Blamed for computer problems you did not cause

[jamieh]

Are you ever blamed for something that goes wrong with the computer just because you are the only tech-savvy person in the house?

Whenever the router decides to take a break, my mom ALWAYS insists that I "sabotaged her connection" and it gets really annoying.

Even if I was on her computer weeks in the past, and something breaks, it's always MY fault.

Us techies are always used as excuses :mad:

Does this ever happen in your vicinity?

[RiceMonster]

Doesn't really happen to me, but I have people who blame everything that goes wrong on Linux when they use my computer, when it's 99% of the time their fault.

[Shwefty]

Oh yeah! If the network connection is down, it's always my fault!

[mindbucket]

It is sometimes best to keep your tech skills secret. imho

[hardyn]

that happend to me with a PIC development board i borrowed to test some code, when i returned it didn't work but nothing i did could have broken it. i ended up having to buy the guy another one but then discovered that somehow the IC got loose in the socket. i was not happy about having to buy one, i didn't really want one.

[Paqman]

My missus is always accusing me of breaking the computer. I'd say that probably 75% of any borkage is due to me trying to do something new and interesting, and only 25% me being a numbskull. Since she gets the benefit of the 75% when I finally get it working, I don't think she really minds too much.

[Private_Ops]

My mom blames me for screwing up the wireless or "messing up the internet" when she accidentally hits the wireless switch on her laptop and doesn't notice.

[magmon]

Whenever window$ skrews up, my parents say its because I download too much stuff I dont know about and dont protect my computer. (I run Avira, threatfire, online armor, A squared, adaware, auslogics disk defrag, and CCleaner btw, see how unprotected I am? I also only go to good/excellent sites rated by WOT) Which, is total bulls***

[saulgoode]

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below says: "Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude."

"You must be an engineer," says the balloonist.

"I am" replies the man. "How did you know."

"Well" says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."

"You must be a manager," says the man below.

"I am" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault."

[magmon]

Uh, my dad is an (INTELLIGENT) software development manager/small business owner >.>

[zmjjmz]

My dad loves getting mad at me whenever Thunderbird or Firefox doesn't behave exactly like he expects them to.

[Peter Anselmo]

saulgoode -

That hot air balloon story was awesome.

[lisati]

Boss hauls employee into office, intimates that employee is responsible for some part of the company network having problems, points at system log entries that implicate employee in something else that is not obviously related to the problems that the employee is being blamed for. Needless to say, the employee leaves that job and goes elsewhere "post haste".....


(This rant inspired by a true story.)

[kaldor]

After installing Ubuntu on a separate partition on my mother's computer, she wanted to boot back into Windows. Internet Explorer froze on her, and she started bawling at me that I should not "screw up other people's things if I cannot fix it". After I clicked "X" and booted Internet Explorer back up, she was fine.

[RiceMonster]

[INDENT]A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost.

lol that's a classic joke.

[rudihawk]

I always get blamed. Slow internet? yup I get blamed. Network printer not working? Yea, I must've fiddled and messed it up. Email program crashes on moms laptop? Yea, my fault again, because I worked on the laptop a month ago. Sisters itunes not working? My fault. Sigh....

[Chilli Bob]

I regularly get blamed because our propitiatory accounting software doesn't have certain features that the boss wants, even though those features aren't even related to accounting. Somehow I'm supposed to "make it work".

And the inherent bugs in Small Business Server 2003 R3 are somehow my fault too.

(On a side note, the spell checker is telling me the word "the" in above sentence is spelled incorrectly, but the "the"s in this sentence are fine. ***?)

[glotz]

My missus is always accusing me of breaking the computer. I'd say that probably 75% of any borkage is due to me trying to do something new and interesting, and only 25% me being a numbskull. Since she gets the benefit of the 75% when I finally get it working, I don't think she really minds too much.:lolflag:

[JillSwift]

Family or coworkers blaming you for computer problems just because you're the convenient tech savvy type?
There can be only one proper reply: Stop fixing them. :p

[Dragonbite]

Somewhat.. except I've informed people "I don't have those problems" and "That's WHY I use Linux, I don't run into these issues."

Actually, the sad thing is that since our house is 100% Linux (currently) I find I'm having more trouble fixing the issues with Windows and that doesn't even include Vista!

I used to be the cause of 100% of the breakage, but since then I've gathered a few systems I can tinker with instead of the ONE family computer ("uh.. don't use the computer today. I'll fix it tonight, promise.")

Conveniently, though, my son is technically savy enough to try and see what he can do so he's a convenient scapegoat when things go sour!
:lolflag:

[chucky chuckaluck]

mrs. chuckaluck trying to use a tiling wm is always pretty hilarious. "what did you do to your computer now?"

[speedwell68]

My Wife has has the ability to cause any computer equipment to fail by the power of sight.:D This is always my fault. I'm sure she screws things up subconsciously, just so she can give me grief for doing it.

[BugenhagenXIII]

When ever I use my mom's computer for any amount of time longer than about half an hour, and something goes wrong within a month, it was obviously me. Despite the fact that all I do on her computer is browse Digg.

My girlfriend knows I tinker with my computer and that, because I run GNU/Linux, things are sometimes done differently. If she can't figure something out, she doesn't get mad anymore, she just askes me how to do it.

[Dr Small]

Strangely enough, I don't get blamed quite as bad anymore. But still, if there is a network problem or OS problem, I seem to be the technical hotline to get it fixed. Even my Aunt that lives out of state called up to have me fix her computer.

[xpod]

I`ve never been blamed for any computer problems as such(other than by myself) but the dear wife does blame me for all the computers full stop.:p

[jomiolto]

Strangely no. I've always had the uncanny ability to break everything I touch (that's probably why I've had to learn to fix things :p ), but still people have the notion that I can fix absolutely anything involving computers -- I don't really mind trying to fix computer problems for other people, but I kind of wish they learned to use Google and try it themselves first...

[ashmew2]

Whenever window$ skrews up, my parents say its because I download too much stuff I dont know about and dont protect my computer. (I run Avira, threatfire, online armor, A squared, adaware, auslogics disk defrag, and CCleaner btw, see how unprotected I am? I also only go to good/excellent sites rated by WOT) Which, is total bulls***

Well I guess your parents are right...you make the computer choke :lolflag:...

[Tamlynmac]

It's always easier to blame someone else (especially the messenger). In our home, when something goes wrong with any of our PCs, it's my fault. Primarily, because I'm breathing.


After installing Ubuntu on all our systems, failure has been practically non-existent. No viruses, maleware, etc. and I must admit sometimes it gets boring. Used to spend significant amounts of time cleaning up Windows every month and it was a good excuse to get out from under my honey-do list. Now I don't have any excuses...LOL


Fix one problem and immediately encounter another – seems life is like that.

[pitchdiesel]

I'm not allowed to touch anyone else's computer in my house... and my advice is never taken seriously. If I do look at someone's comp, it's always my fault when things go wrong while I stare at the screen filled with iwins and egames and icons and themes.. yeah, frustrating.

[Martje_001]

Oh yes, they always do. They're right though, I alway mess things up here ;). But they have to look what they get back:

a stable OS
an OS that boots in 18.2 seconds
a server so that anyone can print in the house without switching cables
free films (yes, downloading them is legal here)

[ddnev45]

mrs. chuckaluck trying to use a tiling wm is always pretty hilarious. "what did you do to your computer now?"

One of the main reasons I still dual boot with XP.

It's tough being the goto person. I've informed by brother that the nephews will now have to pay me $50 US per service call to help get the malware off the computers.

[Private_Ops]

I'm not allowed to touch anyone else's computer in my house... and my advice is never taken seriously. If I do look at someone's comp, it's always my fault when things go wrong while I stare at the screen filled with iwins and egames and icons and themes.. yeah, frustrating.

Simple... stop helping. When (if?) they ask tell them you're according the them you're not smart enough to fix it and you're not going to fix it. They get mad? Oh well.

[MarblePanther]

Exactly ^

leave them high and dry for a month and watch them crawl back to you asking for help :lolflag:

[RiceMonster]

This reminds me, a former roommate of mine would spend hours chatting with someone close to them on Skype webcam, and then whenever it would encounter any problem, which seemed to be all the time, it would be because I was "downloading something".

That got really annoying. They would constantly knock on my door and say "Hey man, I'm on Skype, stop downloading stuff". 99% of the time, I wasn't downloading anything. Plus, why they somehow deserved to have bandwidth priority was beyond me.

[K.Mandla]

More than once I have been blamed for technical issues after fixing someone else's computer, usually after they asked for help. As a result, I usually don't help as much as I could, or would.

[toupeiro]

Ironically, this happened to me this weekend. While it was in total fun, I got a kick out of it.

Myself and three co-workers got together this weekend for some LAN gaming action. All three of them were running vista: 1 was running vista enterprise 64-bit and one was running Vista Ultimate edition. The other was running the standard home edition of Vista. I, was running Intrepid. None of us were using slouch machines, but I was the ONLY one not experiencing some sort of problem that night. The Vista Ultimate user could not get ventrilo outgoing sound to work. The Vista x64 enterprise user experienced a full system lockup mid-game, and the standard vista user, while at the time it seemed no fault of Vista, got a bright green line down the center of his LCD out of the blue. Being windows focused, it only seemed logical that my ubuntu machine was simply intimidating the others too badly to operate properly, and got the blame for all the other problems that night. :P

The best part of this story was not revealed until the next day. The screen with the bar down the middle was working perfect when he got back home, which only fed into the intimidation theory that much more. ;)

[Joeb454]

I had an interesting one earlier, where a word document had corrupted. Word just refused to open it....so!

Drop it into the server share, open it from my laptop in OOo - formatting is a little off - but the document is still there. Resaved as .doc from OOo...Word still refuses to open it.

In the end I installed OOo on the PC and got them to use that (it worked brilliantly). The best part of it?

"Why does Word keep crashing?"
"I don't know?! Because it's rubbish and grossly overpriced?"

I did get a big thankyou afterwards though, but I was apparently at fault when the printer then ran out of ink :confused:

[Dale61]

I often get balmed for problems on a pc I don't even use!

My sister-in-law refuses to even acknowledge that there is anything other than Microsoft. Therefore, she is Windows through and through.

She currently runs XP, and with that, regularly chats using Messenger. Anyway, quite often, some of the people she chats with 'advises' (and I use that term rather loosely) her to try such-and-such a program, download such-and-such, open this, open that, etc, and lo and behold, BSOD.

I then get called (she is in the other room) to see if I can fix what went wrong. When I ask her what she did, she replies with 'nothing, just chatting!'. Yeah, right! Surprisingly, the same people who 'advised' her about these programs are nowhere to be seen.

Anyway, it got to the stage that a reformat was in order as there was so much crap had built up over time, which for her meant that she was without Messenger for the best part of a day whilst I re-installed all the anti-virus (AVG), anti-malware / spyware (S&D), etc, before I was comfortable enough to let her 'back in the wild'.

Within two days I was back in front of her pc ridding it of more crap, but she just can't be told any different.

[Tpolich]

If anything goes wrong even if I am not home it's my fault. Some because I am "tech savvy" I can break any computer or tv in the house with my mind.

[Stenrad]

it is sometimes best to keep your tech skills secret. Imho

+1.

[MarblePanther]

I often get balmed for problems on a pc I don't even use!

My sister-in-law refuses to even acknowledge that there is anything other than Microsoft. Therefore, she is Windows through and through.

She currently runs XP, and with that, regularly chats using Messenger. Anyway, quite often, some of the people she chats with 'advises' (and I use that term rather loosely) her to try such-and-such a program, download such-and-such, open this, open that, etc, and lo and behold, BSOD.

I then get called (she is in the other room) to see if I can fix what went wrong. When I ask her what she did, she replies with 'nothing, just chatting!'. Yeah, right! Surprisingly, the same people who 'advised' her about these programs are nowhere to be seen.

Anyway, it got to the stage that a reformat was in order as there was so much crap had built up over time, which for her meant that she was without Messenger for the best part of a day whilst I re-installed all the anti-virus (AVG), anti-malware / spyware (S&D), etc, before I was comfortable enough to let her 'back in the wild'.

Within two days I was back in front of her pc ridding it of more crap, but she just can't be told any different.

People like that should not even use a computer....urggh I know the feeling

[tvtech]

I'm usually only blamed for the problems I really do create, and I create a lot of them.

I"m a Broadcast systems maintenance Engineer and can create all the problems anyone could ever want.

But on that note When your being blamed for something a luser has done take the BOFH stance and just remember.


The difference between a technician and an engineer is; a technician knows it needs to be hit, an engineer knows where and how hard.

[BatsotO]

It was my very first day, the place is a game center for WOW, I never played WOW, not once, I just do networking and some technical work. That day some of the pcs could not connect to wow game server, or realm or what ever they call it, I dont really know how the game behave, so i traceroute the realm and the connection loss was when the package was already outside the isp's network. The isp is always right, the WOW server, no matter how they flooded, is always right, so I can't argue anymore, It was my fault. Is it?

[Ms_Angel_D]

When My Parent-In-laws still lived here I used to help maintain their computer, I can't count the times I would be called to go down the street and help fix this or that problem with windows XP. Well My Brother-In-Law (who thinks he knows everything yet really knows much of nothing), decides he's going to "Fix" The Computer, after it has has some spyware and virus's on it that my father in law caught through unsafe browsing practices. After he screws it up even more, it somehow gets to be my fault because I was the last person to work on the computer, Go figure.

This is also the same guy who can't make a back up disk to save his life, well the last time he called me because he had been forced to reformat to ask me for some software (for the umpteenth time), I said (even though I had the software on a disk) Sorry Man I don't have it, I don't need it any more because I don't do windows any more. I know it's wrong to fib but Why I should I go out of my way to help someone who


Won't Take Advice
Constantly screws up the computer by re-doing what u tell them not to because that's how it broke
Is probably going to just do the same thing again


It's nice to not be bothered with maintaining someone else's system any more.

[Solicitous]

Haven't worked in IT have you? I know when I was working in the IT industry everything that ever went wrong with a users computer was my fault. Mouse not working...my fault, computer running slow...my fault, user lost documents when they let their children play on their computer...my fault (happened once, apparently I should have warned them that their kids could delete their files).

[sarwiz]

And.. since I built all the desktops in this house (5 of them) and they all run perfectly except the wifes, it really is my fault.. somehow.....

[taqkavar]

If internet is slowed down or disconnected I immediately take the blame, and most of times they are right, since Its me torrenting and downloading simultaneously while uploading to a FTP site and streaming online video.

But for the use of computers this is strange, since if your the one in the household who knows more about computers, then you are less likely to cause them to brake. I'm asked to fix computers for relatives and family from time to time, to blame their misuse on me would be really weird, I wouldn't feel bad to brush them off the next time they would ask me for repairs if they did that.

[billgoldberg]

Are you ever blamed for something that goes wrong with the computer just because you are the only tech-savvy person in the house?

Whenever the router decides to take a break, my mom ALWAYS insists that I "sabotaged her connection" and it gets really annoying.

Even if I was on her computer weeks in the past, and something breaks, it's always MY fault.

Us techies are always used as excuses :mad:

Does this ever happen in your vicinity?

Oh yes, I get blamed for everything that goes wrong with our computers or computer related stuff.

Something goes wrong with the router, it's my fault.

An optical drive breaks, it's my fault.

The ps3 blu-ray drive got busted yesterday, it's my fault.

...

--

PS: My mother or brother can screw up a computer faster than I could.

I don't know how they do it.

Leave the alone for 2 days and all the computers would be broken.

--

Also, am I the only one that gets pissed off when the person who you are trying to help insists on bringing it to the computer shop instead of letting you fix it?

A friend of mine needed to have windows xp reinstall on his laptop.

I told him I would do it for free.

He agreed and said he would bring it this weekend, he was coming over anyway.

That weekend he told me he had brought it to the shop because they could do it better.

He was without a pc for 3 days. I could have fixed it in 1 hour.

[Dragonbite]

Yeah, I get blamed for lost files and their system not working.

Then I tell them if they are nice to me I won't do it again.

:lolflag:

[bp1509]

d

[ZuLuuuuuu]

It happens to me all the time at home. Whenever something on computer does not work or if the computer slows down, it is of course my fault (usually the accusation is getting virus from somewhere).

[conundrumx]

In high school I was once denied access to a teacher's computer during a study hall because "[I] will probably hack it!"

Blamed? No, I just get stuck fixing it when people know me.

[Solicitous]

Also, am I the only one that gets pissed off when the person who you are trying to help insists on bringing it to the computer shop instead of letting you fix it?

A friend of mine needed to have windows xp reinstall on his laptop.

I told him I would do it for free.

He agreed and said he would bring it this weekend, he was coming over anyway.

That weekend he told me he had brought it to the shop because they could do it better.

He was without a pc for 3 days. I could have fixed it in 1 hour.


I find that kind of attitude from people a little disheartening. I really have trouble helping someone a second time if I've tried to help, got a point in the conversation and said "look not much I can do without actually seeing the computer, when would you like me to fix it?" or having to tell them it will cost money to replace faulty hardware, only to be told "Oh my friend/nephew/niece/some-stranger is coming to look at it later today and fix it for free." I always think "If you've got someone coming later to fix it...why waste my time and ask me."

I wonder if Doctors have a thread on some forum like this one complaining of people claiming it being their fault for catching a cold? I think not. I honestly would have thought with the younger generations generally more computer savvy that there would be less disrespect to computer-gurus...but I feel it has got worse.

[Yownanymous]

My mum's brain process goes:
BSoD=Linux's fault... Yeah...:-?

[Prefix100]

Yes, once it annoyed me so much that I don't help people with their computers anymore.

[MarblePanther]

I find that kind of attitude from people a little disheartening. I really have trouble helping someone a second time if I've tried to help, got a point in the conversation and said "look not much I can do without actually seeing the computer, when would you like me to fix it?" or having to tell them it will cost money to replace faulty hardware, only to be told "Oh my friend/nephew/niece/some-stranger is coming to look at it later today and fix it for free." I always think "If you've got someone coming later to fix it...why waste my time and ask me."

I wonder if Doctors have a thread on some forum like this one complaining of people claiming it being their fault for catching a cold? I think not. I honestly would have thought with the younger generations generally more computer savvy that there would be less disrespect to computer-gurus...but I feel it has got worse.

The reason for this was the introduction of a windows gui...

:)

[PhoenixMaster00]

I just tend to get blamed for it in advance. If i need to borrow someones else's laptop/desktop its "dont mess with anything", or "best be working fine when i get it back..." Other than that its the standard why wont you help when all they have to do is plug the printer usb cable into their laptop. Or the obvious why is the wireless not working its all your fault speech.

Maybe for christmas i should have brought all the families computer books

[smartboyathome]

I have gotten past the getting blamed for everything because I use Linux stage (mostly because I have my own computer to run Linux on :p), but I still get blamed for the network sometimes, since I am the one who put the whole thing together. For example, I use powerline ethernet (google it if you don't know what it is, its really useful ;)) in order to run my router in the middle of the house instead of on one side of it, and one time one of the units died. I had diagnosed it and it wasn't the router (connected fine), wasn't the modem (got internet there) so that left the units. I unplugged and plugged each back in, and one of the lights on one unit wouldn't light up. Found out that the unit was defective, and I had originally been blamed for ruining it. :lolflag:

[red_Marvin]

The worst thing that happened me was dualbooting linux on the family computer when the hdd failed (physically), I don't think I was blamed for it though, at least not more than I blamed mysellf.
I must say that some of the attitudes that people show some of you would probably have me go ballistic in a few moments.

[nothingspecial]

Get married. Then everything is your fault.

[spoons]

Remember:

People messing up their computers and filling them with spyware and crap isn't because Windows sucks. There's nothing wrong with Windows and it's security.

The problem is that organic blob sitting in front of the computer.

[klange]

I used to get this a lot. My parents still get the same problems, but I think they've finally realized it's not me.

[bobbob1016]

I'm always blamed for slowing down the network here. I used to use kazaa, I mean 8 years ago, learned better since then, but it killed our network. Now I'm ALWAYS blamed for the network being slow. AT&T is doing line work in our area so when our internet goes out for a few minutes, it has to be me torrenting right? Even though I configured it correctly, and have it croned to run only 12 to 6. They blame me whenever the network slows down.

Something was conflicting with my dad's IP, and it had to be me. I said "If I wanted to mess with things on your PC, would I take your IP and have your computer let you know something was happening?" Worse thing is he's been a programmer +/-35 years