I work web development for a college... which employs a shockingly huge amount of people who are absolutely clueless when it comes to computers and the internet. I could tell a dozen or so stories just about ONE PERSON in a particular department who thinks I'm a wizard and has literally asked my brother what my favorite kind of candy is because she wants to buy me some because I'm so amazing or something for... for UPDATING HER DEPARTMENT'S PAGE.
But I will tell a story about a different department because my boss and I were so completely confused... and then we laughed our butts off.
A couple years ago, I made a tool for a particular department that generated a page via PHP/mySQL/javascript, and there were a couple other pages where data could be entered to go on that page. The data entry pages were coded so that it could only be accessed if you were logged in and had certain credentials. And if you had those credentials AND the credentials indicating you were either one of us web developers or the department head, then you had a few other administrative options.
(tl;dr: If you're logged in as the department head, you get extra options on data entry pages for a tool I made.)
So like a year later, the department switched heads, and they needed the associated login credentials changed from one person - we'll say J - to another person - we'll say S. Easy enough, my boss handles those things, and he added S to the admin group, and left J on for training.
A couple months later, J emailed us and was all "Why isn't S seeing the same pages I'm seeing? S can't use the tool as we need it to be used!" Well, that was sort of unclear, so we asked for details, which eventually resulted in J sending a image consisting of two screencaps. One was the page she had been getting, the other was the page S had been getting. So my boss forwarded it to me, since this was my project, and I took a look at it... and was like "...wtf? Why is this table even showing up on this page? .........Wait a minute......."
One of the screencaps included the menu bar of the browser, which included the URL. The other screencap? Was what should appear on one of the OTHER data entry pages.
The reason they were seeing different pages was because THEY WERE LOOKING AT DIFFERENT PAGES.
I told my boss there was no way I could reply to this tactfully without snark/uncontrollable laughter, and he was gracious enough to give them an explanation, and we heard no argument afterwards - so indeed, that was apparently all the problem was.
Re: Working WTFs
But I will tell a story about a different department because my boss and I were so completely confused... and then we laughed our butts off.
A couple years ago, I made a tool for a particular department that generated a page via PHP/mySQL/javascript, and there were a couple other pages where data could be entered to go on that page. The data entry pages were coded so that it could only be accessed if you were logged in and had certain credentials. And if you had those credentials AND the credentials indicating you were either one of us web developers or the department head, then you had a few other administrative options.
(tl;dr: If you're logged in as the department head, you get extra options on data entry pages for a tool I made.)
So like a year later, the department switched heads, and they needed the associated login credentials changed from one person - we'll say J - to another person - we'll say S. Easy enough, my boss handles those things, and he added S to the admin group, and left J on for training.
A couple months later, J emailed us and was all "Why isn't S seeing the same pages I'm seeing? S can't use the tool as we need it to be used!" Well, that was sort of unclear, so we asked for details, which eventually resulted in J sending a image consisting of two screencaps. One was the page she had been getting, the other was the page S had been getting. So my boss forwarded it to me, since this was my project, and I took a look at it... and was like "...wtf? Why is this table even showing up on this page? .........Wait a minute......."
One of the screencaps included the menu bar of the browser, which included the URL. The other screencap? Was what should appear on one of the OTHER data entry pages.
The reason they were seeing different pages was because THEY WERE LOOKING AT DIFFERENT PAGES.
I told my boss there was no way I could reply to this tactfully without snark/uncontrollable laughter, and he was gracious enough to give them an explanation, and we heard no argument afterwards - so indeed, that was apparently all the problem was.