re: Man calls in internet service disruption - epic fail

Man, I refused to get a home computer until about 10 years ago. I was in my mid 40s, and had never been on the internet, had never even used a computer. For a long time, I chose to believe it was just a fad.Finally started seeing the light.

I went to Walmart one day and saw an " everything you need" package, and decided to get it.I went home, and called Charter to come hook me up to internet, and signed up for their fastest speed.

When the kid came out to hook me up, It didn't take him long to figure out that I had no idea what I was doing. He spent probably 90 minutes showing me what to do and wrote down some notes for me. He never treated me like an idiot or anything.

When he was leaving I tipped him 100 bucks, and figured it was worth every penny.

He gave me his personal phone # and told me I could call him whenever I needed some pointers.
I called him a few times after that, and he was always happy to give me advice.

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You should have been as smooth as possible and told him that if this happens again the only known fix is to get a squeezable bottle of mayonnaise and to fill in the CD-Rom slot to "grease the gears". That or any fix that involved a very strong magnet.

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I doubt an extra man-hour is gonna break the bank. Especially considering this guy will probably call back with a similar issue and demand someone drive out to fix it, or cancel the service over nothing because now there's bad blood. I'm not saying the OP did anything wrong. In the service industry it can be hard as frick to bite your tongue and be nice to someone, but 9 times out of 10 killing them with kindness will pay off in the long run.

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frick that.
In the computer business, good deeds get punished. Every. Damn. Time.

I have a story for you. Years ago I worked for a large manufacturing company. We had engineers working in development. One young lady engineer called me and said that her computer was "eating her 3.5 floppy disks".
I went to look and she was actually putting the disks in a gap between the expansion slots instead of the drive, and they just fell inside the case. When I opened it, there were 5 3.5 disks in there.

Pretty funny

I feel your pain brother.

I work in construction. Our subs are given an excel spreadsheet to use to submit their pay applications. You'd be shocked at how many times I have to walk people through not how to fill one out, but how to use excel to fill one out.

"There's another sheet when you click on that tab?"

My personal favorite is when someone tells me they have to fax me something because they "don't trust email."

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I feel bad for him being isolated completely by his lack of technological awareness. I imagine he must not have kids around that can teach him.

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This is true. But maybe if he wouldn't have been a dick from the get go I would have stayed there and held his hand. What does he think I work for? The satisfaction of helping people?