Charles The Technician

Idiot of the week: Multiple Synaptic Misfiring Idiots of Doom

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week

Idiot 5: Help I can’t play Pogo!

Ok for some reason 85% of our customers use this website called pogo.com, literally everytime we have an outage the pogo brigade comes out of the woodworks and slams the phones. So pogo had an outage last week and believe me I knew within 15 minutes of their website going down.

Her: Hi this is [Her name I can’t remember], and I can’t play pogo.
Me: You can’t browse any website or just pogo?
Her: Just pogo, I’ve been with y’all for 4 years and usually it’s pretty good but tonight I can’t play pogo.
Me: So you can view google and yahoo and other webpages but cannot view pogo’s webpage?
Her: Yes
Me: Ok making sure, alright let me take a look…nope I can’t pull it up either, they must be down for a bit, give it some time.
Her: You are checking from your internet connection which I’m on as well, the problem is with your equipment I just want to play pogo will you fix it?
Me: I’m browsing from 2 different sources, one is the T1 we use for our dial up customers and one is the DSL which I have for our repair side to keep virus / spyware problems from hitting our main network and as a back up.
Her: Look I don’t care, I want to play pogo and your service isn’t letting me

Now imagine 200 people like this calling for the next 2 hours. I’m not kidding it didn’t let up, and people called back 30 minutes later and some called 4 or 5 times in that 2 hour span. I eventually forwarded the phones to my cell phone and set it to have a message saying pogo’s website is down if you can view other webpages it is not your internet connection it’s just pogo, if you can’t view any other webpage leave a message and I’ll get back with you.

My voice mailbox filled up in 10 minutes.

“Why the fuck can’t I play pogo?”
“You motherfuckers are blocking pogo!”

and on and on and on. I was getting scared and tempted to go grab my AR-15 from the apartment leave it in the tech area with a clip in but no round in the chamber and lock the doors. I expected pitch fork and torches coming up main street any minute.

Then pogo came back up.

“Thanks for listening and unblocking pogo”

In the eyes of a pogo player, pogo can do no wrong.

—————————————————————

Idiot 4: Want my windows reinstalled and set back up.

Guy came in 3 weeks ago asked me to reinstall windows for him, typically what I do is copy over the my documents folder grabbing up all their pictures, music, videos, and documents. Kind of my way of saying thank you and going the extra mile. This guy was an internet customer so I went ahead and copied over his email inbox as well.

Reinstalled windows, setup drivers, setup our dial up connection, installed the basics (AVG, Adaware 2007, Spybot S&D, Adobe Document Reader, Firefox, Flash player) setup his email copied over all his stuff and gave him a call.

Computer went home, guy paid and was happy.

Later that night:

Me: [My company], this is Charles, how may I help you?
Him: I TOLD YOU TO WIPE MY COMPUTER CLEAN, I STILL HAVE ALL THIS STUFF ON MY COMPUTER AND IT’S WHAT MAKES IT RUN SLOW!!!

Note: Hardrive space free != Speed.

I had to figure out who the guy was and let him know but still he went on and on and on.

Me: Ok, typically what we do is copy over all your documents and pictures and set you back up with the basics after we do a windows reinstall, I asked you before we did all this to make sure that you were going to be keeping the computer because when you want to sell it most want it wiped with no personal data on it. Documents and pictures take up very little space and even so, free space on your hard drive does not mean your computer will go faster.
Him: I WANT MY COMPUTER WIPED CLEAN, I DON’T WANT ANY OF THIS JUNK!
Me: Ok then delete it, just select it and delete it.
Him: NO I WANT YOU TO DO IT!
Me: Ok bring in on down here and I’ll take care of it.

So I did, lesson learned: No good deed goes unpunished.

Tune in sometime within a week for more idiots, I promise I’ll post some more quick ones. It’s just been so hectic lately and the idiots so numerous that I can’t find one that sticks out and is post worthy.

Charles~