True Tales from Tech Support
I used to work for a large tech manufacturer. We had multi-function printers that would scan a document, save the file and send it as a fax, through the modem on their computer.
This was not a very complicated process, but the software that accomplished this was a bit twitchy, so we did get a lot of calls from folks who had difficulties.
One afternoon, in late 2004 or early 2005, I got a call from a woman who could not get the process to work. I asked her to run through it with me. She told me, “Well, I’m holding the document in front of my my monitor –” and I stopped her there and showed her how to put it in the scanner, then run the program; this worked fine. She was a bit embarrassed, but grateful for the help.
Fast forward to about 2007 or 2008 and I have transferred to a pre-sales support group. We got to see early products before they were released, and one of these was a laptop computer with a camera on the screen. To my astonishment, the rep held a document up to the screen on the laptop, the camera took a picture of it and it sent the document as a fax!
So now, I have to think the the woman that had called me that day long ago was not stupid — she was ahead of her time!