A few years ago, I used to do tech support for a company that had UPS as a client. Basically we supported everybody that shipped a package through UPS.
One of my first days taking calls, a lady calls me up. I go through the greeting and ask, “ok, how can I help you?”
“My bee won’t stop buzzing!!!”
Long pause.
“Excuse me?”
Again, almost screaming: “My bee won’t stop buzzing!!!”
“Ummmm,” I wittily reply. (As a brief aside, one of our tech requirements was to restate the issue1 back to the caller, in our own words. I wasn’t even going to try that...)
“Soooooo,” I start slowly, “your... ...bee... won’t stop... ...buzzing?”
“Make it stop!” she cries desperately.
I look over at the guy training me, who’s listening in. He just shrugs and looks as perplexed as I am.
But through some questions, I was able to figure out what happened:
Crazy Lady had changed her mouse icon to a bumble bee. When a program was busy, instead of giving the hourglass most of us know, hers now would just beat its wings.
As you can tell, I’ve been haunted by that call ever since...