Throughout my career in the IT industry, I've come across a few "interesting" individuals. You know who I'm talking about: the computer illiterate end user; the coworker who knows how to program because he's used FrontPage; the customer who knows more than you about something even though he hired you because he didn't know how to do it; The list goes on and on.

Sometimes, in general conversations with my coworkers these stories come up, and we all get a good chuckle out of them. So, I decided to compile a few of my war stories into a blog post.

These are some of the most memorable ones that come to mind.

• I once had a user who could not log in to our Intranet site. It was just a simple first initial/last name login with a password. No matter how many times she tried, it would not let her log in, even though every time I tried her login it worked fine for me. After troubleshooting for a while, I went to her desk to get her to try so I could see what she was doing. After watching her repeatedly fail to log in, I finally had to ask her, "Doesn't your last name have two 'L's in it?" That's right, she had consistently misspelled her own name over and over again and that's why she couldn't log in.
• I once had a customer request that I change some text on their website. She typed up about 2 pages (in Word) of what she wanted it to say, printed it out, and faxed it over to me. When I asked her if she could just email me the Word doc so I could copy/paste, she said she deleted it after she printed it out. I had to retype everything.
• I was on the phone with a customer one day who had a reputation for belittling everyone he talked to. "This ain't rocket science, kid!" and "Do you need me to come down there and show you how to do this?" were some of the phrases he liked to use. He wanted me to reset his FTP password for him. Apparently, at the same moment I reset his password, he lost Internet connection because he started screaming at me telling me he couldn't get to his email or any websites, and that I had "turned the Internet off". He demanded that I undo whatever it was I had done and turn the Internet back on.
• At one of the companies I worked at, I had a user from one of our remote offices send us his laptop for repair. He sent it priority overnight, so that it was there first thing the next morning when I got to work. I thought it was odd that it was delivered in a huge box, but when I opened it I understood why. He had left the laptop open and running, so that when I got it I could see the error message on the screen.
• I once had a customer who took a screenshot of an error, printed it out, faxed it over to support, and had support scan it and put the image into his trouble ticket for him instead of him just putting the original screenshot in the ticket himself.

That's it for now. Feel free to add some of your own. (you know you've got 'em!)