When you work in tech support, you quickly discover that even otherwise intelligent people can be pretty silly when it comes to tech issues.

What would you do if a user called in to say their printer wasn’t printing and they couldn’t figure out why?

That is what happened to the tech support guy in this story, and he made them trace the printer cable back, and the user finally admitted that the computer it should have been plugged into was out for repair.

The (disconnected) invoice printer won’t print.

Our customer base was equipment dealerships, database in AS400s, PC network as workstations and to run branded part databases.

Wireless printers are a lot nicer.

This was back in the days when printers were hard cabled.

Customer complaint – invoice printer not printing.

Ok, this should be an easy fix.

He tells me which computer it is connected to.

Remote desktop and customer having high speed internet was rare back then so I’m dialed into his AS400 looking at the status of the printers on the network while also talking to him on the phone and having him be my eyes for the windows computer and the printer.

You can never trust end users.

I’m just not seeing the invoice printer online even though he insists it is connected to (PC NAME).

Customer is starting to get kind of irate. “We need our invoice printer now” etc.

This sounds very frustrating.

One of those customers who want it fixed but is too impatient to help make it happen.

I don’t want to call him a liar but things just are not adding up.

This should be foolproof.

“Let’s trace the cables…”

“I already told you printer is connected to PCNAME!”

“I know sir, but if you would just humor me, perhaps we have a loose or bad cable.”

You really have to make things easy.

I walk him through finding the parallel printer cable connected to the back of the printer.

“Now please physically follow that cable and tell me where the other end goes.”

What???

“It’s just laying here on the desk”

“…”

“say again?”

Well, there is your problem.

“It’s not connected to anything. It’s just here on the desk.”

“I thought you told me it is connected to PCNAME?”

Oh. My. Gosh.

“Well, yeah, that’s the PC it connects to but right now that PC is out for repairs so the printer cable isn’t hooked up to it.”

Queue silent face palms.

Like I said, you can’t trust end users.

The dude had already told me multiple times he had checked the cable and it was connected to PCNAME.

Once I got an honest answer it took no time at all to temporarily move their invoice printer to a PC that hadn’t been sent away for repairs.

How do people like this get through life without forgetting to breathe? Insane.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

This is spot on.

Right, the cable was close enough!

This commenter gets it.

End users make troubleshooting impossible.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.