This story is from the time my dad was head of an office machine repair department at an office supply company, before PCs became prevalent.

he receives a call from Good Christian Company(GCC). This is one of his favorite customer always nice and polite. usually a quick call. The techs would take turns helping this company. Their copier is not working.

He sends out Tech Next Inline(TNI) to fix it.

TNI spends 8 hours troubleshooting this copier. Everything he tries doesn't help. He ends up replacing every replaceable part on the copier. GCC basically has a new copier.

Then the STUPIDITY!

He notices the copier is UNPLUGGED!

NOW THE REAL STUPIDITY!

TNI says: "Oh, the problem the whole time has been this is unplugged."

In front of the customer, GCC!

My Dad could have killed him. He could only bill the customer for a 5 MINUTE service call instead on an 8 HOUR service call. Why 5 minutes? because that was the smallest increment he could bill for. AND GCC got all the parts for free!

TlDR: Tech forgets to check if plugged in. Customer gets parts for Free!