Niklas' blog

Another day on the emergency-phone, where I’m the supporting player in a world of tech. Ring, ring!

me: Welcome to the IT-department, I am Niklas speaking.
user: My name is X and I would like to report that our printer isn’t working.
m: I understand; what seems to be the matter with it?
u: Oh, so you understand, do you?
m: Yes, there is something wrong with it; now, what seems to be the matter?
u: Well, I’ve tried printing from it, and my colleague too, but nothing’s being printed.
m: I see, please wait for a minute and I’ll check the status of the printer to what’s wrong.

I start loading the required web-page as the user speaks:

u: You understand. Wow!

This was followed by a hearty laughter. Eh, what?

m: Pardon me?
u: I’m just happy you understood me.
m: Well…you did say there was something wrong with the printer, so…now I’ll just check to see what’s wrong. It’ll only take a minute of your time.
u: Well, I don’t understand how you could tell what was wrong when all I did was say there was something wrong with the printer, you know, that my colleague and I couldn’t print from it!
m: Actually, I merely said I understood that something was wrong with it – I didn’t say I knew what was wrong, which is why I’m checking it at the moment.
u: Oh, you.

After checking the printer-queue I emptied and restarted it, followed by asking the user to restart the printer and please call again if any further problems would happen to arise.

u: Oh, thank you!

The user then laughed until the phone was hung up. Weird, but funny, in a surreal way.