And I'm supposed to be 3rd line here...

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

Last call of the day took about an hour. Some gems:

'No, that's a network cable. It won't fit in the ADSL socket on the filter.'

***

'The black lead with the brick is an adapter. It provides power to the modem.'

'How?'

'...by electricity?'

'Oh!'

***
'No, the yellow cable with the rectangular plastic plug goes into your computer. It won't fit into the filter.

***

'Please plug the power lead into a power socket.'

'What does that look like?'

'...'

***
'Please plug the phone into the phone socket on the filter.'

'What's a phone?'

'...'

***

'The grey cable is the ADSL cable. It goes from the ADSL socket on the modem to the filter. The filter. The fil...The thing you've got plugged into your phone socket. No! That's your network cable! It does not go into the filter! No, the grey cable does not go into your computer. It goes into the filter. Yes. That thing. Got it? Good. What? The other end? You've plugged it into the modem. Oh. You've unplugged it? Okay, put it back in. No, in the socket you took it out of. Not the filter. The modem. Plug the end of the grey cable back into the socket you took it out of. On the modem. No, that is a network socket. Yellow cable goes into yellow socket, grey cable goes into grey socket. Yes, that's right. Yes. It goes in there. Good. Now tu...what? The other end? The. Other. End. The end I just told you to plug into the filter? Oh. You took it out. Why? Well, both ends need to be connected at the same time. Yes. Yes, they do. It won't work otherwise.'

***

Aside to my manager:

'I'm going to ask her to change a microfilter. Gods help me.'

'Godspeed to you.'

***

This is the future of our species, people...

*cross-posted to my own LJ*

Comments

[octavia-hemahi.livejournal.com]

For me, its usually whats a coax cable. I say, the thing you unscrew. They suddenly get this way of light OHHH THAT!

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

That long paragraph, for some reason, reminds me terribly of 'Who's On First?' I don't think that's a good thing; poor you.

[wbyonder.livejournal.com]

What's on second?

[japester.livejournal.com]

I don't know

[wbyonder.livejournal.com]

He's on third, we're not talking about him.

[utoxin.livejournal.com]

You told her to plug in both ends of a cable?! Don't you know that'll short out the tubes, and cause a giant leak? It'll cost Al Gore billions of dollars to repair it!

[japester.livejournal.com]

c|n>k

bad! bad!

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

It's times like this that make you really wish you could hand out mandatory sterilisation forms, or apply 500Kv via phoneline.. for the good of the species.

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

I've seen a young mother chasing a 2 year old around a store once or twice.

"No put that back"
"not in your mouth, in your pocket"
"What does the Train sound like?" "MOOOO!!!"

The long paragraph made me think of that... I read it and in my mind, her soft, exasperated voice rang true.

[kgasso.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

One inexpensive model of DSL modem we sell doesn't have a separate filtered phone port on it. There's a trick you can employ to hang a phone off of it, however, by plugging a standard RJ11/RJ14 splitter into the ADSL port on the back of the modem, plugging the line into one side of the splitter and plugging a microfilter + phone on the other.

After I taught this to one of our guys, he tried to explain it to a customer over the phone, spending about an hour walking them through installing microfilters and the splitter... that is, until the customer inexplicably unplugged the phone they were talking on from a completely different jack in the house and hung up on him.

Somehow they managed to spend 20 minutes trying to plug back in that single cord from the phone that they pulled out of the wall and called back. In the process of "fixing" their phone (on the other jack), they went around the house and unfiltered all of the other phones.

After that, I thought he was going to drive over to the customer's house and unload a full magazine of searing lead into the guy's computer.

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

heh - reminds me of a recent Dunkin Donuts radio spot that has a tech support goodie:

us: let's get started with some preliminary information. Is the PC plugged in?
them: to what?
us: the wall.
them: [panicked] This PC didn't come with a wall!
us: [defeated] Ok, we'll get through this..

[vxo.livejournal.com]

I still remember my adventures with ADSL microfilters...

When we signed up with Bellsouth, they shipped us a self install kit with six defective microfilters inside it. How they managed to find SIX microfilters that would not pass DC or voice and toss 'em in our box, I will never know.

Fortunately, I had the leftovers from an Earthlink DSL self install kit sitting around, with one good filter in it. I wired that right into the customer wiring space in the telephone network interface box, and it's worked perfectly ever since.

[piepants.livejournal.com]

I escaped incoming calls in my job. I now only do tickets and send emails, sometimes chat.

I do not miss my old call taking job for a moment. Thank you for the reminder, and here, some e-pity and pie <3