A Field Service Engineer's Memoirs ---------------------------------- When I worked for a company that had a contract with 3M, 3M had asked me to write them a memo describing why we were having problems with diskette failures. I said in the memo that the disks were failing due to head crashes. "If the customers would just clean their heads periodically, we wouldn't have these problems," I said in the memo. One customer responded with, "What kind of shampoo do you recommend?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ An end-user hotline received a call about a bad software disk. They asked the customer to make a copy of the disk and mail it in to the hotline. A few days later, they received a letter with a mimeographed copy of the disk. Since it was a double-sided disk, both sides of the disk had been xeroxed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Computer Operator says as she is lifting a large disk pack from the drive: "Gee, how much does one of these weigh?" Me: "It depends on how much data is on the disk...." The operator believed it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a similar experience while working as a student operator at Michigan Tech. One particularly trying afternoon, the computer was merrily crashing for a number of reasons. After about four such spectacles, we broadcast that the computer would be down for the remainder of the afternoon. There was a resigned groan from the users and they began to file out of the Center, except for one young woman who wandered up to the counter and queried: "What's wrong with the computer?" Too tired and irritated to give her a straight answer, I looked her straight in the eye and replied: "Broken muffler belt." A look of deep concern wafted into her expression as she asked: "Oh, that's bad. Can you call Midas?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overheard in a student computer lab: Client (raising hand and waving frantically): "The computer says 'Enter your name and press RETURN.' What do I do??" Lab Assistant: "Enter your name and press RETURN." Client (as if a revelation has struck): "Oh!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another friend of mine in a similar situation reports having a student in the lab one day, who had to abort out of the SET PASSWORD sequence because he couldn't think of a six-letter word. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Courtesy of Brian McCrae)