No convert
We had a lot of problems, when we switched from DisplayWrite IV from IBM to WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. 2 users caused real problems.
You would think that a trained secretary, coming from typewriters to WP software would understand tabs... I certainly got taught tabs when I covered typing and secretarial skills as part of my BTEC Business Studies diploma.
But we had one user, who insisted on using spaces instead of tabs, even though we had switched to proportional fonts. The problem was, WordPerfect could cope with proportional fonts, but it obviously couldn't display them on an 80x25 text only screen. So, she would line up her spaces, then call support every time she printed, because they didn't line up. We'd then go down, show her, again how to do it with tabs, then wait for the next call...
The other was a PA who didn't want to switch away from DisplayWrite. She was the DW power user and everybody came to her with their problems. She didn't want to lose that status and didn't want to be starting at the same level as everyone else in WP. "Luckily" for her, the document conversion software the company chose converted the text and formatting, but it was a US product and only understood Letter paper, not A4. That meant, the first time a user opened a converted document in WP, they first had to set the page size, before they could print, otherwise the printer flashed a warning and waited for Letter to be put in, or the user pressed Online and it printed on A4 anyway.
Our devious PA wouldn't change the paper size on her converted documents, instead, she called the help desk every time she printed a document, "to show just how bad WP was, compared to DW". So we would have to go down, change the paper size and save the document...
Did I mention, the help desk was outsourced? We worked for a large IT consultancy and the client had contracted us to run the help desk. At the end of the month, the IT Director can storming into the helpdesk area and tore the manager a new one... The manager then came to us and asked what was going on, the number of word processing based support calls was up 75% since we converted, even though all the users had been trained?
We did an analysis and it turned out that the number of calls had actually dropped 40%, apart from the PA, who accounted for the remaining 60%, plus the additional 75% over the old figures. When our manager politely pointed out to the IT director that it was actually just his PA that was having problems with WP and, in fact, the number of calls (apart from his PA) had actually dropped significantly, we didn't hear any more about it, apart from the fact that the PA never called us again...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
