The Faulty Laptop Screen

One morning we had a rather upset gentleman come in to our office, nursing his laptop. He had been in to several other departments along the way, complaining loudly to anyone that would listen to his problem, searching for someone to help him. They in turn had redirected him to us. So kind of them...

"My laptop's broken, my laptop's broken. Please you have to do something." He pleads as he rushes in.

"What's the problem?" My colleague asked, taking pity on the poor man, who was obviously distressed.

"The Screen. I think it's broken." He says.

My colleague takes the laptop from the man, who was cradling it like a new born baby, and sets it down on to the work bench.

"You see, you can hardly see what's on the screen. I don't know what I'm going to do."

My colleague examined the laptop screen and sure enough the screen was rather dim. He pressed a couple of keys and the screen brightend up.

The man behind him watching nearly fainted in relief.

"Oh thank you so much" he said extremely grateful. "How did you fix it?"

My colleague answered trying not to smile "I turned the screen contrast up to maximum."

I don't think the man realised just how simple a job that was, but he walked away happy. For about 10 minutes anyway. The amount of time it took to get back to his desk.

The phone rings... You guessed it. The man got back to his office and all of a sudden he is having the same problem. I say the same problem...

Rather than try to explain over the phone my colleague went straight down to take a look. This time the screen again was very hard to see and the contrast was still up at maximum.

My colleague then proceeded to close the blind hanging on the window next to where the man was sitting, where the sun was shining through and reflecting on to the screen, restricting the view of the screen.

Some faults can be so complicated to fix. But the users are far too simple.