Tech Support

The entirety of a trouble ticket:

I'm having mouse problems.

That's nice. Can you be more specific? I feel like replying "Your request has been forwarded to the exterminators; your office should be sprayed by Monday." and closing the ticket.

Le-sigh...

Trouble ticket of the year:

I seem to have problems downloading files from moogle and even the cs
email squirrel.

I dunno, just a bit surreal. :)

This trouble ticket came in today. Seriously, you just can't make this up...

I am a student at university park and I am trying to upload my database
onto my unix account at solix. I am having a little trouble getting the codic
from my diskette to the unix server. First I tried loading the files onto the
pc then cutting and pasting them onto the unix account using the pico command.
I found that I could not cut or paste.
SO now what I am trying to do is open a vax account with the pine command and
sending the codic via email, but I cannot login to pine. the username and
password are invalid. please help me find a way to upload my database. there
are alot of programs for the gcc complier in c++.

Here's an explanation of what's wrong with this, for the non-technically minded:

• We don't support solix, only Computer Science systems. But barring that...
• What the heck is a "codic"? And if he meant codec, what does that have to do with databases?
• You're trying to cut and paste files through pico? pico is a text editor! Unless it's a text file, good luck!
• A VAX account? We haven't had a VAX system on this campus in about seven years.
• Even if we had a VAX system still, since when do you use PINE to open an account on them?
• If you can't log into your email account, how in the heck did you send this message? (yes, it came from their campus email account)
• Yes, there's a lot of C++ programs out there. What does this have to do with anything?

Wow. Seriously, every time you think you've seen it all, something like this surprises you again. Jeeez!

I like this guy. He has a technical problem, but at least he admits that it's his fault. I wonder why he has an affair with the caps-lock key, though...

Reason for Request:
I NEED TO DOWNLOAD THIS AGAIN BECAUSE I DIDNT FOLLOW THE STEP BY STEP
DOWNLOADING INSTRUCTIONS AND I DIDNT GET THE SOFTWARE TO INSTAL ON MY COMPUTER
AT HOME. ALL I HAVE ON THE CD IS THE DOWNLOADER ICON, NOT THE ACTUAL SOFTWARE.

Oh, and it's only Monday. And 9:19AM:

User:

It doesn't work. What's going on? Please help me.
Thank you.

Staff:

Hello,
What are you having trouble with? Can be a little more specific so we can assist.

User:

Im trying to finish this report I have to turn into my class tonight, 
I am unsure how to mount the CPU? Can someone please come help me? 
I am told that John in 258 is the person to see about this.
Thank you.

What scares me the most is these are computer science students. Shouldn't people who major in computer science be fellow geeks? You'd think they'd be able to compose a well-written, descriptive E-mail which mentions an error message and what they were doing at the time. But noooo. "It doesn't work." Well, neither do our support services, with information like that. Please hang up and try your call again. }:)

Of course, later in the day, this came in:

Good afternoon,

Can someone please check the fountain printer? It seems to be 
giving us some sort of error message.

Okay, so at least this person told us that they're getting an error message. Is it really that hard to include the error message so we don't have to waste time answering "Uhh, could you please tell us what the error is?" Oh wait, of course it is!