This tale is from the eighties. I have a good friend, Rick, who worked IT at an airport with an old computer system. This computer system was not user-friendly. Anything that you wanted to do required a string of commands. Some commands made sense, while others you just had to memorize, because you would never figure it out on your own.

Rick got a call from two women having an issue. They had to get a certain report, and the input they were using wasn’t working. He recognized that report as one of the aforementioned “the commands don’t make sense, but you get the report you want”.

He told them all this and told them the exact command to put in.

They put him on hold, and when they came back, said, no, it’s not working. This shocked him, because if you have the command right, it works 100%. So, Rick had them read the input back to him. They did, and he verified that it was correct, but they said that it still wasn’t working. After a few more minutes of troubleshooting where they were getting more and more irate, he finally ran the report himself and sent it over to them by courier.

And then another coworker called. He and Rick were good friends, and this guy had been working in the same office as the two women and had watched them try to get this report.

He told Rick, do you know what they were doing when they put you on hold? They had written down the input, but they talked among themselves and decided that you didn’t know what you were talking about. And so, instead of trying the command you told them to try, they entered their own commands. And when you had them read back the input, they didn’t read what was on their screen. They only read back what they had written down, ignoring the fact that their screen commands were completely different. Because “you obviously didn’t know the report we wanted.”

Why call IT if you’re going to ignore everything they say, and then lie about what you’re doing? I guess they got their report in the end, but it took them a lot longer than if they had just followed directions in the first place.

I work in a 24-hour tech support call center. I’m about half an hour into my shift when a coworker who is about to end their shift calls me.

Coworker: “Can I transfer my call to you?”

Me: “Why, does it need a manager?”

Coworker: “No, but I’m about five minutes from the end of my shift, and the caller keeps referring to his PC as the ‘TV thingy along with the typey thingy’.”

Me: “Haha, no worries. Transfer them over and have a nice weekend.”

Coworker: “Oh my god! Thank you!”

My coworker left on time, and I helped the customer with a very simple issue, but it still took over two hours.

I work at a hospital, and the charting can be a bit tedious, but fortunately, we are provided with Dictaphones that plug into the computer and save a ton of time.

Problem: there isn’t enough for all the residents, and so one day, after yet another morning of finding mine vanished, I finally decide to cross the hospital to the IT lair and ask for an additional one.

On the way from the elevator to their door (about twenty metres), I am greeted by FOUR printed signs listing their opening hours in big, bold, red letters, tactically placed where everyone HAS to see them, including at the right of the door, at the left of the door, and ON the door.

I’m let inside and greeted by a dude who seems to wish to be anywhere but here, and while he fetches my query (while commenting on how he may not have any left, then after finding one that it’s far from new), I take a look around.

The space between the door and the counter is tiny, like, not even two by two metres, and yet I count FIVE signs explaining that to open the door you need to press the button right next to it.

That already is wild enough to make me raise an eyebrow, but then I turn and see two signs with big red arrows pointing at the switch and yet another sign explaining what to do.

When the guy finally comes back, I jokingly ask if they get a lot of people who can’t open the door, and his face lights with a genuine smile (and relief, I think) as he explains to me that yes, every day they get people trying to pull and pull on the door, not noticing the switch with “open the door” printed on it.

And apparently even with all these signs they still get some regularly.

I was half-tempted to ‘forget’ to press the switch on my way out.

A customer calls the ISP tech support line to make a complaint about bad service.

Caller: “Good, you’ve answered. Are you busy?!”

Me: “Ah, we’re ticking over, working hard. How can I help you today?”

Caller: “Oh, good, well, seeing as you guys don’t have customer service later than 7 PM, and it’s 7 PM now, you’re gonna deal with me.”

Me: “Well, sir, I can still—”

Caller: “—I missed my dinner yesterday trying to call you then, so now I’m gonna waste your time, while you listen to me eat!”

Me: “Well, sir, I don’t get paid per phone call, but by the minute, and I do need the overtime, so thank you. Also, this is not a free call, so I hope you’re comfortable with the per-minute rate of—”

Caller: *Click.*

Nothing annoys me more than people who are rude to you when you’re there to help them. Well, except for people who are rude to you when you are there to help them AND the problem is completely their own ineptitude and lack of common sense. 

Today we got a message from a user saying Outlook wouldn’t open. I remote in, and I can see Outlook open on the taskbar. I changed monitors, and on the third screen, I can see Outlook prompting to select a profile. I assume she just wasn’t sure what to do here, so I chose the default profile and set it to always use this one to avoid the pop-up from happening again.

I briefly explain the issue to the user, but she insists, snottily:

User: “It still isn’t opening! I’ve been unable to work since 2 PM!”

It’s 2:45 PM at this point.

Me: “I had it open before I left, but I can connect again to check.”

I connect, and it’s sat right there, as open as an Outlook application can possibly be.

Me: “How many screens do you use?”

User: “Three.”

Me: “It’s open on one of those screens. Is there another problem?”

User: “No.”

Me: “Then sorry, I don’t know what the problem is.”

User: “Sorry, are you a technician or not?”

This ROYALLY p***ed me off. I connect AGAIN, screenshot the window showing Outlook is open, and send it to the user.

User: “I can’t see it!”

I go to the display settings and show her that it is on screen three.

User: “It isn’t showing anything on that screen!”

Me: “Can you see the notepad I have opened on that screen?”

User: “No.”

Me: “Is the monitor connected?”

User: “Yes.”

Me: “Is it turned on?”

User: “No.”

Me: “Turn it on.”

User: “Okay.”

Me: “Can you see Outlook now?!”

The audacity of some people to be rude to and criticise people for helping when they lack the basic brain power to do such rudimentary tasks astounds me. She’s now my second least favourite user.

The first spot for least favourite user was a similar story, except the issue was with a third-party mail provider, and when I tried to explain that it’s not something we can help with, he used the phrase “Do you not know what you’re doing?”. That level of rudeness is hard to beat, though I’ve had some close ones.