After you set up our database, the cat got sick and the fridge stopped working
The above might be a slight exaggeration, but the level of rationality is about the same as that shown in the typical support calls I receive. For example, I came home on Friday after a long, hot day on the road to find an urgent message. It seems that there has been a sudden change on a system which means that whenever they open a database, Word files on a different machine inexplicably vanish. Despite my attempts at an explanation, the poor customer simply couldn’t grasp the fact that there was no possible connection between the system and the missing files.
Another case was a lady who insisted that a programme I had written had adversely affected the volume of her telephone calls. “All I can say is that since you installed that thing, I can’t hear a word anyone says,” she grumbled. This was all the more bizarre because the computer in question was not even connected to the phone line. Fortunately, I was able to avoid a visit by demanding that she had an engineer inspect the plumbing first to see if that had been affected too.
