Sad but laughable, but really sad, tech support call

[djheater]

A guy in a retail store called in and could not connect his client machines.
Check server, Server will not boot NVRAM mismatch (the hardware controller lost its configuration and was confused by the drive set).

At this point I'm familiar enough with the Raid Card bios to guide him into accessing the Raid card menu and saving the disk information to the card, if he can just prompt me with the first couple of ines of each menu screen... so I ask him and what he's telling me is not matching up with what I know to be the case... Everytime I prompt him to read the screen to me he hesitates and works real hard over it...
Finally I put him on hold and walk into our test lab, reboot the machine and access the raid card menu....
Ah hah! The problem is this: The first two menu options are Configure and Initialize, then Objects, etc... Everytime the screen came up I would ask him what the first menu option was and he would say Objects.. basically if he didn't recognize the word he would just skip it. I got back on the phone and guided him through the rest of it, a couple of times I would ask him to read the words and I was right, whenever there was a "difficult" one he would just skip it...

It makes trouble shooting kind of hard when the user refuses to actually give you the information on the screen when you ask them directly for it...

What's truly sad is imagining how unlikely it is that this person reads for pleasure.. I couldn't imagine what it would be like not to be able to read a good book...

Oh. I saved the disk configuration to the card and it came up with a failed drive, I sorted out which drive was failed and dispatched a tech to replace the card and drive. All was well.

Clifs:
Guy calls in, Server stuck in boot
Ask him to read info off screen
Guy skips any uncommon or difficult word
Even when I ask him to read EXACTLY what's on the screen
I eventually figure out he's barely literate.
got store back up.

 

[myusername]

That's sad
Just out of curiosity, was his location south of yours?

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: myusername
That's sad
Just out of curiosity, was his location south of yours?

Yes. South Texas to be precise.

 

[Evadman]

He was probably too chagrined to affirm the palpability that he was an ignoramus to someone who worked such an obsequious devoir.

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: Evadman
He was probably too chagrined to affirm the palpability that he was an ignoramus to someone who worked such an obsequious devoir.

:beer:

Though I think that's a very loose definition of devoir.

 

[Evadman]

It is, but I couldn't think of anything else for Job. *shrug*

 

[godmare]

esol?

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: godmare
esol?

Nope, I don't think so. I'm a southerner, the only accent I could hear (and I'm pretty good at it) was Texan. I'd say he was a white native english speaker. That's the reason it's sad.