A lot of people say they only barely tolerate their jobs. But not all these people take to an incredibly public forum to vent their frustrations about how what seemed like a dream gig has since sucked the life force out of them. Then again, not everyone works in phone support for Comcast.

Last night, a Comcast employee went public in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit titled “I work for Comcast, and it is ruining my life.”

Describing himself as “a really nice computer guy, but that’s not what this place wants,” the Kabletown staffer writes:

My hopes have slowly been diminished and crushed as requirements from ‘upper management’ become more strict, and not on promoting people to work harder but discouraging people from being helpful. The red tape that we drown in over the phone gives us the ability to say “Sorry” and if you talk to a good person they’ll actually pray your issue gets fixed as it flows down the rusted, broken down pipe.

Greedy lying manipulative sales people, technicians that blame dispatch and a dispatch that blames technicians, a training department that spends eight weeks on how to setup an account and two weeks on how to fix issues, outsourcing agents (OSRs) that DO read from scripts for out of date billing/repair systems and still manage to mess things up.

The stress from being one of the few in my office that know how to, and actually want to, fix things is over-whelming when it seems there are more rules in place to prevent that than help. I’ve got a teaspoon to poke at an ocean of problems. Feel free to ask me anything.

Since it was an Ask Me Anything, the Comcaster did attempt to respond to the ocean of queries and comments from Redditors.

ON WHY PHONE REPS CAN NEVER TELL YOU WHERE THE TECHNICIAN IS:

“Ugh… We have no idea, and there is no way for us to find out. They give us a tool to send a sort of text message to the tech for an eta but whether it works or even does anything is honestly questionable. We can email their local dispatch office but more than likely you won’t hear back and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they had someone just clean it out at the end of the day. And the amount of technicians that are rescheduled for what ever reason fits their fancy with absolutely no notice to the customer is deplorable. But on the front lines when you call in? Nothing we can do, and barely anything even a supervisor can do too.”

ON HOW A BIG, BROKEN MESS LIKE COMCAST CONTINUES TO THRIVE:

We’re big?

That’s the only thing I can think of because we do have some of the worst sales reps that are just out to make a buck. Yes, we can mail anyone anything for any kind of hook up (some areas -are- iffy on phone service because they’ll need to be setup before hand but mostly it’s okay). At the end of the day, they get their commission and the revenue and it’s up to tech support to come in and fix it. Sales and OSRs cost Comcast more time than they bring in from nonsense like that and the sad part is that it will never get fixed.

ON THE COMPANY’S “7 STRIKES” POLICY AGAINST ALLEGED ILLEGAL FILE SHARING:

[T]ypically we’ll notify you of what file we were told you downloaded.

For example, you download Broodwar (real life example here for me, back in the day). We’ll get told that IP address such and such downloaded such file and they want to know who that is. They can’t file anything against your IP address since it isn’t a direct extension of you, so they need your name and information.

We take that into consideration of course, contact you to let you know what is going on. It could be you’re on an unprotected wireless network and it isn’t you. Of course you’ll be held responsible, but that is what the system is for. The notice just let’s you know what the file is and who is claiming it was downloaded with some basic information on protecting yourself against wireless hi-jacking.

Now there is a contact number for the company making the claim against you on the notice. If you call and give them your information, even if it is to tell them that someone was on your wi-fi, they will more than likely try to sue you. They don’t care. It was downloaded from your connection so for all intents and purposes it was you.

Seven strikes, and seven notices is very generous considering out of a million people that could have pirated a certain piece of information, most of these companies only have the man power to send out a few thousand notices.

ON HIS NICKNAME FOR THE COMPANY:

“Cocmast is my favorite.

You get so used to the motion of typing http://www.comcast.net or .com that you’ll trip up and wind up with Cocmast. And our current slogan now is “The future of awesome” the present is terrible.”

ON WHETHER HE EVER THINKS ABOUT JUMPING OUT THE NEAREST WINDOW:

“If the building wasn’t on the ground floor, I’m pretty sure we’d have another Foxconn on our hands.

Maybe that is a little over the top.”

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