All Your Knowledge Base Are Belong To Us

I call tech support for one of my products. I’m making up the steps involved in this story to simplify the technical aspects, but the gist of the story remains:

When I get through to someone:

Me: “Hi, yeah, I have [detailed and complicated problem].”

Call Center Employee: “I… uh… will need to consult our knowledge base to solve that. Please hold.”

I’m on hold for about five minutes.

Call Center Employee: “Okay, so I have consulted our knowledge base. The solution is to press and hold the yellow button, and when it restarts, toggle the—”

Me: “—main switch until the lights come on?”

Call Center Employee: “Uh… yeah.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s what Google told me as well. Didn’t work.”

Call Center Employee: “I… will need to consult our knowledge base again.”

Five minutes on hold again. And then:

Call Center Employee: “Okay, so I have consulted our knowledge base again. The solution is to swap the blue cord with—”

Me: “—with the red cord and then power it up again?”

Call Center Employee: “Uh… yeah.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s what Google told me as well. I’m beginning to suspect your knowledge base is just Google.”

Call Center Employee: “…”

Me: “Yeah, thought so. Can I escalate to tier two support, please?”

I get escalated, talk to someone a bit more knowledgeable, and he laughingly admits that at that tech support center they Google stuff all the time, but they have to call it a ‘knowledge base’ because otherwise it’s not a good look.

He had my issue fixed within twenty minutes, so I didn’t care all that much, but I did find it funny.