Doesn’t Speak A Paid Programming Language

Caller: “Hi, the program I use to give demos to customers has stopped working.”

Me: “Okay, what is the program that you use?”

Caller: *names third-party free trial program that our company doesn’t use*

Me: “And what’s the problem?”

Caller: “It’s asking me to pay to use it.”

Me: “Okay… there’s nothing I can actually do about that. That is a third-party paid service. Our company does not have any accounts or contracts with that vendor, so we don’t have a company account we can use.”

Caller: “But it worked before.”

Me: “They have a free trial, but once that trial is over you would need to pay for an account.”

Caller: “It’s not working. They told me to call Help Desk.”

Me: “I’m afraid this is not a technical issue that we can help with. This program requires a paid account to use it, and our company doesn’t have one. You’d need to work with your department head to put in a purchase order for an account for this program. That doesn’t go through us.”

Caller: “But all my coworkers use it, and they don’t pay for it!”

Me: “Better not mention that to Legal.”