From: mancuso@pilot.njin.net (Tina Mancuso)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.college
Subject: Computer centers, leaving oneself logged in
Keywords: heh
Date: 7 Oct 92 02:58:15 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


The stories from people who have dealt with and worked in computer
centers are really amusing.  Here are a few of my own:

- Just tonight, a student complained that the computer wouldn't accept
her disk.  I calmly walked over, took out the disk, turned it over,
and placed it in the drive.

- One co-worker once got a phone call from a person who complained
that she was picking up a local radio station through her voice-mail.

- Many people have called saying that their computers were "stuck" on
a screen and they didn't know whaat to do.  Upon further questioning,
the person would say, "It says, 'Press any key to continue.'"  So, I
tell them to press a key.  They do, and the program proceeds normally.

- Excerpt from a conversation I once had with a customer on the phone:

Me: Academic Computer Center.
Caller: I'm using the Technology Handbook to figure out how to send 
        an e-mail message, but I have a question about it.
Me (happy that the person is attempting to RTFM before bothering me): 
    Uh-huh...
Caller: It says to type the text in boldface...
Me: Yeah...
Caller: How do I get it into boldface on my screen?

It took all my effort to explain it to him without laughing -- I 
almost told him to press F6 first, like in WordPerfect.


My standard answer to people who ask me how to do something I don't
know how to do offhand is: "Can you hold on a second?  I have to look
it up in the manual..."  I don't know how many actually get the hint,
but I hope some of them realize that they could have found out the
same info from reading the manual themselves.  We are not allowed to
be directly rude to customers, whether they are students or faculty,
unless they are directly rude to us...and even then, we are supposed
to send them to our boss if he's around.  It's frustrating, especially
when we get one of the types who, if you touch their keyboard, will
not let you leave -- effectively chaining you to it for life.  In
those cases we can politely say that we will tell them how to do
whatever it is, but we will NOT: 1) sit down and give them a tutorial,
or 2) do their work for them.

Did anyone else ever have a customer try to get you to tell them how
to do something illegal?  Tonight I got a call from a student whose
voice I recognized, who wanted to install PrintMaster on his hard
drive.  Now, we don't support PrintMaster, but I explained that he
should look for an INSTALL program, and if there was none, he'd have
to copy the files onto his hard drive.  That was when he said he'd
basically pirated the program from his workplace; right after that he
asked if he could bring his (portable) computer down so we could
install the software for him.  Of course, my answer was that since
software pirating was illegal, we couldn't and wouldn't help him in
it.  Then he changed his story and said he'd bought it, but I
basically said, "Yeah, right" and told him that he'd have to figure it
out for himself, once more warning him about software pirating.

And finally, before I end this entirely-too-long post...this is to the
person who thought that checking the direction of the watermark on
bond paper was "weird"...believe it or not, some employers DO look for
that!  I run the laser printing service for my school's computer
center, and once when I was printing my boss came out of his office 
and asked me, "Is the watermark on that paper [in the printer's tray] 
going the right way?"  I gave him a funny look and thought he was
picking on me again (he seems to enjoy it, as he says I react so well
to it :), but he told me that there are employers who notice things 
like that.  So ever since then, I always make sure the watermark is 
going the same way as the print -- it's not difficult to check, and 
I'd much rather do it than risk dealing with the anal employer who 
notices it (or losing a prospective job because of it).  And I
certainly wouldn't want to give a less-than-perfect resume to a
customer.

--Tina
--
	  Tina Mancuso, Student Manager, Academic Computer Center
		      Drew University, Madison, NJ
     tmancuso@drunivac.drew.edu		mancuso@pilot.njin.net
"What you think of yourself is more important than what others think of you."