I was doing Excel support at Microsoft shortly after Win95 came out. Someone called and needed some help on Excel. He told me he had left the computer for a few minutes, and when he came back, the “devil” had “possessed” his computer. He told me it was bubbling all over the place, and the devil was in his monitor. I told him to move the mouse. The devil left. It was the screen saver.
I got a call from someone in our office.
Friend: “My computer’s dead.”
Me: “Ok, can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”
Friend: “The screen’s black. I got some coffee, came back, and the screen was black.”
It was a short walk to her desk, so off I go. Looking at the monitor, I saw that it was on with no flashing red lights, so I knew it was connected to the computer. Instinctively, my hand went to the mouse, and snap. The screen came back with all her work.
Friend: “WHAT DID YOU DO!?”
Me: “I moved your mouse. It was your screen saver.”
Friend: “Thanks! You’re a lifesaver!”
About two years ago, I was asked to run a virus scan on one company’s network of computers. I did and I found a simple harmless virus on each computer in the network. After I reported that to the company’s officials, they gasped (literally), then thanked me, then asked me to leave despite my offers to remove the virus with the anti-virus program. The next day, I found out that they formatted every single hard drive of every computer, backing up only the most important data.
I used to work at the IT Support Desk for a university. A librarian at one of our libraries was surfing the web one day and came across a site that said it was best viewed using the Internet Explorer browser. So she called me and said she needed a “browser” to view this site, and could we install a browser onto her system?
I told her that if she was viewing the site already, she was already using a browser, but, unsatisfied with that answer, she went over my head to the Directory of Libraries and said that we were being uncooperative about providing her with a browser.