Shit that pisses you off, part II

[kal]

I work in an incoming call centre. Thankfully not tech support...yet. Although I am beyond familiar with the "I was talking to some guy at some indeterminable point, so how's that thing we discussed going?"

And god I have dealt with so much shit from someone who didn't do their job properly so now I have to spend 4 times as long fixing it at the last second while been blamed for the issue.

[camanchi]

Argh, I know. I swear half the people who work in those places ask a few random questions, verify some information and then say "oh the systems are down, can you call back in a half hour to an hour?" as soon as something hard/annoying comes up.

[Feynman]

Speaking of tech support, it pisses me off when tech support folks refuse to believe that I have an actual problem.

About two years ago, I had just had internet installed at my new residence. It was very spotty, and had a tendency to go down for hours at a time. I did some testing, and concluded that the problem had to be on my Comcast's end. The cabling running into the house was somewhat worn, which the installation dude remarked on when he set up the cable in the first place. Given the arbitrary nature of my internet outages, and the fact that the TV went out as well, I was very suspicious that there was a problem with the cabling itself.

So, I call Comcast. I then proceed to spend the next two hours talking to some poor bastard with a bare minimum of tech training, with delightful suggestions such as:

"Is the modem on?"
"Have you power cycled the modem?"
"Do you have a router?"
"Try power cycling the modem again."
"Try power cycling your router."
"It's probably the router."

The router bit was in spite of the fact that the cable TV went out as well... apparently the dude on the phone was under the impression that routers are evil, internet-eating devices, because he was really hung up on the fact that I was using a router. Most of my time on the phone was spent trying to convince this guy that it really, honestly, was not my router's fault. As if checking my router settings wasn't one of the first things I did.

Now, in all fairness, I know that so often callers really are non-tech folk who just need to power cycle their modem. I know that the standard level 1 tech support guys aren't tech-savvy themselves, and just read off a script to weed out people with minor problems. I used to work as an on-site IT guy, so I've personally witnessed an impressive range of incredibly silly things people do to their computers (personal favorite, someone left a message for me begging me to fix their printer, because they couldn't get it to do anything. I walked into his office, looked behind the printer, plugged it in, and walked right back out with an entertaining story to tell).

No, what really bothered me was that this guy just would not for the life of him believe that I could possibly have any knowledge myself. That the problem must be on my end, and he simply refused to escalate my call to somebody who knew what the fuck they were talking about. In was absolutely infuriating. In the end, I finally managed to get him to relent out of sheer persistence, and they agreed to send over somebody to take a look personally.

And it turned out to be the goddamn cabling, just like I claimed it was. And after all that hell with their belligerent tech rep, they then had the audacity to charge me for the repair, despite the fact that the installation dude noticed a potential issue in the first place. Fucking Comcast.

[camanchi]

My net drops off a lot too, but I'm not sure if it's the fact that I'm around a LOT of other wireless signals and need to change the port or something or because my laptop had beer spilled on it a few years ago. I dried it out with that canned air blasts and it worked fine but maybe my wireless card was semi-damaged.

[kal]

The company I'm with for my internet are more than happy to send someone out to look at internet related problems. The catch is if the problem is on YOUR end (your router, your PC) then you get to front the bill otherwise if it's their issue, it's covered. While I have a lot of issues with them...that's surprisingly not one of them.

[personman]

For the past week my hard drive fried and dell sent a replacement. That's all well and good but this has happened three flipping times since I bought this thing a year ago, I think there's a good chance that some other piece of the hardware is nuking my hard drives and it really would be nice if I could just get this piece junk replaced entirely.

I could be wrong I guess, maybe the hard drives Dell uses are just that cheap, but still I'm really getting sick of having to wait around a weeks duration without a computer every 5 months or so.

[camanchi]

When you're in the area of an earthquake for the first time of your life and you miss it because you're busy driving around doing errands or showering or something. It was a 5.5! I thought I lived in a natural-disaster-free area.

[Deleted]

You're upset that you missed an earthquake? I grew up in Ohio, and not once was I annoyed to miss out on any of the numerous tornadoes that touched down all around where I lived.

[Feynman]

Jun 23, 2010 22:14:32 GMT -5 camanchi said:

natural-disaster-free area.

No such thing. No matter where you live, there is some kind of terrible tectonic, volcanic, or weather-related thing that can kill you.

[camanchi]

Honestly, nothing has ever happened anywhere close to where I live that caused any significant damage. The worst we get is summer thunderstorms that bring a lot of rain and sometimes hit trees. Tornadoes are unheard of and earthquakes are even rarer.

I find things like extreme weather and other natural events to be interesting I guess.

[Deleted]

I guess that makes sense. It's sort of like having an interest in snow when you've never lived in it.

[TheChosen]

Its 8 am right now. Havent slept a single minute because Im not tired. Didnt sleep last night at all, and so I went to bed at 1pm, and woke up at 6pm.

Why cant I sleep like normal people?

[Atma]

I lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was barely 3, my brother had just been born a couple months prior. I thought it was the damn funniest shit ever and thought the house almost falling onto me was a blast. Good job, me. It was the grand start to many a massive California quake I would experience. To be honest, after a while I got used to them, especially when you lived near geysers like I did.

My hard drive also ate itself a couple nights ago. Thankfully, not much important was lost, and I had been predicting this for about a year now with how often I had to reinstall windows, but argh. I'm more depressed it had to go, it was a loyal soldier, may angels sing her to her rest. Though I got a new rig out of it and the specs make up for the sadness. (It was cheaper and better made than doing it myself at that point.)

Still, I have to take the old one out and fry it hard so nobody has any chance of retrieving anything off it ever. I hate to pound her circuits open, but she would have wanted it this way.

[Deleted]

Jun 24, 2010 0:07:55 GMT -5 TheChosen said:

Its 8 am right now. Havent slept a single minute because Im not tired. Didnt sleep last night at all, and so I went to bed at 1pm, and woke up at 6pm.

Why cant I sleep like normal people?

For the last two weeks I've been sleeping but not feeling the effects of having slept. I'm really not sure what it is.

I hate sleep problems .

[ryochan]

Personman: It's not Dell's HDs. When I had a Dell that wasn't the issue I usually had. Something else in your computer must be acting out.

Two big things that piss me off, both about people:

1. When you start a project, and then recruit people in because you need help, but proceed to basically ignore the project or hand over most everything to the other people. This has been happening with something I was brought in on for one reason, but have now been basically forced to handle several other pieces of the project because the project leader seems to conveniently miss the questions you send him. It's actually caused me to not want to do much work, even though I know once I do, it'll get done somewhat quickly.

2. Discussing an idea with a person, who agrees to help, but then realizing you're not only going to be handling a good 99%, or more, of the work on your own, but said person:
A. Isn't very helpful in the brainstorming or assisting area
B. Can't understand why you keep telling them that a certain idea isn't going to work because there is no way to end it, and thus basically keeps forcing the project back
C. Doesn't want to work half the time anyway, except when you basically force them to, or are with them (which happens rarely as they live in an entirely different state and most your conversations are mostly net-based)

I don't know. Maybe I'm just too pissy about people, but I find this has happened to me more than once, and there are times I really don't want to work with anyone, on anything.