Like many tech support people (and geeks in general), I regret that I am not the BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell). I have to resort to internal sarcasm, the mute button, and jabber to keep all of the crap at bay. The truth is that every one of us have a BOFH living inside of us that just wants to be let out, but we like to eat, so we keep it to ourselves or put it on our blog. We do this while changing the names and events enough to keep us from becoming hungry later on.

The results are funny. The results help us when we are in the midst of those stressful moments. “The website is down.” someone says. And besides going, “Aw, fuck.” we can post the link and quasi-quote, “Dude, I can’t arrange the icons by penis”.

The rest of you can laugh… pause… and wonder if you are the type of person to say the funny, yet dumb thing.

Over these months I’ve heard a lot and it’s time to share some with the rest of you. Things have been changed to protect people, namely myself.

7:01 P.M. – beep
“This won’t even install.”
“What version of the software do you have?”
Names a version from the late ninties.
“And what operating system are you running on your computer?”
“Vista.”
“That, unfortunately, isn’t going to run even if we can get it to install.”
“It’s not even supported on Vista?”
Well, Vista kinda didn’t exist when the software was written, buddy. It’s hard to support something when it doesn’t exist.
“If you’d like I can send you a link to the system requirements for that version.”
“Well, is there a newer version that is supported?”
“Yes there is.”
“Can you send that to me?”
Oh, yeah, we give out software for free here. It’s what we do, make newer versions so people with the old one can get it for free. Winning business model right there…
“Unfortunately, no. You’d need to buy it.”
“But I paid for this!!”
“I’d be more than happy to help you install that on a computer running a compatible operating system.”
“This is wrong! I bought this and now I can’t even use it! I upgraded to Vista. I don’t have a computer running anything else.”
Can I get a FAIL?

7:15 P.M. – beep
“Thank you for calling.”
“Hi, uh, I can’t get my student software to work.”
“Are you getting an error message?”
“I fill out the form with my information: my name, uh, my school, my address-”
I let this continue for awhile.
“…and it’s telling me I need to enter my year of graduation and no where do I see a year box, I see: my name, um, my school-”
I feel like I’ve let him go on long enough.
“Are you on a Mac?”
“Uh, yeah. How’d you-”
“Try using the scroll bar or resizing the window.”
“Oh- hey, there it is. Thanks.”
“No problem. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Uh, no. Wow, I feel stupid.”
You and the half a dozen people who call with the exact same issue every week.
“Oh, no, don’t. It’s what we’re here for. You have a great evening.”
“Um, yah, you too. Thanks!”

7:23 P.M.
“What operating system are you on?
“Um, I’m on Windows.”
“Is that XP?”
“No, Vista.”
“Okay, could you please go to your start menu-”
“I don’t have a start menu.”
Riiight
“Okay, sure. Please go to the start bubble on the bottom left hand side of the screen. In the search box there type c-m-d. That’s charlie, mary, delta. Hit enter.”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that. A command prompt window should come up.”
“.. …okay.”
“Now could you please type the command for me i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, ipconfig, slash, a-l-l, all… and hit enter.”
“It’s not working.”
“Did you type cmd first and hit enter.”
“Yeah, it didn’t do anything.”
“Try it again.”
“Oh. Ooooh. I must not have hit enter.”
“Sure. Could you please type the command i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, slash, a-l-l?”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that.”

7:44 P. M.
“This doesn’t work.”
“Have you installed and activated? Is there a particular error message you are getting.”
“I click on it and it goes away.”
“What operating system are you on?”
“Mac.”
“What version of Mac OSX do you have?”
“…”
“Panther,Tiger, Leopard…?”
“Um, how do I find out?”
“Go to the apple icon in the top left and click on it. Click on ‘about this Mac’.”
“Okay. I have 10.4.-”
“Alright. Then can you please get your Tiger DVD?”
“I don’t have it with me. It’s at my other house.”
“Okay, then I can send you some instructions on what to do when you do have your DVD to get this to work.”
“Um, that’s going to be like, not for a very long time and I need this now. Can’t I download it?”
“The Apple website only has updates, it does not have the actual program that you need installed.”
“What if I don’t have that dvd anymore.”
“Then you should probably go to the Apple store and get a new one. It’s pretty important to have your operating system disk.”
…even when you’re pirating it, you should probably have a copy.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

7:55 P.M.
“So, I’m getting a message about a missing lib or something.”
“It sounds like you’re missing that library.”
“How do I get it?”
“Well, if you have the yum installer, you can use that.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s try it. Type yum install..”
…the missing library. Making sure he’s typing it in with the correct case. How to spell yum.
“It didn’t work. How do I get a yum install thing?”
“Well, you can download the yum installer for your distribution of Linux.”
“How do I do that?”
“Just Google it by what distro you have.”
“…okay..?”

7:59 P.M.
“So, I got that thing you told me to install from the Tiger disk.”
“Great.”
“It’s still not working.”
“Okay, well let’s walk through together and install the package.”
“Um, I don’t have the DVD here with me.”
A few minutes to make sure he doesn’t have the right thing installed
“It sounds like you have the Leopard version of this installed.”
“…”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I downloaded the right thing.”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”

…and time to go home.

Yuvi: “Tech Support work is harder than Superman’s. Usually.”
Me: “Superman saves people from villains. In tech support we have to save people from their own ignorance and stupidity. That’s damn near impossible.”