Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

ON CALL Welcome to another edition of On Call, the reader-contributed column The Register runs each Friday to share your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Darwin," who once worked as a sysadmin for a Wall Street law firm – the sort of outfit that charges four-figure hourly fees and justifies them by pointing to its exceptionally smart and experienced staff. Darwin was busy updating a PC when one of the lawyer's secretaries called. "The lawyer needed help with Outlook," Darwin told On Call. He assumed an email problem could wait until he had finished the PC upgrade, so promised to be there in ten minutes. "The secretary called back and told me the lawyer insisted I come immediately." Darwin therefore hustled off to the lawyer’s office and asked him to describe the problem. "All of these letters are slanted," the legal genius explained. "That's called italics," Darwin replied, then watched as the lawyer got angry and demanded to know how italics happened. Darwin found the reaction rather odd. The lawyer had attended an Ivy League university and held both law and business degrees – credentials that suggested a certain intelligence and worldliness. "I showed him the italics icon," Darwin told On Call, "and after I left his office I saw his secretary bent over trying to hide her laughter." Who's the supposedly smartest person who has asked you a dumb support question? Click here to send On Call an email telling your tale, and hopefully we'll be smart enough to share it with our readers on a future Friday. ®