1. Index
  2. Literature
  3. Tech Support Humour
  4. Stupid Salesmen

Midimusic.org.uk Computer Humour, Role Reversal

6.2 Stupid Salesmen

There are some salesmen out there who are content to remain blissfully ignorant about the products they're selling.

A friend and I were looking for a C compiler in a software store. We went in and searched the shelves but found nothing. We asked the salesperson. He went looking through the games section. I told him it was a programming language. So he took us to the foreign language software.

The other day I walked into this little place that sells old software, old computers, and some new software. I walked up to a sales clerk and said, "Do you guys carry Linux?" He took one look at me (I am 15 years old) and, not knowing what Linux was, he checked the rack with games. I said, "No, Linux is not a game -- it's an operating system."

He looked confused, then stuttered, "Uhhh...yeah...well check that rack, we've got stuff like Quicken there."

One day I received a catalogue from a mail order company. I tried to find Linux. It took me a while. It was in the games section.

A few years ago I visited a computer store and saw a computer equipped with this new Microid Research BIOS which was unfamiliar to me. I would like to know something about the performance of this BIOS, so I asked if it was a fast BIOS. "Well yes!" he answered, "Take a look at this!" He rebooted the computer and pointed at the "Press DEL to enter SETUP" message, which was on the screen for five seconds. Then he rebooted the system again, entered the BIOS, and decreased the "Display enter setup message time" from five seconds to one second, left the BIOS, and rebooted the system once more. While it was booting, he pointed again at the "Press DEL to enter SETUP" message which was now on the screen for just one second. "See how fast it is?" he said proudly. "I increased its speed by a factor of five! Is this a fast BIOS or what?"

I once went to our local computer store, known for the stupidity of its employees. I decided to test the rumors, so I asked which joystick was better, the normal Microsoft Sidewinder, or the Force Feedback Sidewinder.

A friend and I visited a computer store in a mall. They had aisles of software and cabinets of hardware in the back. I was curious to know how much they charged for RAM, so we headed for the rear of the store.

Suddenly the salesman turns down a software aisle.

I once asked a salesman in a computer store about a monitor I was interested in buying.

I went into a "Software Etc." store at the mall just after Quake came out to look for a demo CD. When I got it, the salesman was telling me about one of those CDs with Quake levels. Since the game had just come out, it was obviously one of those cheap CDs where they just download all the levels off ftp.cdrom.com and burn it to a CD.

But the sales guy told me that it was the only one that is approved by Id Software. However, no Id Software logo, seal, or note of approval was found on the box.

It was 1995. I was a freshman in college. I'd just gone to the computer labs for the first time to get signed up for an account on the campus network. The tech support guy I talked to wanted the specs on my machine, so I told him. At the time, I had a 28.8 modem. He told me I must be mistaken.

At this point, I just gave up and walked out. I went back to my dorm, grabbed the modem's box, which I had used to transport some electronic gadgets, and brought it back to the tech guy. I brought my friend along because I figured he'd be entertained by all this.

At this point, several people, including my friend, were laughing at this moron.

The tech support guy got mad and suggested that we all enroll in the "Introduction to Computers" seminar they were offering.

I was channel surfing the other night when I came across this guy on QVC giving a demo of Windows on a ThinkPad 500. After a few choice comments from the slick salesman, I started taking notes.

He started out by explaining that icons were like glimpses of what was behind them and proceeded to show the Accessories "menu." He talked about how wonderful this deal was since the machine came with so much preloaded software, and then gave a brief description of each icon in Accessories. First there was "A-Write" the "word processing package" (I think he called it "A-Write" because the icon for Write has a fountain pen drawing an 'A'.) Then there was Paintbrush, which allows you to "do your 3D work," he said. "For example, if you were designing a house, you could keep all the floor plans and layouts in here."

Next was Terminal, "which lets you uhhh, uhhhh, add another uhh, terminal to your computer." He fumbled a little more and skipped Notepad, presumably because he couldn't make up anything good to say just after describing "A-Write." Next: "It has this Recorder, which helps you be a little like Steven Spielberg...it interfaces directly with your VHS cassettes." While pointing at the next icon he proudly announced that the machine even came with a built-in Clock.

There was Calculator, which of course "manages your finances." He mentioned some of the "executive" features, like Calendar and Cardfile. He pretty much gave up at Object Packager, but saved the moment by kicking into a demo of the "word processing package" because, "If you're like me, that's where your family will spend most of its time."

In his "A-Write" demo, he drooled about how versatile the software was. (Somehow the common font picker dialog just didn't convince me to pick up the phone and order a ThinkPad.) As proof of how useful the "word processing package" was, he "printed in" a sentence: "Dean shows hot computers on QVC." Then "Oh jeez!" he exclaimed, "It's been a long day folks, I misspelled my own first name!" (Dan) He proceeded to hit the backspace key 31 TIMES, leaving only the 'D'. He started retyping the rest of the sentence but gave up midway and moved on. "Let me tell you something: This thing will really change your life!"

He started babbling about "executive" features again and fired up the Cardfile "database system." It kind of took the punch out when the camera zoomed back in, and you saw that there were three dessert recipes on the screen.

The stupidity went on, but mostly on other bundled things like "C-Mail" (I think he meant 'Lotus Cc:Mail') and some IBM antivirus utilities.

An interesting note: In one screen shot it was evident that IBM had replaced the MS-DOS icon with a PC-DOS icon that looks almost identical to the OS/2 logo. Later on, while showing off the manuals, he held up the clearly labelled "IBM PC-DOS" book and said, "You get an MS-DOS manual...."

After a while...

He leads me to his terminal. There is much typing.

He puts in Armageddon and turns up the volume to a ludicrous level.

He turns up the volume the rest of the way. People nearby start giving us dirty looks.

At a rather large electronics chain I was looking at the new 3D accelerators with a friend of mine. A salesman overheard me and piped up.

Overheard in a computer store:

I was in a computer store, waiting in line at customer service. I overheard this, between a customer and the sales clerk:

Once a salesperson told me that Windows 95 was only for desktop computers and that I'd need to buy Windows CE for my laptop.

After comparing feature lists and sample print-outs from several printers, I finally decided to buy a certain model. I flagged down a salesman and as we went to one of the "sales" desks, he continued to tell me about additional wonderful features of this printer and how top-of-the-line and reliable it was.

Finally, before completing the sale, he asked me if I wanted to purchase a service agreement, saying that I really ought to buy one, since printers are prone to all sorts of problems and breakdowns and may have a 50 percent out-of-the-box failure rate.

"Wait," I asked him, "you just told me how high-quality and reliable this printer is. Are you saying it really isn't that good after all?"

He didn't really have an answer for that and didn't mention the service agreement again.

Once my father asked a computer salesman about the interior of a hard disk. The salesman replied, "It's not really a disk -- it's just a piece of electronics that's called a disk because you save things on it."

A friend of mine needed to upgrade his 386 with some new memory (this was a while ago). At that time, there were two basic types of memory -- 30 pin and 72 pin. He went into a computer store and asked about the memory they had on display. He picked up a box containing a 72 pin SIMM, but the salesman stopped him.

My dad -- a man of admirable common sense for a computer newbie -- leaped from editing to managing desktop publishing to selling computers. Once he had to train a new salesperson who claimed a degree in computer science. According to her, there wasn't anything she didn't know. At the start of teaching her about some software their (very big) company was selling, he told her to use the mouse to click on something on the screen. In all seriousness, she picked up the mouse and physically pressed the end of it to the screen. Urban legends abound about stupid computer users, but this woman embodied them. She once attempted scanning by placing a document against the computer screen. Ultimately, she was fired for incompetence (imagine!) but as expected, she blamed everyone else.

I'm a technician in a small computer store in New York. One day, a particularly distraught man brought his computer in and complained that it kept freezing. I did the usual checks but couldn't find anything. Since he had just bought it the day before, I authorized a replacement but told him he'd have to wait an hour for us to configure the machine properly.

He was very upset at having to wait, so he complained to his salesperson, who has no control or responsibility over the tech department. He came storming in, all upset and fearing the loss of his commission. He laid into me, asking why I couldn't just fix the problem (it would have taken longer), and I just kept pointing out how his silly arguing was cutting into the time I could have spent setting up the new computer.

At any rate, the customer eventually walked over and asked the salesperson what was wrong with the machine -- he was quite upset that his brand new computer didn't work and that he didn't know why. The salesperson cracked a wide smile.

I went into a store to purchase an external modem for one of my customers. He had an older system and the fastest modem that he could use was a 33.6. The salesman insisted that the slowest external modem ever manufactured was 56K. There was not and had never been a 33.6 modem. I pointed out a label on the shelf that said, "33.6 External Modem," and he insisted that it was a misprint. There were boxes on the back shelf that were clearly what I wanted. He refused to sell me one. Losing a sale was apparently preferable to admitting an error.

In late 1995, I called a large computer software/hardware chain notorious for their lack of service and asked them if they had any copies of Windows 95 in stock.

I hung up and called a smaller dealer. They were more than happy to put a copy aside for me.

  1. Index
  2. Literature
  3. Tech Support Humour
  4. Stupid Salesmen