My first job in nerd purgatory was for a small ISP in the late 90s. I was tech support / systems admin there, and when a customer called I had no idea whether to expect a super-nerd who thought he knew more than me, or grandma having problems with her Mac and System 7.5.3.
My most memorable call was from a new user. She sounded like a middle-aged lady, and she complained that she had signed up for our service but couldn't connect. I tried trouble-shooting the issue from a software side, then started asking her questions about her modem.
"Modem?" she said. "What's a modem?"
She didn't have an internal modem, and she sure didn't have an external modem, either. After explaining the concept of "dialup" to her, she threatened to sue us for fraud. "You never told me I had to have a modem! You're trying to extort more money out of me! I'm paying you for the Internet and I shouldn't have to get anything else!"
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.. Where have YOU been every time I've called Dell support?
The only thing your post needs is your direct phone number. Damn.
I did Veritas support too, for several years, for the Solaris "online" products. My favorite call there went like this:
Customer: "There's something wrong with Volume Manager! I have the GUI open and there's this red x!"
I asked him to close the GUI.
Customer: "But I can't use Volume Manager without it!"
I said, "No problem, I know the command-line interface, I'll be happy to help you out."
Customer: "But I'm not good with the command line, just let me use the GUI. I'm the NT admin here, I don't know UNIX."
I sighed to myself and said, "Do you have a UNIX admin around who'd be more comfortable with the command line?"
"No," he said, "We don't have any UNIX admins. I can put the DBA on the phone though, he knows more UNIX than I do!"
I cried inside.
My first job in nerd purgatory was for a small ISP in the late 90s. I was tech support / systems admin there, and when a customer called I had no idea whether to expect a super-nerd who thought he knew more than me, or grandma having problems with her Mac and System 7.5.3.
My most memorable call was from a new user. She sounded like a middle-aged lady, and she complained that she had signed up for our service but couldn't connect. I tried trouble-shooting the issue from a software side, then started asking her questions about her modem.
"Modem?" she said. "What's a modem?"
She didn't have an internal modem, and she sure didn't have an external modem, either. After explaining the concept of "dialup" to her, she threatened to sue us for fraud. "You never told me I had to have a modem! You're trying to extort more money out of me! I'm paying you for the Internet and I shouldn't have to get anything else!"
I proceeded to help her cancel her account.