[geeks] funny way to start the day

[John Duksta]

At 08:26 AM 9/21/2001 +0100, Will Mc Donald wrote:
>We had one bloke who would just consistently phone us to complain about
>services (or the proceedures for dealing with problems with the services)
>without even giving us a chance to help, *really* obnoxious.

Back when I was doing phone support for DCA's Remote LAN Node
product (PPP-based remote access server, but using a proprietary
bridging control protocol) in '94, I had a customer from a
large Ross Perot owned consulting firm. I was helping him
get DHCP working over RLN. RLN was in essense a dialup bridge,
you would get assigned a real MAC address and everything.
In order to get DHCP working, we had to develop an appropriate
bridge filter to let the broadcast DHCP responses back through
to the client.

Anyway, after I got done telling him how to get the bridge
filter setup on RLN, he starts asking me to tell him how
to setup a DHCP server on NT. I calmly tell him "Sorry,
but I can't do that. I support RLN, not NT. If you're
having trouble getting your DHCP server setup, you'll
have to contact Microsoft." He starts getting all irate
on me, saying that he's evaluating the product for a
potentially large account and that if I don't help him
with this, he'll recommend another product. I transferred
him over to my manager, who told him the same thing I did.

> > Someone told me once that I got this "tech support voice" when
> > doing phones that had this "dont fuck with me, I know what I'm
> > talking about" tone to it.

Ahhh, the tech support voice. It is that it becomes second
nature to slip into that tone of voice when dealing
with (l)users. Gets me in trouble when I'm helping Andrea
with something on her machine. She says it makes her feel
like I'm being condescending. I tell her I can't help it,
it's a programmed scenario response. I think/hope she
understands now.

-john