I was working for a technology giant that shall remain nameless, but their black ties should give you a hint.
One day an older woman decided to call in with an odd problem, demanding to speak to the associate that sold her the computer. “It’s f#$@ing broken” she kept repeating. I finally managed to calm her down a bit, enough to at least explain to me what was going on.
These were her exact words:
“I don’t know what is wrong with it, okay? I had my techie friend come over and look at it and he doesn’t know either. It’s the mouse. It has a virus or something. When I want to move up, I have to go down. When I want to go left, I have to go right. It’s just broken, and YOU PEOPLE need to come out and fix it.”
After going through some more complicated reasoning in my head, I decided to go with the simplest solution and work from there. “Ma’am, which end of the mouse is the cord coming out of?”. “THE BOTTOM!” she replied. I calmly asked her to try turning the mouse around so the cord was coming out of the top.
She quickly apologized and hung up.
Seems contrived – However, I’ve actually seen this myself – Rob
[Picture Source: Ran Yaniv Hartstein (CC)]