Thursday, May 17, 2007

I thought if I posted after midnight that the blog would show up on today.

Meanwhile, I was offline at home all day. Finally called Bend Broadband Tech Support after dinner, and surprisingly, they were there. Told him I'd turned off all the gadgets, and replugged and jiggled everything.

"Have you turned on the modem?"

"Of course I've turned on the modem, do you think I'm an idi.....wait, is that the button on top here?"

Sometimes I wonder if the tech people just have their eyes roll back in their heads as they slide off the chair onto the floor from the sheer stupidity of the people calling them.
Posted by at

4 comments:

Boozetalkin said...

Yes, yes they do.

I think that goes for anyone who works customer service over the phone. You know what companies hand out to employees to promote new things? Foam rubber stress relief objects in funny shapes. Hammers, cellphones, computers, hardhats, puzzle pieces, and easychairs are just a few I've been given over the last couple of years at T-Mobile. Because they know that at least once per day you'll get a call from someone who is so unbelievably dumb that the rep will need to squeeze that stress ball to keep their cool:

"I just got my bill in the mail! Why is it so high if I made a payment on it?"
"We sent the bill out on June 1st, you didn't make your payment until June 5th."
"So why doesn't it show that on my bill! YOU ARE RIPPING ME OFF!!!"

Repeat for 10 minutes...

squeeze

May 17, 2007 at 12:49:00 PM PDT
dkgoodman said...

The posting time is when you started the post, not when you published it. You can change the posting time in the "Post Options" just above the "Save as draft" button during editing.

People always assume that things are correct rather than check. When I was in service, I could never ask "Is your computer plugged in?" because obviously it must be. The user always, ALWAYS would say, "Yes, of course it is!"

I then got in the habit of saying, "Please go to the wall, unplug the computer and plug it in backwards." The user would go to the wall, see the plug lying on the floor where they kicked it or the janitor left it, plug it in and come back to tell me, "Yeah, that was it, the computer was plugged in backwards."

O brave new world.

May 17, 2007 at 1:38:00 PM PDT
Steven said...

Oh, you have no idea of the hilarity on the other end of the line, Dunc.

Several IT industry publications have columns devoted to the incredibly... ah.. let's say, *amusing* things that end-users come up with. Stories about the "built-in cup holder" and "sticky keyboard keys due to the kinks in the keyboard cable" abound.

There's even an acronym for it this phenomenon: PEBKAC.

"Problem exists between keyboard and chair."

Cheers,
Steven

May 17, 2007 at 4:16:00 PM PDT
Jason said...

That's funny ... I was going to mention the "cupholder" story. It's definitely my favorite.

It's not just limited to the tech fiedl, of course. Us hotel folks have quite a few good stories ourselves. One of the funniest I've heard was as follows:

=-=-=-=-=-=

A gentleman calls the front desk from his cell phone and claims he's stuck in the elevator. The desk clerk on duty heads down to the one and only elevator to see if he can help. Lo and behold, the elevator is empty and working perfectly. A short time later, the same guest calls back -again-, very irrate, insisting that he's still in the elevator. The clerk takes the cordless phone down to the elevator, and after some arguing back and forth about who is where, the guest finally realizes he's calling the hotel that he had stayed at the -previous- night by mistake. I believe he had been traveling quite a bit of late due to his job. The story ends with the guest apologizing, and saying he's going to call his boss to find out what city he's currently in, as he has no recollection.

May 19, 2007 at 11:29:00 PM PDT

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)