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Worst Tech Supportees

Written on Sep 19, 09 7:01 am | Other Technology PC Hardware 1 comments | 2 | 0 | tags: tech support it
Tech support has its ups and downs; an average would support the idea that it's moderately rewarding. For every nice, polite customer you come across that mades a real effort to follow along and listen up, there are the... "other people". I have many names of them. Some are not suitable for Neoseeker, others cause fires or make demons writhe in pain.

Note: There are people in each of these groups that are the nicest people ever. For each of them though is a next door neighbour who had someone shit in their cornflakes that morning.

Octogenerians
    Hurray! It's their first computer! Old people provide a nice balance of all of the below, including meandering thought patterns, mumbling to themselves, not realizing that I can't see them, and giving completely irrelevant stories, anecdotes, and facts. I know more about the lives of random old people scattered about the continent than I ever wanted to. Wrong terminology and trying to decipher what they're trying to tell me is happening is the funnest part.
Run Aways
    Give them step one in the direction you're going and they're off like a shot, finding their way into nooks and crannies that people should never venture into. There's no wrangling them or popping a leash on these suckers; they're off and away. Before you know it their house is burned down, you're stuck with your mouth agape at their burst of kinetic stupidity and they're complaining that your plan didn't work. Impatience is their worst trait. I often stomp the ground in frustration of these people and find myself cutting them off to prevent something catastrophic.
Hyper Illiterate
    There are those who aren't very good at computers. They don't know how to reformat a PC properly or make sure their drivers are properly updated, but they can get around and know what you're talking about. But then there are those who arrived the day before from the middle ages. You can hear armor clinking in the background if you listen hard enough. If you ask them what operating system they use, they respond with "Dell". They call their PC tower a router. They have absolutely no clue what a USB is, and will actively go out of their way to make new names for it every time. They seem to also screw up simple words and premises, like locating things on the underside of other things. Leading the blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid is not a fun task.
Middle Age Women
    Something about a telephone put into a middle aged woman's hand turns her into the biggest bitch in the world. Somehow she becomes entitled to more and basic troubleshooting concepts, all shreds of patience, and human kindness and understanding take off like a scared dog. Stupid, beligerent, and operating on boiled estrogen firing off like a bottle rocket. I am held accountable because their bought a cheap product from the back of a van, hooked it up to their 5 year old Compaq and I am unable to conjure techno sorcery over the telephone. Clearly it IS my problem. Good luck to the husbands.
Spacey Mumblers
    These individuals are fueled by slow computers and confusing problems. They have time to allow their conversational metabolism to slow to the speed of frozen mollases and make any feedback I try to garner impossible. In the past I have fallen asleep waiting for them to give me feedback. I need to speak louder and quicker to try and jump start them. I've considered having a death metal background accompaniment going to keep the pace up. One wonders who would approve a Best Buy card to a sloth.
Ramblers
    Someone did not listen to these individuals as children, and now you are the unwitting recipient of their rainman-like stream of rambling and thoughts. They will ask questions, propose ideas, put words in your mouth, and reexplain everything they have just told you halfway through any sentence you can muster. You then find a breakpoint to begin a thought or answer, and they begin again. No one has taught these poor souls that conversations are a back-and-forth of ideas and feedback; responding to cues and introducing pauses to signal the other party to continue. My largest regret is that the company in question that I work for frowns upon the idea of telling their customers to "Shut up or I'll staple your mouth closed!"
The Truy Strange
    You can't see them coming. The calls start off as ordinary, albeit in the evenings usually. You can tell they got their notes together for this event of calling tech support, and now it's your turn to feel the brutal wrath of fate's harsh malice. Somehow they have boxed themselves into the corners of life itself and have dragged you down with them. "I need to get from here to here..." the calls begins, "But you can only step on the white tiles, half of which explode when stepped upon. Also, you're blind and disoriented. Also, I have some unrelated anecdotes that you will listen to!"
    My favorite example? The gentleman in question had dyslexia. The ample amount of feedback required in every call was not possible, and had to be given character by character, often describing where the character in question was on the keyboard. Often I had to write the character streams down and unscramble them. They were fundamentally handicapped in their regard, and had no computer knowledge otherwise, but to their credit, they put a lot of effort into it.
Texans
    Extending as far as the whole southern United States. Put simply, what's wrong with them? How and why did God decide to dole them out the goofy accents? These are the same people that think cowboy boots, cow skulls, and scorpion bites are the building blocks of "God's country", one can only imagine their reasoning when dealing with finnicky gadgets. Does the state issue you a dog when you buy a house? Do you have a pick between "Marmaduke" and "that dog that sounds like a daft parakeet"?
    Their ineptitude is rather innocent; you have the impression that they may have figured it out if the computer were a side of beef. Largely though they are more impatient, less understanding, and have their own terminology and pronounciation for everything.

Anyone think of any other categories?
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Comments

  • 0 thumbs!
    GexTheLizard since Jun 2003 | Sep 29, 09
    From my dad's PC repair experience, one of my personal favorites are the ones that will call because their printer/camera/scanner/entire computer/whatever else isn't working. The first thing he asks them over the phone is if they have plugged the device in, they check and say yes. So he goes through a few other things with them, decides he needs to make a service call out because they're clueless and can't really answer questions. He goes out to their house...can you ever guess what was wrong? Something wasn't plugged in, be it the printer to the USB port, the tower to the outlet, the surge protector was turned off, something to that effect. Easiest money ever though so can't really complain.

    Oh the ones that don't have enough sense to know how to use Windows automatic updates are fun too. How you can mess up something that's supposed to be entirely automatic I don't know.

    And the ones that can't understand why they get (unwanted) porn pop-ups after they've downloaded 4 gigs of porn off the internet. Just makes me facepalm.
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