[HUMOR] another tech support story

Mark Q. Maxham (max@atg.apple.com)
Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:30:22 -0700

Note that you should not feel marginalized by the fact that most of the mail I send to you is bulk humor mailings. I care. I really do. ;-)

max

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Sent to me by my fellow Rice alum, B. K. Oxley (binkley)
<binkley@gateway.novasoft.com>
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Now, for a completely true story--because *I* was the tech support
person involved...

I'm doing tech support for a PC manufacturer (Ergo Computing, maker of
"The Brick"--yes, a real name), and a gentleman calls late into the
afternoon. It seems that he wants to save a file to a diskette, but
cannot figure out how. After going through a very long stretch, the
truth comes out: the real problem is that he cannot get his 5-1/4"
inch floppy diskette into the Brick's 3-1/2" diskette drive. No
problem--I ask him to get a proper size diskette, and call me back,
and we'll fix it all up.

A little before I'm due to go home (I worked until 8 EST on the phones
then), he calls back. He's got a floppy, and we're all set. He puts
it in, and we start to try and save files to it. No go. I'm
stumped. I talk it through with him, and we try a bunch of stuff.
Even DOS won't recognize the diskette when I try simple stuff like
formatting the diskette, etc.

Ok, so I'm about to have him send the machine back to us (so we can
replace a defective disk drive--I hope), and he explains to me how he
obtained a 3-1/2" diskette...

He used scissors to cut the 5-1/4" diskette down to size. I'm not
making this up. End of tech support issue. I go home with tears of
laughter in my eyes (nearly have an accident).

--binkley

Paula K. Wirth \ Working my real job @
Basking in ceaseless childhood @ \ University of Texas Medical School
4812 Hazard Apt.F, Houston,TX 77098\ Medical Illustration,Graphics,Photography
713.942.2380 (h) 713.603.7500 (p) \ 713.792.5497 (w), 713.794.1349 (f)
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