salut

[zimxim.livejournal.com]

i'm new here, just thought i'd introduce myself. i work for a small ISP in illinois and i've been doing technical support for 8 months. i don't get yelled at often, but i absolutely cannot stand it when someone is transferred to my phone and asks me at least once, "are you technical support?" because i'm female. i don't mind stupid folks nearly as much as the sexist pricks that need to be severely LARTed.

Comments

[avantlegion.livejournal.com]

Now now. Tech support (and "tech" in general) is overwhelmingly male.

It doesn't hurt to ask a harmless question, to make sure there's no confusion. It's not "sexist", unless you say yes and they still don't listen to anything you have to say.

[zimxim.livejournal.com]

unfortunately, that often is the case. i've started answering the phone, "isp technical support, this is zimxim," and i'm still questioned. one customer in particular will ask, "so what do you do there, hon, make the coffee?" if he is transferred to a female tech and then demands to be transferred to a male who "knows what he is doing."

[nancymccoydfw.livejournal.com]

I had this happend to me as well. It took one man forever to get across what was wrong. When I told him what to do, step by step, he didn't do it. A half an hour later, I gave up and transfered him to a guy and he told him the same shit and was fixed..
And there more wemon in tech support than most ppl know. Ask my daughter. She worked as a master tech for earthstink before they called the dallas call senter down.

[snoopyh42.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the evil in me, but... Next time you get one of those guys, transfer him to one of your male buddies, have him act like an idiot for the customer until he asks for the "supervisor" then have your buddy transfer him back to you. Did that once and the customer was at a loss for words, but acutally listened to her the second time.

[haloseven.livejournal.com]

i experience this quite often. many times someone will say before i've even begun troubleshooting, "i need to talk to a technical person." i kindly explain that i'm a level 2 technician, and they always sound disappointed. ah, well. in all fairness, i AM usually the minority (being female) at wherever i work.

[dkphoenix.livejournal.com]

Oooooh... I *hate* that. I always answered the phone "Tech support. This is ____." and I was still asked "How long until I can speak to a tech?" or even better, "Let me speak to one of the GUYS in tech support." I also hate the ones who'd call back to hear the exact same answer they got from me, just coming from a male voice before they'd believe it. Once, a caller did just that, and the guy who answered the call the second time read my notes, knew what the caller was doing (this was a very small department) and told him that this was a complicated issue, and he'd need to transfer him to the "senior product engineer" - me ;-)

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

,u favorite was a female at my work got a call, the customer was a joys pain in the butt, the kind that just make you want to do thing to their credit rateing, and he demanded to talk to a supervisor because he didnt like her answers, nevermind she is one of the most experienced tech in the company. and the result was unanamous, teh man would get passed to a supervisor, but only the ladies of the office... since most of them are the ones in charge... that part was the joyful tad of revenge.. i dont rember what else happened...

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

the fun one is when tehy hang up when you wont transfer, but you are the only one avaialble for whatever reasons and well he either talks to you or doesnt get it fixed... hehe

think that happened to me once, not as a female being descriminated against but the custoemr didnt like my answer and tried calling back 4 times to get the answer he wanted... that was fun

[daerlyn.livejournal.com]

I hear you. One of my (female) coworkers got a client who started abusing her from the get-go, finally got transferred to a (male) supervisor, turned nice as pie, and as the call ended asked my supervisor to tell my coworker he wanted to take her out on a date. The three of us failed entirely to see the logic there.

[bookofnights.livejournal.com]

I got that all the time (from both men and women). But the men were the worst.
I routinely had men that:
asked me out on dates
asked me to "talk dirty" to them
proposed marriage
invited me to look at their "sex sites"
tried to talk dirty to me because I'm "paid to take it"

Whenever a user wanted to talk to a "tech guy", I was always happy to dump them back in line. It lowered my talk time :)

On the other hand, I had plenty of people that wanted to talk to me *because* I was a woman. Mostly women. They said that "men spoke a different language" and they couldn't understand what the male techs were trying to tell them. I had some men say they liked talking to women techs because women techs were honest. According to them, if a male tech didn't know the answer, he'd make something up. The female techs would say "I don't know" and then go find out.

Some sexism bugs me more than others :)

[nix.livejournal.com]

I remember years ago when I worked at a small ISP and a customer called in saying he'd just hung up on a female tech and blathering on and on about girls just arn't good technitions.. After hearing him out I gently said, 'Well Sir. I've found the problem and I will take this straight to the network administrator. I'll tell HER every thing you just said and maybe SHE will get around to fixing your problem next week.' *click.*

[zimxim.livejournal.com]

i love/b> that!

[zimxim.livejournal.com]

whoops, haha

[poprockgrrl.livejournal.com]

I've had crap like that happen in reverse.
I've called Dell about crappy monitors that needed to be replaced on numerous occaisions. Every time I talked to a male tech at Dell, I had to jump through hoops and go through all the troubleshooting things on their list, even when the monitor was shooting sparks out the back, I still had to jump through hoops... when my male co workers call, they get asked 2 questions and are told a new monitor is on the way.

Because I'm a girl I don't know that a monitor is broken? Gah.

[miharu.livejournal.com]

at the help desk i work for only my female co-worker (who admittedly is largely an idiot) and myself get asked the million dollar question when we answer calls: can i get tech support/is this the help desk/maybe i have the wrong extention, could i get the help desk? at first it dumbfounded me to the point where i could only respond with something stupid like 'uh yeah.. you pressed the number for tech support and you've reached it..' because our phone system is quite explict about how to reach tech support. i understand that the industry is largely male but people should realize that not every female they reach on the phone is a secretary and not every male they reach is mr. fantasto-computer-dork.
luckily i haven't gotten any of the static mentioned by others here, i hope i never do. ^^;;