I really ought to know better
Since I'm now an internet developer, but not all that many years ago I used to work in a laboratory and didn't know all that much about computers.

I bought my first ever computer with a modem from some guy who built them himself on the cheap, installed freeserve, plugged in the modem and was raring to go. But the modem wouldn't, couldn't dial in.

So, I call tech support and the guy is running through all my modem config and stuff, can't figure out what's wrong since it all seems to be correct. So he asks me to try it again and I say "hang on, I'll need to swap the cable back" and he says "what?" and I say "the phone cable: I just took the cable out of the phone and plugged it in the back of the modem". Well, how am I supposed to know you need a special modem cable if one isn't supplied with the PC, I ask you?

Since becoming an IT person myself, my best ever tech support moment was asking someone what the filename of a file they were trying to access was which resulted in an embarressed silence followed by "what's a file?"
(MattDP (Squiggle), Mon 29 Dec 2003, 9:31, Reply)