I’m quite enjoying working on the helpdesk, I’ve learnt lots of computer type stuff, and met a bunch of interesting new peoples, and dealing with the public can be so much more palatable from a distance like this instead of over a customer service counter (less BO and demanding snot nosed kids).  The money has been grand, (Turkey…. two weeks today!!!)  and I feel like I’m finally contributing around here (thanks MrK for imposing your agenda on me 🙂  And some of the interactions with the customers are positively fun!

Helpdesk Chickie:   Welcome to Goliath – how can I help you?

Customer:  Oh hello there dear.  My internet doesn’t seem to be working, can you put me onto a technical fellow to help me out?

Helpdesk Chickie:  No problem sir, I should be able to help you, can I ask your username please?

Customer:  is that my email address…. ah there, it’s [email protected].

Helpdesk Chickie:  One moment thanks, and I’ll look the account up for you.   ……    Sir, that account seems to have been closed, I can see in the notes that it was closed about 5 hours ago by the authorized representative.

Customer:  Oh goodness!  Really?  Could you hold the phone there a moment dear and I’ll ask my wife?

Helpdesk Chickie:  Certainly sir.

SweetOldMan walks to a door, knocks politely… “May I open the door Dear?” (pause) “Sorry to bother you Dear, but did you close the internet account today?”…. “Yes I did Dear” from the other room…

Customer:  Oh my!  Well thank you very much for your help, I will call back after I speak to my wife.  I’m terribly sorry to have bothered you.

Helpdesk Chickie:  Not a problem Sir.

And this in stark contrast to a similar call I had last week where a customer discovered their account wasn’t malfunctioning and rather had been suspended… which went something like…..  

What do you mean the internet has been shut off? 
The bill hasn’t been paid?!?!   I’m gonna f#$king kill him! 
He told me he paid the goddamn f#@king bill last week.   
BARRY!!!  Why didn’t you pay the f#@king phone bill?

………and hangs up without saying goodbye.

I think I need to work harder on being a bit more SweetOldMan myself…..
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Things have changed since I last worked full time.  Not sure when it all happened, but there’s been additions to the office landscape. One of the most noticeable are the goddamn lanyards.   They’re everywhere and I hate them.

I can understand how they came about as modern security measures,  I mean… when you watch the news and see how disgruntled consumers can sometimes go crazy and march into some place and take everyone hostage and start shooting the place up… it kinda makes sense not to let unauthorized nut jobs into a work place.   And hey!  We’re a monstrous nightmare corporate ISP… so if ever consumers are going to be seriously disgruntled, it’s going to be at us!  So keep ’em out I say. 

It’s also kinda dodgy how they’re used as identifiers in my work place – permanent staff… here, have a pretty blue one… agency staff… you, second class citizen, you… have the dodgy grey one.  No doubt very useful for the permanent staff, so they know who they should bother getting to know and who they can basically fob off or ignore.

Anyway…. I just hate wearing the damn lanyard.  We’re supposed to wear them to get in and out of the building and whenever we’re on the floor, but I avoid wearing mine where ever possible.  They bang against the desk, and swing all over the place and I hate the way it rubs against my neck.

Sigh… they just seem to get in the way  :(….  or maybe it’s the boobs getting in the way… the damn thing doesn’t hang flat down my chest the way it does on a guy….

One of the consultants at work today got a call today from a customer who’d had a new ADSL wifi service installed last month and had just received his first bill…. for $13,000.   😐    Seems his wifi was left unsecure, and someone (or someones) had accessed it and absolutely reamed his account.  Now I’m not one for math, but it seems to me that $13,000 in excess usage at 15c / MB is a LOT of download!!!   Correction… a hellava LOT of download. 

I mean who has that kinda storage?!?!? 

I wonder who left the wifi unsecured??   I wonder how they stole so much in such a short time??   I wonder…. how much of it was porn?   😛   Oh… maybe there was even some Turtle Porn downloaded in there somewhere!!! 
.

HelpDesk Chickie:  What sort of internet do you have?
Customer #147: (sounding confident)  I have the ADSL Cable Wireless.

How can you have purchased something, or in my book even worse, signed up a contract for a long term service, and yet have absolutely no idea what you’ve bought yourself into?  I reckon about 40-50% of the people I speak to at work every day have absolutely no idea what they’ve bought.  Many of them barely seem to know how their internet access is delivered to house, let alone what sort of account they have or how their connection works.  It’s weird…. I mean I’m not the most techno savvy person on the planet (I’m getting better – honest) but I’ve always known that I have (or rather… ‘had’ – we switched to ADSL this week!) cable internet access, and had rough understanding of how it got into my house and how it was connected to my computer.  I am just finding it amazing that so many people we talk to haven’t got a clue what they got…. and they paid good money for it!  :S

All they know is … you turn it on … and it works …. and if you turn it on … and it doesn’t work … call tech support and demand they fix it.  I particularly love the customers who want you to fix their internet for them when they aren’t on the premises.  Yep…  goes something like this…

Customer:    Hi my internet isn’t working…

HelpDesk Chickie:  What’s your username and what sort of internet do you have?

Customer:   Ummm… my username is [email protected] & we have ADSL I think.

Help Desk Chickie: 
    Okay, I’ll just run a test out on the line while I look up your account…. 
    Everything seems to be okay on the line … your modem is logged in..
    It might be your wifi connection that is giving you troubles…
    Can I get you to click on the Start Menu please…

Customer:  Oh, I’m not at home, I’m calling from work… can’t you just fix it?

I’m obviously spending way too much time at work and have nothing else to write about!  :S   Have to fix that I guess… will have to see what exciting things I can get up to on the weekend.