I worked with an individual who plugged his power strip back into itself and for the life of him could not understand why his computer would not turn on.
1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"
2nd Person: "A little. What's wrong?"
1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened."
2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?"
1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient would open it and read it."
I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery for this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked. "No, just this remote 'thingy,'" she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries; it's a long walk."
Tech Support: "What does the screen say now?"
Person: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready.'"
Tech Support: "Well?"
Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"
Several years ago, we had an intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," he told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386." He started to type it and paused, asking me "Where's the key for that line thing?" I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark. "I replied, "You mean the letter 'i?" and he said, "Yeah, that's it!"
I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large new motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, then went in back to make a sandwich.
And, one addition from a friend: She's been doing temp work at various offices. At one place she became the resident expert on the photocopy machine. One day there was a big backup. She went over to help and found that no one knew how to stop the copier from "punching" three holes down the side of each copy. She opened the paper tray, removed the three-hole paper and solved the problem.