Once I had a user swear up and down they restarted the computer 3 times, and asked if I thought they were an idiot.

I said, "No, I'm not saying you're an idiot, but your computer is saying it's boot time was 18 months ago."

I used to see a lot of people log out and back in and think that was restarting. Still wish Windows had an uptime command

My initial thought is "I don't believe you" if they claim to have already restarted the PC. Sometimes they Think they did but only put it to sleep or something, and sometimes they are just lying to seem less stupid.

My initial thought is "I don't believe you" if they claim to have already restarted the PC. Sometimes they Think they did but only put it to sleep or something, and sometimes they are just lying to seem less stupid.

Once I had a user swear up and down they restarted the computer 3 times, and asked if I thought they were an idiot.

I said, "No, I'm not saying you're an idiot, but your computer is saying it's boot time was 18 months ago."

We don't hate you. We hate everyone

At a previous job, I was not doing IT support but another role and I noticed a coworker had a red dot on the Windows Update status bar icon.

Told him I don't think I have seen that before, normally it is orange.

So he tells me that he is trying to see how long he can keep it going before something happens. I recommended against this, and also I normally recommend against using the desktop to store files. The laptop goes up in flames, so do your files. We have OneDrive for business, I know people hate it, but at least your stuff is... relatively safe. Backed up at least with version history.

A few weeks later I was chatting to someone else who sometimes shared my desk, and somehow I mentioned this encounter. A while later, his manager sitting ahead of us is on a phone call and we hear he is getting upset. He hangs up and turns around, tells us.

Him and one sales guy had spent hours on some proposals, worked out all the values and timings and it's gone. All that work gone. His laptop rebooted because Windows updates.

He mentions who... it is the same guy. I tell him I was just telling my desk buddy about him and how he intentionally left his laptop running for months to see what Windows Update would do and clearly he did not take my advice about rebooting and using OneDrive.

The rest of the day... this guy did not stop. Every 30 minutes or so he'd just go "All that work, gone. Why?"

We'd be walking to get lunch, talking about other things and again he'd just switch back to that and turn gloomy again.

I used to see a lot of people log out and back in and think that was restarting. Still wish Windows had an uptime command

This. "Lets try it again, just to be sure." ::watches them put it to sleep with the soft power button::

Most likely the IT guy thought you were either lying, or are too stupid to actually turn your computer off and on again. Because both is pretty typical for end users. Working in IT with direct contact to "non technical" end users will make you lose your faith in humanity very quickly, because you get to look straight into the deepest abyss of human malice and stupidity all day every day.

I mean... I don't doubt this happens. But, even though I hate Windows with the fire of a thousand suns and don't use it, this is what Group Policy is for

Well is it plugged in?

I don't know how our IT system was set up, I had no access to poke around.

But I think it was a bit relaxed, we knew some users were downloading movies in certain office locations. Told to stop rather than clamping down.

So I think everyone was just left to deal with the update schedule themselves because there were maybe... 2 or 3 desktops in the entire office. Everyone was on laptops and didn't leave them running overnight.

You can check Windows uptime in the taskmanager under the Performance tab.

Spent too long in tech support - The trick with people like this is to move the goal to something that they certainly haven't done before yet still accomplishes the same goal. Here I would honest to God ask the customer to check the pins on the power cable to make sure they're straight. I don't give a damn about those pins but they have to unplug the computer to look.

The real fun is when you can't watch what their doing because its over the phone, so you just have to hope they are doing it right. I used to hit them with the "Let's try this; hold down the power button for exactly 30 seconds, then turn it back on." Worked every time, but I did once have a guy ask me why that worked, and I didn't want to call him an idiot so I made up some BS about it being a way to "flush the power from the system" and he bought it.