My first tech job was doing tech support by phone for a certain large
ISP. (It's still around, but it's just a brand name now.)
This was in the modem age, and while the Internet was beginning
to get popular it was still thought of as mostly for enthusiasts. Some
of our customers… weren't terribly enthusiastic.
On the other hand we weren't restricted to a script; we were trained
to do our best actually to solve a customer's problem. So it wasn't a
bad job. Mostly.
"You know this CD you sent me? Does it have the Internet on it?"
While the cup holder story never happened to me, i would certainly
believe it after my time there.
Many of the problems took the form of the modem dialling but not
connecting or logging in (failure to train). This was sometimes the
software's fault, but usually swapping in a new modem would fix it; it
was the analogue side that was going wrong, since the electronics were
prone to go slightly adrift. Modems were considered expensive, and the
customer didn't want to hear that. One chap explained that he hadn't
changed anything (this was a usual mantra that we learned to ignore),
but eventually admitted that actually he'd recently installed a new
serial port card in his computer. Could that be causing the problem?
Me: "Well, probably not, but can you try putting the old one back in
to see if it makes a difference?"
Him: "Oh, the computer was struck by lightning last week, and it
melted the old serial card."
Me: "Was anything connected to it except the modem?"
Him (light beginning to dawn) "No…"
Me: "Then that's probably how the lightning got to your computer. I'm
afraid it's new modem time."
He took it quite well.
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