Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
Tech Support is one reason I like guns so much. I don't do it anymore professionally; Family and friends I'll help, usually... LOL.
Which reminds me!
Here everyone, come see why some of us like high powered rifles:
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Looks like it started literally at the beginning .....
I used to work for MacWarehouse as a tech support representative. One day a gentleman called who had never had a computer before. He was trying to set up his new system. I tried and I tried but I just couldn't make him understand where to plug the cables in. Finally I looked up the details on his order. He had ordered top-of-the-line everything -- monitor, keyboard, printer, modem, scanner, speakers, CD-ROM drive, external hard drive......except, he had not ordered the actual computer itself. No wonder the cables would not plug in anywhere.
- Customer: "How fast will my COM ports go?"
- Tech Support: "How hard can you throw your computer?"
My boss received complaint about me from one of those users that hates all tech support personnel. He said, quote:
I had not touched this person's PC for several months. I went to her desk and discovered she had moved her desk to the other side of the cube. She had disconnected the Cat 5 LAN cable because it was too short to reach the new desk location.
- Customer: "I don't know what that idiot did, but my PC was LAN connected yesterday, and now it's not."
She was not in the area, so I moved the desk back and hooked the PC to the LAN. I left a note saying it would "only work on this side of the cube."
Being an "idiot," I doubt that I could have found any of the longer LAN cables in the tub drawer at my desk.
I work in a small computer store, not only as a tech, but also as a salesperson. A customer came to me with a question about whether a piece of software would run on his computer.
Alarm bells go off in my head.
- Me: "Have you checked the minimum system requirements on the box?"
- Customer: "The what? Look, I just bought a computer here four months ago. Just tell me whether it will work."
Ten minutes later, after making no progress whatsoever, I decided to throw together some random jargon and buzzwords to get rid of him.
- Me: "Well, what kind of system did you buy?"
- Customer: "I dunno, it was a [brand name]."
- Me: (grasping at straws, losing the will to live) "How fast is the system?"
- Customer: "Well, it's Microsoft 98."
The customer, unhappy with our "poor service," rants, raves, and goes down the street to another computer store. I happen to have a friend there, so I called him, warned him, and told him what to say. Last I heard, the guy was still trying to figure out how to stop a DMA type 3 conflict with the processor cache.
- Me: "Well sir, I hate to tell you this, but your BIOS would cause an DMA type 3 conflict on the processor cache, causing a complete system shut down. I'm sorry, but you can't run this program."
I work as a clerk in a computer store. Once a guy came in needing RAM for his 486. I told him he probably needed parity SIMMs.
I put the parity away and got him two 8 meg non parity. As he left, I got a good one in.
- Customer: "Isn't non-parity faster?"
- Me: "Well, yeah, more or less."
- Customer: "That's what I want."
- Me: "Well, sir, that won't work in your machine."
- Customer: "Yes, it will. My friend said it was faster and that it would work."
- Me: "Sir, non-parity is for 120 Pentiums and better. I assure you, it will not work in your machine."
- Customer: "My friend says it will, and he's a computer genius."
- Me: "Fine."
- Me: "See you tomorrow. Hang on to your receipt."
I once went on site to fix a problem a customer had. Nothing would come up. I asked if he cycled the power, and he said he did. I asked him to show me exactly what he had done. He turned the monitor off and on again.
I reached down under the desk, hit the reset button, and everything was fine. He asked what the problem was. I said, "Don't worry about it sir, it's an eye-dee-ten-tee error -- takes too long to explain -- have a nice day."
Write down 'I,' 'D', '10', and 'T' together, and you'll see what I meant.
- Customer: "What's the fastest way to move 500 megabytes of data daily from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles?"
- Tech Support: "Fed Ex."
I have a Mac friend that convinced the other IBM people at his company that when the token ring network went down, it was due to someone removing the cable and the token falling out. He actually had businessmen on the floor looking for it. I think he eventually stated he found it himself to avoid getting lynched.
A support representative friend of mine came up to me one day and said that he thought he had done something wrong. He had been walking a novice Mac user through rebuilding her desktop. She tiresomely questioned every direction the technician made. After half an hour of patiently talking her through what should have been a one minute process, she finally stated, "Oh! Now it says, 'Are you sure you want to rebuild the desktop on the disk XXX?'"
The next thing he heard was the phone hitting the floor, the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps, and a door slam. After numerous calls over the course of an hour, the customer finally answered the phone. She had waited outside for an hour -- when the computer didn't explode, she went back inside and unplugged it.
- Tech Support: "Ok--"
- Customer: "Oh, now there's something like a spinning barber pole on the screen."
- Tech Support: "You didn't press 'OK' did you?"
- Customer: "Yes. You said 'OK'."
- Tech Support: (acting alarmed) "I just said 'Ok,' I didn't mean for you to press 'OK'!"
- Customer: (panicking) "What should I do now?"
- Tech Support: "Run! Get out of there! Run! Run!"
- Customer: "I tried to use this web page from my bookmarks, but it comes back with a DNS failure!"
- Tech Support: "Can you go anywhere else?"
- Customer: "YES!"
- Tech Support: "Then it's probably that the web site is down for repairs or that it's been discontinued. That happens on the Internet."
- Customer: "Well, go out and fix it! It's at [some obscure site in Japan]."
- Tech Support: "That would require me to take Japanese language lessons for about six months. Then you will have to send me money and plane tickets to travel to Japan to speak with the people who shut down the web site."
- Customer: "Geez, all I want is naked pictures!"
- Tech Support: "Who is your supervisor, so we can make arrangements?"
- Customer: "Ms. [such and such]."
- Tech Support: "Ok, please hold, and we'll have a conference call..."
- Customer: "I think I broke the Internet!"
- Tech Support: "So it was you!"
- Customer: (click)
This is a true account of personal trial, which happened while I was working Tech Support for a company which sold Stock Analysis software. The company would sell data to its customers who would download said data from the company's database on a daily basis. Their listing of data was, therefore, kept on their hard drive, along with the data itself.
For the next half hour, I try to explain amidst all the interruptions that he is going to have to pay for the replacement data, either by downloading it again or by getting it on disk from us, and that it would be Monday at the earliest (this was Friday, one hour before closing) before he got it back regardless of which method he chose. This, of course, was unacceptable and resulted in me being subjected to more tirades of ridiculous cursing and genetic analysis. Finally, just to change the subject (he refused to hang up, which I was hoping for), I inquired further into the whereabouts of his missing data.
- Me: "Thank you for calling, how can I help you?"
- Him: "Yeah, I want my data back. You need my phone number?"
- Me: "Back? What's happened to your data?"
- Him: "It's gone. I need it back. Let's get this going, hmmm?"
- Me: "Ummm...sir, what happened to it?"
- Him: "Don't you worry about that. Just give me my freaking data."
- Me: "Well, we have several options for data replacement. If you can send us a listing of the stocks you had--"
- Him: "Send you a list? I don't have time for this !@*#$!&. Give me my data."
- Me: "Uh, unfortunately, it's not that easy. We can--"
- Him: "Look, buddy, don't jerk me around. Just press your little whachamajiggers there, zip me down my data, and we're good, ok?"
- Me: "Well, sir, these are your options. You can--"
- Him: "*$#& you, you stupid &#&$! Stick those options up your @#$*! Why won't you give me my data!?!?"
At this point, I, and the other techs who were listening in by now, shared a great laugh, which I didn't bother to mute.
- Me: "Sir, what exactly was it that happened to your data?"
- Him: "You have it there! What the hell is in your head?"
- Me: "What happened to the data you used to have?"
- Him: "Well, this is a new computer, and I need it here, if you morons can handle that."
- Me: "Oh! Well, we can transfer it from the old machine. Is it--"
- Him: "Nope, nope, can't do that. It's dead."
- Me: "Dead?"
- Him: "That's right, dead. Your software killed it, so I threw it away."
- Me: "You...threw it away? What was wrong with it?"
- Him: "What are you, deaf?!? It wouldn't work any more, the monitor, laser printer, nothing, so I threw it all away."
- Me: "You threw away the printer?!?"
- Him: "Yeah, damn thing cost me $8000 to replace it all, and I'm gonna sue you guys!"
- Me: "Well, um, what was wrong with it? Did it get hit by lightning or something?"
- Him: "I told you, your software killed it! You got @#!+ in your ears? I put your $#^&*# disk in, and the whole computer just died."
- Me: "Died."
- Him: "That's right, pooboy!! It wouldn't load anymore, not even windows, just a blank screen with some gobbledygook babble on it."
- Me: "What babble was this? An error message?"
- Him: "You're damn right, an error message, caused by your software!!! I hope you can clean toilets, buddy!"
- Me: "Do you have the error message written down somewhere?"
- Him: "Well, Mr. Smartypants, as a matter of fact I do! And I'm gonna use it in court to see you in rags!"
- Me: "What's it say?"
- Him: (rustle, rustle, curse, curse, mutter) "Ah hah! Here it is! It says, 'Non System Disk or Disk Error!' You'll pay for this!"
Epilogue: When he called back on Monday, the manager terminated his account for abusive behavior for that record two minutes, thirty-eight second call.
- Me: "Sir, you will be happy to know that you threw away a perfectly good $8000 set of machinery because you were stupid enough to leave a disk in the drive."
- Him: (long silence) "...well, I'm still gonna sue you guys..."
- Me: "I want front row seats in the courtroom. Have a nice evening." (click)
They are in categories, enjoy, and try not to PTSD reading them LOL.
