From: ST102315 at brownvm.brown.edu (Jake) Subject: Notes on a Day of Backsliding Date: 23 January 1997 Message-ID: <5c8bau$ecn@cocoa.brown.edu> newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recoveryAfter near-total recovery, I had a major relapse on Tuesday and worked the help desk from 9-5 while all of the real Bobs were being trained. A few random notes before the horror of it all gets suppressed again...
A luser with a 'quick question'. Yes, the question was quick. The answer would have been quick, too, except that she refused to understand it. The question was: 'After it says I'm connected, what do I do?' The answer was: 'Run Netscape or Eudora or whatever it is you want to use.' This lead me to pose the following question to myself: Given the choice between going to a hell where you had to provide tech support where all the lusers had complicated questions and kept saying 'Why does it have to be so COMPLICATED?' and one in which the lusers had very simple questions but refused to believe that the answer could be that simple, which would you choose?
[Another segment of the conversation: 'You can just run any programs you want.' 'Should I minimize the dialer?' 'It doesn't really matter; you can if you don't want to be looking at it all the time.' 'I don't.' 'OK, then minimize it.' 'Will it still work if I don't minimize it?']
Taking a lunch break and using it to log on, because I didn't have the time to do it while I was working. Listening to the phone beep every three seconds for more than ten minutes. [Every beep=an incoming call, which is either forwarded to a real live techie or is given a busy signal.] Deciding that there isn't really any big hurry in ending the lunch break. Later, listening to a man get all in my face about how difficult it is to call us. I should have taken him into the room and let him listen to the beeping. Maybe 10 consultants working the phones could make it so that you'd get through on your first try more often than not. Or maybe not.
Closing at five and having lusers get all pissy when they find out we're closed. "It's an emergency!" If I wasn't here, would it still be an emergency? What would you do? If you were an off-duty McDonald's worker and I was starving, could I ask you for a hamburger?
Conversation afterwards (at dinner):
Friend: [speaking ironically] "What better way to relieve stress than going to a Wal-Mart?"
[pause]
Me: "You mean with a machine gun, or what?"
At any rate, I made it through the day without feeling the need to harm myself or others, and kept my cool the whole time. That means that I'll probably be asked to do this again, and will agree. Drat. And the recovery was going so well...
-jwgh
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He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the
Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.
- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)