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User Charged With Taking ISP Tech Hostage
User AttheCoalFac pointed us to an interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.
Threatened to take him hostage Taking him hostage - the title is misleading.
Here in US, most repairmen won't leave until you sign for the work, as I understand it. If your not satisfied, don't sign for the job.
Ken
I've had some shitty experiences with Aliant employees as I'm from Halifax, but nothing that would drive me that far. Christ.
this is just a case of a disgruntled customer's remarks being taken WAY out of context.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
Vendor lock-in.
That should read "Threatened to take him hostage (is not the same as) Taking him hostage - the title is misleading. I had a less than and greater than that were scrubbed out of the final posting - sorry.
Ken
What was wrong with her computer?
I mean, what was it in the end. To go through this whole song and dance just to realize maybe Cat5e patch cord went bad?
What was so beyond wrong with this computer that took 20 phone calls then to a site visit?
Are there no local IT company's in the town they can recommend to the women that can fix computers?
Wait, so up in Canada they have ISPs where you can actually get in contact with the employees instead of the automated phone system from hell?
Lucky Canadians.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
It happens
It's like me saying, "If you don't do what I want, I'll blow up the world!"
Even if I mean it, it is not a credible threat. Unless there was some physical aspect to this--holding a gun, a hammer, or locking her doors, etc.--who really thinks that an unarmed woman talking about taking a repair man hostage (who probably has a knife, hammer, or at least a screw driver equipped on his repair belt) is unto itself a comment worthy of police action? Was there any physical possibility of her holding him against his will?
I would hate to think manners of speech are now subject to a PC crackdown.
At any event, unless there is a record of the conversation, it's not sufficient evidence of anything at all.
Just a retarded employee with a completely artless grasp of language. Public education sucks. Get over it. Move along, please.
The part of me that burned out on tech support oh so long ago is quick to jump on the side of the repair tech. I have known people who were crazy enough to do that sort of thing when they reached their breaking point.
On the other hand, it's possible that even if she was at her breaking point, the tech -- caught between the rock of the customer and the hard place of his employer's prior actions -- found he had to get out of there before the customer got REALLY angry.
On the gripping hand... I've found that in the vast majority of times that I've had internet connection problems, with the exception of Verison DSL on Staten Island, NY,* especially when I was the only one in the neighborhood with connection problems, especially after several weeks... the problem has almost invariably been with my computer.
So, wild-ass speculation here, but I think the customer vented her frustration a bit too firmly (she did say she was not going to be polite, always a bad way to start a session); the technician hit his own breaking point and rather than go off on the customer he found an excuse to flee and a story to lay on his supervisor; his story of a crazy customer with a gun who wanted to hold him hostage got blown out of proportion and the woman was taken to court... ... and in the end, it really will be something wrong with her computer.
While my sympathy automatically lies with the technician, rationally I'm certain the truth is going to be somewhere between these two stories. And in a larger view, this might kick up the tension between residential end-users and technicians by a notch. While residential end-users might be a bit more inclined to be more polite to techs, it might also raise their animosity towards same and the relationship becomes more hostile as a result. At best this will fade into a footnote.
* - Kids, not much is worse in a customer sense, than a telco who sells you DSL and then moves some equipment around the central office such that you are now further from the central office than they rate DSL for. You're not actually farther from the CO, but the wiring inside the CO is now long enough that you are outside the CO's radius. And then they don't tell you. Fortunately, Verizon did the right thing and finagled something so that they returned my DSL. Part of me is pretty sure I wasn't the only one who had this happen to.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Between this 50 something broad trying to threaten a young buck with an implied gun, to him undoubtedly waddling away at top speed with tool belt to his car as she yells curses after his hasty retreat, it's the kind of scene I'd expect to see in a Christopher Guest film.
of any technician to be bouund hostaagee to a laaady?
Maybe there is another sort, but I wouldn't like them to be near my peripherals!
That's just poor choice of words on her part. The tech should have just left. So what if she's pissed afterwards. I've worked with some cable techs in dispatch and have left houses when the place was infested with rodents or bugs, had fresh "carpet stains", a mess around everything. Never mind computers were infested with viruses, cheap hardware, a condo that needs wiring installed and they don't have written permission. No matter, the customers are bitchy, want everything now and always call to complain. I just hope with that attitude they aren't successful in business. That or they maintain a really bad family.
It's a figure of speech ... "I hate to hold you hostage, but ...". That is said in a lot of contexts. If things went down as this story claims, then the ISP tech didn't understand and just blew it all out of proportion.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The actress said she called her provider, Aliant, one last time, disguising her voice to sound like a man and telling the company she needed her connection right away because she was a businessman. "Lo and behold, they said someone would be over between 8 and 11 the next morning." This after the usual wall-of-please-holds she got earlier.
Sue their asses away.
"The time has come" the walrus said " for a GOOD swim."
Angry customer was probably annoyed that the technician couldn't solve the problem, so she overreacted and the technician got annoyed that the incompetence of others led to verbal abuse against him though he had nothing to do with what happened prior, and then called the cops. I read the headline, figured the customer was irate and overreacted against the technician, and the technician retaliated. Then I read the article and it pretty much proved my theory.
When you are arraigned you are told you can't call up and cancel service! :)
Theatre people, they're almost as bad as carnies. If you have to do on site support for theatre people, make sure there are people who know where you are going and how long you should be. If they don't hear from you after that, they should call the police.
Loose lips lose spit.
The guy obviously overreacted to having a gun put to his head and a pit bull chewing on his leg. Also the quote "I want to either see the internet or your brains splattered across my computer screen" was taken out of context.
What a small world. She doesn't seem like the "hostage holding" type at all, and the local ISPs are known for their shitty customer service. Seems like quite a misunderstanding.
[Insert "so, do you know Bob/Joe/Cathy from Canada?" Jokes here]
She could have strapped him to the bed and taken a sledgehammer to his ankles. (or, if you're a bookworm: cut off his foot with an axe and blowtorch it to cauterize the wound).
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
in alt.sex.stories
Even Lumbergh.
...is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with ... any employee from her ISP.
Granted, I'm used to trying to call an engineer out from US ISPs... But how is this different to what you get without a court order?
Don't call.
Just go to your back up system.
1. Morse code.
2. Quantum Accelerator.
3. Prayer [ hah hah ]
4. A book.
...squarely with the tech. I do field repair work for a smallish ISP myself, and it is absolute, zero flexibility policy that if any sort of threat, even in a joking manner, is made to our safety, we leave the premises immediately. Now to the best of my knowledge, the only circumstances this has actually been invoked under have involved unruly dogs, but were a subscriber to joke about holding one of us hostage, we're required to get the hell out, even if it means leaving equipment, up to and including entire vehicles, behind if necessary.
The policy does allow us to return to the customer's premises at a later time, at our discretion, but only when accompanied by another tech.
While I cannot vouch for the following, it is what has been described around the office here. "Back in the day" a subscriber apparently did use a shotgun to, ahem, "troubleshoot" a wiring ped right in front of a field tech. So, no, I have no doubt whatsoever that some people are more than capable of threatening what's implied in the article.
Did she physically prevent him from leaving? Did he even try to leave? If not he should be buried up to his neck and be pelted with muffin fans from 20 paces.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
... she went back upstairs to the condo and cracked a vodka cooler. "It was five hours earlier than I usually drink, but I was frankly a little frustrated.", laminated Sinclair. Don't drink and Internet, it's the computer.
how is she gonna cancel her contract with the ISP if she is not allowed to contact any of their employees??
Seems to me that she was just being humorously dramatic. Summary says nothing about a weapon being presented at any time.
It depends on who you believe. Read the article. According the Tech, she took him hostage, then he escaped. Or if you believe her *side* of the story, the Tech shows up at 12:30 PM, works on her computer, and then takes off running for no reason whatsoever, and then she sits down to drink a third of a vodka cooler as the police knocks on her door.
It's a remarkably good excuse for the ISP not doing their job; the customer is forbidden to contact them. I think it's probably system-abuse on the part of the ISP.
Not to directly jump in and take sides, but if you want a service, and have to call twenty times with no result, anything else that eventuates is your fault. If someone can't provide you the right service after one call (okay, throw in a second followup call just for good measure) then do business with someone else. Uselss companies will flounder, good companies will flourish. People seem to have lost the ability to look at a service and say "Hey, you aren't doing a good enough job here. Pack up, leave and I will give my money to someone better than you."
Why accept such poor service at all?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Huh?
I've never heard that statement used in conversation, in any context.
after all, she's almost definitely a terrorist..
René Seindal
The repair man should have plugged in a laptop or similar, showing a working connection, thus placing the issue squarely on the customers computer. If the repair man couldn't make his laptop connect either, the issue is either with both computers or - much more likely - the connection, and thus he knows he has work to do.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
was handcuffs maybe some rope then I saw her pic no wonder he went to the police
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Folks, in Canada it's one thing to be charged, it's another to be arrested. In the US if the police are convinced you've committed a crime, they arrest you. In Canada, if you're not posing an imminent danger to others, you just get charged. They tell you to come in, do some paperwork, and let you know the pre-trial date etc. She must have been beyond hysterical when the cops arrived, either completely shitfaced or holding a knife, or both. That's what it would take to get arrested in your own home under those circumstances.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
reading my comment, but that technician seems like a real @sshole.
Dear /. crew, please remove Idle at least from the front page, if not altogether. It's annoying, and makes me look strange when people "shoulder-surfing" see that stuff among the tech news. And no, registering a user account and disabling it is not an option for me -- I don't want to have to log in on each of the various machines I use through the day just to take a glimpse at the front page.
It is kind of unlikely, isn't it.
Even if it was a man, how would he do it? Point a gun at them? Tie them up? Any form of restraint that didn't require force is unlikely to be a hostage situation.
I've had, though over the phone, not in person. Sadly, tempting as it is, you can't really hold someone hostage over the phone ;)
ACT 1
It went like this: so at some point I activate my email at T-Online. They had a handy-dandy page that allows one to change their _email_ password, and I use it.
Suddenly I can't log in to the ISP any more. I figure, hmm, I bet the damned thing changed my ISP password too. I try the new one, it doesn't work either.
I'm pretty sure I didn't forget the new password, since it was one I had used before. But ok, it could happen. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
So I call the ISP's tech support, he makes me try both the new and old password, neither works, ok, he says he'll send me a new one by post. But first he wants to know my invoice number, to be sure he's sending it to the right guy. I read the one from my phone bill to him. Says it's ok, all clear, he'll send me a new password.
A week goes by, I have no new password. I call again, different employee, makes me read him the invoice number again, assures me all is well and he'll send me the new password. Nothing happens.
The spiel continues for one and a half fucking months, in increasinly short intervals as my patience wears thin. Then I lose my patience entirely and escalate it to hell and back.
Turns out that when I moved, both the ISP and the parent telco gave me a new invoice number. Each. Different ones. But on the bill there was only the telco one. So the retards from support saw that the numbers don't match and _lied_ to me.
They fucking lied to me for a month and a half. They didn't even bother telling me what's wrong, or finding a simple solution like "ok, come to one of our stores to prove it's you." Nah, the bloody retards lied to me.
(At this point it's worth noting that (A) DSL connections are point-to-point anyway, (B) they can know it's me or at least calling from my phone number since it's a subsidiary of my telco, but most importantly (C) they're sending it by post to my address. What more confirmation do they want?)
ACT 2
My brother buys a new house informs the same telco and isp, is assured he'll get dsl in a couple of days.
It's worth noting that somehow he was flagged as VIP customer. Dunno why. Maybe because he and his wife are addicted to their cell phones, and get a phone bill comparable to some small companies. But anyway, he's a VIP customer and for that they assure him that it won't take more than a day or two to switch his account to the new address.
Short story: the same spiel as in my case happens. He's repeatedly assured that, yeah, verily, someone will take care of it by tomorrow. And nothing happens. Again and again.
What had happened? The drone who entered his new address made a typo. Let's say his new house number was 42 A (not the real one, for the obvious reasons), and the drone entered it as 42 S. Which didn't exist.
Ok, typos happen.
But again, they just lied to him again and again. If they do that even to "VIP customers", I rest my case.
ACT 3
After the previous incident, I was weary of doing anything to my connection any more. But eventually I'm dumb enough to say yes, when some salesman offers me (again) to upgrade my connection to 6000 MB/s instead 1000.
Life goes on for a month or so, in which time nothing happens to my connection, good or bad. As in, I'm still on 1000. Well, ok, I'm fine with that. At least I still have it.
Then suddenly I can't log in any more.
The call this time was a surrealistic carousel affair, where I'm passed around between 6 different departments. Each sees only his slice of the problem, so as soon as it even touches any other domain or aspect, he gives me a new phone number to call. And, as we'll see, didn't even see his own slice well enough.
It took me a whole weekend, albeit with large breaks to recharge my phone's batteries, of going round robin like that.
In that time, I'm
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
im rooting for her to be sentenced to 80 years hard labour in a PMITA prison. ;)
or i conveniently didnt rtfa
Good people go to bed earlier.
I did. Me, a friend and mom were travelling by plane at one point in the 80's. Much to mom's annoyance (and probably because it annoyed her), I spent the whole time at both airports and on the plane telling jokes about airplane hijacks and bombings.
Admittedly, we did get a few cops around us on the airport listening to my jokes.
But you know what? That was it. They didn't even butt into the talk, or try to be menacing or anything. I'm still guessing that probably they were bored enough and the jokes made their day.
The post 9/11 histeria there wasn't normal at any time before. And in a lot of countries it still isn't.
Now threatening to blow up the plane, or falsely reporting a bomb, those are serious crimes. Even as a joke. Because they cause quite the disruption.
But just saying the word "bomb" or telling an obvious joke about a bomb? Geeze. If you can't do that, ask yourself what went wrong and when.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, we know. Welcome to the Internet.
If this issue was with the ISP's equipment, then this escalated way too far and should have been resolved on the first phone call. On the other hand, the story really does leave out the most important part... was it her computer? If it was her computer, I can understand it taking 20 calls to get a technician out to look at the issue. Regardless if you're a big company or a small company, performing a service costs money, from the call centre agents who are taking the calls to the technicians who go out and repair connections. If it's an issue with the equipment the ISP provides, then to resolve the issue and keep the customer paying, it's "worth' sending a tech out to get the issue resolved. However, if they send a technician out and it's a computer-related issue, the company has basically wasted money, which in the long run leads to higher fees. The customer should have gone to a PC technician, said "My internet isn't working", found out what was wrong, and then, if it ends up being an issue with the connection or the ISP's equipment, make them pay for the PC Tech visit. Not all technicians who go out and repair connections are skilled in computers. I've seen techs call in for instructions on how to release and renew an IP address. The customer may have been thinking that if a tech comes out and can't fix the connection, he can fix her computer. But again, it's all based on where the underlying issue was.
"To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password."
Well, then he's an even bigger fucktard.
Involving the police in a petty retaliation game is already an abuse. Filing criminal chages against someone as a petty retaliation? Oooer.
All in all, I hope the retard goes to PMITA jail for it, _if_ that is the case. Abusing the police and justice system as one's private goon squad to terrorize/punish people one doesn't like, isn't exactly something I'd want to see repeated.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"is that the customer might have the capability to attempt the act."
Riiiight.
If a middle aged woman with no weapon threatens you, *and you feel threatened*, it's time to hit the weight room, take a martial arts course, and probably both and more.
I don't know if you kids use the word "Pussy" nowadays, but I have a feeling if you look up the word "Pussy" in the dictionary, this repair-things (hard to call him a man) picture would be there.
I mean, really.
From her local newspaper ( http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Search/1076377.html )
"Halifax police told the Chronicle Herald that when David Arthur Scott, 21, arrived to fix the Internet on Thursday afternoon, he determined the problem was with the computer.
But Sinclair said she had tried using the Internet on three different computers, and that it did not work on any of them.
"She didnâ(TM)t like the answer and became very angry and agitated," said Const. Jeff Carr.
Sinclair said she asked Scott to call another technician after he could not repair the problem.
"She told the technician, in a tirade, that he was not leaving her until her Internet was working and she told him she was keeping him hostage," said Carr.
Sinclair said that Scott misheard her.
"I said Iâ(TM)m not holding you hostage, but I would like it if youâ(TM)d stay until (the other technician) arrives," Sinclair said. "Thatâ(TM)s all I can think of where he got that from."
Carr said Sinclair implied she had a gun, but that the technician did not see one. Police say the technician told Sinclair he had a disc in his truck that could repair her Internet, and Sinclair said she was going with him so he wouldnâ(TM)t run off.
But Sinclair said she followed the technician downstairs to his truck to prop the door open to the building so he could get back in.
The technician then hopped in his truck and drove back to the Aliant office.
Police said they soon arrived at the apartment where they arrested an "extremely intoxicated woman" without incident.
i did - very interesting
To boldly mod where no one has trolled before.
I liked the bit about her making a point of mentioning she drank a significant amount of alcohol after the incident, and that she normally doesn't do this, but hey, I was stressed out.
For those of you who've never had to deal with things like domestic abuse, that's classical weasel talk for "I was drunk as a skunk and misbehaved as a result, but I won't admit it". It was no doubt prompted by the police smelling her breath or seeing an empty bottle, and asking uncomfortable questions as a result.
We'll never know what really happened, but I'm going with "abrasive drunk woman tears techie a new one" here. Although I can understand someone losing their cool after such a long and fruitless struggle to get their connection fixed.
Keep in mind that this woman was drunk and the ISP had told her repeatedly that it was her computer that was at fault. The connection was working perfectly. This is just another case of a person knowing so little about computers that they don't even know who is to blame. The person to blame is the woman trying to operate a device beyond her comprehension. She broke her computer and was unwilling to hire the proper company to come fix it. If my washing machine was broken I wouldn't blame the power company who provides my electricity when they would refuse to fix it. If you read the story where they do tell the ISPs side they tell you that she called 20 times and they told her 20 times that her connection was fine. Then they sent a tech who plugged in his computer and it was again working fine. He told her that her computer was at fault and that he was not going to fix that. This is when she lost it. The police kept her in jail overnight. In Canada the police are not so gung ho to arrest people so if they arrested her she had to be out of control. This issue is not a two sided issue.
A tech guy took a comment out of context...
Oh what what am I talking about just browse Slashdot.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP."
So she can never quit her service, no matter what they change the rates to? Brilliant! Why don't the quote tags work in idle? whay is the text box _still_ 22 char wide?
FYI:
http://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=Sinclair%2C%20Carol
Do you have ESP?
I've had a lot of experience with ISP support, with Adelphia (before they collapsed), Comcast (before I switched) and now Verizon. I'm a computer engineer, so if I call the ISP it's usually because I've figured out that the problem is at their end, and I can tell them what to do to fix it, yet I've found myself getting very, very, very frustrated and angry at the absurdity that I've encountered. In one case, after a half-hour of maneuvering through the maddening computer prompts (press 1, press 3, press 7 etc...) to speak to a human being, I got a support person who gave me the standard "reboot your computer and reset your modem". After a few minutes of first humoring him, and then another few minutes of walking through steps I knew were not the problem, I tried to explain to him what the problem was and what he had to do. He obviously had no idea about IP addresses, default gateways, DSN or what "ping" meant -- and after pretending to listen to me, he said that I needed to call "Lynksys". I said "okay", hung up, and immediately called back, went through the same scenario with another support person, who told me "you have to call Microsoft". I said "okay" hung up and immediately called back, and after maneuvering through the prompts again to get a human, I got a support person who (after suggesting that I reboot and rest my modem) listened to what I had to say, appeared to understand everything and had my internet running again in under 5 minutes. All told, however, I was on the phone for about 3 hours, and you have to realize how maddening it is when after to finally get to the prompt that says "press 7 if you are having connectivity problems", you're put on hold and every minute the recording tells you to try going to their website!! I know few people who have my patience or restraint (and it took every bit of that restraint to avoid letting out my frustration on that third support person[the one who finally helped] when she told me to try rebooting and resetting the modem) so I can just imagine what a layperson must feel. I remember having a technician come to my house to set up the internet service who kept trying different modems (saying "I can't believe all these are defective') before I intervened and set it up myself. I think that ISPs are overwhelmed with service calls, are understaffed, and suffer from a wide discrepancy of skill-sets amongst their personnel. The use of computer prompting to carry some of this burden is what gives computer prompting a bad name. I wouldn't be surprised if the actress actually did threaten the technician -- ISP support seems designed to coerce otherwise normal, well-adjusted persons to become homicidal, suicidal and paranoid.
Annie, are you back?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I might even have more sympathy for the techie, if not for the following detail: she actually opened the door for him, when he said he needed some CD from the van, and propped it open for when he returns. (Only to see him run off and drive off to the cops.)
I'm sorry, but is there any realistic and sane way to mistake that for a genuine hostage situation? I mean, hello? Isn't that the polar opposite of _preventing_ someone from leaving?
How would that even work, if it were a genuine hostage situation? "KK, you can go now, but please return later 'cuz you're my hostage. I'll let the door propped open for you. KTHXBYE." Or what? :P
Surely it would count as the most incompetent kidnapping in known history.
Look, that maybe he was close to the breaking point himself and he left an impolite customer, ok. I can live with that. Maybe the company even has a policy of leaving at the slightest perceived threat, even as a joke, as someone else suggested. Fine. Leave if you must.
But going to the police and filing criminal charges? Nope, sorry, my sympathy for him automatically ends there. He's an arsehole who thought he can abuse the system to teach someone else a lesson. And I have no sympathy for that.
Well, either that, or he is genuinely schizophrenic and thought that opening the door for him equals preventing him to leave. And in that case, someone put him in a nut house and on neuroleptics. Because God knows what else he might mis-interpret in surrealistic ways, and how he'll react then. Maybe at the next customer he'll think that offering him a glass of water means trying to set him on fire, or whatever. Maybe he'll end up injuring someone or himself, thinking he's fighting for his very life.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I worked as a second-level tech in tech support for 3 years.
It was the female customers who were the nasty, abusive callers.
It is well-known in tech support circles that female customers are vicious and nasty on the phone.
I was a field tech who serviced PC's for various brands and had to go onsite at MIT in Cambridge to replace a defective harddrive. The contract with the vendor stated to replace the parts and to format the drive just to make it bootable and that the user is responsible to install the operating system or to call the vendor to install it. After I finished the gentleman physically blocked my way and asked me to install Windows and all the drivers and restore his backup to which I said we don't do and to call the vendor and he shoved me back demanding I do that. Luckily for me a guard saw this and came over and made him move out of my way and asked if I wanted to file charges. I didn't but I called my boss and the vendor to put on record what had happened.
first, you dont press charges in canada, you report the incident and the crown presses the charges.
second, i know of her, and she writes great plays. and is also completely unstable. so she made a 'big' scene whatever it was...
the halifax newspaper reported that; she hinted at having a gun' and that the tech only got out by lying to say some equipment was in his truck.
if only she had been running linux, a virus wouldn't have driven her to the brink...
You're trying to seduce me!
Aren't you?
New Trailer Park Boys Movie
August 27th, 2008 by Gilbert Seah
GUESS WHO'S OUTTA JAIL? AGAIN!
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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TRAILER PARK BOYS 2 begins with Julian, Ricky and Bubbles newly released from jail and brimming with optimism about their prospects for the future. However, when they return to Sunnyvale, they encounter a leaner and much meaner Park Supervisor Jim Lahey who has some big changes in mind for the park, changes that don't exactly go over well with the Boys, who will now face their biggest test since Grade 10.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
No THAT is class. I must try that next time, just for the hell of it.
Sadly, most of the people at my ISP appear to have a clue. Maybe I'll try it with my bank instead.
"No, no, I think you need to restart the mainframe. Trust me on this".
Insert
To be entirely fair, though, I don't think it's the teachers' job to teach them all possible figures of speech. That time spent together _is_ limited, if apparently large, and there are a lot of subjects which are more important than knowing the exact meaning of "I hate to hold you hostage." If you have the extra hours to teach them every single figure of speech, I'd rather you use that to teach them some extra physics instead. Or maths. Or whatever.
Plus, would you like to be the teacher who uses that phrase in class? Especially in the terrorism hysteria in the USA?
I mean, I can just see it, "Officer, she threatened to hold mah li'l Jimmy hostage. Mah li'l Jimmy was so affraid. Mah daddy always said, 'son', he said, 'them bastards that take hostages ain't no good people.' And I don't want no bad people near mah li'l Jimmy."
I mean, it's bad enough that one techie understood it wrong. You don't want to bet your career on the fact that none of the tens of little illiterates will misunderstand you.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I work for a small telco, and we've had some pretty interesting experiences. It's always funny when a customer thinks that we will stop EVERYTHING and have a technician out RIGHT NOW to fix a problem, especially when it's a problem with their computer.
I remember one time, a technician went out to one customers house because her DSL wasn't working. When he knocked on the door, nobody answered, so he called her house, heard to phone ring, nobody answered. He then called her cell, she answered saying she would be right there. About 3 mintues later the door opened, and here is some lady standing there completely naked, and wasted as hell. The technician took a few steps back, and was just like "Mam, I'm gunna have to leave, you can call and schedule to have somebody come back out at a seperate time. When another tech was finally sent out, she jumped him and locked him in a closet. He called his sup, who called the police. Needless to say she didn't get another tech...
Another thing that's funny, is when people threaten me that they will switch to another provider, and somehow thing that will get them better service. It always makes me laugh when they do that, because I honestly don't give a flying fuck if they switch to Verizon, especially since 80% of the time the problem is on Verizon's side or the Customer's side, and they will continue to have the problem anyway. The only way you would get a different level of service from any tech (at least where I work) is if you really piss them of, or yell at them. In which most cases we will just hang up.
...there doesn't seem to be anyone wondering why a guy would be fearful of a woman? Men are taller, bigger, stronger, and more aggressive, yet he was afraid. Mmmmm'kay. He said she implied she had a gun, but according to him it wasn't on her (he couldn't see it), so why on Earth would a guy who's twice as strong as the woman be afraid? This makes no sense because generally smaller and weaker women are quite fearful of men. My guess is the woman was rude and acting like a diva and he made up the story to punish her by twisting an inconvenient choice of words. I don't buy his story at all and I believe he should be arrested for filing a false complaint.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I could understand if she DID hold him hostage.
Seems that all of these ISPs/telcoms are grounded on unaccountability, and it's no wonder that it pisses people off. I used to work on the phones for Bell Canada repair, and it was unbelievable what would happen without consequence.
There are the CSRs:
Hang up on someone -- it was an 'accident'.
Transfer someone to a closed department -- oh well!
Put someone on hold without telling them.
Then there was the technicians:
Tech leaves without fixing the problem -- happened all of the time.
Techs would come at the wrong time, pretty much all of the time. Had an appointment from 2-4? Well the tech came (at 10am) and nobody was there. He left a note. Oops!
We would have techs that would notice that the customer was home, go up to the door and not knock. They would leave a note saying that they came an nobody was there, then slink away.
Then there was this time when I was on the phone with a customer while the tech as at their home. They needed info on their service. The tech had been there for half an hour and wasn't able (was actually just too dull) to fix the problem. While on the phone, the tech ran out the door without any of his equipment, jumped into his truck and sped away! He left the tools there and a hole in the wall!
Later on when I moved into my own place (ans wasn't working for Bell anymore) I had Rogers service installed at my home. I had an appointment from 2-4pm, and the tech came at 9am. Luckily I was home, and even more lucky, I was awake. I know what would have happened if I didn't meet him at the door: a note to reschedule.
There was no way that a technician, or the CSRs, were held responsible for their actions. They were completely separated processes, both outsourced to different companies.
Holding the tech hostage seems to be a reasonable way to keep someone accountable, which would be the first time in a long time for an ISP.
This allegations sounds as substantial as the story of someone being accused of kidnapping Robert Louis Stevenson, when all they did was to borrow the book. Then it was discovered that Stevenson was dead, so it wasn't just a case of kidnapping.