Lessons not learned (Or, why my dogs are smarter than some of our clients)

I don’t mind helping people learn new things. During my college days, I used to tutor people in various subjects, and one of my instructors tried pretty hard to get me to change over to an education major. No thanks.

What I do mind, however, is people who refuse to even attempt to do anything for themselves, or who complain about things being “too technical” when they are not, or who insist that everything is – and this is a direct quote – “ridiculous” or that we must be “kidding”.

I can assure you that the only thing ridiculous when we deal with someone like you – is you. And no, we are most certainly not kidding about any of it.

Let me tell you a story.

We have two dogs now, both rescued from the pound. Great dogs. They have managed to learn a number of things in the course of the last year. One of the dogs will not push open a door. He was the one who was abused by whoever had him previously. The other dog will nose open anything at all, because he’s a goofy puppy. We have taught them to work together for certain situations. For instance, when they have to go outside, we open the door for them, let them out, and then leave the door not quite closed. The little dog does his business and then generally comes right back to the door while the goofy puppy runs around sticking his nose into things. Little dog whines a bit, as a signal, and goofy puppy, having learned that this is his job, comes running over to muscle open the door.

There is a gate to the side yard, and one afternoon, both dogs had gone out the gate. Goofy puppy had come pounding back inside, knocking open the door. I was in the middle of something and did not immediately close it. He ran off to another room. In the meantime, the wind had pushed the gate almost closed, so there was insufficient space for little dog to walk through. We all heard him calling because he could not get back in the gate. That includes goofy puppy, who came tearing around from the other room, flew through the open door, and who went over to the gate and knocked it open for little dog to enter.

Smart. Learned do a task after a couple of tries and subsequently performed that task without any issues at all.

If we could get some of our clients to do the same thing, it would be a miracle, because quite frankly, certain types do not have it in them. If we could get them to simply be less rude, that would work, too, but alas, all hopes we may have had for that have long since passed.

Want to know how to really irritate tech support – people, I might add, that you are contacting for assistance, not the other way around?

Be a jackass, for no reason, or when you are clearly wrong.

For instance, open a ticket with a subject line that does not seem all that incredibly urgent, with a first post that indicates nothing more than the subject does. The problem is solved. Then come back a day or so later, berating us because something was not working for two hours, and now you have to explain it to people. Here’s a tip: if something is an emergency, then say so. If whatever you’re opening a request for means some part of the site or server isn’t working, then perhaps you should indicate that, rather than just saying “abc isn’t working, please check it”, when “abc” isn’t required for the server itself to be operational. If you further bitch about the time it took because your subject line was so nondescript that a level one tech couldn’t really see anything wrong and had to bump it up, then perhaps you should use a tool that is readily available to you to have a higher up look at it immediately.

Or let’s say you want to give someone access to a portion of your site, without giving them your login details. If we give you a step by step on how to create login details for that person and then tell you exactly how to go about accessing the site with that information, and you respond with “It’s not letting me login” with exactly zero further information: you are not helping. If you further bitch and moan about the very precise, very clearly laid out information you are subsequently provided in the course of half a dozen back and forths because you simply were doing it wrong, asking us if we are “kidding”: you are being a jackass. No, we’re not kidding. Neither are we interested in spending boatloads of time telling you exactly how to do something that is not recommended in the first place. That is why we gave you the exact link that you need to use. All you needed to do was cut and paste it. Instead, you’re berating the people who resolved your issue. Do you think that will make us more or less inclined to think you are anything other than a rude moron?

Or, let’s take you, user who hasn’t been able to check his mail for “two weeks”. Who is also emailing us using an address from which you have already said you cannot receive mail. It would behoove you to use some alternate email address to contact us, just as it would behoove you not to let 43,000 (well, technically, 42,749) pieces of mail pile up in the main account that you never check but yet left active anyway despite recommendations that you not do this. We will be polite. We will suggest that you use, or provide, some other email address when you contact us and that you reset the main account not to collect mail. If you write back to us, telling us that you provided otheraddress@somewhere.com to contact you: we can read. Had you provided it, we would have used it. You did not. Therefore, you look even more foolish to us because you can’t read your own original request – which is embedded at the bottom of our response to you, something you received when we cleared out a little room to work in the mailbox.

And finally, if you act indignant, order us to “look into” why your site is deactivated, and we find that you have several invoices outstanding, have ignored the notices from the billing system itself, have ignored the requests that the billing department has sent you about your overdue account, and have not bothered to pay any of those invoices even after we’ve suspended your site: you are being a deadbeat. But I must say that I sometimes get some wry amusement out of the fact that suddenly the situation is rather urgent to you when you seemed to feel no particular urgency previously although you were warned that your account would in fact be suspended. And on this same topic, the reason we are not as lenient as we used to be is precisely because of the people who like to say “we will address all open invoices by specific date” and then do exactly nothing about paying their invoices. That includes you, Miss “I’ll pay all invoices by Friday” who not only didn’t pay a dime but also moved your accounts elsewhere. You, particularly, will be held up as a prime example of why there simply won’t be any exceptions any longer. Congratulations. You are the winning jackass for this round.

4 thoughts on “Lessons not learned (Or, why my dogs are smarter than some of our clients)”

  1. In this world, equality truly exists: neither side has declared an advantage in the asshat arena. Although I will say that only guys have ever asked to have a male tech answer a ticket when they didn’t like the (correct) answer they received from a female tech. That, fortunately, has happened very rarely.

  2. Well shucks, and there’s me hoping my theory that men are always more stupid than women was correct across the board.

  3. The male/female question is a very interesting one. Based on my experience at my corporate / tech support job in the last two years, I have to agree that it’s pretty equal in number. But I find that the stupid men are often “aggressively” stupid. And, yes, it’s very true that some clients have more confidence in a male tech’s answer, which is totally unfair because where I work, the are more women who have YEARS more experience than I have and know a heck of a lot more than I do. In fact, often, the answers I give came from my consulting with such a woman beforehand. It’s quite disturbing. I find that clients are more likely to throw some attitude on my female colleagues than on me. Yet in my personal experience over the years when I have to seek tech support, I have always had more luck with women …you, Annette, being a major case in point. 🙂

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