Part of my job is to back up the Help Desk, so I get to see all the help email that come in. I’ve done tech support before, and if there’s one thing it teaches you, it’s that people are stupid. Witness the following email that just came in:

“We are getting kicked out of (your software) after about 20 minutes. Are you having others with the same problem?”

Our software is designed to log you out after 20 minutes of inactivity. It’s a security feature. It tells you it’s doing this. You get two pop-up messages warning you about it: one tells you you’re going to be logged out in 2 minutes if you don’t do something, then after you’ve been logged out another window pops up telling you that you’ve been logged out and why. So it’s not like there aren’t any clues to what’s happening.

But still, Genius up there wants to know if there’s a problem. Yes, in fact there is, and there’s a name for it. You’re experiencing a PEBCAK error: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. There’s also the ID-10-T error, which also applies. Pick one. Or both.

People are stupid.