I once had to debug a broken button on one of our internal systems, user helpfully sent a screenshot of the page in question so I'd know which button she meant.

I checked, and sure enough someone had broken it a few days earlier with a minor update. Took me maybe 90 seconds to apply the fix and deploy it, asked the user to try it now... still not working.

I asked her to close and restart her browser and try again, still not working. I dragged myself out of my chair and crossed the building to where she was seated to watch the continuing issue in person, she demonstrated clicking the button and noted that nothing was continuing to happen.

I pointed out that she was clicking on the screenshot she'd taken earlier and the actual button was behind it. Ticket resolved.

I pointed out that she was clicking on the screenshot she'd taken earlier and the actual button was behind it. Ticket resolved.

Fair enough -- but I'll be the first to admit that I've caught myself clicking on some application's "close window" X in the upper-right corner ... only to realize belatedly that it was on the screenshot I'd taken and forwarded earlier. Face palm!

I've found myself trying to resize a window someone was sharing on Teams...

And every time I see a Kerbal Space Program screenshot, I have to resist the urge to rotate the camera.

I think we've pretty much all done that. or similar. Easy mistake to make.

I could easily see myself doing that.

-> I think I've got it on VHS somewhere

I first ran across this particular problem and fixed it in about 3rd grade. The teacher hadn't plugged in the tape deck that provided the voice-over for the filmstrip. The following month, same teacher, same thing, but this time with a slide show & tape deck. I've run across similar pretty much every year ever since.

Remember, DearOldTelly imitates life, not vice-versa.

If that's obviously English, but not meaningful to you, ask a grandparent.

I guess, it's a law of modern life: comedy and satire, after a certain finite time, gets overtaken by reality.

It does......but.........I had a custard who insisted on a visit to fix his new, powerless, desktop. I switched it on at the mains.

With the same mains switches he insisted be turned off each night. He forgot computers need power.

That's probably my fault for talking about magic smoke and pixies ;)

Couple of students pitch up at the door of our office complaining that one of the computers wasn't working in a lab. Of course, it would be the one furthest from our office... Trudge along, sure enough, pressing the power button doesn't do anything. Wander round the back, notice the plug not quite fully in, so give it a whack to push it all the way in, reach round and press the power button... voila! working PC. Gave the pair of them a look and wandered off without saying anything...

* "Regomized" is a made-up portmanteau of "The Register" and "anonymized" to indicate we're not using the real names of folks who contribute stories to On-Call. Mentioning that after a reader last week alerted us to a typo.

Well the Z in Regomised is still there...

... ElReg invented the word, so ElReg gets to tell the rest of us how it is spelled.

And how it is pronounced, for that matter.

>>And how it is pronounced, for that matter.

Err no. I refer the hononourable person to the GIF pronunciation controversy.

/coat becausae no popcorn icon.

Indeed. Although we have a fair number of compadres from across the Pond who read and post here El Reg is still (AFAIK) a British English website.

If you're setting up a desk for someone, I'd say yes, power needs to be on and all cables need to be connected; it does seem like some setup was missed.

Not that being absolutely baffled by the idea of a connected power cable is forgivable, high powered lawyer or no.

This was clearly an unpowered lawyer.

And yes, that is also a reference to his (lack of) brain power.

You gotta remember these lawyers are usually doing a burnout% speedrun, so a bit of a "I don't have time for this crap" attitude is understandable.

But i agree, he didn't need to be this much of a dick about it... what's the harm in asking nicely?

Probably right, but people who don't have the skills to go from the plug to the device shouldn't be let loose in polite society

I don't know. I've seen people immediately set to yanking things about on a new desk, I wouldn't put it past him to be the one to pull the cord loose.

And mainly this is about the guy being a complete and utter twat when asked nicely to complete a very simple task.

Yes and no.

A Good number of the people I worked with, if they arrived at a new set up and seen it's not plugged in yet would assume that the experts haven't performed some important bit of magic. What they wouldn't do is just plug it in until told to.

I'm sure I've recounted these before but here goes:

Customer demanding an on-site visit "immediately" after being advised to power down and restart the system. It was pointed out that "immediately" would be at least 40 minutes to get on site. I did have to go out eventually but at least they'd tried the quick fix.

Insurance consultant's secretary who's computer (PS2/50) was completely dead. We went through the usual including specifically asking her to unplug the power lead from the computer and plug it back in firmly as they weren't the greatest power sockets. She claimed she'd done all of that and demanded an engineer, so we warned her that if it was a power lead issue the call would be chargeable; needless to say her boss immediately complained when he got the invoice for the engineer call out for, "Pushed cable into socket!" We pointed out they'd been warned and if he wanted to argue it would have to be with IBM not us (we were contracted first line support only).

After working for Lawyers and their equally insane secretaries there are way too many to count.

I always love the "something weird is happening my computer is broken" - "can you check you have nothing resting on your keyboard" deny anything is on the keyboard.

Repeat the question two more times until "oh I found there is something resting on my keyboard" - click

the always great my computer is not powering on, go up and see they've kicked the lead out of the power brick.

This one is not Lawyers, but the always impressive "my webcam intermittently doesn't work."

"Have you checked the cover over the webcam"

"My webcam has no cover"

*cool voiceover* In fact there was a cover and it was over the webcam

We had a high-profile customer making a transition from their own internal world-wide network to a more commercial T-carrier based system. The company I worked for supplied the necessary gear to interface between $TELCO and their own equipment. This wasn't pre-Internet, but it was before the general use of the Internet for routing internal traffic around the world, so all their WAN links were supplied by one $TELCO or another. Call it mid 1980s.

Our customer service got a phone call from the customer allowing as to how one of their offices in Sydney, Australia refused to see the rest of the world. Customer service called me (the primary TAC Engineer for the customer), and I eyeballed it. Digging into the network, I could see that a loopback switch in the Sydney office was thrown, it would need to be flipped back to connect their LAN to their WAN. I informed customer service, and figured that was the end of it. Until about two hours later when my Boss wandered in and asked what I knew about Sydney being down. I blinked three or four times to reboot (kernel hacking again, probably) and told him I had located the cause and informed our guys as to the fix, and then got on with putting out fires elsewhere.

He replied that apparently the dude in charge of the Sydney office didn't like the answer, had called his Boss, who called his Boss, who called the director of the Australian branch, who called the owner of our company, who was informed by our CS guys that I was responsible, and so now my Boss had been put in charge of fixing it. He wasn't happy. So using my TAC access, I showed him the "fault". He expressed disbelief. And called the owner down to my office. The owner (the engineer who founded the company, and a real tech, not just a suit) also expressed disbelief. I believe his actual words were "What the fuck are those useless fucks doing?" ...

ANYway, he called the director of the Australian branch (just a suit, apparently), who got all shouty and demanded an immediate fix, now, or we'd lose the entire contract if he had anything to say about it. Our owner tried to calm him down, but the dude wasn't having any of it ... so to make a long(er) story short(er), he promised to "put his best man on it" ... and I got sent to Sydney on the next flight. Out of San Francisco. First Class. At very short notice. To flip a switch. With invoice in hand, to be presented personally to the Director in Oz. I honestly thought he was going to take a swing at me when he read it ... it was a tick over $20,000 ... in mid-1980s dollars. Broken down in glorious detail. To flip a switch.

But wait ... it gets better! When I was at the airport heading home (having been in Australia for maybe 2 hours total), I got called to the proverbial White Courtesy Phone[0]. Seems a different branch of the very same company had a similar problem, this time in a satellite office outside Boca Raton, Florida. I called my Boss and asked something like "WTF‽‽‽". He tiredly allowed as to how he personally had checked, and indeed it was the exact same issue. Our owner had asked if I wouldn't mind doing the hono(u)rs ... a completely different Director had called and threatened him in a similar manner to the first. So instead of taking the long east-bound flight home six hours later, I had to take an immediate West-bound flight, changing planes in Jakarta and London, to Florida. Arriving somewhat cranky & disheveled in Boca, I was rather pleased with the similar result (one switch, and out), except I didn't feel physically threatened after the Director read the invoice. This one just went white and slumped in his chair. I excused myself.

Back to the airport, and home to California. Still First Class. Four+ days on the road, literally once around the world, no hotel rooms, not a single proper meal, showering in airports, just to flip two switches. Such was the life of a field engineer. Tell that to kids these days ...

[0] If you don't know a white courtesy phone is, ask yer Gran. This was in the halcyon days before ubiquitous cell phones, and I had left my DynaTAC at home ... it not only wouldn't have worked in Oz, it probably would have been confiscated at the airport.

Yeah, seen all that as per the article. Also multiple people who swore up and down they'd pressed it to turn the computer on, when they'd been pressing the power button on the screen instead. Various verbal tricks could be used to try and get them to look elsewhere - directly telling them that they'd been pressing the wrong button could get their back up and stop them from looking elsewhere.

I have solved "error 220" for years, but nowadays error 230 is more common.

Got a call that an all-in-one fruit based computer wasn't booting. Went through usual faultfinding on the phone.

Is the power cable plugged in both ends? Is the plug switched on? Have you tried another socket?

Arrived at the office to find:

2 gang switch. Plug in one. Switch switch to "off" on the plugged in flex. Switched "on" on the other..

Very simple call, felt the heat from the blush as I left. I got some exercise, so not all lost.

New senior lawyer at this place. So far:

Opened a Word document then had to look at email. "How do I get my document back?" Click the Word icon on the task bar.

Double-click an e-mail attachment. "I can't open that file. Is there something wrong with it?" It's open on your other screen.

We had a complete technophobe of a marketing director, back in around 2002, who never used his computer. He'd always come to us to dictate emails (despite none of us being secretaries), and when we asked him why, he complained that his computer was really old and slow. And to be fair, it was the last 486 in the building, so we ordered him a shiny new Pentium 3.

When it arrived, I took out his old computer, and he took the opportunity to rearrange his office a bit. Meaning that the new computer was now too far from the network port, and I needed to get a new cable. We didn't have any of the right length in stock, so I ordered some new ones, and told him that I'd be back to install the cable in the next couple of days.

Things happened, there was a weekend, and it was 6 weeks before he came back to me to say that his new computer didn't work... SIX WEEKS!