Re: Marc: I took that call about 15 years ago, but I couldn't tell the user they were too stupid. I was working as a medical transcriptionist on third shift for a company that did transcription for emergency rooms across the country.

For some reason our tech support, normally available 24/7, wasn't available. The shift supervisor called me into her office to walk a client through rebooting our onsite server, which was located in the client's ER. She had already tried and given up. Note that this was essential as this hospital processed all of their ER reports through our office. Neither of us could do business unless this PC was up.

It took half an hour. Most of it was spent getting the client to recognize the monitor and CPU. I started with a description of the "thing that looked like a TV set" and literally had this . . . person . . . trace the cables down to the "gray or beige box at the other end."

I could understand the difficulty once we actually got to the CPU as I didn't know exactly what it looked like and the power switch could have been in several places. I eventually got them to power the thing down, wait, and restart it with the desired results.

Even that long ago I don't recall meeting anyone who had apparently never seen a computer before. Remember, this person worked in a hospital and somehow knew enough to call us about the problem. If I had been on my own I might have hung up or cursed them out. All I could do, though, was get the job done while shaking my head and grinning at my supervisor, who couldn't believe it either.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."