In his Circuits column this week, David Pogue shares some of the most absurd calls he listened to when he toured a tech support center.
I learned that when they say, “Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes,” that’s only partly true. They also record your calls so they can pass around recordings of the funniest ones.
The agents gave him a CD of their favorite calls, and he transcribes a few of them in his column. We like this one:
A Canadian customer was calling to find out if there was a faster way to trigger menu commands than mousing up to the menus.Agent: Certainly, sir. There are keyboard shortcuts for many of those commands. For example, suppose you want to trigger the Select All command…
Caller: Yes, I use that one all the time! How do I do it?
Agent: Well, you just press Control-A.
Caller (after a pause): Well, that’s not working for me.
Agent: Do you have a text document open in front of you?
Caller: Yes, I sure do.
Agent: OK, now press Control-A.
Caller: I am, but nothing happens.
Agent: The text isn’t highlighted?
Caller: No, there’s no change at all.
Agent: That’s odd. If you press Control-A, the whole document should be highlighted. Try it again. Press Control-A. Tell me exactly what’s happening.
Caller (nearing his Canadian breaking point): Listen. I’m pressing Control, eh? And nothing’s happening, eh?
“Tech Support Gets a Reprieve While Users Take a Hit “ [New York Times]
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Once I had trouble with the internet on my computer, I accidentally clicked something on the setup page that made it so I couldn’t connect, period.
So, I am not a moron about this stuff, but I needed help reseting it, so i called the linksys customer help. Some gentlemen with a french accent would chuckle or act a bit patronizing any time I just didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. He acted as if this is stuff I would have known by heart.
I always have a problem with places like this laughing at their customers. I know I did it when I worked in customer service because it’s a way to blow off stress, but recording it and giving it out on a cd? come on.
I work in Tech support and I can ASSURE you that we DO pass around the funniest calls. Its kinda like a sport to us.
My favorite was a kindly old man that got our # mixed up with Haines underwear and it took me 10 minutes to explain that he reached technical support for XXXX instead of his intended target.
I felt so sorry for him I googled Haines underwear and transferred him directly to their number.
When I worked for Echostar troubleshooting I had some funny calls.
I got one call from a lady in Florida during Hurricane Hugo. We get used to checking where the person is and have a running memory of how the basic weather is across the country at that time. So she calls in and is getting: “Aquiring Satallite Signal” which basically means she has no signal. I see where she lives, in Florida I forget where. I have a sneaking suspesion she’s in the path of the Hurricane so I ask: “How’s the weather outside?” “What do you mean? We’re in the middle of a Hurricane.” “Can you see the Dish from the window?” “Let me see…yea, um, it’s not there, let me see, um, wait, I see it, it’s up in the neighbor’s tree now…Can you send someone out to fix it?”
I get another caller trying to reconnect his receiver to the satallite and his TV after moving it. The satellite receiver has two main inputs, “Satllite In” this is for the feed from the Dish, and “TV-Ant In” this is for the feed from an off-air Ant.” So this man calls in swearing and cussing. You F’n dickheads you screwed up my F’n service, I moved my TV and can’t get the F’n signal back. I try to troubleshoot a little with the man, but I swear to this day I havn’t met a more stubborn haughty man. (I learned from working here, the more humble the man the eaiser to slove the problem, when they are egotistical that impeeds their learning, because they already think they know it all). Anyway I ask “Where do you have the signal from the Satellite connected on the back. “Don’t you dare ask me where it’s connected like I don’t know what I’m doing? Don’t you know I’m an engineer, I’ve been to college, you dimwit, how dare you insinuate I’m stupid. I ought to talk with your sup and have you fired, you no-good good for nothing, piece of S***. Why you people at technical support are worthless. I just want my signal back on, send me the signal and shut up, you moron brick, who just reads scripts.” This goes on for about, no kidding a half an hour. I’m getting a little-annoyed at this point and figure out a strategy to help the customer, for I figured out for pretty sure what was wrong the first two minutes of his ranting. I say: “You know what, to show me just show stupid I am, can you look on the back and prove to me that I’m dumb and tell me where you have the feed from the Satellite plugged in.” “Yep, just to prove to you how wrong and dumb you are I’ll look in the back and tell you you little chicken-S***”. (Finally, I think, we’re going to get to some troubleshooting.) So he’s says, the signal from the satallite is connected to where it says TV-Ant In, “I say, switch that over to “Sattlite In” he cusses me out for being ignorant again, switches it over gets signal, and all the sudden he becomes quiet and disconnects the call. I just love the know-it-alls.
I got a frantic phone call late at night from my father. “The computer is making a high pitched screech! I think it’s going to blow up!” So, I dropped what I was doing and I race across town to see what the heck he did. Now I’m fairly certain the PC wasn’t going to blow up, but then again, it’s my father we’re talking about. I arrive at the scene, go over to the computer….. and remove his glasses from the keyboard. Ya, I charged him for gas.
@TinkishDelight: Yeah. These sound suspiciously apocryphal. Did he actually HEAR these stories recorded or were they typed up like you see in a million forwards? The Control-A one especially.
Just a note for all of you out there that don’t do tech support/helpdesk/desktop support/IT work in general:
The crazy stories you hear: They’re all true.
I’ve done external and internal support and both groups call in for things they could figure out/fix if they weren’t dumber than drunken lemurs. IT support is stressful, mostly because we’re not allowed to say EXACTLY what we’re thinking or track the caller down and beat them with a bat.
Wow, it’s like alt.tech-support.recovery in here. And no one has to wave dead chickens to talk about it. Fantastic.
i would just like to also add my comment to those of you who don’t believe these stories are true:
clearly you have never worked tech support, and let me tell you, you are wrong. i work tech support at a university campus and have since 1996, and some of these stories are tame compared to some of the stuff i’ve encountered here.
@firesign: Uh,
I worked in Tech Support for two years. Yes, there are people out there who are dumb as rocks, but the succinct, punchline-perfect stories recounted by Pogue and those email forwards almost never happen (at least to me). They were much more drawn out, and not as funny. The stories recounted by commenters on this page strike me as true to life. The ones recounted by Pogue do not.
I thought the “My coffee cup holder story was mildly amusing the first time I read oh about 10 years ago or so. Since then I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve read it on websites where the writer swears up and down that it happened to him or he overheard a co-worker on the call.
That one really needs to be put to rest.
The control-A story is fake. In canada, “eh” is used at the end of a question. Nice weather, eh? Questions end with an inflection change (i.e. a rise in the voice’s pitch).
If the CSR said “press control A”, there would be no rise in inflection, and the caller would not think the CSR was saying “eh?”.
bogus.
One of my recent favorites was a user, fresh out of college that acted like they knew all about computers. They would try and talk to me about computers and one day they asked me if I liked Macs. I said I owned one but it was not my main computer at that time. The user said, “A friend just gave me a copy of Leopard but I haven’t put it in my PC yet to see if it works.” I had to turn around so I wouldn’t start laughing.
@bbbici: You forget not everyone has the same accent.
@reddingofish: Ever hear of OSx86? Hell, now you can just patch the real cd and install it.
Oh there were a few good ones when I had the displeasure of working tech support.
Best one? Woman called in for tech support, had the tech on the phone for over half an hour, going on about how this city in Britain had it’s name pronounced wrong, aliens were invading her neighborhood and what not. All kinds of strange things.
Finally the tech asked her to look at the modem.
Woman said she couldn’t.
Tech asked why not.
Woman said it was in the basement, and she never went down there, it was haunted.
@Firstborn Dragon: lol @ the haunted basement… I’ve got to find a way to work that into daily conversations.
An old boyfriend of mine once worked for the Social Sciences computer lab at my graduate school. He swore that he had to help one undergraduate who couldn’t seem to make the pointer go where she wanted it to on the screen. It turned out she had the mouse upside down. Yep, she would move it right, and the pointer would go left, she would move it up and the pointer would go down, and she was not able to fix this problem BY HERSELF. She actually went up to the Help Desk and requested assistance. This was in 1996, if anyone was wondering.
@bbbici: I think they all get that. But it’s good to have a (fake) laugh at us from time to time. I called them all “hosers” and we’re good. It’s what we do.
Wikipedia explains it all. Don’t get me talking about the “about = aboot” nonsense.
@Jim (The Canuck One):
The difference between Canadians and others?
The Germans tell jokes about the Russians. The Russians tell jokes about the Poles.
The English tell jokes about the Germans. The Yanks tell jokes about the French. Etc.
Canadians tell jokes about Canadians, that’s the difference.
@cockeye – Frankly, until you’ve been on the receiving end of those calls, you will never understand. I admit that I have had my moments where I get frustrated with the CSR/TSR on the other end of the phone. But, being a TSR myself (and American, yes), I deal with people screaming and cursing at me for something that’s not even my fault. Give us a break, huh? If we didn’t have the occasional laugh at a situation, we’d probably hang up on you.