“My computer is broken, it won’t turn on!”
“Are you sure it’s plugged in?”
“You think I’m stupid? Of course it’s plugged in! It’s broken!”
“Sometimes the plug isn’t in all the way and then it won’t work.”
“I know how to plug in a plug, it just won’t turn on because it is b-r-o-k-e-n!”
“Are you sure the plug is all the way in?”
“It’s all the way in. My computer is broken!”
“Im coming down there and if the plug isnt all the way in, I’ll be pissed and mock you.”
“IT’S BROKEN!”
Goes down there and plugs the plug all the way in
Computer starts
Never ask them if it’s plugged in. Ask them to unplug it and plug it back in. Make something up about contact patches on the cables getting corrosion. That way they can see that it’s not plugged in without feeling ashamed for not checking it.
If I’m ever doubtful that someone has unplugged something, I’ll ask them to describe something that may or may not be on the plug.
- Color
- metal type
- “can you please read me the serial number stamped on the prongs of the power cable”
- “what color is the plastic inside the plug” Etc.etc.
Have not had it fail yet
I’ve used the, unplug it, touch the ends of the plug with your fingers to release the static on the line ans plug it back in line more times than I care to count.
I have a deep fear that the power supply won’t have a discharge capacitor and they’ll get a shock from it. Completely irrational but its deep seated enough that couldn’t use this one
Edit: discharge resistor*
Ohh that’s good. I always use the “try another outlet”, but it backfires sometimes when they move the whole desk to another outlet
If you ask them to unplug it and plug it back in, they’ll lie and say they already did that, though.
And if they were ashamed at all, they’d have remembered the last time the exact same thing happened.
This sounds like I hate end users which I really don’t. Their expertise lies elsewhere and I respect that. Still, sometimes it makes for funny/exhausting situations.
my brain sees “I’ll be pissed and mock you” and read it to me as “I’ll piss on you”.
Not a bad punishment for people don’t plug their plugs all the way in.
I myself had this problem with my monitor when I first bought it. It has weird touch buttons instead of normal buttons, I plugged it into the computer and kept hitting the power button and it wouldn’t come on. I was getting annoyed that it was broken… Then I realized I only plugged it into the computer and forgot the freakin’ power cable when I was about to pack it back up and take it back to the store. 🤦♂️
I can top this.
I was running hackintosh along side others OSes. Keep in mind it was working fine until it wasn’t. So this hackintosh one day started having a problem. After some time of inactivity, the monitor would sleep. Once it did, it wouldn’t come back up. Only a reboot would help. Eventually I thought it was incompatible with the DVI output since I saw similar hackintosh issues online. I bought a new monitor that would support display port. When I was disconnecting everything I notice that the DVI port wasn’t fully plugged in. 🤦♂️
My Monitor used to turn off randomly for no reason. Until I noticed it turned off every time my mini fridge kicked in, move mini fridge plug to a different wall port and issue resolved.
Make sure you aren’t overloading your wall sockets people!
I learned 3 things very quickly in one evening:
- My cheap electric razor throws a ton of noise onto whatever electrical circuit it’s plugged into
- How to sort out ZFS filesystem errors
- That the bathroom socket I plug my razor into and the plug across the house that the main desktop is plugged into happen to be on the same electrical circuit
So that’s fun!
This reminds me. At work, I’ve had to help during rapid consultation procedures for surgeons while they are performing a surgery. It involves you cutting tissue microscopically thin with a very sharp blade within this specialized machine.
Well one day I am cutting and cutting and I just can’t get anything to work. It’s making a mess and fucking everything up.
I look down and realize I didn’t even have the blade in the machine lmaooo. I was trying to cut with blunt metal. What a goober move.
Brain farts happen!
And thus, the The Bastard Operator from Hell was born…
