Before I worked in retail at a lovely beauty shop, I worked at a call center.
Tech Support. For Comcast. It’s as bad as you think it was. Lemmie tell ya a story.
The year was 2011. I’m at the call centre, working away, doing my best and getting chewed out because I often helped people beyond what was required (driver issues and shit, instead of just following our LOQ. If you have someone who refuses to leave their script, they probably got written up for doing so just FYI. )
Anyway,
Buddy calls in, and right off the bat he comes in swinging. Rawr rawr rawr, my internet isn’t working, fix this now, you guys suck. like, dude, I don’t disagree with you, but I have literally no control over the company I’m a fuckin’ cog. Whatever. I go into his account to check his system/devices/account, and I see the modem is fully offline. That’s actually good, because it means it’ll be super easy to fix: either the damn thing is busted (needs a tech) or it’s out of power. So, I ask buddy to unplug the device from the outlet, wait a second, and plug it back in again. I didn’t ask this because I thought resetting it would fix it, I asked him to do this because peeps get pissy if you ask them if their stuff is plugged in.
Foreshadowing.
Anyway, he grumbles and complains, and does the thing. Nothing. OK. There’s one more thing I can check. I ask him if the modem is plugged into the wall, or a power bar.
“It’s plugged into a power bar.”
“Ah.” I say, “Ok. Can I get you to plug it directly into the wall?”
“Why the Fuck do I have to do that?”
Now, the answer we give is “well, that’s because sometimes the modem and the power bar don’t work well together, and it’s just easier to check it if it’s plugged into the wall.”
This is bullshit. The truth is that we don’t know where you got this power bar. We don’t know how old it is. We don’t know if you got this shit rigged up like the dad in “A Christmas Story” with three dozen things plugged into a set power bars all plugged in and twisted like some chthonic electro beast. I mean, sure, that SOUNDS hot, but it’s not useful when trying to do troubleshooting and figure out if your power bar sucks and is broken.
This guy *loses his shit* at me. Rawr rawr rawr, every time I call you got me running around doing all this shit, blah blah blah, No, I can’t unplug it, there’s no other outlets in the room.
Now I pause, the gears in my brain quickly clicking together. “There’s… no outlets in that room?”
“No, there’s not! Not any!”
Ok, well, ASIDE from that being absolutely not to electrical codes for modern houses, it also raises a new question.
“Sir… what’s your powerbar plugged into?”
“It’s plugged into a powerbar!”
“…. The same powerbar?”
There’s a moment of stunned silence, followed by a *Click*. I pause my line for a minute so I don’t get any more incoming calls while I take my notes, but really I’m watching this account. I refresh a few times, and after a minute or so, the modem is MAGICALLY ONLINE
This dude. This chaotic dumbass had his modem plugged into a powerbar, which was plugged into ITSELF. Like, I know there’s that meme flying around that shows that, and it’s supposed to be a joke on how stupid people can be, an exaggeration of sorts… But I swear, this is NOT an exaggeration. This shit actually happened.
So, the moral of the story: If you’re on the line with Tech Support, and they ask you to just “Check the wires” or “Make sure the device is plugged in firmly.” Just do the thing. We’ve dealt with a lot of dumbasses in our time.
Before it’s asked: No, this was not an elder gentleman. It was a Prime-Of-His-Life dude.
