Leaving out the good parts

[TNT]

Once upon a long time ago, there was a forgettable yet very popular song called, "How Do You Do?" The lyrics went something like this:

"And then we can na na na na
"And then na na na na na na
"Just like we did na na na na na."

Something like that.

At any rate, half my callers remind me of that song...

Me: What were you doing when you had this error?
Caller: I was trying to check my, you know, and then when I clicked on, ummm, I got this message that said, um, you know.
Me: What program are you using?
Caller: Microsoft ummm....
Me: Okay... can you read the error message to me?
Caller: Sure. It says, "Not able to, umm... server um... " Well, basically it says, "You can't umm...."
Me: All right... (long pause while I try to telepathically connect with the customer's computer).
Caller: Looks like this one's a real stumper for you, huh?

[lordlundar]

Caller: Looks like this one's a real stumper for you, huh?

There's a stump involved alright, and it's the person phoning.

[phillippbo]

There's a stump involved alright, and it's the person phoning.

Just have to say it - LOL!

I'm getting tired of talking to people like this. They will read me the entire message that follows "The page cannot be displayed" in Internet Exploder, but will skip all the vital parts in OE:

"It gave me an error. Uhm, it says something about the server... says it can be caused by 'server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity'. I haven't been inactive a long time, is something wrong with your server...?"

Why, oh why, oh why won't people read me the vital parts of the error message?!

[Phone Jockey]

Caller: Looks like this one's a real stumper for you, huh?

Tech: Oh yeah, Einstein, ya really got me stumped on this complicated issue.

[Dips]

I got a lady once who flat out refused to give me the error code. To be fair, she was blind and using a text-to-speech program; I could hear it and it was reading the message too fast to understand.

However, there is a way to make those programs slow down and even make them read things off one letter/number at a time, if you need that. She didn't know how to do it and I didn't know how to do it. But she kept insisting that I help her without knowing the error code and telling me how horrible I was for not being able to "tell [her] how to fix [her] problem."

After a lot of frustrating back and forth where neither of made any headway I finally told her that my GUESS (that's the word I used: guess) was that she needed to run chkdsk, restart her computer and re-install. And, no, I wasn't going to stay on the phone while she did it. If that didn't work, she needed to call the manufacturer of her screen reader, figure out how to slow it down, get the error code and call us back with it.

She was mad, but she didn't call back. My guess must have been right. On the one hand, it's good that the problem is fixed. On the other hand, next time she'll be even MORE convinced that she doesn't need to give us the error code.

Maybe I won't be stuck on phones when that happens.