LUSER Stories Submitted by our members.

For your review ...

Admin and I are walking down the hall after a much too peaceful lunch.  One
of the folks runs out of there office, grabs admin by arm and says "Please
come in here, we don't want to tell you this in the hall."  I giggle and
come down to check the list, knowing there will be at least 100 messages
....

Poor user (who really tries to check everything before she comes to us) was
using a simple budget sheet for our upcoming fund raiser.  She made a couple
of changes, then set the thing to printing.  She went to get a drink,
thinking the 2 page spreadsheet would be waiting for her upon her return. 

When she returned to her office, her assistant was trying to figure out how
to shut the printer off.  Seems it was producing graph paper .... Lots of
graph paper.  Of course, they were turning it over and sticking it back in
the printer.  Admin get there and takes the paper out.  Goes to the print
queue and nothing is there.  Thinks to himself "Gee, lots of memory in this
thing - no that can't be right."  It's a LaserJet 6L.  He turns off the
printer, put in a couple of sheets of graph paper, and turns it back on.
Printer memory cleared.  Okay - so what were they printing?

Pulls up the spreadsheet.  Prints the sheet.  Now printing Page 1 of 4217.
(I swear - he sent the sheet to me via e-mail for me to try if he couldn't
fix it.)  Stops the printer again.  Goes back into the sheet.  Nothing weird
here .... so lets go to the end of the sheet.  Low and behold, at Column B,
Row God Knows Where is a cell that is summing the column.  The whole column,
all the way out to God Knows Where.

He deletes the column, prints the sheet, and shows the users what happened.
Tells them to save the corrected sheet, and all will be well with life.
Notice he TOLD them to save the sheet.

20 minutes later, User (now almost a luser - she did lose some points
yesterday) appears at the door in another panic, interrupting an important
conference (my priests were converting his elephants almost as fast as he
could make them - Age of Empires).   She said "It's doing it again!!"  He
asks "Did you save the sheet?"  She mutters something as she goes back to
her office.  (He lost 3 more elephants during that short conversation.)

Today hasn't been quite as much fun.  I discovered PHBs and lusers where I
thought none existed ....

Tom McCarty, MCP