Times when you shouldn't call tech support

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

• While you're driving a car (my personal favorite as stupid moves go)


• While you're at the office, if the product is at home


• Above, vice versa


• While you're moving to a new house


• While you're remodeling a house


• While you're eating (ugh .. nausea)


• While you're waiting for your new product to be shipped and you don't actually have it yet


• While your kids are playing a MMORPG and can't be knocked off the LAN (if you want me to be at all helpful fixing routing issues, at least)


• While your kids are in attention-starved mode and won't let you concentrate on anything much more complicated than scratching your head


• ^kids are^spouse is^


• ^spouse^dog^


• ^dog^cat^

I probably forgot some things, but you get the idea. Especially the eating thing .. put the fscking sandwich down at least while you're talking.

(I was going to add certain regional accents and personality characteristics, but I'm virtually certain to offend people if I include those and it would generate more heat than light ..)

Comments

[azzy23.livejournal.com]

You forgot:

While you're using the toilet.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Or on the job ...

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Oh. Ew. Haven't had that one yet, as far as I know. I've had just about everything else imaginable, but for some reason, not that. Thankfully. :)

(Although, to be fair, the person calling from the same room as a couple having very loud and enthusiastic sex wasn't for a tech support job, it was an earlier phone bank job..)

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Yeh, I was going to mention that one.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

Its also a good idea not to call your IT guy's phone repeatedly while he is on the toilet. He might decide to answer it and describe his poop to you over the phone.

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

this is why toilets need to be bluetooth enabled -- so cellphones can detect them in proximity, and incoming calls can be routed straight to voicemail, perhaps with a courtesy message, "The Verizon Wireless customer you are trying to reach is taking a shit. Please leave a voice message at the tone."

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!

I got so tired of that at Dell. Just because it's a laptop...

[two-pi-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got the first few pretty often when I was helldesk.

P: So click on this, then this.
L: Okay...
P: And what does that say?
L: Oh. I was writing this down for later. I'm in my car, heading home.
P: No, I actually wanted you to follow these steps so I can see what's going on. Please call back when you're actually at your computer.

[two-pi-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the ever-favorite:

L: What's your mailing address?
P: [blahdittyblah]
L: Okay can you repeat that while I pull over and get a pen?
P (thinking): How about you call back when it's actually safe for you to be on the phone?

[gremlingirl.livejournal.com]

I've had a couple of calls that needed me to hold so the caller could go kick his chicken. No joke. Of course, I was sort of grateful after the chicken buggered off because then I could hear.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Kick His Chicken? Is that a euphamism?

[canray.livejournal.com]

While you're having the Stupid.

While you think you need an electrician in order to "Unplug something from the Con-Ed in the same way you would a toaster or hair dryer." (I was dealing with New York at the time.)

While the person who has the computer's password is not available due to be in some Third-World Country protesting the War (No, I'm not joking.).

When the computer is on fire.

When the house is on fire.

[crywolf.livejournal.com]

If it was a business in New York City, they probably did need someone from the electrician's union to unplug something. Unplugging something yourself in a union shop will get a grievance filed against you.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Those I get all the time, unfortunately. (Not the computer/house on fire, thankfully, although I've heard rumors, and the service tech who called us instead of the police when an irate customer threatened him with a gun if he didn't repair the machine right that second.)

Unfortunately, one popular one is "oh, I don't have any of those passwords [i.e. none of about half a dozen that are absolutely necessary to fix, well, anything], my son/daughter/cousin/whatever gave me this computer and they set it all up for me [and thus bypassed a setup assistant whose ENTIRE PURPOSE is to make sure they remember those passwords when THEY set them up].."

[canray.livejournal.com]

Yeah. When you were put into the queue, you may have been free, and the Crotch Dropplings were alseep or distracted by the lead paint chips then, but, when someone is finally able to answer 45-minutes later (because the company is too cheap to hire sufficient staff) they might be back at it...

[mrs-whiskerson.livejournal.com]

While you're waiting for your new product to be shipped and you don't actually have it yet

I once got a call from a woman wanting help writing a query for an access database. We discussed exactly what she wanted from the query and various other things, including the differing functions of forms, tables, queries and reports and the best part of an hour into this out-of-the-goodness-of-my-heart one-to-one Access Telephone Tutorial she started getting frustrated because I couldn't just give her a click this, click this, click this list that would give her the desired result. So we went back a few steps:
Me: What are the fields called and which tables are they in?
Woman: I don't know.
Me: Is the mdb somewhere on the network? Can I have a look at it?
Woman: I don't know.
Me: Well how are you opening it when you look at it?
Woman: Oh, I'm not opening it. I haven't made it yet. I'm waiting for *department* to give me the data.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Now THAT'S forward planning ...

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

When you're no where NEAR the device you need to troubleshoot.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Oh, and even better. When you take the product on vacation, hose something up in the OS because you couldn't stop fooling around with root level components, and guess what? You left your install disc set back in Boston, and you're in a hotel in Orlando. And you think it's totally unacceptable that you now have to carry the thing to a shop that has install discs to fix what you broke.

I get that one a lot.

[canray.livejournal.com]

When they're child called complaining that it isn't working, and FIX IT! FIX IT NOW!!!

[alstaria.livejournal.com]

Ah, you must work at a Uni help desk like me...

poor soul.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

When you're stoned! He's called a couple of times, says he doesn't know a thing about computers but knows everything about plants from the South, and could tell me how to grow the best marijuana. He loves it when I say stuff like 'No worries' if he apologizes for being slow, because 'Canadians are so laid-back'.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

LOL!! People ask me if I'm Canadian now, I've talked to so many people from up in the provinces. I switch into Canadian mode so easily it's a bit scary these days .. caught myself automatically using "zed" once recently when I was spelling something, and I'm starting to recognize familiar looking postcodes from some places.

And I know where places like Nanaimo are. That's scary as hell. :D

(One of these days I may get to see Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto, if not other places in Canada. I feel sort of like I've been there already, or at least I know how to get along with the people. If I could just lose this buzzsaw rural Kansas accent of mine .. :D )

[fallconsmate.livejournal.com]

*laughing* especially at the regional accents...

i know dang well i have one, southern drawl/texas twang crossover. i also apparently sound young, if the "is your mother at home?" comments are correct.

at least i *know* i'm sometimes hard to understand, and try harder...

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll probably piss some people off, but ..

That thick blue-collar Boston accent, the one that's funny as hell on Car Talk but not funny at all when its owner is a particularly dense mouth-breather with an abrasive personality to match the accent, makes me cringe when I hear it now, because I know what it means in terms of the next hour and a half of my life. Manhattan and Montréal pale by comparison, although Montréal has its good days and bad days. (New Yorkers have actually grown on me quite a bit .. NYC is another city I feel like I know, only visited Manhattan once but from all the people I've talked to in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Long Island .. heh .. I catch myself going Brooklyn occasionally now.)

[4ti3k4t35.livejournal.com]

I get people calling from their cars all the time. It really weirds me out when they say they're on the freeway and are dinking around on their mobile phone and their laptop while on the phone with me.

I reeeeeally hope someone else is driving, but those calls are few and far between and we're only allowed to suggest that they pull over for safety. Sigh. At least I haven't had anyone crash yet.


Also, you reeeeally don't need to call tech support when you're drunk. You may THINK you do, but you're wrong. Very, very wrong.

[bitchtude.livejournal.com]

How about don't call when you don't have power to your house. *rollseyes* Yeah, I've had that call.

Moron: We just had a lightening strike here and now my computer won't turn on.
Me: Is it plugged into a surge strip or straight into the wall?
Moron: It's in one of those strip things.
Me: Okay, I want you to unplug it from the strip and plug it right into the wall.
Moron: Well I can't really see where it's plugged into the strip at.
Me: Why? Is the strip behind the desk?
Moron: No, it's under the desk but the power in the house is off and it's too dark see under there.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

"You're in the car doing ninety? OK, please raise both hands above your head and career into a telephone pole."

[crazdgamer.livejournal.com]

"Ok, did that. I'm now bleeding profusely from my head, and I think my arms and legs are broken in multiple places. Now what?"

[devilish69angel.livejournal.com]

I've only been working in tech support for 3 months...I've had all of those already

plus a really good one
me: ok i need you to click start
idiot: i dont have a start button
me: this is a windows machine correct?
idiot: yes
me: lower left hand corner, says start, click on that for me please
idiot: my screen saver is on
me: ok ma'am move your mouse or strike a key on your keyboard for the screen saver to de-activate
idiot: nothings happening it's still my screen saver
(we went on like this for another 5 minutes or so...til I had her just hold the power button on the tower to power it off, turns out she called back later for another issue and her "screen saver" was her desktop background)
OY!

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

Having someone chew food over the phone is one thing. How about the guy that eats NEXT to you while you work on their grease covered laptop and snorts like a pig the entire time? Talk about aggravating!