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| From a fellow toiler in the Farmyard of the Damned, 'stina: |
| "Reason number 3948490348 why you don't let your (more intelligent) children play with your computer." |
| You know how it goes when you work in a call center. Almost everyone is stupid, but there are varying levels of stupidity. Most, a seasoned tech support person can handle. However, there is one class that everone has problems with. We like to refer to them as the "shiney-side-down" group. ("Yes, sir/ma'am...the CD goes into the drive with the shiney side down.") All you can do is answer your calls and hope it doesn't happen to you. |
| It was a monday when he struck...a shiney side down. I answered my phone, and halfway through my greeting he bursts out with "OHMYGOD!!! I have this messege on my screen and it WON'T GO AWAY....it says 'You have been idle for 58 minutes. You have received no messeges' AND IT WON'T LEAVE!!!" |
| I, of coarse, sit there and stare blankely at the screen for a few beats, then say, "ok." |
| And he launches into "I've restarted the computer 4 times and it's STILL there!!" (Side note for the non-tech support out there: If they say "I've turned off the computer and it's still there" it means "I'm a dumbass and I only know how to turn off the monitor.") |
| This is the point where I can no longer take it. I inform him that I'll put him on hold to research the error messege, and promptly bust up laughing. I also took the liberty of sharing this with the rest of my team. Again, for the non-internet initiated among you, that is the messege AOL gives you when you move your mouse and it removes your away messege after the software has gone idle. You click ok, and it goes away. It's a pretty standard, generic thing. |
| After I'm done busting a gut, I take him off hold and ask him to restart his computer via the power button on the tower. This process takes a good 4-5 minutes, as he does not know the difference between the tower, modem, and monitor. After I get him to restart it he tells me that it's BACK. Even though I know the computer's restart, I had him narrate the startup process to me. He tells me he sees is icons, and he sees this messege and it WON'T go away. |
| Then it dawns on me. I ask, "Sir, is this messege behind your icons?" |
| Of coarse, the answer is yes. It's mute button time, as I start laughing hysterically again. Then, we begin again,"Sir...if you would right click on your desktop for me. Right, then left click on 'properties'." And then proceeded to explain the process of changing one's wallpaper. |
| Turns out, someone had used his computer and taken a screenshot, and then set it as the wallpaper...the poor old coot couldn't tell the different. Let's hear it for gene pool pee! |
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| Alright, I'm not good at telling stories (or writing them) . But here goes... I received a tech call, with the member telling me that he could not connect to aol..... I went thru some of the normal questions, like ..do you receive an error message, does the screen freeze...etc. All answers were no........member said the issue just recently started and that he's not sure what happened..as it was working fine 2 days ago. I started trouble shooting with the "unable to connect flow" in Sherlock ( Sheerluck ) and after about 15 minutes which is well over average handle time I find out that the member's hard drive had been corrupted and he had removed it from the computer all together, and also that it would be another 2 days before he received the new hard drive. At that point of course I was irratated but remained calm and "nice" but had to inform him that without a hard drive he would not be able to run aol, and he would need to call back when he had installed the new hard drive. -- So far that's my best story, but i've only been at this for a few months. |
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| The April 2004 contest winner |
| This happened about 4 days after I started nesting (on the floor, but still very new). I was nothing but pure script monkey at that point, having no idea what AOL was, or how it worked. About an hour into my shift I take my call, and start asking the basic questions. Per usual before I could even get their screen name, or anything else, the member interrupting me. Completely freaked out, and pissed as hell at AOL. They were about cancel because AOL wasn’t working right, they’ve gone through the install several times but they still couldn’t get to the Internet.
I asked if they got any error messages, or if they could tell me what exactly happens when they try to get online. All I got back was “nothing, it doesn’t work”. I asked the member if they could double click on the AOL Icon on there desktop, and they asked what I was talking about (sigh). After explaining what an icon was, and the importance of double clicking we were able to launch AOL. First words out of the member mouth. “Oh wow, I’ve never seen this before, what’s this?” quickly followed by “it says (insert the entire word content inside aol starting at the title bar of the window down to setup, sign on, and help) I had the member click sign on, and the screen for detecting the computers connection methods pops up. We go through that little bit and eventually run into enter your area code, and enter your dialing preferences (press *whatever to disable call waiting, press 9 to get outside line, etc.). “Ok then Mr./Ms Member this is as far as I can take you”... “Why? I’m not letting you go until I can go to the Internet” “Well at this point, AOL is going to need to dial up and get access numbers that you can use, the process is not that hard at all, and is very quick, unfortunately If we are on the phone line when your computer dials up, its not going to go through because we are already using your line.” A long pause on the line, then “but my computer doesn’t need the phone line to get to the Internet, I already have AOL on my computer” Mute button followed by a heavy sigh at my end, and cursing, lots of cursing. Unmute “yes you have AOL on your computer, however, AOL can only connect you to the Internet, in order to connect to the Internet we need to be able to use your phone line” “But the Internet is already on my computer, this is the cd I used to install it with. Aol 6.0 right? That’s the newest version of the internet?” Mute button, cursing, so much so, I think baby Jesus cried. Unmute “the inter net does not come on the cd, you would need thousands, if not millions of cd’s to store all of the pages on the internet that are out there.” “REALY? WOW…” the same kind of voice you would get when you told a child about Santa clause, the Easter bunny, and Canadians. I did not “end the call” in the normal fashion, it was more of a running away reflex action. I never said the ending script faster, and before they knew it they were talking to sprint to change their long distance. I have yet to hear this story from anyone, and have never gotten a call like it sense. It’s the only time I've spoken with anyone, who believed the interweb came on one, cute little cd. |
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| A signpost reading This Way To Sanity lays on the ground. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell where it was pointing... |