A short tale that happened this morning here that made me shake my head…

As an app dev at $AwesomeCorp, I usually only have to deal with users in the context of my various projects and applications that I head up. The biggest one of those is out central imaging application, DerpUBase. If someone’s got a DerpUBase problem that the HelpDesk can’t fix…guess who gets to field the call. But these incidents are few and far between, yet my greatest one so far happened this morning.

My favorite Helpdesk tech, $GratefulDeadTech calls me up at like 9am:

$GDT: Hey man, $ReallyOldUser down in the Purchasing department has been having a real problem using DerpUbase. He says he can’t key in PO Numbers on the query screen, in both the web app and the legacy client. I VNC’d him and sure enough, I couldn’t key any numbers into the field. But it works fine on my PC…I even had him log out of his Citrix session and switch to a different server which didn’t do squat.

Me: Ahhh…a lovely Citrix user. They’re always fun. How old is $ReallyOldUser again?

$GDT: Yeah, tell me about it. Dude’s like 78 years old and won’t retire. Anywho…$NetOpsManager said you were going to be heading over to Purchasing to help $PurchasingDirector with storing his e-mails into DerpUBase with your DerpDesktop application. Maybe you can go hit up $ReallyOldUser when you’re down there.

Me: Might as well. I’ll let you know what it is.

About an hour later, I head over to Purchasing and hit $ReallyOldUser first. He’s clearly very frustrated.

$ROU: FINALLY, they sent one of you young bucks out here to fix this be-damned contraption. I keep trying to punch in PO numbers and they don’t go into the little box. Why can’t you guys just keep things simple…why do you have to change to this fancy web stuff? Everything works great on the mainframe (we still use character-based terminal emulation for almost all our applications on HP-UX mainframes) and it’s simple.

Me: Well, it’s a little hard for me to show you a PDF file in a character-based application.

$ROU: Wha-what?

Me: Nothing, go ahead and show me what you’re doing.

As I stand over his shoulder, I watch him log into the DerpUBase Imaging webapp without issue…he pulls up the appropriate query form…and tries to plug in a PO # to no avail. As he does this, I see the problem.

NUM LOCK IS OFF.

I reach over his shoulder and toggle the Num Lock to on, then tell him to try again. He’s amazed that I’ve fixed it. I cheerfully remind him that the Num Lock light on his keyboard should be on all the time and leave.

My subsequent install and training with $PurchasingDirector goes smoothly and I stop by $GratefulDeadTech’s office on the way to fill him in:

Me: Yeah, $ReallyOldUser’s Num Lock key was off. Fixed it.

$GDT: Ahhh…not the first time, certainly won’t be the last.

I’m so glad I don’t work help desk / support anymore.