Little Green Men
by Kathy Burns

Anyone who's worked in the computer technical support field will to you,
there are some strange things that can come up with no warning.

This particular night there had to have been a full moon out because I
was running into weirdness everywhere I turned.

It was past midnight when a customer came to meet online and said, "my
web browser is running really slow, what's wrong?"

I asked if he had cleared his cache, or temporary Internet files, and he
said yes.

"Okay," I said, "let's look into task list to see a something is
interfering or using too much memory. Press Ctrl plus Alt plus delete
once and a close program list will appear on your screen. Tell me
everything that shows in that list."

The customer proceeded to type his reply, he listed about 15 items and
as I waited for him to finish I thought to myself, "no wonder his web
browser is running so slow, he has too many programs open." I didn't
want to interrupt him as he was faithfully carrying out my request to
the letter, so I began to help a couple of other people at the same
time.

A few minutes later, I glanced back at the first screen to look over his
list and decide what could be closed. As I reached the bottom of his
list I started laughing so hard that almost dropped my Mt. dew on the
keyboard.

The last item in the customers task list was: Little Green Men.

Being a professional, I decided to probe a bit farther for more
information. "Little Green Men? Is that a screen saver or a game?" I
asked.

"Not that I know of," was his reply.

I tried probing further. "Okay, do you know what that is then?"

"No, I never seen before."

Before I could think of what to say next, he typed excitedly, "the
little green men are dancing!"

Now by this time my hysterical laughter had attracted a supervisor and a
few other techs and they were avidly watching my screen. When the green
man started 'dancing' the supervisor made a joke about whether the
customer had a gun handy. I decided to act as if there was nothing
unusual about finding little green man dancing on a computer screen.

"Okay sir, please click once on the little green men in the task list
and then click the End Task button," I instructed, trying to ignore the
roar of laughter behind me.

After a short pause, His hysterical reply came: " No! There are little
green men on my screen! They are dancing and climbing all over the
place!! When I click the end task button they get BIGGER!!"

My response threw all professionalism aside. "Sir, please turn your
computer completely off, go to bed and get some sleep"

"...In the morning, check to see if the green men are still there. If
so, please call Microsoft. Thank You for using our online technical
support system, good night."

Originally published 5/8/1998