On Call: When Users Push Back with Nonsense Diagnoses
December 30, 2025
Welcome back to On Call, The Register’s reader-contributed Friday column where we share your stories of tech support jobs that are so bizarre, they’re almost impressive.
This week, meet a reader we’ll call Mike, a traveling engineer for a local education authority in the UK Midlands. His job involved driving across the region, visiting different schools to troubleshoot various IT issues.
The Head Teacher's Network Dilemma
One day, Mike was dispatched to a school to fix the head teacher’s laptop, which couldn’t connect to the network. Upon arriving, he plugged in an Ethernet cable and quickly realized the network port in the head teacher’s office wasn’t active.
The head teacher entered just as Mike was about to leave and insisted that the port was live. To demonstrate, the teacher checked for new email—Outlook Express promptly displayed a message stating that no internet connection could be found.
The teacher’s claim? The problem was a full inbox—not an inactive network port. This was, admittedly, a common issue back in the day.
The Nonsense Diagnostics Continue
Next, the teacher insisted the screen was blank—until they admitted it wasn’t. Then, they opened a browser to show web pages loading successfully, claiming the issue was that the desktop was "too cluttered."
Mike decided to bide his time and leave the teacher alone. Meanwhile, a network technician was assigned to get the network point working properly, while Mike made sure another engineer completed the original task.
How Do You Handle Users Who Diagnose Nonsense?
Have you encountered users who push back with equally nonsensical diagnoses? Share your experiences by clicking here to send us an email. Our On Call column continues through the festive season—and we can always use a good story.
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