User Complained His Mouse Wasnt Working. But He Wasnt Using A Mouse

On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column in which we share your astounding tales of being asked to tackle tech support jobs that seemingly defy common sense.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Brian" who told us of the time he worked for an outsourcer that had a contract to provide tech support in a missile factory.

One of the workers in the factory – let's call him "Fred" – had a knack for making trouble.

On one memorable occasion he caused a bomb scare that sent the factory into full lockdown by leaving a box labelled "Explosives" in the pump house for the building's fire suppression system.

There were no explosives in the box. Fred just thought it was a nice and useful box, stored various things in it, and one day forgot he'd left it in the pump house.

"The box was spotted by someone doing a check on the pumps and panic ensued," Brian told On Call.

Staff were corralled in the canteen for hours and only let out at around 8pm.

You can probably guess that Fred also made some merry moments for Brian and his tech support colleagues.

• Glitchy taxi tech blew cover on steamy dispatch dalliance
• One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee
• DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers
• Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

His favorite such incident came when Fred logged a fault in his mouse, which had apparently stopped working.

Brian duly visited his desk, found Fred out to lunch but the mouse present, properly connected, and entirely capable of making a cursor move – although it was placed on top of the PC case rather than on the desk.

That was odd, but so was Fred. Brian nonetheless asked around and was told others who sat near Fred had also seen the mouse misbehave.

So he came back later, found Fred at his desk, and asked him to demonstrate the problem.

Fred then picked up his glasses case – not the mouse – and slid it around his desk before proclaiming "I told you the pointer isn't moving!"

Brian and his colleagues reacted quickly.

"I took the mouse off the PC case and placed it under Fred's hand," he told On Call.

The mouse "started working" again.

Brian figured out how this very odd event came about. Fred had taken the previous day off and someone else had parked at his desk and moved the mouse out of the way.

When he returned, Fred didn't look for the mouse, but reached out to where he thought it would be, found his glasses case – which had a similar shape - and decided it wasn't working.

Have you ever worked with a serial offender who sent many trivial tech support chores your way? If so, click here to send On Call an email as we'd love to tell your tale on a future Friday. ®