don't have to, because if they did, then you'd know where they are.

Maybe it was schmo, andhe didn't want you to recognize him by giving away too much info.

Been there, done that.

Used to be a data center manager at a large hospital in CT. Had three outstanding support giggles:

(1) Major walk-in clinic with hundreds of patients ground to a halt when network connectivity failed. After going onsite & looking things over, decided that perhaps cold-booting the main router might help. After a few minutes, when it finished all its cycling & fussing, Voila! everyone's back online. Network contractors ripped me a new one, however, as they were "collecting data" with some diags, & I disrupted all that.

Of course, the building full of sick people who couldn't be admitted, or get X-rays done, lab results, etc., etc., wasn't important.

Next week, the same problem recurred. After being chewed out once by VP's, I decided to CYA & call the network admin folks first. After some hemming & hawing, their suggestion was to... wait, don't guess! yes!! "Cold-boot the router". :)

(2) User of one of hundreds of "dumb terminals" had scrambled colors on an unreadable display. Knowing that these terminals were prone to loose connectors & such, I gave it a couple of sharp slaps on the left side. Everything went back to normal. User ask's "Aren't you going to fix it? " -- I said that I obviously just did! (works everytime).

(3) Manager calls with a problem: PC monitor just sitting there, beeping & flashing its power LED once per second. Made a visit, & while he was sitting there with his chin resting on an upraised arm, I slammed the monitor sharply with my hand, on top, 3 times. Without moving a muscle, he laconically said, "Tried that already". :)

Technotards are just the latest version of the species.
I used to work in the vending machine biz, and one time after I had just finished fixing a coffee machine, somebody asked me what had been wrong with it. Being a smartass I said the midget inside had fallen asleep on the job.

The next week we got several applications for the midget's job.

there is a restaurant in London that is called "EAT." I had to take a picture of that one for my friends at home to believe it.