(I am manning the phones late on a Saturday afternoon.)

Me: “Good afternoon, [TV service]; how can I help you?”

Caller: “The TV’s gone wrong. There will be somebody in at six to fix it. The football’s on tonight.”

Me: “Sorry, sir, we cannot get anybody out until Monday.”

Caller: “You have gotta be f****** joking. You advertise 24-hour service.”

Me: “We have a 24-hour answering service to take the details. Repairs are carried out from 8 am until 6 pm, Monday through to Saturday.”

Caller: “Look, c***! Get somebody round my house now, or I’ll come round there and smash your f****** face in!”

Me: “Sorry, sir, I can’t help.”

Caller: “Okay ‘boy’, put me through to your boss. I want to talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey.”

(The boss is in the office with me, and has heard my half of the conversation. My boss picks up the phone, and puts it in speaker mode.)

Boss: “Good evening, sir. How can I be of assistance?”

Caller: “Your f****** ‘TEA BOY’ has told me I can’t get my TV fixed today!”

Boss: “The f****** tea boy is absolutely correct.”

(My boss puts the phone down on the caller, cutting him off in mid-flow of swear words. He looks over and smiles.)

Boss: “That’s the way to handle them. Now, how about a cup of tea now that you have been promoted?”

(The internet in our store is not working. I give our help desk a call.)

Me: “Hi, I’m calling from [store]. I’m just calling to see if there’s something that can be done about our connection through the company. I have to open in half an hour, and I can’t connect to any of our necessary functions.”

Tech Support: “Seriously? Why are you calling? Didn’t you get the email we sent out 10 minutes ago?”

Me: “…okay. Here’s the deal. I want you to think about my reason for calling, and then think about the question you just asked me. Hopefully you can come up with the answer on your own.”

Tech Support: “Uh, duh. Check your email. We send all our updates through that.”

Me: “And how, pray-tell, am I supposed to check my email, when I do not have functioning internet to do so? Also, why on earth would you send out an email to people after their internet is down, to inform them that their internet is down, and the reasons why said internet is down, when they can’t actually access that email, because the internet is down?!”

Tech Support: “…it made sense at the time.”

(I work for a company that produces a word processing software, which I am supporting.)

Me: “Thank you for calling technical support. Can I have your case number?”

(The customer provides the information. Just by the voice, I know the customer is an older lady. Usually, this means a 45+ minutes call, just because of the technology challenges.)

Me: “Could you right-click on the start button?”

Customer: “Okay, I have programs, documents, settings—”

Me: “That’s left-clicking. Could you please right-click on the start button?”

Customer: “Okay, but I still get programs, documents, settings.”

Me: “Could you describe to me, visually and step by step, what you are doing?”

Customer: “I’m putting the mouse cursor over the right part of the word ‘start’, and I click.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry; I was not clear. Is it possible for you to click using the right mouse button?”

Customer: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Okay, please pick up your mouse by the wire, and hold it up in the air.”

Customer: “I feel stupid.”

Me: “No, ma’am, you’re not. We’re all starting from different points. I’m a geek, so it’s normal if I’m a bit ahead of the curve, as far as this stuff goes. I just need to make sure that we’re on a level field, here.”

Customer: “Okay, it’s in the air.”

Me: “Great! Between your wire and your palm-resting are—”

Customer: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Okay, put it flat again, and put your hand on your mouse, as if to use it.”

Customer: “Oh, I get it, the place where my palm is resting.”

Me: “Exactly. Pick it up again. Between the wire and the palm-resting area, there is an area that is divided vertically. How many sections are there?”

Customer: “Two”

Me: “Great! Ma’am, I would like to formally introduce you to your left mouse button and your right mouse button. So when I ask you to right-click—”

Customer: “You want me to use the right mouse button!”

Me: “You’re a smart one!”

(It turns out that the older lady is 96 years old. She was doing her shuffleboard association’s newsletter, and her software had become thoroughly corrupted and needed to be reinstalled. We spend over an hour and a half. This lady had seen the advent of movies, TV, color TV, had seen the Model T, saw the first planes, radio and all. When I will be 96 years old, I just hope I am as technologically savvy as she is!)

Me: “Good morning, thank you for calling Tech Support.”

Customer: “Hi, I bought a [brand name] laptop, and I want to get it set up. Can you talk me through it?”

Me: “Sure, when you turn on the computer you’ll be asked to type in the user name you want to use—”

Customer: “I haven’t gotten that far yet. How do I open the box?”

Me: “Really, you want me to talk you through opening the box?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Is this a prank call?”

Customer: “No…”

(The customer actually kept me on the line for 30 minutes asking me how to open the box her laptop came in!)

(I work in our university’s IT department, which also maintains three computer labs on campus of which two are in the library. All of our lab computers use software known as ‘Deep Freeze’ which, upon re-start, completely resets a computer’s settings, registry, and wipes saved data. The background of every machine, and various signs, tell users to ‘Save often!’. A young student approaches the lab help desk.)

Student: “I was upstairs working on my paper for the last six hours, and now it’s gone!”

Me: “Which station are you working at?”

Student: “One on the 4th floor.”

(I follow her to our 4th floor lab, and we head to her station.)

Me: “So, describe what happened.”

Student: “I was working on my paper and needed to go to the bathroom. When I came back the screen was dark, so I held the button down.”

(The student points to the CPU’s power button.)

Me: “Did you save your work to a flash drive, or e-mail it to yourself?”

Student: “No. Why? I should have to do that!”

(I explain Deep Freeze to her, show her the desktop background warnings, and the signs we have around the lab.)

Student: “I shouldn’t be expected to read! Get my paper back!”

Me: “There’s one thing left to try, but I doubt it will work.”

(I open the word processor, and attempt to access the auto-recovery section, which is blank as I knew it would be.)

Me: “I’m very sorry, but your paper is gone. Are you sure you didn’t save it to a drive or online document storage?”

Student: “No! I don’t know these computer things. You’re not being helpful! You will call my professor and tell him you lost my paper! I want your manager!”

(I get the name of her professor,.who teaches in Computer Information Systems; the kicker is he doesn’t teach lower division classes!)