Snipper: Tech S’port

Any of my readers ever work in Tech Support? As you may guess, yeah, I did. Things often went in funny directions…

Caller: “I need help setting up my email program”
(Yes this was back in dialup Internet days and things like Hotmail or Gmail didn’t exist yet.)
Me (helping out at a helpdesk): “What’s the problem? Can’t set up the email address?”
Caller: “No, I got that. It’s here where it says ‘your name:’ – what should I write there?”
Me:”Just write your name, easy.”
Caller: “But what’s my name?”
Me:”It’s your name?”
Caller: “Pardon?”
Me:”It’s quite literally your name.”
Caller: ” . . . ??? . . .”
Me:”What did your parents call you?”
Caller: “OMG I feel silly..”
Me:”Never, it’s hard to figure things out when you’re setting up new software, have a great day!”

Me:”Hi, you’ve called me at 2AM I’m at home and not actually on staff but I’ll see what I can do for you. What’s the problem?”
Caller: “You f#^$ing bas$)ards have disabled my account!”
Me:”I’m sorry, what account was that? Are you sure you’re paid up? “
Caller: “Of course I am (*ing well paid up! And as soon as I paid up, I come home and find that you f#^$ing bas$)ards have disabled my account!”
(He ranted and raved at me and I listened, amused. It was his dollar, calling me on a company mobile so more power to him. I was getting a bit tired of the constant aggro though.)
Me:”I’m sure no-one would do anything like that to you. I know (owner) and he’s very tolerant. So what’s been happening?”
Caller: “It says my password is wrong and disconnects me.”
Me:”Okay, no problem – did you enter it on the keyboard?”
Caller: “No – it is saved automatically and always has worked before for me.”
Me:”Okay get your computer ready to log in again, type the password over the top of the automatic one, and then hang up and try again.”
(The bad old days, remember? He was using the phone so he had to hang up after the call in order to logi in again. I listened for the sound of typing but heard nothing, then the phone hung up and I could see an incoming call in the log. “PAP failure” said the log, and disconnected. Thirty second later, he rang back/)
Caller: “You see? My account is deactivated, you f#^$ing bas$)ards are ripping me off!”
Me:”I asked you to type the password in manually last time but I heard no typing. Could we do that again please, open your connection program again, manually type in the password to be sure it’s correct, then hang up the phone and click the login button.”
Caller: “Okay I have done that, will try again now.”
(Muttering what sounded like Polish or Russian cursewords under his breath. I noticed I again didn’t hear any typing. Caller is now livid when he rings back and swearing his head off. He again insists that he manually typed in his password and “knows his computer system inside and out and we are unmentionable assholes for doing this to him. We go a few more times around with me explaining that a password failure means that he’s typed his password in wrong, he keeps abusing me, and it’s by now almost 4AM and I’ve frankly had it with him.)
Me:”Mate, it’s 4AM. You’ve told me you typed in the password six times now but it’s still not working. All I can think is that your installation of Windows has corrupted some password-typing module and you’ll need to copy all your documents off it, re-install Windows, and type all the information into the new copy. Good night.”

Result: Instead of admitting that he’d just typed something random over his saved password by accident, and just manually re-entering it when I asked him, he actually did save all his documents and re-install Windows just to save face. I know that because he asked me where he could download Eudora email from and how to set it up again.

So I can fully appreciate this tech support abuse: https://notalwaysright.com/providing-a-full-quality-service/350087/

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