Top 20 Stupid Client Quotes

I work for a government agency that investigates complaints of discrimination, including, for example, homophobia. Quite often our case officers will need to do research online for their cases. A few months back, our parents government department implemented a new internet content filter, and a large amount of inoffensive GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans) sites are being blocked, including activism sites, community groups, and queer news outlets. We're an agency that deals with discriminatory behaviour against GLBT people, among other groups, and our access to relevant websites is being blocked because they have been deemed "offensive". We are trying to explain to the stubborn idiots in IT management that this is a crazy situation, but they are telling us they are doing nothing wrong and the filter is working perfectly. The crazy thing is that we may be forced to make a complaint *to ourselves* about our own department, all because the central IT management are too arrogant to admit their web filter is broken.

There is a strange effect with user's who call their IT department to come and troubleshoot/fix a problem they're having, but feel the need to lie about certain details (only to be caught out because, hey, you called us to fix the problem). They don't seem to realise that while we in the IT department might give them a short reprimand for being careless with coffee, or installing something without checking first, it's nothing compared to having wasted 4 hours: Accounts: My $%^&ing keyboard is broken - some keys have stopped... bring me a replacement now IT: What happened to it? Accounts: Nothing 'happened' to it - it's just broken. Keyboards break, they get old! I need a new one. IT: sure... *couple of minutes later* IT: So, if nothing happened to this keyboard, why does cold coffee drip out of it when I pick it up?

I work tech support for an online learning company. as I was walking a student through our course he uttered this gem: " I don't do fancy things on computers like save files."

Not IT related, but I think it might fit. I do events listings for a morning newspaper. The following conversation is one that, regrettably, I have heard many times: Caller: I need to publicize my event. Me: OK, when is it? Caller: Tonight. Me: Well, we obviously can't get it into the paper. I can add it to our newspaper's website, but that's all I can do. About half the time, they sheepishly accept the notion that I can't add a listing to a newspaper that's already been printed and delivered to our subscribers' homes ... but half the time they flip out. And more than once, I've had somebody say "OK, I'll BUY an ad! Then you can't refuse me!" Since the printing industry has yet to invent a time machine that lets me go back and insert their event info ... all I can do is assure them that buying an ad won't help them at all.

In an effort to bring a local company to the modern age, the bosses made all of thier salesmen take their old paper invoice records and stick them into an insanely (1 book for each month, one page for each day) huge excel spreadsheet so that we could turn it into a CSV and dump it into a database. (This was apparently preferable to hiring a small army of data entry temps to do it for the salesmen?!?) I have just discovered that one of the older salesmen has been entering data into excel spreadsheets by ... typesetting...sorta. He starts out in the first field, enters data like a company name.... Then...rather than tab over to the next field, he hits the <bleep> space bar however many times is required to make it LOOK like the next bit of info is in fact in the next field...he does this for about 20 fields across...some that should be numbers, others strings, and others currency amounts. And he's done this for all of 2009 so far. Shoot me!

A while back i was working in a public sector IT department with around 150 staff. One day a director calls up the head of IT and rips into him complaining about a call he had just had with the support team. Apparently they where too technical for him to understand and they where using far to many technical acronyms. In a fit of rage the head of IT sent a group email around to the whole department ripping into all of us (not just the support team) about how we should respect our clients and not use a single acronym in any communication from this moment on. This email was about 3 pages long and must have said "no acronyms" at least 20 times throught out. Not 10 minutes later the same head of department sent a group email around to all 150 staff full of acronyms. Just as i was contemplating the irony of this chain of events a guy a few desks over sent a response. His response was "could you please explain your acronyms". He is my new hero.

When I was working for a small computer game company as a dialogue writer and scripter (and everything else not involved with coding or art) this "double genius" of a gem appeared on our forums: User: "I need dialog files for [gamename]" Me: (thinking the user edited/broke them) "Just backup your savegames, which are in [dir], reinstall the game and copy your savegames back to [dir]." User: "Well I downloaded game, but it was translated into Russian." Me: "We haven't localized for Russian yet..." User: "Yes, I downloaded game." Me: "Wait, so you're seriously writing on the official company forums to ask for assistance with our game - which you pirated?" User: "Well in Russia there is not many games available" Me: "..." The other genius (tangentially) involved in this story was the pirate who "translated" the dialogue (scripting) files by the simple expedient of running them through an English-to-Russian translator. You see, script commands and variables are also in English...

This is a third-hand story, but I believe it, and it still makes me smile. Customer: (angrily) "Excuse me?" Employee: (startled) "Yes, ma'am?" Customer: (with growing, self-righteous indignation) "Why is there no African-American section in your bookstore?" Employee: (aghast) "But ma'am, we've been desegregated for decades now!"

Let me preface this by saying that I don't work in any sort of CS field. I consider myself an average computer user, but my boss thinks I'm some sort of genius because I once found a file on his computer using only the file path! OMG! Anyway, Boss came to me one day wanting help sending out performance reviews to all his employees. His idea was to attach all the reviews to an e-mail, then send that one e-mail out via BCC. Took me about half an hour to explain how that wouldn't keep the reviews confidential, and his repeated reasoning for why I should be able to make his idea work was that I can move a window between montiors on my dual-monitor workstation.

I work as a tech/billing support agent for a corporation. I fully understand that we're going through some tough times right now with the economy crisis, unemployment and what not. A long time customer of ours calls in. He demands that we refund him every dime he has paid since 2006. So when I naturally ask him why he feels that he deserves all of that, he says that if we don't do so, he will have his son, who works at a very well known internet media company put the word out and tell everyone not to use our services. There was no other reason. He even fully admitted to having utilized our services happily over the years with minimal problems. So I explain to him that he is basically blackmailing us, which is illegal and grounds for a lawsuit. He then offers me his information so we can contact him and do what he asked, and I quote, "... once things get rough on you guys and I'll CONSIDER having the article removed." I politely told him that we have all of his information and that the call is recorded. I also told him that if he tries to debase our company on the grounds that me mentioned, it wont be him we'll be contacting, it will be law enforcement. He promptly hung up. We haven't heard from him since and he still utilizes our services.

A local hosting client calls and says he doesn't get emails for hours after they are sent, something must be wrong with the mail server we have him on. I check the system and there's no back log, I let him know and send a test message, telling him to reply when he get's it... He calls the next day pretty upset, he didn't get my email until that morning, and what's worse he isn't getting all sorts of important emails until the next day. What's worse, when his clients email to his gmail account, it's almost immediate. Since he's local I round up one of our techs to pay a courtesy call and check out his set up and see if there's anything funny on his end. The tech returns in no time and reports, "He was using Outlook and had the "Today" panel collapsed, so he couldn't see any mail until it was a day old and appeared in the "Yesterday" panel...

A discussion between a programmer and HR clerk: User: I found a bug in a program you wrote for us. I need you to fix it ASAP. Pgmr: OK, can you show me the bug so I can figure out what is going wrong? User: No, the information on this system is confidential. Pgmr: Can you describe the conditions that seem to cause the error? User: No, that would give too much information about the data. Pgmr: I have a test system setup, can you recreate the conditions with dummy data to reproduce the error? User: No, that would give too much information about the data. It's a very critical and confidential system. Pgmr: I can't fix the problem unless it can be recreated. User: I need the problem fixed ASAP. Pgmr: What module is the error happening in? User: The vacation scheduling system. Pgmr: What's so confidential about that system? The vacation schedule is published on the intranet every week. User: It's HR data, so it's confidential. Pgmr: *******

The client I wrote about in #5523 was the head of a publicly funded agency working to regenerate a "deprived" neighbourhood. He wrote all of his emails and communications in a stream of consciousness style - no grammar, punctuation, or attention to spelling, and no logical order or flow whatsoever. But because he was the head of the company, everyone under him was afraid to correct his written communications, so all of the company's press releases, web site updates, and business letters were going out exactly as he wrote them: stream of consciousness meets txt spk. When I raised this as an issue, his lapdog #2 accused me of being a snob and said that usage of proper grammar and spelling would make the company appear elitist to its "deprived" target audience. I no longer work in the public sector.

One day, I was working on Development in a busy office. The Tech. Support people were the other side of a room divider. They usually escalated calls by bawling for a developer. One day, one of them had a client with a problem with the latest release of the software. At his request, I went over to his desk, and he demonstrated that he could reproduce the fault - a running total in a field wasn't being updated. Up to this point, he had been typing in values and using the tab key to skip fields. I wondered what the setting in an optional field at the top of the screen was, and tried to use the mouse to move the cursor to that field. The mouse wouldn't move. No, I don't mean the mouse cursor wouldn't move. I mean I that I physically could not move the mouse. After one or two nightmarish seconds during which I wondered whether I had introduced a software bug which had altered the workings of the universe, I picked the mouse up. The mouse mat came with it. I pried the mat and mouse apart, to find a truly revolting paté of mainly hair gel, but also sandwich filler, crumbs and heaven knows what else gumming up the works. Roller mice were well known for erratic working as the ball picked up various bits of debris and pasted them to the rollers inside. This however, was a laser mouse! The gunge had entirely blocked the laser port. My eyebrows had disappeared into my hairline. The Tech. Support man said, "That mouse is no good. It stopped working a week or so after I started here." Rather than offend him by reference to the insanitary state of the mouse (and mat, and the rest of his desk), I asked "Have you reported it?" His eyebrows also went up, and he replied, "Who would I report it to? We are the Tech. Support department. I don't know why, but nobody will let me borrow another one." I took a few paces away, and suggested he let me speak to the customer directly. I went back to my own desk, borrowing a wet-wipe from a female colleague on the way. What can you say? Evidently, the man's own co-workers hadn't dared point out his offensive state, nor complained (to their superiors, or the local Public Health Authority).

I'm working with a local non-profit that is looking for a new hosting company. I quoted them a rock bottom, give it away price and sent our standard hosting contract... This was in the reply from their controller: "I'm also not sure why you would be creating the contract when we would be paying you. Usually when we are paying someone else for a service, if there is a contract to be made, we make it." Man, would I love to see the contracts they wrote and got the phone, cell phone and cable companies to sign...

I would for a public school district, and provide help desk services to the teachers, administrators, and other staff. One aspect of this is repairing/cleaning Cisco 7940/60 Phones. On a Friday morning I get an email that I need to come to one of the grade schools ASAP because one of the teachers has "A phone that is broken, likely beyond repair." Vague help desk tickets are normal, so I figured the phone was either unplugged, or some other similar error. When I arrive to the class room, the teacher meets me at the door quite flustered about how terrible our response time is (it took 5 minutes to drive from a different building) and how crappy our hardware is. When she calms down enough for me to ask what the problem is, she says the wireless hand set doesn't work...On a decidedly wired...phone...So I go and look, and she has removed the phone line between the handset and the base. When I asked her where the cord was her response made me want to kill myself: "Oh that? I threw that away. Once you charge the batteries you don't need it any more! It's a green device." I confiscated the handset, and she is now stuck using speaker phone.

Me: The e-campaign results are really good - only 20 unsubscribes. Client: 20 unsubscribes? Why would they unsubscribe? Me: Well, a number of reasons. Maybe they've signed up in error or receive alot of emails etc - could be anything really. Client: This is unacceptable Me: ? Client: Can you email them immediately and ask them why they've unsubscribed? Me: No, they've unsubscribed Client: But we need to find out why - what on earth would make them unsubscribe? Me: ...

Me: woman, late 20s, computer science degree, web accessibility expert (member of W3 committee writing the guidelines), hired as technical project manager by client. Supplier is giving a demo of a web application that we're thinking of implementing. Me: Does the visitor part of your site rely on Javascript? We want our site to be accessible for people with disabilities. Supplier: You mean Java. We don't use Java. Me: No, I mean JavaSCRIPT. Does your site rely on it? Supplier (patronizing tone): You really mean Java not Javascript, it's a common mistake people make. There can be problems with accessibility with Java, but we don't use Java. Me: Please trust me that I know the difference between Javascript and Java. Can you *please* tell me if your product relies on Javascript? Supplier: Yes, you need Javascript to use our product. But that has nothing to do with web accessibility, only Java causes problems there. AAARRRRRGGGGGH!!! Needless to say, I ended up advising against using their product!

Living far out in the boonies is good in so many ways, but trying to get highspeed internet access is not one of them. Finally I walked into a big box electronics store that offered wireless broadband internet for about $60 USD a month. I won't name the company, but it advertises across the U.S. and the name sounds alot like Horizon. After getting home I plugged my new toy in and quickly ran through the install CD. Things looked good but I just couldn't connect to the internet and the browser gave me some oddball messages I certainly didn't understand. I called customer Service and after maybe 5 minutes of doing very basic troubleshooting, they put me through to a technical support specialist. I'll give that Tech Support guy a lot of credit, because for the next hour-and-a-half he tried every trick in the book to get broadband service working. The whole time he was polite, never talked down to me and spoke good english. Finally after his bag of tricks ran out, he decided that I was in a 'marginal service area' and it might work sometimes but not all the time. Since I wanted a service that worked anytime *I* needed it to, I told him I'd probably box it up and take it back. He then repeated the same magic phrase that the sales guy had used: If you return it within 30 days, there will be no charge for trying the service. The next morning I took it back to the store and they cheerfully refunded my money. Six weeks later I got a bill for over $160. I politely called and spoke to someone at the giant corporation who listened to my plea, checked their records, and agreed that I should never have been billed. Problem solved! Until the next bill arrived a few weeks later for $120. I went through the same routine again except this time, the customer service people assured me that I'd been using the service and would have to pay. I finally wrangled a fax number from them, wrote a fairly hot letter and faxed it along with my purchase and return receipts. It's kinda hard to use a device for three weeks that one has returned in less than 24 hours. A few weeks later I get yet another bill for $66. This time my call was nowhere near as polite and I was put through to a 'Billing specialist'. He saw receipt of the fax I sent and the corresponding notes about the return of the modem, but couldn't understand why I got the bill. He then promised to give me full credit and said I'd get a statement with a zero balance within a week or two. I was thinking: at least they're polite when fixing the problem. Two weeks later, another bill arrives, this time for a measley $26. My call is blistering hot and the person on the other end responds in kind. There is no way they can change the balance because I owe them. I repeated that two of their telephone buddies said I owed nothing and the person in the store said I owed nothing. Still they will not budge. Finally I ask: 'So you are saying that I owe $26 for a modem I had for less than 24 hours and that your own tech support could never get to work?!!" Their answer:'Yes'. I'm still fighting with them but decided it deserved an entry on Clientcopia. I just hope to keep my sanity until it's settled. Stay tuned to the Aggravation Channel... ;^)

Might as well slip in one more story before this whole site implodes under the weight of the script kiddies... I had one of those callers the other day that got me offside from his first few words and managed to alienate me more and more throughout the call. First, some background. My boss and I are the onsite helpdesk and IT department of a little government agency. Some of our users work from home and are supplied with a PC and a broadband connection. These are technically for work use only, but there's some unofficial leeway for family to use them to a reasonable degree. Anyway, a box was dropped on my desk the other week, and I was told it was crippled with virii/trojans/spyware/god-knows. Our network setup doesn't allow us to download executables or install our own software (stupid departmental regulations!) so I offered to take it home and rack up a bit of paid overtime. Turns out some idiot had clicked on one of those "Warning! You have a billion virus infections! Click here to scan and clean!" and installed a trojan. It was an incredibly irritating one that disabled the Task Manager so I couldn't unload it while I worked, and it threw up contstant pop-ups, demanding I go to a website and give them money to buy the "full version" of the trojan scam bullshit. So yes, I got it cleaned out, installed a stack of free malware detectors on it, and then carried the bloody thing back into work on the train (not pleasant). I then mentioned to my boss that such popups most often appear on porn sites ("Click here to install video codec...") so we needed to tell the user to be more careful about where he browsed in future. Back to the call. His first words were to whine about how long it had taken (three days) and then to whine about how hard it is to get us on the phone (we're away from our desks frequently, yes, but he never left a voicemail). I told him I'd had to take it home and work on it in the evening, so it had taken a bit longer. The word "thankyou" was not uttered, then or at any time later in the conversation. It seems it was our fault his PC got infected, because his son needed to use the internet and we had not sent anyone to get his son's PC working with the wireless network. His subsequent demand was downright comical: we needed to send a tech (i.e. me) to his home in a distant outer suburb to set up his son's PC (a personal machine, not supplied by us) to connect it to his work-supplied internet connection to make it easier for his son to use it for his own personal reasons. So yeah, in short, it was out fault that his son got a trojan off a porn site because we hadn't yet sent a tech to set up his son's personal computer to take advantage of his work-supplied broadband. It took a fairly substantial effort to not tell him go fuck himself right there and then.