December 26, 2025 at 11:35 am

Tech Support Guy Received A Call From A Woman Accusing Them Of Deleting All Of Her Files, But It Turns Out She Just Thought “Recycling Bins” Worked Literally

by Mila Cardozo

Unsplash/Reddit

Sometimes it’s just baffling what some people don’t know, when most of us assume it’s just common sense.

Tech support guys are on the front line, dealing with the darndest questions on a daily basis.

Read the whole story and you’ll understand what I mean.

You deleted all my files!

This is a tale from one of my IT buddies.

He had this one woman that would always puts tickets in for the smallest things. But this one takes the cake.

People:
IT – IT Buddy
CW – Confused Woman

IT saw a ticket had come in and it was from CW.

It said: “You deleted all my files! I need them to do my job!”

It sounded serious.

IT called CW to see what was going on because we don’t delete personal files off of people’s computers unless there is a good reason for it and we have the user’s permission.

So while he was on the phone, he remotes into her computer and noticed everything but the recycling bin was missing on her desktop.

He noticed that there was files in the recycling bin, so he opened it and all her files are there.

Nothing was deleted…

IT: Here are all your files, did you move them into here?

CW: Yes I did, I moved them in here to recycle them so they will be clean for me to work on them.

IT: …..Excuse me?

CW: Yes, I move them to the recycling bin to make them new again so I can reuse the files.

IT: This is the trash bin, you would move files here to delete them off of your computer.

CW: IT IS NOT A TRASH CAN, IT IS A RECYCLING BIN! IT SAYS SO RIGHT UNDER THE ICON!

So for the next half hour, my buddy had to teach her how to use the recycling bin.

Luckily, she didn’t try to “clean” the System32 folder.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

It doesn’t make any sense.