techrecovery | why oh why. (Reply)

Have any of you worked with other techs that perhaps shouldn't have been hired to do tech support? Either for being just plain rude or as dumb as a bucket of rocks?

I work with a lady that's been at the help desk here longer than anyone else in the department, even our supervisor. She's an older lady, probably in her 60's, and I had heard that the reason she was hired was because of a discrimination lawsuit that had been pending at the time she applied. That may or may not be true but I can't say it would surprise me: she still refers to notes for commands and aliases that we have set up with our internal system that we all type probably about a zillion times a day - and like i said, she's been here for at least five years. Half of the time she's really good with customers, mostly because she can speak to them in a way that they can easily understand. The other half of the time, I'm shocked to hear how sharply and mean she talks to the customers. I applaud her effort to try to plunge headfirst into technology and her attempt to help other people out and I suppose that it's nice to not be the sole female in the department. However, it's usually like the legally blind leading the completely blind when she's on the phone. A couple of weeks ago she was trying to explain to a customer the different account options we have (dialup, DSL, wireless) and she insisted to the customer that DSL was not broadband because it 'comes through the phone line.' I really wanted to explain to her the difference between narrowband and broadband when she was done with the call but I didn't want to argue the point with her in case she didn't believe me. It's not a huge point, but when you're arguing with a customer looking for help about whether or not DSL is broadband and just confusing them further, it doesn't seem like a terribly good idea to me.