In this growing world of technology, we all find it necessary now and then to seek help when something does not work. Everything in our lives gets more and more specialized, so no one is capable of knowing how it all works. I had the "privilege" of being a telephone support tech for Microsoft for a couple of years. As you might imagine, some of the calls got a little humorous.
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One of the funny things about tech support is that as soon as you pick up the phone to call, it is as if you lose any common sense you have. The fundamental rules from the support perspective are: everyone is dumb and everyone lies. As cynical as that sounds, it was true in a practical way.
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For instance I once had a gentleman call me and say: "I knocked my computer off the desk and it went BOOM. Now I can not get into Windows." It literally took me an hour to convince him that the problem was with his hardware, and he had to get the hardware fixed. A week later, he called back, and I got him again. Seems the computer was a rent-to-own type, and he called their tech support folk, who convinced him it was a software issue. I guarantee that if he started the conversation with THEM the same way he did with me, they would not have tried to convince him it was a software issue. Unless they just didn’t feel like fixing it for him. It took me another hour to convince him again that his computer was broken. I had to give him a detailed list of what to say to the other tech guys.
The true irony is the fact that on the rare occasion I find myself calling tech support … I also find myself not telling the complete truth and being dumb.
Nature of the beast I guess ….
