I recently started working with an IT service business. We usually serviced business that had anywhere from 5-30 employees. One of these businesses really seemed to have a large collection of ignorant users, I mean, REALLY ignorant users. Because they required a lot of patience walking them through very basic tasks, I often was given the joy of being the guy who would be sent on-site to service the latest complaint. One event specificallys stands out.

We received an email informing us that Joe could not receive email in his Outlook. I was just about to head over when I also learned that Jake down the hall was having the same problem. Now email at this business was a mess. People were using personal accounts for business purposes and that resulted in us trying to consolidate multiple accounts for one person. I showed up at Joe’s workstation and sure enough, he was getting errors whenever Outlook tried to update itself. I found that his PST file was corrupt, preventing Outlook from pulling or sending more email. Run ScanPST. Great! Job well done, email is now working. As I was working, Jake walked by several times to see what I was doing.

“Yea, I’m having the same problem. I can’t send email either”, he kept saying as he watched over my shoulder.

I promptly headed over to Jake’s computer, confident that this was be an easy fix. I soon as I started typing in his password to log in, I noticed something odd. The keyboard would work intermittently. Sometimes it would work fine, then it was delayed, and then it stopped working altogether. I quickly swapped it out for another keyboard and logged in with no difficulty. Now, time for the real problem.

His Outlook worked without a single problem. I checked and rechecked. No problem.

“Jake,” I said. “Well, your email seems to be working fine. But did you notice that your keyboard barely works?”

Jake looks at me sceptically. “Yea. Obviously. I TOLD you that I couldn’t send any email.”

Yeah, forget about EVERYTHING ELSE THAT YOU CAN’T DO!!!

– Jeez.  This is kinda like saying “That dead guy has really low blood pressure!”  I hate it when people try to diagnose their own problems and clearly have no idea what the hell they are talking about – Rob

[Picture Source: ian.schofield (CC)]