This week's customer-induced pet hate

There are, it must be said, copious drawbacks to working in technical support. No one values the work you do, no one says please or thank you, people are as rude as they feel like because they don't grasp the idea that this doesn't incline you to put yourself out to help them, you constantly have to deal with people as dumb as a box of rocks who repeatedly ask the same questions and neither read the documentation you provide nor pay any attention to what you're explaining to them. To name but a few.

When you work for an ISP as I did for five and a half fun-filled years you hear everything. You experience the full gamut of people with so little idea of what they're doing that you marvel that they appeared to have got out of bed on the correct side without braining themselves on the wall; the kind for whom walking and chewing gum simultaneously would appear to present an insurmountable challenge. I once spent 40 minutes trying to get to the bottom of why a customer couldn't see the BBC Education site when I got to the site virtually instantly, even though he was connected to the same network and using the same browser. Eventually I figured out that he had no idea what the address bar in his browser was for, that his only method of reaching any website was to type its URL into the search box which appeared on AOL UK's home page and which was set as his browser default and that because that day AOL couldn't see the site in question, neither could he. Shortly before I joined the company, my so-to-be cow-orker Debi had the following exchange with a certain well-known TV fitness instructor who happened to be a customer of ours:

Debi: "Good morning, I-Way support. How can I help you?"
Mr Motivator*: "I can't get my e-mail."
[twenty-five minutes of increasingly low-level troubleshooting]
Debi: "On the front of your modem, which lights are on?"
Mr Motivator: "None."
Debi: "None?"
Mr Motivator: "None."
Debi: "Is it switched on?"
Mr Motivator: "No. Why? Does it have to be?"

* Yes, that Mr Motivator, the dude in the green lycra suit and baseball cap from TV-AM.

But I digress. The company I now work for doesn't deal with home users and the vast majority of our customers are smart cookies who have very definitely been in the same room as a clue. So I don't have these problems anymore, especially as I deal with the enterprise customers. But still, you get the occasional one where you wonder why they called up in the first place.

Yesterday I took a case where a new customer had called for a piece of fairly basic configuration advice. I called him back, expecting to explain what he needed to do and have the call finished in two minutes, if that. I put the phone down after the fifteen most frustrating minutes of this year. At no point was I permitted to tell the guy anything without being interrupted after six or seven words for him to tell me something neither of interest nor relevance. It took me at least three attempts to say anything. By the time he'd stopped me for the fourth time from answering an additional question he'd just asked I was about three seconds from a career-limiting recommendation that we would make rather more progress if he would please just shut. The. Fuck. Up and let me give him the information he had requested. Honestly, what's with these people?

The thought processes of traffic cops

I wonder sometimes what goes through the brains of traffic policemen. OK, I know the expression "the brains of traffic policemen" is an oxymoron. But still. Who can tell what these boys are thinking of sometimes? A fortnight ago I was heading up to my parents' place in Teesside; it was late and I was bowling along the M18 a couple of miles before it meets the A1(M). There were some roadworks which meant the outside lane was closed but unusually the speed limit wasn't reduced to 50.

So I was travelling along in the middle lane minding my own business doing sixty or so, passing everything in the left lane, when I was flashed by the car behind. In common with, I suspect, a lot of people, my normal reaction to this is to mutter "fuck you, Tonto, and the BMW you rode up in" and I don't budge, though there is usually nothing so certain as that thirty seconds later there will be another flash of lights. Sometimes I play this game for quite a while before I eventually get bored enough or irritated enough to pull over and let the impatient motherfucker in the BMW (and it usually is a BMW) shoot past and harass the next person in his way.

In this case, I had no interest in pulling over because there was a steady stream of traffic in the left lane and I didn't want to slow down just to accommodate a dickhead in a big car. So when, as sure as day turns to night, the next flash of headlights came I uttered a torrent of epithets not suitable for a family audience and gave him the finger. Which drew an immediate response in the form of flashing blue lights. I sighed "oh, for fuck's sake" and pulled over, whereupon I was passed with considerable urgency by a police Volvo estate and then another police Volvo estate.

Which brings me back to my original question: what are these boys thinking of? If you're a policeman I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've got a good reason for demanding to be past. But why approach it in the same manner as the average Boss-suited prick in a 5 Series BMW, guaranteed to irk the driver in front and likely to make them dig their heels in and refuse to move? How about putting the blue lights on first, Scooter? That way I know you're a cop and I'll get out of your way. Not rocket science, is it?