Idiot in Training

Through the years we have had many trainees come to work with us. Unfortunately the first few we had were as computer literate as the rest of our users. They were not there for IT Support experience, but for work experience. Not a good combination in an environment such as ours.

One day a few years back, a fault comes in from an office that has a computer malfunctioning; nothing was appearing on the screen. This was a legitimate fault that after troubleshooting was pinned down to being a faulty graphics card. The computer was temporarily put out of commission and a replacement graphics card was ordered.

Upside down

"My email isn't working; please can you take a look." I am asked as I walk down the corridor. So I take a detour in to one of the Managers’ offices and stare in disbelief.

The computer was seated on the desk but the monitor on top of it (an old style CRT) was upside down with the swivel base pointing up at the ceiling. The screen surrounded by post-its and bits of paper with messages and phone numbers on.

"It just doesn’t seem to send anything" the Manager complains.

"Urrm, why is your screen upside down on top of your computer?" I asked (quite reasonably I thought) ignoring the email fault temporarily.

"It's not. Just the monitor is." He says "the screen moved upside down about three months ago, so I turned the monitor over. Must be a fault with the video card."

Health and Safety - Course 101

So I am sitting at my desk one day when the door opens and woman sheepishly creeps in to the room carrying an open laptop.

She stops and grins at me for about a minute then finally confesses that her "friend" had asked her come and see us because she (her friend) had spilt coffee all over her (the friend's) laptop. I asked who her friend was and if it was an accident, why she didn't bring it down herself if.

Answer: She was too scared we would tell her off.

The lady left and I took a look at the bedraggled, Nescafe flavoured laptop and I noticed that the screen was blank but the laptop was switched on and running.