Posted on 07/30/2005 3:45:33 PM PDT by Kaslin
General Motors doesn't have a ''help line'' for people who don't know how to drive, because people don't buy cars like they buy computers - but imagine if they did?
HELPLINE: ''General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?''
CUSTOMER: ''I got in my car and closed the door, and nothing happened!''
HELPLINE: ''Did you put the key in the ignition and turn it?''
CUSTOMER: ''What's an ignition?''
HELPLINE: ''It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine.''
CUSTOMER: ''Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all of these technical terms just to use my car?''
HELPLINE: ''General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?''
CUSTOMER: ''My car ran fine for a week, and now it won't go anywhere!''
HELPLINE: ''Is the gas tank empty?''
CUSTOMER: ''Huh? How do I know?''
HELPLINE: ''There's a little gauge on the front panel, with a needle, and markings from 'E' to 'F'. Where is the needle pointing?''
CUSTOMER: ''I see an 'E' but no 'F'.''
HELPLINE: ''You see the 'E' and just to the right is the 'F'.
CUSTOMER: ''No, just to the right of the first 'E' is a 'V'.
HELPLINE: ''A 'V'?!?''
CUSTOMER: ''Yeah, there's a 'C', an 'H', the first 'E', then a 'V', followed by 'R', 'O', 'L' ...''
HELPLINE: ''No, no, no sir! That's the front of the car. When you sit behind the steering wheel, that's the panel I'm talking about.''
CUSTOMER: ''That steering wheel thingy-- Is that the round thing that honks the horn?''
HELPLINE: ''Yes, among other things.''
CUSTOMER: ''The needle's pointing to 'E'. What does that mean?''
HELPLINE: ''It means that you have to visit a gasoline vendor and purchase some more gasoline. You can install it yourself, or pay the vendor to install it for you.''
CUSTOMER: ''What? I paid $12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!''
HELPLINE: ''General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?''
CUSTOMER: ''Your cars suck!''
HELPLINE: ''What's wrong?''
CUSTOMER: ''It crashed, that's what went wrong!''
HELPLINE: ''What were you doing?''
CUSTOMER: ''I wanted to go faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while, and then it crashed -- and now it won't even start up!''
HELPLINE: ''I'm sorry, sir, but it's your responsibility if you misuse the product.''
CUSTOMER: ''Misuse it? I was just following this damned manual of yours. It said to make the car go to put the transmission in 'D' and press the accelerator pedal. That's exactly what I did --now the damn thing's crashed.''
HELPLINE: ''Did you read the entire operator's manual before operating the car sir?''
CUSTOMER: ''What? Of course I did! I told you I did EVERYTHING the manual said and it didn't work!''
HELPLINE: ''Didn't you attempt to slow down so you wouldn't crash?''
CUSTOMER: ''Huh! How do you do THAT?''
HELPLINE: ''You said you read the entire manual, sir. It's on page 14. The pedal next to the accelerator.''
CUSTOMER: ''Well, I don't have all day to sit around and read this manual you know.''
HELPLINE: ''Of course not. What do you expect us to do about it?''
CUSTOMER: ''I want you to send me one of the latest versions that goes fast and won't crash anymore!''
old as dirt, but still just as funny.
Wow, that was awesome. As someone who has worked in PC support, I can attest that this is a very good analogy.
Thanks. I've done a lot of computer tech support, and I'd never seen this one. LOL.
That one is as old as Helen Thomas's grandmother.
Have you been warned about the GOOD TIMES virus?
This is too funny and too true.
I once "fixed" a friends stereo receiver that wouldn't work by plugging it into to the wall electrical outlet. She had it plugged into the back of itself in one of the accessory outlets. Swear to God.
This may be as old as sin, but it's going on the bulletin board at work on Monday!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I work a hospital IT help desk on midnights. I would classify these mythical "GM help desk callers" as rocket scientists compared to the real (?) people I have to deal with.
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly
compared the Computer industry with the auto industry and
stated:
"If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer
industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got
1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press
release stating:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be
driving cars with the following characteristics:
1) For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2) Every time they repainted the lines in the road you would
have to buy a new car.
3) Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no
reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close
all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the
windows before you could continue. For some reason you would accept this.
4) Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn
would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which
case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5) Only one person at a time could use the car unless you
bought "CarNT", but then you would have to buy more seats.
6) Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was
reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would
only run on five percent of the roads.
7) The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights
would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning
light.
8) New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.
9) The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.
10) Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock
you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the
door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
11) GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe
set of Rand McNally road maps (Now a GM subsidiary) even though
they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50%
or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12) Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have
to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would
operate in the same manner as the old car.
13) You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn off the
engine.
Would that be a input output proplem or like a dog chasing its tail
I worked with a guy that fixed a extension cord once and he put two male ends on it and pluged one end in went to the other end and shocked the wee wee out of him self
After having them trace the cables, I found out that the server was plugged into the UPS, which was plugged into the power strip, which was plugged into the UPS. At no point was it ever actually plugged into a wall outlet.
I'll get back to you as soon as I find the "any" key.
And this was at a place where the average end user was an engineer!!
LOL. I was doing an on-site upgrade for one of our customers, and they had a half-dozen or so computers on the network. As I was hooking up the new machines, I glanced at the keyboards of the existing machines. I was trying really hard not to laugh, but finally had to leave the room.
Once I had recovered and came back into the room, my boss whispered to me "would you like to share it with me", and I could tell that she was angry. I pointed to the keyboards: on every keyboard, on every spacebar, in fat black marker ink, was the word "ANY".
It was her turn to leave the room...
Am embarrassed to admit this, but when I bought my first laptop, I couldn't get sound. I'd gotten the RealPlayer up to play something, and thought I could use the sound button on it to hear. I called tech support to find out why I couldn't get sound, and he mentioned the "volume" button on the side of my laptop. I said "volume button? You mean there's a volume button?"
Maybe it was you I talked to! Whoever it was, I'll bet I was the lead-off story at the dinner table later that night.
I remember being told once by a computer genius (CG) that he installed a new system for a CFO. The next morning the CFO called to tell him the system was dead in the water.
The CG told the CFO to look behind the desk to see if the system was plugged in. The CFO chewed him out for 15 minutes. When the tirade ran down the CG said, Ok, now will you look. When the CFO returned to the desk, there were profuse apologies. CG built that little episode into his next five billings.
You're not kidding. I work in an office where I've been trying to get people up to speed for over 10 years. I'll explain and demonstrate a procedure time after time after time. Makes no difference, the next time it happens, they're still helpless and clueless. If there's an upside, it's that I've become indispensable, the one person with sight in a kingdom of the blind.
One associate, despite repeated instructions on "how to", insisted on adding columns of numbers in a spreadsheet on her calculator and then inserting the result in the total cell.
Well, apparently the last 'Start to shut down' comment came from someone totally ignorant.
The logic is to 'Start the Shutdown Program'.
Jes'...some people.
MOOOOVVVVE!!!!!!
A friend of mine works in federal law enforcement, and they all have to enter their time into an Excel spreadsheet. Unfortunately, they hired a new "accountant" and she didn't understand what the formulas were for, or she got scared when numbers changed automatically, or whatever, so she painstakingly deleted all of the formulas for all of the cells. Now, everybody (thousands of people) has to do each and every calculation by hand.
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