Being the family tech support comes with loads of responsibilities.

This man received a call from his dad asking him to help him get his printer working. After asking him twice about the cables, his dad assured him they were all connected.

He later found out, one of them wasn’t.

Read the full story below.

Remote family printer tech support

I was walking my dog last evening when my father called me. He’s 7 time zones behind me.

He said he needed my help because his printer wasn’t working, and he wanted my help in getting it to work again. When he tried to print, it said “Printer not connected”, so my first instinct was to ask him if the printer was connected. Simple, right? He assured me it was.

Being an avid reader of this subreddit, I asked him to make sure, to go and check the USB was plugged in on both sides, and that the printer was plugged in.

He once again told me that everything was plugged in to where it was supposed to be. I then tried a trick I read about here. I asked him to unplug the USB cable from the printer and the computer, blow on both sides to clear them from dust, and plug them back in. He said he did.

At this point, I was unable to help him over the phone while picking up dog poop, so I told him that when I got home and put the kids to sleep, I’d remote connect and see if I could help some more.

This man and hhis dad finally figured out what was wrong with the printer.

Two hours later, the kids are finally asleep and I called him again. We connected to TeamViewer and I open the Printers section. I can clearly see where it says “Not connected.”

I ran the troubleshooting, and it said no errors found.

I figured maybe I’d remove the printer and try to add it again, maybe that would clear up whatever was wrong. When I tried to add it again, Windows couldn’t even locate the printer.

At this point, I asked him again to please locate the cables and make sure that everything was plugged in to where they were supposed to be.

He’s coming up on 76, so he’s not a nimble or limber fella, but after about 5 minutes of crawling under his desk, wanna guess what the result was?

That’s right, the printer’s USB cable wasn’t plugged in. He plugged it in, we printed a test page, and all was good with the world.

As everyone here knows, users lie. I just didn’t expect to be lied to twice.

Stop lying, Dad. Your son was trying to help you.

People in the comments are chiming in.

Here’s a hilarious suggestion.

This one is amused.

Here’s a valid response.

Another funny line.

And this one shares a personal experience.

Why users lie to tech support is beyond comprehension.

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.