Can You Read?

My morning has gotten off on the wrong foot. No, that's not true...it started just fine, but then callers have made it go downhill. Maybe I'm just a little too happy it's Friday, and I'm already in weekend mode? Person calls, says they can't log into their machine. Could be quite a few reasons for that so I say, "Can you read me the error message?" And the response is something like "oh you know blah blah contact your administrator!" Am I not phrasing the question properly? Maybe I should be saying "Tell me exactly what it says on your screen. I want you to read the message word for word exactly as it appears and do not leave out a single syllable. Can you do that?"