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Contest #4: Helpless User Stories

Welcome to the final week of The Great Tech Call-'Em-Like-You-See-'Em Contest, the contest where you can win one of two iPods, plus one of 36 other cool prizes.

What's it all about? Well, each week for the past four weeks we've been expounding on a different theme in a series of short essays by various TechWeb editors. Then we let our readers take over by submitting their own contributions.

The topics are:

  • The Software Hall Of Fame: What is your favorite software app of the last 10 years? (There's still time to enter!)
  • The Hardware Hall Of Fame: What's the best hardware you've come across in the past decade? (Enter any time!)
  • The Next Big Thing: There's a lot of great stuff coming up. What tech do you see in your future? (Still open -- don't forget to enter!)
  • Helpless User Stories: Tell us your best, funniest, and/or most horrifying story of user lo-jinks. (Enter at the end of this story.)

    This week, we're looking for Helpless User Stories from IT professionals in the trenches. We've canvassed support tech personnel for both actual horror stories and those classic urban legends that just won't fade away. The results -- amusing, horrifying, or just plain exasperating -- follow.

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