People are so thick!
I'm a doctor. The other day someone came into ER coughing up blood and in terrible pain. It was obviously a case of serious internal haemorrhaging.

ME: "Have you had any cardio-vascular difficulties or angioplasty recently?"

PATIENT: Urrrg, I don't ... arrrg, understand."

ME: "Look, I'm being quite clear. Have you had any anginal or aortal procedures?"

PATIENT: I'm ... arrrgg ... going .... to die!"

ME: Just tell me about any cardiac infarctions you may have had.

PATIENT: I ... don't ... urrrrrrrrrrrg."

And then he died. If only he had done just what I told him to do, it all could have been avoided. People are just so thick, aren't they?
(frankspencer, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 10:12, Reply)

goldies
these poor oldies had probably had it explained poorly to them by some useless IT wanker like all you complaintsmiths
(scumbum, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 8:29, Reply)

One thing that fucks me off
as an IT bloke is when you give and oldie instructions and the following happens;

Me - "Right, can you click on the My Computer symbol please on the desktop?"
Oldie - "Ok, done that."
Me - "Now you should see an option on the left saying Control Panel. Click onto this please."
Oldie - "Right, done that."
Me - "Now how many options have you got there please? Do you have 9 catergories, or about 30 odd items?"
Oldie - "Errrr...."
Me - "You should have in front of you either 9 large catergories or a load of small options....you are in the control panel are you?"
Oldie - "I've got My Documents....Internet Explorer?"

Me - "THEN WHY TELL ME YOU'VE FUCKING DONE WHAT I'VE ASKED YOU THICK OLD TWAT!?!?!?!?!!???"

Well, that's what I'd like to reply ahem.
( Jeccius Oops, finished MW2 already :p, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 8:24, Reply)

I setup a computer for my uncle...
..and received the most formal thank you e-mail ever. It had his home address in the top-right corner, and my home address below it. It even had "Dear Jeccy" at the top and "Yours faithfully" at the bottom too. It looked like he'd typed it in MS Word. I replied with two words, which were basically "Errrrr, thanks."
( Jeccius Oops, finished MW2 already :p, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 7:44, Reply)

The restart button
My workmate (a very nice chap, but pretty computer illiterate) was having problems with his computer. As usual it was me he called out to to help him, and - as usual - I called out to him "Have you restarted?"

"Yes" he replied, "Nothing happened"

As I walked over there to help he said "It did start up awfully fast"

Yep, he'd turned just the screen off, and back on again.
(winestain, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 6:18, Reply)

being 65, I'm a bit of a duffer with computers

I keep accidentally using the feature that sends your emails back in time.

Bugger.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 3:58, Reply)

explaining email to old people

Couldn't you just say it's like the telegraph?
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 3:56, Reply)

My dear old gran
When trying to explain to my dear old gran what email was, I used our Canadian relatives as an example. I explained that we could type them "a letter" and it would arrive instantly on their computer in Canada. Her Response?

"That's wonderfull! We can post the christmas presents that way too!"
(starskythehutch, Thu 28 Sep 2006, 1:17, Reply)

well
my best friend's mom is computer savvy, i am, and she is. a few years back, before she knew that much about computers, i was the designated techmonkey. her mom gave her an old laptop. now my best friend had been using this laptop for a while, and had accidentally downloaded a few viruses. it was running slow and freezing up a lot, so i asked her to let me see the thing. she handed it over and i installed and ran a spyware/virus scanner. 1,095 viruses, and 638 pieces of spyware.
( Killerkitti You look so dumb and you sound so twee., Thu 28 Sep 2006, 0:04, Reply)

How to load up an MP3 player
My dad got an MP3 player. To load it up with songs he plugged it into the PC's USB socket... then put it in (voice) record mode while playing an audio CD in Windows Media Player.
(ngolian, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 23:23, Reply)

Baby boomers have no respect for sensitive data
Me: Mum it looks like your computer is fucked and needs some new parts.

Mum: I still need the data off it.

Me: ok let's transfer it onto one of a variety of storage devices in the mean time.

Mum: No darling I would rather send my computer, which is full of higly sensitive information, off to a random fat middle aged computer repair guy.

No shit! she had like higly sensitive information about people on witness protection programs, tax file numbers, criminal records etc. If the government got wind of how many of their middle aged female workers were leaking info because of IT phobia, they would flip.

On the other hand good if you ever need to track someone down.
(rattus, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 22:52, Reply)

Tales from the HelpDesk...
Like a lot of people on here, I've done my stint in IT support.

My all-time favourite act of computer-related stupidity came from a lady who called the company helpdesk one morning last year.

Have a (VERY rough) transcript...

Sylia: Good monring! You're through to your friendly local techmonkey. What manner of jackassery must we put up with today?

Stupid Bint: Hi. I am highly incompetent, & cannot switch on my PC, which I need to play solitaire all day so my boss thinks I actually do some work around here...

Sylia: Righto! We'll soon have you back to full slacking capacity! First off, could you please check the computer is plugged in for me?

The Dumb One: Do you think I'm some sort of idiot?! Of course it's plugged in!

Sylia: And it still won't power up?

Molecule Mind: Nope. I just don't understand it. It was working just fine when I was emailing my friend with all the latest gossip about Victoria Beckham's pet chihuaha's new Gucci merkin last night.

Sylia: I see. That does indeed sound like you have some serious computer trouble there. But before I call Bill Gates over here to fix this in person, could you be a dear & check the power is switched ON at the wallsocket please?

Queen Fucktard: ... ... ... Oh... Bollocks.
( Sylia Stingray is pilfering the biscuits on, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 21:54, Reply)

Oldies are the best
Im my opinion oldies are not the worst people in the wold with computers, its the middle aged ones you have to look out for.
I do part time computer work for people in my area, and most of the oldies are not that bad. They generally have a list of things they want to ask, know mostly what they're talking about and actually listen when you explain things. A middle aged person paid me £15 an hour to organise her pictures, email several of them as attachements to a friend, and set up an email account for her, amongst other things. She explained what she wanted in a slightly muddled up way and kept forgetting what she wanted me to do.
In my opinion, oldies are the best to work with - if theyre not senile that is - then you have BIG trouble :)
(PixelGirl unlock the mind...unmind the lock, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 21:14, Reply)

More supidity from the guy who believed that typing in "self destruct" blows up an Apple Mac
Using his new PC, and despite him using computers for years, he was under the impression that you could turn a BAT file into a fully working EXE by changing the file extension.
(Dinky Pimp, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 19:02, Reply)

.
your own story.

its what the button said to do
(bacneman, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 18:37, Reply)

Possibly a world record
... for the number of viruses on one computer. God bless the boarding house I used to be in, it did attract some wonderful idiots. One particular idiot brought in a pc from home assuming we would fix it for him for free if he unleashed such a virus-ridden machine on our network (true).

After waiting over 30 minutes for the thing to boot up (I went and grabbed dinner) I gave up and booted up in safe mode, then hit it with a virus scan. 634. I'd have taken a screenshot but that would have meant connecting the pc to something else to transfer files off, not happening, but God's truth, that was the number.

634 tupping viruses thanks to his Kazaa habit. To paraphrase Ricky Gervais a bit, surely you'd notice something was wrong when you had say, 200 viruses and your computer was slower than Steven Hawking in a treacle spill?

Anyway, I formatted the fucker and unplugged his patch cable from the switch. Problem solved.

/penis joke
(ZoFreX is cleaner than smoked trout, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 17:17, Reply)

Ooh, I've just remembered another one.
When I worked in London, a customer I dealt with was being investigated for some (alleged) shady deals. One of his colleagues told me that there were some documents on his computer which he needed to dispose of... he'd been suspended, so one evening he apparently went into the office, and got rid of the offending files.

How?

By printing them out and putting the hard copies into the shredder.
( Professor Kenny Martin Receiver of the world's first Marbleositing, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 17:14, Reply)

Porn?
Many moons ago, when my mum was still a bit wary of the computer and all this new fangled internet stuff (around 2000), she finally succumbed to the pleas of her daughters and husband and agreed to get the internet.

What's the first thing she does?

She types the word porn into a search engine.

Her excuse? 'I just couldn't believe that there could be as much porn as they say there is'

I think she was a bit shocked. Still, she never said how many of those sites she visited...
(birdwoman pissed herself at least once on, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 17:13, Reply)

You've all heard about the problems with computers we're having in the NHS...
Well one of the guys in another department here is a little doddery, to put it kindly.

He phoned the helpdesk a while back because he couldn't get something to work. Not unusual, we're always encountering problems of one kind or another.

Much headscratching later, everyone's very confused because he's the only one having a problem with this particular system.

Until someone spotted that he was spelling his surname wrong when he entered his user name...

EDIT: Just re-read this - "a bit doddery" isn't really putting it that kindly, is it? =)
( Professor Kenny Martin Receiver of the world's first Marbleositing, Wed 27 Sep 2006, 17:06, Reply)