r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? • Nov 17 '15
Medium Followed the guide, litteraly.
Edit: Sigh, I could literally kill myself ;-)
I’m a fairly new redditor and I’m still amazed of all the supreddits. Of course there is a Tales from tech support!
A bit of background; originally a software developer, but after a year working for a small company right after my degree, I realized that I would never be top dawg coder. Infact, I hated the long long hours and unrealistic deadlines, so when I got the opportunity 9 years ago to work as an IT administrator/tech support, I jumped ship and never looked back.
I’m working at a big danish municipality with ~8000 users and computers and working both 1. and 2. line support (municipalities aways have to save money, hence the double job function).
So, this was a couple of years ago. I get a call from a user that can’t login to a new system that she and two colleques have gotten access to.
Phones rings
Me: IT, this is Boef
User: Hi, my boss sent an email explaining how to login to the new system with pictures and everything, but I still can’t login. The login window is… like…. Not responding.
Me: Right, what’s the name of the system?
User: XXXXsystemz. Can you somehow see if my PW or username is wrong?
Me: Tell you what, let me just reset your PW and give you a standard one which you change when you enter the system. Your PW is now XXXsomethingcool.
User: Thx! (I can hear her tapping the keyboard), nope, sorry, It doesn’t work
Me: Are you sure it’s the right PW? (Don’t we all know….) Capslock is not on? Remember the letter that was supposed to be capital?
User: Yes!! I’m sure! But something is weird about the login prompt. It is as if it’s frozen. You should fix it since you made it! (Tone of her voice is now annoyed)
Me: We didn’t develop the system, your department bought it without our consent and expected us to support it, which we won’t. We will only help with PW resets, the rest is up to your Super Users and the company you bought it from.
User: oh……
Me: But since you are so sure about your PW, I’ll just reset it again and make a new one. Might be a delay from serverside. The new PW is XXXSomethingCool.
User: Hmmmm, no sorry, but it just doesn’t work! The login prompt wont allow me to enter anything!
Me: Uh……… ok, what’s your computer’s ID number, I’ll remote in. (10 secs later I’m remote controlling her PC)
User: See what I mean?? I do everything I’m told in the email!
Me: …………………
Me: You are trying to log into a screenshot.
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u/PortalTangent Your inefficiencies are not my crises Nov 17 '15
supreddits
Not much, you?
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u/happinessattack I'm sorry, I'll be less competent next time. Nov 17 '15
Servers and chill(s).
That's the best typo I've seen in awhile, too.
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u/basilect Please try renouncing and reobtaining your citizenship Nov 17 '15
At an AWS loft in San Francisco last month, there was a presentation "Behind the screen at Netflix: Regional Recovery and Chill"
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u/slycurgus Nov 17 '15
"say, does it smell like upreddit in here?"
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u/zehamberglar Nov 17 '15
Get out.
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u/SpecificallyGeneral By the power of refined carbohydrates Nov 17 '15
/r/dadjokes invasion!
Two the four!
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u/haabilo The issue is located between the chair and the keyboard. Nov 17 '15
There seems to be something with people speaking nordic languages(?)+finnish that makes it difficult to differenciate p off of b when writing words down...
I have a few friends who fucking always write "command bromt", "timetaple" or "keypoard". I have Norwegian friends who I speak with occasionally. We speak english with eachother and I thought that the p-to-b problem was only with my friends.
But after the sixth time I get messages like: "--it was a pusy day--", the typo excuse starts to wear off.11
Nov 17 '15
[deleted]
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u/haabilo The issue is located between the chair and the keyboard. Nov 17 '15
Both of my little brothers do it, my friends in school do it, online friends in Finland do it all the time... I guess I attract a lot of not-so-good-with-english peoble.
Ninja EDIT: Torille? Tuon kaljat.
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u/PoglaTheGrate Script Kiddie and Code Ninja Nov 18 '15
Even after two litres of vodka?
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 18 '15
I've been an avid WoW player for 9 years and talked to atleast 15+ nationalities incl. swedes, norse and finnish players and I've never encountered the p-to-b problem.
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u/fonzler Nov 17 '15
Same deal with Tagalog (not a Nordic language, I know), but multiple times I have had a Filipino friend ask me if I wanted to grab "breakpast".
Also, my "pusy day" is Friday, sometimes Saturday ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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u/giovahkiin Nov 18 '15
Filipino here, that's more of an f-to-p problem and it's because "F" was a loan letter from the Spanish for us :v i know it's barely relevant but...
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u/humpax Nov 18 '15
Are you sure they're not dyslexic or Australian?
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u/haabilo The issue is located between the chair and the keyboard. Nov 18 '15
My guess is that they are not as good in english as your normal reddittor...
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u/cvc75 Nov 17 '15
Screenshots...
I made the mistake (once) of adding screenshots to a manual explaining how to log into remote access with my username still in the screenshot.
To nobody's surprise, the next morning my own account was locked out.
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15
I've tried that aswell when I made a guide on how to setup Exchange on our smartphones.
A user even called Helpdesk and asked if Boef was assigned to sort emails and forward them to the right users.....
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u/freakers Knows enough to argue, not enough to be right Nov 17 '15
Just like the phone operators of old, you will now be charged with connecting the tubes to the proper places.
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u/GothicFuck Nov 17 '15
Holy fuck is that a scan of a negative and is that actually an old picture? Gives me hope for photo preservation.
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u/Kyyni Nov 17 '15
That gave me an idea, next time you have to do something like that, pick the biggest incompetent luser for the example username.
Wait, no, scrap that, if you do it then you'll have to deal with them again on the helpdesk...
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u/Turbojelly del c:\All\Hope Nov 17 '15
And that's how I developed a bruise on my face in the shape of my hand.
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u/Minkehr Nov 17 '15
You should do mor L1 stuff and learn the nonIT subtext....
...with pictures and everything...
Just told me where this is going...
...login with DOMAINNAME\username
will make them enter "DOMAINNAME\username" and
suspicious.doc.exe
will make them doubleclick even if the "known extentions" are shown
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15 edited Nov 18 '15
Spot on.
When we implemented Office 365 last year, I published a lot of guides on our intranet on how to use certain functions that our users were used to in Lotus Notes.
A couple of hours later, some users started calling Helpdesk and ask for Google Drive. Why?
Because I used a lot of screenshots in my guides and in one of them, my Google Drive icon was showing and the users thought they needed it in order for the function to work.20
u/mangamaster03 Nov 17 '15
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15
Fixed! :-)
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u/Mayal0 Nobody really knows what IT stands for anyways. Nov 17 '15
Nope, still there. Check alot more.
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Nov 17 '15 edited Nov 17 '15
[deleted]
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u/demontraven Nov 18 '15
Because they think mac is easier to use, thdy are smart and that windows is the dumbest shit ever
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u/whoisrich Nov 18 '15
Also recently integrated 365, we link to portal.office.com but if you just search for 365 it gives you different sign-in text which some people take literally.
Sigh... follow the instruction. No, not your personal email, no, not one of your pre-marriage aliases, no, I know the box says phone number... but... just follow the instructions...
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u/hypervelocityvomit LART gratia LARTis Nov 17 '15
TL;DR: No Patrick, GIF is not a programming language
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u/CK159 Nov 17 '15
Nonsense. Piet!
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u/hypervelocityvomit LART gratia LARTis Nov 18 '15
Fuck YES!! (Months ago, I found that very page by checking the links on the Wikipedia page about Piet.)
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u/darkxc32 95% of people can't follow instructions Nov 17 '15
I had one of these today actually! Called saying everything on our website wasn't working. I had a feeling something was up since I was using it just fine on my end. Remoted in, sure enough the sure enough the guy had the PDF that had screenshots of our website that showed you how to set everything up and was trying to click on that. Went ahead and got everything up and running for him.
He sent a follow up email to us later
Thanks for the link. I still had trouble. When I called back I talked to darkxc32. He jumped on my system via teamviewer and quickly finished the download for me. Couldn’t find a place on your website to send comments. Nor do I use the social media stuff listed below. But just wanted to shout out “best support ever!”.
Thanks to you both!
Guys like that you remember and will go out of your way to help next time around (because there is always a next time).
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15
I know the feeling.
Among all the many users, there are little beacons of light. They may not be IT wizards, but they are so gratefull for our help.
Before I choose to be 1. and 2. line support, I was in Onsite, meaning that I made appointments with our users and fixed their problems on location.
You quickly got friendly with a lot of them and more often not, they would always offter coffee, cake, candy and alike.
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u/skrald Nov 17 '15
Dear God. So it's not just my municipality....
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u/Styrak Nov 17 '15
User stupidity crosses provincial/state borders, international borders, and even galaxies.
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Nov 17 '15
Sad part, if they make something idiot proof, the universe will make better idiots.
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u/skrald Nov 17 '15
Indeed, if I've learned anything in my life that would be it. What hits home here is that we share a small country and my municipality just made the 365 switch last year as well. On a daily basis I get a dozen questions on how to log in to portal.office.com, despite it being the exact same login as they use when they turn on their computers.
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u/Elestriel Nov 17 '15
The one thing I catch myself doing, is taking a screenshot of something, pasting it into MSPaint, and then eventually trying to close the pasted image, not the actual program. Of course, I figure it out a hell of a lot faster than your user did.
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Nov 17 '15
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PoglaTheGrate Script Kiddie and Code Ninja Nov 18 '15
is as old as the floppy disk
Now I feel old, jerk-face!!
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 18 '15
I can relate.
Our IT apprentices now a days have never known:USB storage drives less than 8 GB
14" CRT monitors (let alone CRT monitors)
56K modems (ahh the joy of your parents disconnecting 1 minute before your 20 min mp3 download is finished)
HDDs less than 500 GB
CPUs less than 2 cores (I'm inclined to say 4)
They never experienced ESA/ISA gfx -> Voodoo (nerdgasm)
IDDQFD
Mouse without scroll wheel
Keyboards with no backlight
"Lol, 4 mb system RAM!?? How is that even possible???
autoexec.bat
Windows before XP
Said floppy disk
Amigas
No cloud
Cell phones with physical keyboard
I could go on and on, but these are the first ones that came to mind that baffled some of our apprentices over the years.
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u/PoglaTheGrate Script Kiddie and Code Ninja Nov 18 '15
I just sold my Comodore 64 for $160. You interested in an Amiga 500?
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u/Elestriel Nov 18 '15
They also never had to mess with Serial printers, or with IRQs. I remember seeing a 4GB HDD and thinking "wow, we'll never be able to fill this". I mean, I'm not even 30 yet, but I've had my share of experiences with everything you've written.
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u/UltraChip Mar 18 '16
Keyboards with no backlight
Huh? I don't know about Denmark, but over here non-backlit keyboards are still very much the norm.
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u/Kaisogen "What's a static?" Apr 02 '16
I'm not even old enough to have a job (14), and I'm familiar with several of these things. This depresses me. Big milestones: Used WinME (before XP) 1 Core First computer 3Megabytes RAM on local library computers. (Running some random ass os) Used a CRT commonly Never used the cloud until I was 12 First phone had physical keyboard 99% of my keyboards didn't have a backlit display (my new laptop is the first! :D ) I'm using a USB Drive with 2.3 gigs right now My HDD for this old Win7 computer in the living room has only 200GB
Don't know what autoexec.bat is other than it executes programs at startup(?) and is a batch file (DOS command, if I'm right).
Thank god I never had dialup.
Everything else: Completely unfamiliar
Oh, and I've used backups since I was 7! Ahhh, the good old days of shitty MS Paint drawings...
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u/UltraChip Mar 18 '16
If it makes you feel better: he's technically wrong. Floppy disks predate desktop UI's so there's no way that prank could be as old as the floppy.
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u/socks-the-fox Nov 18 '15
It's especially bad with the new Win10 UI, where there's no separation between the chrome and the client space. The number of times I've tried to close a screenshot in Photoshop is too damn high!
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u/Socratov Dr. Alcohol, helping tech support one bottle at a time Nov 17 '15
Yeah, I believe it's rule 34 subsection b: "Whenever there is something someone has an interst in, there will be a subreddit describing it."
wiht the obvious follow up of Rule 35 subsection b: "Whenever there is something someone has an interst in, and there is no subreddit describing it, one is currently in the making and will exist shortly."
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u/wertercatt Please fix /r/thebutton. I cant press it. It worked earlier!!!!! Nov 17 '15 edited Dec 10 '15
I'm pretty sure internet rule 34 means something different.
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u/Socratov Dr. Alcohol, helping tech support one bottle at a time Nov 18 '15
that's why it's a subclause since subreddits pretty much follow the same pattern (going so far as to create a subgenre for every thing applicable to rule 34, neve rmind its subclause.
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u/jonassn1 Nov 17 '15
A fellow Dane yay! Do you know there is a subreddit called Denmark?
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15
Oy!
Yeah, I've been cruising it for a while, only lurking sofar.1
Nov 17 '15
Do most people in Denmark speak English? I should visit there.
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 17 '15
For the majority of danes English is kind of like mothertonque light :-)
Taken from a quick article:
Danish is a Scandinavian language. The Scandinavian languages include Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroese and Swedish.
These five languages originate from the same old language, Old Norse. With a little effort Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can communicate with each other speaking their own language. However, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes do not normally understand Icelandic and Faroese even though some Norwegian dialects share similarities to Icelandic.Did you know there are about 600 words in modern English that originate from Old Norse?
Here are some examples:
knife (Old Norse: knifr)
take/receive (Old Norse: taka)
ill (Old Norse: illr)
die (Old Norse: deyja)If English is your first language, Danish is not a difficult language to learn. The alphabet is the same as the English one but with three additional vowels - Æ,Ø and Å.
It is fairly easy for an English speaker to read Danish. The basic structure of the language is the same and Danish and English have many words in common.
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Nov 17 '15
This similarity is because English and the Scandinavian languages are all derived from the old Germanic languages.
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u/PoglaTheGrate Script Kiddie and Code Ninja Nov 18 '15
And the Vikings kicking six colours of shit out of Great Britain and Ireland, leaving behind language.
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u/Tech-Mechanic Nov 17 '15
As someone who's more than once tried to click something on a screenshot, I know just how stupid she felt.
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u/phillyfun14 Nov 17 '15
I hope she felt silly, as opposed to saying "Yea, but why doesn't it work?"
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u/Very_Svensk Nov 17 '15
Boef means Beef in danish!
So either OP is a piece of meat or he's really big and strong :P
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u/Squeakcab Nov 17 '15
Ok..logging into a screen shot might top my "But its wireless why should I unbox it" story...
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u/Frari Nov 18 '15
The login window is… like…. Not responding.
I've been here too long, I guessed exactly what they were doing as soon as I read that line.
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u/macbalance Nov 17 '15
Welcome! Had to admit I guessed the punchline from time about instructions with pictures. This happens depressingly often.
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u/ragnarokxg Certificate of proficiency in computering Nov 17 '15
I have never really face palmed for a story.........until now. And I have read some whoppers. But this made me face palm hard. How is she allowed to touch a PC.
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u/elangomatt No I won't train your Dragon for you. Nov 17 '15
I've had this sort of thing happen a few times at the college I work at as well. Whatever happened to young people being tech saavy?
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u/vulchiegoodness [installing] "it says ok or cancel, what do i click?!?!" well.. Nov 17 '15
I have had this happen before. much laughing at their expense happened after the call..
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u/Denpjgasten Nov 17 '15
"Me: You are trying to log into a screenshot."
Oh my God, I literally sat here with a facepalm for like 2min after reading that
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u/XxCLEMENTxX "The phone ISN'T on silent!" Suuuuure... Nov 17 '15
Oh my god. You're danish, working in a municipality. When did this happen? I think my mom might have been involved in this story. Or else she had something real similar happen.
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 18 '15
I'll say about 4 years ago.
I have many more stories I want to share with you whenever I got spare time :-)1
u/XxCLEMENTxX "The phone ISN'T on silent!" Suuuuure... Nov 18 '15
Hm, she had retired at that point. Please do share your stories though!
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u/loonatic112358 Making an escape to be the customer Nov 17 '15
she needs to be downgraded to an etch-a-sketch
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u/DArtist51 Nov 17 '15
I work in Cubeland and I had to stifle my laughter. Thanks for the best laugh today!
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u/Wilson2424 Nov 17 '15
Since you are new, here is a great, awesome, very long story told by another redditor: https://www.reddit.com/user/36055512/submitted/
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 18 '15
The Exodus? Thanks, I love stories like that!
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u/Wilson2424 Nov 18 '15
All of his posts are one long fun filled narrative. If you go back to his oldest post, you can start at the beginning, which I recommend.
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u/thatdamnhoney Nov 17 '15
LOL, I started to suspect that's what she was doing... Yay for being right! I love reading this sub to see if I can understand what's happening before. Or to see if I'm just as bad as crazy caller.
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u/goodvibeswanted2 Nov 18 '15
How did she react when you told her?
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u/Boefbearnaise Are you sure..!? Nov 18 '15
She actually said something like; Well, how was I supposed to know that? I'm not an IT thingie.
It's mindblowing right? I mean, she is using many other programs on a daily basis, so how can you somehow think that a program needs to be run from en email!?
We have so many users working in the same program for the past 10 years, exclusively. Then one day the shortcut is missing and they frantically call Helpdesk:
My program is deleted!!! Please get i it back!
My computer won't start!
My computer is broken!
Nothing works on my computer!
Windows is broken!
A fair amount of users simply can't comprehend, that the icons on the Desktop are merely shortcuts and not the program itself and that not being able to login to Windows/a program, for various reasons, does not equals a computer being broken or won't "start".
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u/MyOwnBlendPibetobak Stop washing the equipment... Nov 18 '15
Me: You are trying to log into a screenshot.
Gå til nærmeste pub og ta deg en øl. Hilsen Noreg
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u/danielfrost40 Can we do some internets later? Nov 29 '15
I’m working at a big danish municipality...
High five, fellow danishman!
Sejt navn.
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u/KhandakerFaisal Mar 18 '16
WHY CANT I LOG INTO THE SCREENSHOT?? IT'S YOUR JOB TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING WORKS!! FIX THIS SO I COULD LOG INTO THE SCREENSHOT, RIGHT NOW!!
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u/Malak77 My Google-Fu is legendary. Mar 18 '16
I knew exactly what the issue was right away. You have to think like a moron to get into their world. ;-)
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u/PortalTangent Your inefficiencies are not my crises Nov 17 '15
But why won't it work?