Overheard in a computer shop: Customer: “I’d like a mouse mat, please.” Salesperson: “Certainly sir, we’ve got a large variety.” Customer: “But will they be compatible with my computer?”

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I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax the document back to the sender when I was finished with it, because he needed to keep it.

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Customer in computer shop: “Can you copy the Internet onto this disk for me?”

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Customer: “So that’ll get me connected to the Internet, right?” Tech Support: “Yeah.” Customer: “And that’s the latest version of the Internet, right?” Tech Support: “Uhh…uh…uh…yeah.”

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Customer: “My computer crashed!” Tech Support: “It crashed?” Customer: “Yeah, it won’t let me play my game.” Tech Support: “All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot.” Customer: “No, it didn’t crash-it crashed.” Tech Support: “Huh?” Customer: “I crashed my game. That’s what I said before. I crashed my spaceship and now it doesn’t work.” Tech Support: “Click on ‘File,’ then ‘New Game.'” Customer: [pause] “Wow! How’d you learn how to do that?”

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I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn’t solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new ideas. After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly, “Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?”

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A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer’s tech support number, complaining about the error message: “Can’t find the printer.” On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front of the screen, but the computer still couldn’t find it.

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This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message Every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his username and password in capital letters. Tech Support: “Ok, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.” Customer: “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.”

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Email from a friend: “CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?”