Stupid Questions at the Help Desk

[UPDATE: More stories here, plus, Am I too PC or not PC enough?] We’ve all heard the tale of the clueless computer user who is told by the Help Desk to press any key and responds by asking, “Which one is the ‘any’ key?” And then there’s the newbie who thinks the disk-tray on his PC is a cup-holder. I’ve always supposed that these chestnuts and others like them were apocryphal stories, meant to make us feel better about our own sometimes-tenuous grasp of technology. But what if these users are real? SysAid Technologies, an Israeli IT service management provider, asked IT managers around the world for true and bizarre service requests. The company distributed a list of memorable responses, some of which appear below. Did these anecdotes really happen? The ones with names attached carry more weight with me than the anonymous entries, but you can decide for yourself. It may be that the high percentage of incidents involving women indicates the persistence of the old, misogynistic IT culture. Got a story of your own? Send it along, and we can create our own list.