So I had the following conversation via chat on Wednesday.

Happy User [4:49 PM]: hello Me. my mail is not working. I cannot send or receive mail through outlook. is started acting up monday and has not been working since. I would email you but i don't know if you will receive the mail. Can you take a look at it? thank you

Me [4:49 PM]: does it give you an error?

So our IT guy in charge of user passwords gets a phone call from a PHB, John (we'll call him) didn't change his password last month (passwords expire after 45 days at 30 days automated reminders start flowing into the user's email) and now he can't get his email or mount servers.

A few years back before I started working in IT for education I was an on-site computer technician...there are many good stories but here is one I'd like to share:

I am sitting at my desk, when the new head of HR, Wendy, storms in and says there is a file missing from the Shared drive and she needs that file right now for a meeting with the President.

“OK, what is the name of the file?” I ask.

“I don't remember”, Wendy says, “I know I didn't delete it, I am really careful with my files.

Here is a actual helpdesk ticket received today from a user who (out of mercy) will remain anonymous:

In these troubled times (drink), we're looking for any way we can to save money. A hundred bucks here, three hundred there - it all adds up. So we stopped buying Adobe Acrobat Pro and have filled the "void" with free replacements: PDF Split and Merge, CutePDF, and FoxitReader. Averyone in the company is getting along fine with these after I rolled them out several months ago, until yesterday.

A year ago I worked for a Law Firm in dntwn Mpls. I received a call from a user/lawyer that was having MS Word custom template issues. His issue was a "known" bug that the company custom templates did not work nice with MS word 03.
The fix was to delete a particular file on his machine that was causing that error.

I got the following snippet in an email from a user today. This user wanted to change her email password.

I am in Preferences – change password. What is the current password? I am stuck with a window box reading my password is wrong. Ugh Have tried all my usual ones including the one below....but it said it was not the same as my window password so I probably made a mess of this.

Years ago I was into interesting t-shirts. I found one that was black with a manilla-colored punch card printed on the front. It came with a laundry marker so you could "punch" out a message. One day I wore it and went to the University computer center. A friend was working behind the desk. He saw my shirt and asked, "why do you have columns of numbers on your shirt?"

Today I spent five minutes on the phone with a user trying to connect to his computer using various remote access tools. He provided multiple pieces of information to me, such as the computer name and the IP address, none of which responded to any tools we have. Our final fallback solution is web based, so I ask him to open Internet Explorer...