The reason this memory even surfaced from my drug-addled Oldheimer’s ravaged brain was the recent TechRepublic 10 Classic Clueless User stories from clueless tech support personnel, who seem to think that their embarrassingly inept technology always has the solution to any problem if ordinary people would just agree to have their problems and expectations radically modified to be satisfied with what is available. That’s one spicy meatball for you.
It’s been so long since this encounter took place that I can no longer recall what programs I was using at the time, but they were all produced by Microsoft, and they were all flakier than and lacking the basic nutrition benefits of a Pillsbury canned buttermilk biscuit.
To summarize what the problem was: I needed to copy something I created in one Microsoft program and insert it into a document created with another Microsoft program. The only problem was that no matter how I attempted to accomplish this simple task, my machine presented me with the blue screen of death (or BSOD, as the Orwellian semiconductor and software idiots came to define it to avoid wasting hours every day expressing exactly what was happening to ordinary customers who had to use these terrible products).
I attempted to reach Tech Support by phone and was directed to a Web site where I had to fill out a cumbersome and annoying form so that someone from Microsoft, at that time stationed somewhere in this hemisphere, would call me with a solution.
The form required that I fully document all the steps necessary to reliably recreate the problem. Of course, I couldn’t do this without writing down the steps on a legal pad and testing that I could repeatedly crash my machine and lose my work. Talk about sado-masochism. That’s technology for you.
Now here’s idiocy for you. It took me nearly four hours to document all the steps to reproduce the problem. I actually wasted four hours of my life to file a defect report for Microsoft. I wasn’t paid for that by Microsoft. My company paid me for it, but that was four hours my company paid me to work for Microsoft.
It took me another 30-40 minutes to complete the Tech Support form and submit it. A tech called back after I had had gone for the day and left a message to call a number in Redmond. He provided a case number that I should use, which I already knew was going to be closed before I got through to anyone.
The next morning I waited until 9 a.m. and called the number and spent 30 minutes on hold before I could even provide the case number, whereupon I was told that my case had been closed, of course, before I was “accidentally” disconnected and had to call back. The second time, I held for 20 minutes and demanded and managed to get a direct number to call in case (when) I was cut off again, which, of course, I was.
On the third call, I finally managed to connect with a technician who actually read my report of the steps to reproduce the BSOD, and he reproduced them while we were talking. “Whoa,” he said, chuckling. “That’s wicked.”
He then asked me to hold, and I held for 15 minutes while he search something that Microsoft calls a knowledge base, which ordinary people understand to mean the employee is taking a coffee or doober break, and when he finally got back on the line, he told me that the problem I reported was “a known issue with a low priority and severity.”
“So how am I supposed to work around this problem?” I asked.
“There is no work around,” he said. “Just don’t do that.”
“But I need to do this,” I said. “That’s why I’m trying to do it. I have something in one of your programs that I need to include in another of your programs.”
“I can’t help you with that,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with that.”
“What can you help me with?” I asked. “Can you tell of another company that sells products that promise to do what I’m trying to do that actually work?”
“You can buy a Macintosh,” the tech said.
“I already have a Macintosh, and I’d be working on a Macintosh here,” I fumed, “If you scumbuckets hadn’t sold NT to my current employer.”
The Tech then told me there I had no reason to be rude. He had given me the answer to my problem that he found in the knowledge base, which was to stop trying to do what I was trying to do. There was nothing else in the knowledge base pertaining to my problem. He wished me the best of luck and told me to have a nice day.
As if.