My first day working at my new job, my boss didn’t have a desk for me yet. She took me into an office that was not in use, as the individual was gone for the holidays. A hurricane had gone through our city the weekend before, so all of the computers in the building had been unplugged and laid up in case of flooding.
When we went into the office, my boss pushed the power button on the desktop. Nothing happened. Minutes pass with her repeatedly pressing power and looking for signs of life in the computer. Finally she looks at the floor and sees the surge protector. She flips the switch and again tried the power button. Still nothing. After a few more minutes of consternation, she realizes the surge protector isn’t plugged in. She grabs the cord, finds the plug, and plugs it in… to the surge protector.I’m quietly standing behind my boss, trying not to laugh out loud when I see her do this. She then continues to try in vain to turn on the computer by pushing power and flipping the surge protector switch.
Finally, she follows the surge protector cord around to where it is plugged into itself, and says “That’s odd! Why would someone have plugged the surge protector into itself?”. She was completely serious- and genuinely baffled! I was dying trying to not laugh at her. Finally she got the computer started and I was able to get my work done.
By: Lindsay
[Picture Source: grggrssmr (CC)]
You’re the fail for just standing around like a useless pile of trash while your moronic, but at least well-intentioned, boss tries to make you feel comfortable at her expense. If you needed your boss to help you to be “able to get [your] work done” you were a miserably lazy and cowardly waste of breath to begin with. You only come off as sycophantic, deceitful and gossipy. I would hate to work with someone like you. If this article is any representation of your will, then I doubt anyone else would be truly impressed with you.
Surely, if you saw someone trying to fix something, and failing badlty you would try to let them figure things out on their own, rather than seem to be insulting said persons intelligence
My boss is actually a family member that was giving me some part time work after my college grad… And I wasn’t being lazy so much as since I was only a part time employee, I had no login or network access, so she had to get me on the computer. And I really didn’t feel like embarrassing her by calling her out on it. That, and it was just amusing to watch 🙂
Good story Lindsay! We all have moment like this (on both sides).
That was a bit harsh, no? We are here to have fun – being in IT or computer support is not easy, so having a laugh here is OK.
wow you fail… somone has their panties all in a bunch lol
I have seen people do that sort of thing and also call me to help them after having done such a thing. I don’t even bother telling them what they have done because well I don’t want to make them feel as miserably stupid person that they are.
When I first saw the title I was expecting it to be a person who didn’t know where the power button was for the computer itself I have seen that happen also.
A few years back I work in a Driver Fulfillment team for a PC Manufacturer as a Floater (assisting other agents and taking escalation calls) Well one evening there was a very common cold dump from a call centre in India from a customer that wanted to speak to a supervisor. After the call was transferred to my desk, the first words out his mouth were “Are you an American?” to which I answered “No, I am thankful to be Canadian” in which he responds with, “Well close enough, that is only because we had never declared war on you and taken over your country, but you are like a poor second cousin.” I could already tell that within the first minute of this conversation it is not going to go well. In our conversation, he had wanted a new PC shipped to him overnight, free of charge because his Windows 98 machine refuses to turn on, to which I explained “If there is an issue with your PC, we need to send you to tech support, as my department only sells Driver CDs and Recovery CDs, we offer no tech support here” An answer he was not happy with, but during his rant he mentioned that if the lights were on, he could tell you exactly what he did before this problem began, it turns out that this *wonderful gentleman* bought himself a new powerbar. Now informing him that our department does no troubleshooting, I wanted to see where the problem might be before I sent him back to tech support. I ask him if the monitor, tower and any other electrical devices have been plugged into the new bar, to which the answer was Yes. I proceeded to ask if the power switch on the bar is in the On position, once again the answer was Yes. Now following logic (or at the time I thought would be logical) I asked him if the powerbar was plugged into wall outlet. Once again he let a big sigh and started to go under the desk once again, and swearing the entire time goes “Of course it is plugged into the wa…….F*ck You” and hangs up. After a couple of minutes went by, I called him back to confirm if it was OK to close the case that was created for his original call, to which I asked him if he had an internet connection as well and if he did, he should do a search on the War of 1812, to which we Canadians, the poorer second cousins as he put it, kicked the Americans out of our country and took the fight right to them. Just goes to show you that a computer can always be fixed, but stupid is forever 🙂