
Computer Stupidities (2013) - JoachimS
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
======
forinti
Once a user called about a floppy drive that was eating up his floppies.
Support was perplexed, so they sent someone to look into it.

It turns out that the user did not have a floppy drive, but that his machine
had an open drive bay through which he inserted floppies. There was a pile of
them at the bottom of the case.

~~~
monetus
Thanks for this, gave me a really good laugh.

------
mcqueenjordan
These are funny, but I do want to make a meta point that I take extra care to
not make fun of or otherwise belittle anyone who is extremely non-tech-savvy.

I try to apply incredible magnitudes of patience in these cases. Usually these
people are older and may feel left behind, self-conscious, or embarrassed. I
don’t want to add fuel to those anxieties. I just want to help them achieve
their goal.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
At this point anyone who works in a office has had a computer on their desk
for two or three decades. If they decided not to learn how to use it I don't
have much sympathy. Much of these situations are what is called performative
ignorance, where someone pretends to be ignorant in order to get someone else
to work for them.

~~~
close04
> anyone who works in a office has had a computer on their desk for two or
> three decades. If they decided not to learn how to use it [...]

Knowing how to operate equipment and understanding how to troubleshoot it are
very different things. It's exactly why IT support, car mechanics, or
electricians still exist.

Some people think that knowing how to use a computer makes them experts, then
they start spreading that "knowledge", and IT support ends up with all kinds
of seemingly stupid calls where someone is (or took the word of) such an
expert. Other times people just want to be helpful and play back what they
heard from the IT personnel during the last case because that appeared to be
similar for them, even if the issue was radically different.

~~~
danaris
> Knowing how to operate equipment and understanding how to troubleshoot it
> are very different things.

While that's certainly true, there's plenty of stories out there (and I've
experienced a few myself) of people who just refused to use basic common
sense, reading comprehension, or understanding of physics 101 when dealing
with computers.

------
bipson
Hm, IMHO most of the ridiculed under "paranoia" would not be ridiculed anymore
post-Snowden. Government listening on all your Internet activity? Remotely
destroying hardware? I mean, not only are these things possible, as we now
know, they actually happen.

Joke's on us?

~~~
petercooper
The very first item on the paranoia page is ridiculing someone who heard on TV
that loading a random disk into their computer could open their machine to
remotely located hackers. Laughable in 1985, perhaps, but this threat has
existed for real since the mid 90s for almost every computer user(!)

------
chrisweekly
My mother in law (may she RIP) once called for help, saying her computer had
stopped working. Partway through the series of troubleshooting questions, she
started laughing hysterically -- having realized her hand was on a stapler
next to the mouse.

~~~
masklinn
Well at least she was honest and self aware. There are legions of tech support
tales of users just lying their mouths off about having taken troubleshooting
steps they hadn't, techs started making up workaround so users had excuses to
do the thing they'd said they'd done.

"Unplug it and blow on the connector" is a classic, the point is not to blow
on the connector, it's to give the user an excuse to actually check the
connection / fit after they've told you they have already despite there being
99 chances out of a 100 they have not.

~~~
goodcanadian
Unfortunately, I have often had the opposite problem where tech support
"lies"* and claims my internet is fine when it clearly is not, trying to get
me to go through pointless troubleshooting steps. Mysteriously, it starts
working midway through the call.

*I used scare quotes because I strongly suspect the first line tech support don't know it's going on. I suspect someone is frantically fixing things in the background and no one has officially reported any outage.

~~~
close04
> trying to get me to go through pointless troubleshooting steps

There is a double edged sword here. IT support people are taught (or learn
quickly) not to trust the user. In the sea of users who think they know better
there will be occasional user who knows what they're doing but it's hard to
tell them apart. So in comes the script, applied as a matter of procedure.

------
namelosw
I remember one of my far relatives tried to drag document from one computer to
another, by drag and keep pressing the mouse, in the meantime, he disconnected
the mouse to one computer and then connected to another. It really confused
him why this move didn't work at all.

~~~
Splines
Your relative was before their time: [https://www.logitech.com/en-
us/product/options/page/flow-mul...](https://www.logitech.com/en-
us/product/options/page/flow-multi-device-control)

~~~
reeeeee
As far as I know, this does not allow dragging files from one computer to
another one. Logitech is not the first one to do this though, I already
combined my Windows laptop and Debian tower into one triple screen computer 10
years ago, using Synergy[1] and an ethernet cable. There was no noticable
delay, I miss that setup.

[1] [https://symless.com/synergy](https://symless.com/synergy)

~~~
close04
I remember using Synergy to link my Windows desktop and my PowerMac since this
was the only tool I could find to bridge the 2 platforms.

For Windows to Windows I made extensive use of Microsoft Garage's Mouse
without Borders [0].

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=354...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=35460)

------
shultays
Here is a stupidity I did back when I was a kid and just got my first
computer.

I had some pre-installed games on my PC. I noticed shortcuts to games are only
1-2kb while the executable files are in MBs. Since both things have same
icons, same names they must be the same thing right? I deleted the executables
and copied shortcuts to where they were to save some precious space for my PC.
And I didn't even test things before hand, I permanently deleted all my game
exes and then tried starting running a game, which obviously failed.

Thankfully the place where my parents bought our PC reinstalled my games.

~~~
flukus
Here's one from my whole family.

We got an Amiga 500 back in the late 80's, it's all setup with word processing
and spreadsheets working fine, the games were incredibly hard though. Most
games had these dark patches where there were hidden pieces of floor, except
sometimes they'd disappear and you would die, so for these games you had to
memorize exactly where all the floor was. For some games it was mostly fine,
for others it made them almost impossible. I was only 5 or 6 and it was the
only games machine I'd ever played.

Fast forward a few years and the computer is no longer an expensive
investment, or threat to children, or whatever it is that made my parents have
it in their bedroom, so we moved it. As I picked up the monitor I accidentally
pressed a button on the back the toggled the graphics mode and when the
machine turned on I could suddenly see all my games in full color. In
retrospect it affected many other things too.

The only saving grace during that period was that so many games were ports
from the speccy or commodore 64 with a limited color pallet.

------
DoreenMichele
Does it somewhere have the classic about tech support finally learning after
about 45 minutes that the computer wasn't working due to the power being out?
He loses it and says "Put the computer back in the box and take it back to the
store because you're too fucking stupid to use a computer!"

(Of course, the tech support guy was promptly fired.)

~~~
reeeeee
Honestly, if it took the support guy 45 minutes to notice the cable not being
plugged in...

~~~
gambiting
No, it was. There was a power cut to the entire building, but the person
calling thought that somehow their computer should continue working even
though nothing else had power. And they only mentioned it to the support guy
after 45 minutes of trying different things to make the machine boot up.

~~~
magduf
I don't see why the support guy should be fired for this. There should be
limits to the depths of stupidity they should have to deal with. Computers are
complicated instruments, and if someone is _that_ idiotic, maybe they
shouldn't be using a computer. You can't expect everyone to be completely
unflappable no matter how frustrating their job is.

------
sjdegraeve
Ah memories. Twenty years ago I worked a few cubicles away from the guy who
runs this site. He had a handmade Rube Goldberg machine made from cardboard
perched on the edge of his cube wall that accepted coins as payment for candy
he kept in a dish.

~~~
Fnoord
Was it some kind of special or expensive candy? I just give candy to my
colleagues for free.

~~~
EliRivers
They're paying for the thrill of the cardboard contraption's operation! The
candy is just the denoument.

------
dijit
Since people are sharing their stories. I can add some.

I alone used to be “The IT” for a small e-commerce company, but it was young
(very few people over 30).

People can just be absent minded sometimes.

One person contacted me claiming that they couldn’t get new email. After going
to their PC and asking her to show me, she opened her mail client and then
closed a dialog asking for her new password since she has changed it.

Another had “weird mouse behaviour” she had a Mac and couldn’t click on
anything without a context menu popping up. I came over and assumed that the
mouse had its right button stuck, but, no. A stack of papers was resting on
the control key.

------
chicob
A relative once had to send an invoice to several people.

He got he invoice by email, printed it, scanned it, and then attached the
thing in a new email.

The weird part is that he's been using computers for years, even before the
Internet. I can't imagine the trouble he had finding out how to scan, where to
find the file and how to attach it.

Actually he still doesn't understand the difference between email and a
browser.

------
aphextim
I liked this gem:

>Tech Support: "Tech support. May I help you?"

>Customer: "Yes, my microwave isn't communicating with my computer correctly
anymore. I'd like to bring in my microwave and my computer."

Sadly with IoT this may be a true case nowadays.

From -
[http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_misc.shtml](http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_misc.shtml)

------
gryffin
> My coworker (who uses Windows 95) was having trouble downloading a self-
> extracting archive off the net. In an attempt to make it easier to open the
> file with WinZIP, he associated *.EXE with WinZIP.

> Nothing worked after that. Every program he tried to run would load WinZIP
> first. He couldn't even run REGEDIT to delete the association.

Happened to me.. :) One of those Windows 95 days!

------
Fnoord
This is a very old website (still no TLS). I remember reading it first time in
the end of the 90s. Even though the older anecdotes are more difficult to
relate to these days, I'm glad it survived. It made my day (and lightened up
my mood) during periods of depression.

------
mrhappyunhappy
These are hilarious and bring back so many memories of my time in IT. But as
another commenter said, it helps to be extra respectful of people who are not
too tech savvy. I've had many of those examples play out and the people
involved usually felt very stupid and awkward. I always tried to go to great
lengths to reassure them that it has happened more times to more people than
they suspect, even if it weren't true, just so they didn't feel shitty and
stupid. I'd also try to tell them about the stupid things I'd done to lighten
the situation which always seemed to help.

------
kazinator
Bottom of:
[http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_amnesia.shtml](http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_amnesia.shtml)

That just has to be made up.

------
rbanffy
I feel genuinely bad for the people caught in this transition.

~~~
meuk
Yup. You're 80. You spend your money on a modem, because some marketing guy
tells you that's all you need to send e-mails. Then there's this thing in your
room, you still have no idea how to send an e-mail, so you call tech support.
Then suddenly _you_ are the idiot, and get ridiculed.

Reminds me a lot of how narrow-minded a lot of people are in tech. Everyone
who knows a bit more than you is a wizard and everyone who knows a bit less is
a moron.

------
cosmodisk
Had this one multiple times at my job: Do you know your email password?I'll
need you to enter it when I'll finish setting this one up..Blank face...So
what's the password?Emmm...Emmm..I didn't know my email had a password,I just
turn on my PC and it's there...Blank face.. There's no money on this planet
that could force me to do IT support,as full time job.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Doesn't sound stupid to me. Someone forgot their password since it is stored
in the email client. They once went through the steps of setting up the email
client or email account with a password and had the right intuition that the
whole procedure is reasonably save. The email client is on autostart and looks
different to how they read email on their phones. If they follow your
instructions to recover the password, then that's fine.

This seems to reside in a different category than some of the other stories
here in this thread. I'm trying to make this distinction since, if we're
honest, the UIs that we're all building are not always as good as they could
be for the common user.

Edit: Reading through some of the stories on that website I see real user
issues described as stupidity:

Under "Email Magic": I actually had this emailed to me once: "Help! I can't
find your email address. What is it?"

Modern email clients and web interfaces hide known email addresses and just
show the name. Good to know that I typed the address correctly, but actually
finding out the actual address may not be intuitive.

~~~
cosmodisk
It wasn't the case the user forgot the password - that's normal, instead she
was genuinely surprised she had one at all. As for UIs, I have to agree, a lot
of the are so ridiculous..For instance JIRA, especially the settings
section...

------
nencrystation
Classic website. The thing that gets me is that at this point, in 2019, there
are so many users who have been using windows every day for 25 years, and have
forgotten that eg Start -> All Programs exists. I truly don't understand how
you can use a computer for that long and not learn basics like that.

~~~
close04
I haven't used it this way in years. I click Start or Win key and start
typing. And this basically works on any OS and the "Start equivalent" (like
Spotlight on MacOS, or Dash on Ubuntu). It's far more efficient that visually
scanning a list that can potentially have dozens of shortcuts in folders and
subfolders.

------
tomc1985
Holy crap -- Rinkworks is still up and around. I had a classmate who was
obsessed with that site

------
g051051
Ah Rinkworks...so sad it doesn't update. Like crank.net...

~~~
ChickeNES
Still looks like it did 20 years ago when I first stumbled across it.

~~~
grawprog
I thought this looked really familiar. I've definitely seen this sometime
years and years ago.

------
dusted
Blast from the past ^_^ I wonder if there are any new stories coming out, or
if things have been prepackaged so well now that nobody is able to break them?

------
phtrivier
I know those stories are supposed to be midly amusing, but they always put me
into a mild state of depression.

First, most of them are probably urban legends, and I'm not too keen on them.
(That's a slippery slope argument, so feel free to dismiss it, but I don't
know how far 'that grandma overthere who sued to put her cat in the microwave'
is from 'that pizzeria basement where people run sex rings')

Second, the overal tone of stories is "IT people who know about computer
stuff" vs "clueless non-IT people who don't know about computer stuff".

Now, there is a huge source of humor and irony in people who _claim_ to be
expert at something, when in reality they don't have a clue.

And sometimes, the misinterpretation of computer jargon by non-IT experts can
be rather poetic. ("It said I would have 98 windows. Where are the windows ?")

But I claim, that, most of the times, in those stories, the joke should be on
_us_ (IT-people), not on _them_.

Especially since those stories are from the mid-90s to early 2000s the non-IT
people were not "clueless". They were _never taught_ how IT "works".

And let's face it, IT does _not_ work.

They probably had references to how things are supposed to _work_. 60s
household technology. Toasters. Light bulbs. Vaccuum cleaners. Fridge. TV
sets. Washing machines. Even cars.

Those things "worked". The vendor would show you the thing, you would turn
around it for a while, get how it works, and go on with your life. And you
would be able to explain it to you kid, and your neighboor.

And yeah, you might have no idea how your car engine worked in the details.
(Although, you probably did. Your military instructors explained it to you,
because your car and the jeep with which your father freed Europe worked the
same.)

But you knew rather intuitively that if it started making weird noises, you
would bring it to a technician who would be able to do something.

And car do not break _that_ often unless you do stupid things like running
into a tree or mixing up gas, right ?

Introduce 90s computers.

You would pay good money to buy it. No one would explain it to you (because
vendors were probably as clueless as you were.)

You would not be trained how to use it - cause it would change in 2 years
anyway.

You would be _required_ to know how to use it, or you would start to fear
loosing your job.

(Remember when we 'high-salary experts' had 'javascript fatigue' ? Don't you
think everyone had some sort of 'computer-nonsense fatigue' at some point ?)

You don't have the words to talk about the things. You have no mental model
about the "normal behavior". Or what made a machine "better" than another. Or
what made a machine "compatible" with another.

And, let's not forget one tiny little details: THOSE THINGS BARELY WORKED AT
ALL !!!!

The number of hilarious bugs, stupid behavior, counter-intuitive UX, border-
line ripoff software should be humbling to us.

Anyone read "The insane are running the asylum" as a programmer and wanted to
cry ?

Anyone had to explain to their father that "yeah, now that I have installed
Windows 95, if you want to switch the computer off, you need to click on
'Start' first..." ?

So, yes, confused people were calling customer _support_ to try and get
_support_ , because they had other things to do with their life, and for some
reason, the market had decided they had to do it through one of those computer
thingies that are slow, expensive, buggy and talk to me like they don't know
the meaning of _words_.

In an ideal world, we would have made computers simpler. More compatible. More
standards. Maybe a bit less powerful, but basically more _real-people_
friendly.

The market had no incentive for that.

But now, at least, we have trained people no to bother calling IT support
anyway - because IT-support people are expensive, and it's better to have
clueless minions on _that_ side of the phone to, only paid to make user waste
enough time to accept that the insane behavior of the computer is actually
normal, and that it's really their fault.

And, since software eats the world, people have now graciously stopped
expecting _anything_ to work at all.

To paraphrase Stroustrup:

"If only my computer was as simple as a my car", one wished ! "If only using
my computer was as easy as using my phone", one prayed ! "If only software was
as straightforward as laundry", one lamented !

"Careful what you wish for", said the programmer.

"Your car is now a computer with wheels, that will show your speed to be `NaN
mph`." "Your phone is now a pocket computer, that will let you make lousy
phone calls if you're lucky, between software updates." "And your washing
machine is now a computer, so now you won't know with program to use - but
that's okay, you don't know at which temperature you're supposed to wash that
shirt anyway. Go ask your mom."

We taught them that.

So yeah us ! Let's have some fun mocking the peons!!

Or maybe re-read 'Fondation' on our e-reader - provided the last DRM software
update did not break it, of course.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Well said.

------
raxxorrax
> Microsoft Internet Exploiter

I would file that under technically correct.

Cool site. Reminds me of the daily wtf. Haven't visited that for quite a
while.

------
bwldrbst
Oh no! This is almost as bad a time sink as tvtropes! I haven't seen it in
years and it is a shame it no longer gets updated.

~~~
userbinator
According to the site, last update was in 2013, which I'd still consider
"relatively recent" in terms of computers being generally available (and well
on their way to being locked-down appliances, but I digress...) --- although
the bulk of the content there looks to be from the early to mid 90s.

------
chrisweekly
Father in law (verbatim quote, deadpan):

"I went on the internet, and I downloaded so fast I blew out my printer."

~~~
ASalazarMX
Oh, so that's why some surge suppressors have a phone jack!

------
nevster
Book-a-Minute is the best
[http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/](http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/)

~~~
bostik
Even in that space, one stands out from the rest.

ANGST!

------
egdod
A lot of these seem fake.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I'm sure a lot of them are fake. Stories told by tech nerds huddled around the
glow of a CRT to convince themselves that they're better than everyone else
because they know some computer stuff.

------
the_70x
computer does not turn on even connected: UPS connected to itself

------
kstenerud
Mostly what I'm seeing here is tech support people who either don't explain
things well, or are severely lacking in empathy.

Example:

\--------------------------

I had a customer with a problem getting his mouse to work. So I tried asking
him about his COM port settings and so forth.

Tech Support: "Ok, do you have a internal modem?"

Customer: "I don't know."

Tech Support: "Um...do you have a modem at all?"

Customer: "I call the Internet sometimes."

Tech Support: "Do you plug a phone line directly into the back of the
computer?"

Customer: "Yes."

Tech Support: "Ok. And is this a serial mouse that isn't working?"

I explained to him what a serial mouse was, and he agreed that his mouse was a
serial mouse.

Tech Support: "Ok, do you know what COM port your mouse uses?"

Customer: "No."

Tech Support: "Ok, well do you know what COM port your modem uses?"

Customer: "No."

Tech Support: "Uh, do you have any other serial devices that plug into the
machine, like a graphics pad, external modem, etc?"

Customer: "I don't know."

Tech Support: "Uh. Well, I'm gonna have to guess here, but your mouse should
be on COM 1, and your modem is probably set for COM 2."

Customer: "What do you mean guess? I told you everything you need to know! Now
quit messing around and just tell me what I need to do to fix it!"

\--------------------------

Anyone who concludes from this exchange that the customer is an idiot should
NEVER do tech support.

It shouldn't take more than a couple of questions to gauge the customer's
technical knowledge, and then adjust your questioning to match. For example:

Tech Support: OK, first we need to find out what kind of mouse you have.
Follow the cable going from the mouse and take note of where it's plugged into
the back of your computer.

Customer: OK.

Tech Support: Alright, now, you need to remember where it's plugged in because
you have to plug it back in the same way, and be careful not to plug it in
upside down because it won't fit that way. Now I want you to unplug it, look
at the socket it was plugged into on the back of the computer, tell me whether
the socket is rectangular or circular, then plug the mouse back in the same
way you found it.

Customer: OK... It's rectangular

And now you know it's a serial mouse. Now you can ask things like "Do you have
a phone line connected to your computer? or is it connected to a box that's
connected to your computer?", etc, then lead them through looking at Trumpet
Winsock configuration and COM port config and even IRQs if necessary.

How you ask your questions makes a BIG difference to how helpful the responses
are likely to be. Good tech support people ask good questions. It's a skill
that can and must be practiced.

~~~
magduf
>How you ask your questions makes a BIG difference to how helpful the
responses are likely to be. Good tech support people ask good questions. It's
a skill that can and must be practiced.

You're asking for people who are both good with computers, and good at talking
to people who are clueless with computers, and very patient and empathetic on
top of that. And finally, you want to pay them peanuts for this job.

Exactly how many people do you think you're going to find who are actually
good at this, and want the job?

------
trilila
The design of this website brings so many memories. Where did the old internet
go?!

~~~
h2odragon
In this case, its right there where it's been forever. How many generations of
"front end stack" have happened while this site has existed? Is there any real
feature any of those could have offered to enhance it?

~~~
mieseratte
Server side rendering of course! I bet those amateurs are just caching that
page on the file system like cavemen!

~~~
dusted
The HTML files are on the filesystem, the rendering is what turns that HTML
into graphics and letters on your screen, and it happens on your computer,
like god intended! ^_^

~~~
mieseratte
> the rendering is what turns that HTML into graphics and letters on your
> screen

I use a series of -1-days in conjunction with websockets to deliver the latest
hemmorhaging-edge experience, streaming the rendered byte stream straight to
your monitor.

