What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

[Mark1989]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I had a customer ask if I could speed up the copier as it was too slow for him.

[gneebore]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I have seen the same thing with hospitals going "paperless." It used to be that when a doctor went to visit a patient, he/she would stop at the nursing station and get the patient's medical records jacket. After the visit was over, the jacket was returned to the nursing station. Nothing printed. Enter paperless medical records. Now a doctor comes to the nursing station, sits down at the computer provided to look at the medical records. Doctor decides that he/she will need to have them in the patient's room so prints a copy. Doctor finishes visit and places copy of records in the secure shredding bin. In the course of the day multiple primary care and specialists may visit the same patient. At the end of the day, instead of one copy being in secure storage at the nursing station, there are multiple copies in the shredding bin.

This reminded me of a requirement the federal paper saving technique. Went on a service call a couple years ago. I was looking at a copier next to three HP printer, Networked and shared to reduce energy use, three printers running is better than forty. Plus they had every computer print driver set to automatically duplex all print jobs. While I was there I watched as at least ten single paged documents had the first side printed and then watched as the duplex mechanism printed a blank second side. I explained to the guy that they were wasting a heck of a lot of toner and putting an extra service load on the machines. He replied that the orders came down that printing on one side was wasting too much paper going into the shredders and then a landfill. So someone figured out that all the pc print drivers could be set to default to always duplex. He did not know that the toner cartridges had chips that counted the number of pages printed and then would call for a replacement after a certain number were printed. So they were getting at the rate I saw single sided letters being printed about a third less use out of their toners than they should. And the type of toner they used in printer cartridges was not recyclable. Plus toner cost a heck of a lot more than paper. Went back to deliver supplies for the copier a few weeks later and the person I explained it to told me he called a supervisor. Who then told him the policy was set by Washington and could not be changed. They were doing it to "Save the forestry resources" Funny thing was i had to look at what they were printing because once it was printed someone inevitably came to the printers. Picked up their printed pages and then ran them through the copier to make copies to distribute as proof that they sent the information along and have a hard copy on file in case the hard drive failed and the letters were lost.

[slimslob]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Waaay back, in the 90's i worked at a Ministry here in Holland, desktopside PC support. Then they decided to give everyone Emai... Now that would be progression, ppl could mail their reports, others could comment and mail it back ! We had to stop them or they would have taken the copiers away the same day ! The first to have a paperless office !

Reality : they printed a lot more....

"Oh, important info in his mail, I should not forget this !" [PRINT]
"Let's read this report during my coffeebreak..." [PRINT]
"Oh, funny. my colleage should see this ! [PRINT]


I don't think they where quite ready for it...

I have seen the same thing with hospitals going "paperless." It used to be that when a doctor went to visit a patient, he/she would stop at the nursing station and get the patient's medical records jacket. After the visit was over, the jacket was returned to the nursing station. Nothing printed. Enter paperless medical records. Now a doctor comes to the nursing station, sits down at the computer provided to look at the medical records. Doctor decides that he/she will need to have them in the patient's room so prints a copy. Doctor finishes visit and places copy of records in the secure shredding bin. In the course of the day multiple primary care and specialists may visit the same patient. At the end of the day, instead of one copy being in secure storage at the nursing station, there are multiple copies in the shredding bin.

[JPiek]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Waaay back, in the 90's i worked at a Ministry here in Holland, desktopside PC support. Then they decided to give everyone Emai... Now that would be progression, ppl could mail their reports, others could comment and mail it back ! We had to stop them or they would have taken the copiers away the same day ! The first to have a paperless office !

Reality : they printed a lot more....

"Oh, important info in his mail, I should not forget this !" [PRINT]
"Let's read this report during my coffeebreak..." [PRINT]
"Oh, funny. my colleage should see this ! [PRINT]


I don't think they where quite ready for it...

[theengel]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I remember when I was first starting out in a company who had a B&W Division and a Color Division. When someone was referring to someone in the color division, they simply said, one of the "color guys." I was sent to ask Joe a question, and I didn't know who he was. My coworker said, "He's the color guy wearing a green shirt." I searched for half an hour because I was new and didn't want to sound like an idiot. I found the only black man working there, and he wasn't wearing a green shirt, but I said "Are you Joe?" He wasn't Joe.

[gneebore]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

This one was a new low for me...

me: 'Excuse me, your copier is indicating that the black toner cartridge is empty, you wouldn't have a spare?'

client: 'OMG THAT IS SO RACIST!'

me: 'erm.... what did I say?'

client 'YOU CAN'T SAY BLACK'

Not surprising in today's climate. Of course there was one time when I needed to test a copier and needed to use other than plain white paper. So I asked for some colored paper and got the same result. "Racist comments are not allowed in our office" So glad it was in our office service area and I could tell the idiot he was a jerk.

[George J]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

This one was a new low for me...

me: 'Excuse me, your copier is indicating that the black toner cartridge is empty, you wouldn't have a spare?'

client: 'OMG THAT IS SO RACIST!'

me: 'erm.... what did I say?'

client 'YOU CAN'T SAY BLACK'

[sturmtrooper]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Three calls this week for customers complaining about the slit glass getting dirty.

"Why do we have to clean the slit glass all the time?"

I tell them "The slit glass is no more or less dirty than your originals."
"What can we do about that?"
"Clean the slit glass when it needs it."

=^..^=

We have a customer in the county courthouse. The building is from 1877 and is therefore a bit dusty at times. Also many of the court records they copy are quite old as well. They call at least once a month for lines on the ADF glass. They claim to have cleaned it. One of us goes there and dusts it off and wipes off the occasional glob of pen ink and leaves.

[gneebore]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Three calls this week for customers complaining about the slit glass getting dirty.

"Why do we have to clean the slit glass all the time?"

I tell them "The slit glass is no more or less dirty than your originals."
"What can we do about that?"
"Clean the slit glass when it needs it."

=^..^=

Or the billable customer forty miles away that has repeat calls to clean the slit glass and then they complain because you have the nerve to charge them for an hour and only spent five minutes cleaning a little strip of glass. Sometimes twice in one week.

[blackcat4866]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Three calls this week for customers complaining about the slit glass getting dirty.

"Why do we have to clean the slit glass all the time?"

I tell them "The slit glass is no more or less dirty than your originals."
"What can we do about that?"
"Clean the slit glass when it needs it."

=^..^=

[gneebore]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Recent idiocy: Other tech drove to a customer an hour away who was saying the machine wasn't pulling from the high capacity tray in this case tray three, and that the machine would also print on legal paper. Tech gets there. Machine works fine. Asks customers what they were copying. It was post it notes and other small things. Paper size sensors couldn't pick up paper. So it would chirp, customer would mash start button again and it would just pull paper from tray one. Once that ran out it moved to tray two, which was legal paper.

Sigh.

Oh boy does this remind me of a very very picky customer. They just could not understand why their old Mita 1435 would print their copied index cards in the center of the paper and their brand new Copystar 3035 would not. Just could not make them understand that the machine was not detecting the cards in the center of the glass since it used sensors to detect the proper size and automatically select the right paper tray. If I remember correctly you tell the machine which tray to use and then it would override the size detection sensors. They just could not understand the concept. After third call for the same dumb question I put a sign on the wall with instructions on how to copy index cards centered on letter sized paper. Then someone there got the great idea to put sharpie points where the cards were centered on the glass and then wondered why they kept getting spots on regular copies. And also wondered why I kept cleaning the sharpie points off of the glass. I was so glad when they moved their office out of our service area. They called and tried to make us drive the extra eighty miles. My boss refused and actually refunded the unused portion of their service contract.

[Ratchet2501]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I have always said, "teachers are the worst learners". Lol

As Sir Ken Robinson would tell you, they are just another form of life.

[sturmtrooper]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

Recent idiocy: Other tech drove to a customer an hour away who was saying the machine wasn't pulling from the high capacity tray in this case tray three, and that the machine would also print on legal paper. Tech gets there. Machine works fine. Asks customers what they were copying. It was post it notes and other small things. Paper size sensors couldn't pick up paper. So it would chirp, customer would mash start button again and it would just pull paper from tray one. Once that ran out it moved to tray two, which was legal paper.

Sigh.

[JPiek]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I've had customers that did (some teachers actually) duplex transparencies and then complained that when they used them both sides of the transparency showed up on the screen when they used them on the overhead projectors in class. The scary part is there have been more than one and they were teachers,

Don't punish the kids when they fail their exam.....

[Copier Addict]

Re: What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

I've had customers that did (some teachers actually) duplex transparencies and then complained that when they used them both sides of the transparency showed up on the screen when they used them on the overhead projectors in class. The scary part is there have been more than one and they were teachers,

I have always said, "teachers are the worst learners". Lol