I will never, in my entire life, understand why people have to be such blazing assholes – for no reason whatsoever. Bitching to us about your billing, because you moved some site elsewhere “months ago”? Be nice if you actually contacted us to tell us this, since we don’t communicate via ESP around here. Complaining that there is an error on your page, and it couldn’t possible be your (homegrown) code, and then demanding that we fix a server where nothing has changed one iota, shown quite clearly by the information page for that server – except that very code you wrote, which shows timestamps the day before you contacted us? A pretty fair indicator that you broke something in your “couldn’t possibly be my code”, since it was working before and isn’t working now (and we won’t even go into your leeching of other peoples’ bandwidth by including their images in your site). Telling us you requested 1.5 months ago that a certain account be removed from your profile and telling us to correct this immediately? Not so, according to the ticket history – which, by the way, you can easily access to review at any time – wherein you said that you would be removing it, and you’ve made zero requests that we hold your hand through that process. Acting like a total jackhole and demanding a response to a request and telling us that you’re going to “switch hosts” if you don’t get an answer today? Number one, perhaps you should ensure that we actually received that request (we didn’t, according to the mail logs) and number two, perhaps you should ensure that the request is supposed to implemented today (it wasn’t, according to the actual tech person who cleaned up the mess you caused by your virtual stomping of feet). And of course, there’s always my favorite, someone bitching about not getting an email that was sent two nanoseconds ago, or even better, was not received when the sender merely had the passing thought of sending that email: if all you have to do with your time is constantly refresh your site or your mailbox, looking for that latest “l0l” comment on your magnificent and oh-so-interesting blog, or some stupid piece of forwarded chain mail crap, then you definitely need a hobby. In the real world. Moaning about the lack of an instantaneous response in the dead of night/morning here, our time, when there is one person on duty (me) and said person has had to go the NOC to fix yet another issue with your server, which is chronically overloaded? Not going to win you any points with a tired and cranky admin who continually tells you the very same thing over and over again, which you conveniently ignore in favor of whining about the fact that we fixed the problem you made before answering the inevitable jackass ticket that we knew would be awaiting us on the return. Whining about something that you “can’t do (again)”, making it sound as if there is some horrible, ongoing problem? It would help if there was a first report of that problem – or indeed, if there was a ticket from you anywhere in the past six months with a request for anything whatsoever, or a ticket from before that containing a request that your password be reset because you forgot it.
Fortunately for us, the vast majority of the people we deal with day in and day out are normal, polite people. Normal people who simply ask their questions, get their answers, and move on. Without the gnashing of teeth about how terribly tragic their suffering is and complaining that we “just don’t care”. Yeah, that would be why I’m on call 24/7/365 and why I work approximately a million hours a day (ok, more like 16-18 hours) around here. Because quite clearly, we “just don’t care” about anything. Tell that to the people who venture elsewhere and then wind up back on our doorstep because of the “caring” they’ve received at other places.
i’m amazed you haven’t hit the whiskey yet! on a better note – did you enjoy thanksgiving? i hope so – you deserve it.
I’m so sorry to hear that you still have to contend with “total jackholes,” as you put it. But is it wrong for me to say that reading your rant felt good, as I’m sure it felt good for you to get it off your chest?
The day itself was quite enjoyable, yes – a smaller than anticipated gathering that I’ll be talking about in the post with all the food porn. It was also very quiet on the work front, as people were thankfully doing whatever it is they do with their lives when they’re not puttering around on their sites.
I used to have an entire site devoted to nothing but tech support stories. It was more amusing than annoying. Over the years, as more and more people come online, the number of people who are total jerks continues to increase, so the number of people we have to deal with who are just offensive right off the bat continues to increase. I’ve never understood that, myself. Why would you, as your first contact with someone, immediately be rude? Is that what we’ve come to these days, where in this medium, where you don’t have to deal with someone face to face, you just treat them badly from the start? It’s depressing, sometimes, but as I said, fortunately, most people act like normal, civil people instead of like a raging case of hives on the butt of humanity.