Jessica L. thinks she possibly made contact with the stupidest person to ever man the Dell phone lines.

Only reachable by calling Dell and hitting the 0 key 8 times in a row, this Milton-esque mumbler lives in a dank, lightless basement, surrounded by rotting cardboard boxes. He knows nothing about the outside world, unable to parse the difference between the United States government and a business. He also knows nothing about Dell’s product line, outside of notebooks. Luckily, he’s got an easy solution if he can’t directly help you… just hang up.

Jess describes him as the dumbest person in all America. Being a Government employee, she might not be aware that that person, in fact, is her ultimate employer. But second dumbest seems apt. Jessica’s email after the jump:

I work for a government agency. We need to buy about 50-70 TB of
storage, which is at least a $300,000 purchase. We’ve been having
vendors come out and woo us. Dell is an industry leader, right?

So, one of my team members emails me: “I have spent some time trying
to ascertain the services available from Dell Professional Services
and to actually contact them. On their web site they have a category
called “Assess, Design, and Implement”, it sounds like what we are
looking for and yet it is divided into categories of “System
Consolidation Services”, “Software Migration Services”, and “IT
Architecture Services”. Okay, we are neither consolidating or
migrating so IT Architecture! Under IT Architecture the only thing
that sounds remotely like it might fit is Backup and Recover. After
reading the introduction it still seems like it has potential.

So, now I need to find out how to talk to someone and discuss this a
little further. So I hunt for more information and the only thing
that I am able to come up with is a phone number 800-WWW-DELL. So, I
call and …
No, I don’t want to dial an extension
No, I don’t want to place an order
Technical Question? not really but lets follow this to see where it
leads.
Well that was a waste of time. They are anticipating a question
related to some piece of hardware that I already have.
Okay let’s call back and see if there is anything else. This time I
get one more option “All issues related to a purchase already made”.
Well, that’s not what I want but this is not my first automated
answering system so I will just dial 0 and wait for an operator.

“You have entered an invalid selection!””

This is were I pull out my big guns. So, my tactic was
http://gethuman.com/us/, where I was told to call
800‑999‑3355 and press 0 repeatedly to get a human.

After 8 (or more) 0’s. I got the dumbest person in all of America.
“What system do you want to purchase?”
“I am with the federal government. I want to purchase a Dell/EMC
product. Can I have the federal services division or the professional
services division?”
“Is this business or personal?”
“This a Dell/EMC partnership for hardware and services. It’s on your
web page.”
“Is this business or personal?”
“It’s the government.”
“Is this business or personal?”
“Okay, so it would be a business.”
“Are you using personal or business funds?”
“Business.”
“Okay, let me take your name, number, and address.”
“Why do you need my address to connect me to someone?”
“I need your address to get anything in my database.”
“Okay.”
“So, what computer do you want to purchase?”
“LIKE I SAID I AM CALLING ABOUT THE DELL/EMC MASS STORAGE SYSTEMS ON
YOUR WEBSITE.”
“Okay, is that a notebook?’
“This is a huge storage system for the federal government!!!”
“Okay, let me transfer you.”

At this point I was disconnected back to the main menu of pointless options.

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