>I am the first line tech support for my office. Here is how my support calls usually go, when a user calls me with a computer problem:
>
>1) 33% are solved by the usual means:
>
>User: "I have this problem..."
>Me, cutting user off in mid-sentence: "Did you try rebooting?"
>User: "Um, no."
>Me: "Try it!"
>Later user calls back: "Thanks, that worked!"
>
Back when I was doing that sort of thing there was one elderly lady senior manager who was just starting to use computers and was deathly afraid of breaking it. It was "politically correct" to make a visit rather than tell her to reboot.

Once, after trying a couple of things (for form's sake) the reboot worked. Not satisfied that she was now operational again, she demanded to know what was wrong. I obviously had no clue, but she needed an answer.

I asked if she had heard the rumors about display tubes causing an unwarranted number of mis-carriages - and she said yes. I then told her that IBM had decided that it was infra-red emissions from the monitor that were the culprit, and they were monitoring the problem by putting sensors in the keyboard. Her red laquor nail polish had reflected back some of those emissions and had overloaded the sensors - causing the system to stop.

I'm not sure she believed me. But the next day she was wearing blue nail polish --- and hair to match.