A special kind of keyboard

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

30 minutes for what should have been a 7 minute mail-server-checking call.

And why did it take so long?

Well, apart from the user being completely useless when it came to simple commands to type in ("So now type mail-dot-myISP-dot-com-dot-au" "It won't let me. I've gone to the next line but it won't let me type dot." "By dot I mean a full stop." *pause* *pause* "Which one's the full stop?" *Head-desk-WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM*) it seems that this user had an expanded keyboard of the type I have never heard of before.

O2G: The User of doom.
CSR: This little black duck

(And I'm going to omit the loooooong pauses between me asking him to do something and him responding. Just imagine them, and me almost tearing out my hair.)

CSR: "Now in the black box type in 'ping' then a space..."

O2G: "Which one is the space?"

CSR: "The space bar." *pause* "The long skinny bar at the bottom of the keyboard."

O2G: "Oh. I have two space bars - a long one at the bottom and a short one at the top."

( /me thinks for a moment about all the expanded keyboards she's seen, decides this must be some new one, and just lives with it.)

CSR: "Ok, just type 'ping', then press the spacebar once. Then mail-dot-myISP-dot-com-dot-au, then another space, then one-one-zero. Now press enter."

O2G: "It's saying there's no such command."

CSR: (*puzzled boggle*) "Odd. Ping is a fairly standard command. Did you type it P-I-N-G?"

O2G: "Yes."

CSR: "What is the exact error message?"

O2G: "Ping all that stuff is not recognized as an internal or external command."

CSR: "Weird. Just type 'ping' and press enter."

O2G: "All this stuff came up about Ping..."

CSR: "Hmmmm - so 'ping' is a recognised command. I wonder why..."

O2G: "I used the short space - was that the right one?"

CSR: "Short space? What does a short space look like?"

O2G: "It's got this line along the bottom..."

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH We'd just spent 15 smegging minutes trying a simple PING command because he didn't know that an underscore is NOT a space.

I was almost crying after that one.

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

oh my wow.

the short space? that's classic.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

for those that ride the "short bus"

[pygmymetal.livejournal.com]

LOL, brilliant. :p

[sarin-girl.livejournal.com]

*hugs* hopefully you'll never get them again..

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

You know me. They'll ring in and I'm the only mug who'll actually try to help them - the previous 4 reps will have told them some jerk-story to get them off the phone.

I hate to think how often I've had a customer start their call with "I've rung in three times today and I need to get this fixed" and you *know* it's a fixable problem but it'll take a bit of time and the previous reps haven't wanted to blow their call stats.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

What's scary is, you know this sort of user is the kind that will find message boards right away.

[samwize.livejournal.com]

Ah MAN that's gnasty. All I can hear in my head is "Kuni" from UHF screaming "STUPID! YOU SOOO STUUUPIIIDD!!!".

[jazzmasterson.livejournal.com]

That's ...special.

And I mean "special" in the sense of people who ride short schoolbusses and have to eat pudding with soft spoons so they don't injure themselves.