im your tech asshole ripped from techsnap
Aug. 21st, 2007 06:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
slayne-souls.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecovery* I am here, simply put, to fix your shit. My job is not complete until said shit is fixed. Please just help me fix this shit.
* With that out of the way, know that I hate you exactly as much as you hate me. No more, no less. If you are at least relatively pleasant, I’m happy to help you- even to make small talk as I attend to the issue at hand. Conversely, if you are a total and complete jackass, I will make this the worst 10 minutes of your week.
* Neither I, nor any of my coworkers, are out to fuck you. We are not idiots. We are college graduates in technical disciplines, the vast majority of whom are here to work their way up the IT ladder to more fulfilling positions. Sometimes we have off days, sure, but we know EXACTLY what we are doing. Note that this does not apply to anyone outside of our department. They are, in all reality, idiots who are out to fuck you.
* So you’ve already unplugged the “internet box” and plugged it back in? Brace yourself, you’re going to do it again. Most of the time I do this for a reason…unless you’re a dick. Then I do it to see how mad it makes you.
* Don’t lie to me- I can tell you have a router. It isn’t illegal.
* To those who think they are “computer illiterate”: The vast majority of the time, you are lovely customers: Patient, willing to learn, and most importantly, willing to listen. Thank you!
* To those who think they are CompSci PHD’s: The vast majority of the time, you are retarded: If you already cycled your equipment and it didn’t work, why did it work when I made you do it again? If you are so well educated, stay the hell out of the queue so that people who need help can get it.
* Supervisors don’t have a magic wand that they can wave to make everything better. They are governed by the same protocol and use the same utilities as I do. In fact, supervisors are more likely to tell you to fuck off- believe it or not, they have other pressing issues to attend to. If a node goes down, they WILL put those 200 subscribers before you in Priorityland.
* Threatening to cancel does not intimidate us. We have an entire department that is paid to care about that, which means that I don’t have to. Harsh? Sure, but I have more than enough work to do fixing shit, yelling at field techs, following up on cases, and explaining the concept of email to your grandmother that it won’t cause me to lose any sleep.
* It worked fine yesterday? Oh, then I must be wrong. Let me reconsider the 40 minutes I spent troubleshooting your Win98 box. Check it out: Shit breaks (see point 1); If shit did not break, I would be mowing your lawn instead of sitting in this office.
* Speakerphone? Turn it the fuck off.
* Don’t call back and have another rep troubleshoot the same problem. He will read the notes I left about how you spilled coke into your cable box. Even if he didn’t, he would come to the same conclusion, and more people with undiagnosed problems would be stuck listening to that god-awful hold music.
* I am not blowing smoke when I say that I understand how frustrating it is to wait on hold, get transferred, and deal with bad agents. I too have called Dell’s tech support line. The difference is that I actually DO care about your problem, so please just calm down before I kill your family.
* My company has over 20 million subscribers. I handle a region of about 2 million. To this day, none of them have ever called in to say “I just wanted you to know that my shit is working correctly.” Maybe someday?
* With that out of the way, know that I hate you exactly as much as you hate me. No more, no less. If you are at least relatively pleasant, I’m happy to help you- even to make small talk as I attend to the issue at hand. Conversely, if you are a total and complete jackass, I will make this the worst 10 minutes of your week.
* Neither I, nor any of my coworkers, are out to fuck you. We are not idiots. We are college graduates in technical disciplines, the vast majority of whom are here to work their way up the IT ladder to more fulfilling positions. Sometimes we have off days, sure, but we know EXACTLY what we are doing. Note that this does not apply to anyone outside of our department. They are, in all reality, idiots who are out to fuck you.
* So you’ve already unplugged the “internet box” and plugged it back in? Brace yourself, you’re going to do it again. Most of the time I do this for a reason…unless you’re a dick. Then I do it to see how mad it makes you.
* Don’t lie to me- I can tell you have a router. It isn’t illegal.
* To those who think they are “computer illiterate”: The vast majority of the time, you are lovely customers: Patient, willing to learn, and most importantly, willing to listen. Thank you!
* To those who think they are CompSci PHD’s: The vast majority of the time, you are retarded: If you already cycled your equipment and it didn’t work, why did it work when I made you do it again? If you are so well educated, stay the hell out of the queue so that people who need help can get it.
* Supervisors don’t have a magic wand that they can wave to make everything better. They are governed by the same protocol and use the same utilities as I do. In fact, supervisors are more likely to tell you to fuck off- believe it or not, they have other pressing issues to attend to. If a node goes down, they WILL put those 200 subscribers before you in Priorityland.
* Threatening to cancel does not intimidate us. We have an entire department that is paid to care about that, which means that I don’t have to. Harsh? Sure, but I have more than enough work to do fixing shit, yelling at field techs, following up on cases, and explaining the concept of email to your grandmother that it won’t cause me to lose any sleep.
* It worked fine yesterday? Oh, then I must be wrong. Let me reconsider the 40 minutes I spent troubleshooting your Win98 box. Check it out: Shit breaks (see point 1); If shit did not break, I would be mowing your lawn instead of sitting in this office.
* Speakerphone? Turn it the fuck off.
* Don’t call back and have another rep troubleshoot the same problem. He will read the notes I left about how you spilled coke into your cable box. Even if he didn’t, he would come to the same conclusion, and more people with undiagnosed problems would be stuck listening to that god-awful hold music.
* I am not blowing smoke when I say that I understand how frustrating it is to wait on hold, get transferred, and deal with bad agents. I too have called Dell’s tech support line. The difference is that I actually DO care about your problem, so please just calm down before I kill your family.
* My company has over 20 million subscribers. I handle a region of about 2 million. To this day, none of them have ever called in to say “I just wanted you to know that my shit is working correctly.” Maybe someday?
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 10:43 pm (UTC)"Guess what? Everything is fine!"
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Date: 2007-08-21 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 11:13 pm (UTC)Oh, that's so true. I <3 those people. My mom listens to me complain about customers and so she gets nervous when she needs to call Dell (because I weaned her off me.). I always gtell her "Mom, just be nice and listen to what the tech says. I know you know enough to where you can follow their directions, so just calm down". lol. :)
Speakerphone? Turn it the fuck off.
OH. MY. GOD. YES. And along the same lines, to the people who like play telephone and have relatives "help"? DIAF, kthxbye.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 11:14 pm (UTC)I forgot this one...
In 5.5 years of working for gigantic companies, that's happened twice. Damn near made my day both times.
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Date: 2007-08-22 03:48 am (UTC)cust: "I just wanted to let you know that {previous tech} fixed my problem and everything is working. Thanks so much!"
me: . . . . Uhhhhhhhh . . . .
It happened on Thanksgiving 2004. It gave a new meaning to the holiday. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-21 11:48 pm (UTC)But if they did, we'd be pissed that they're clogging up our queues.
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Date: 2007-08-22 11:14 am (UTC)The CFO here has a similar saying: "People don't come into my office just to tell me my hair looks good..."
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Date: 2007-08-22 04:56 pm (UTC)And I'm tempted to call my DSL provider and thank them for providing me with a solid reliable connection.
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Date: 2007-08-23 01:05 pm (UTC)Yep. "If you really did know what you were doing, you wouldn't have called me."
As for people calling me who don't have problems - I don't like them, they clog up the queue. Especially the guy who called me to say that he had plugged in a new keyboard and it was working fine. Only it took him fifteen minutes to articulate this.
I'll admit I've called TS when my shit wasn't broken. However, it was when I was looking for my first bit of ADSL kit, and I figured the best way to minimise future calls would be to ping the ISP techs in my hometown and ask them which model they personally had experienced the least problems with. Thus I ended up with a model which not only ran like a dream, but which every tech in a hundred-mile radius considered utterly bog-standard and easily troubleshot, and which played very well indeed with the local phone lines and ISP equipment.
Considering I then pushed the same model on everyone else I knew in the area, I'd like to think that the 60 seconds I stole from each ISP's TS queue was returned in spades.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-25 04:38 am (UTC)I knew this sounded familiar when I read it...