Customers ....

I never fail to be staggered by the number of ignorant, stupid people who hold down jobs at some very large companies, in fact the larger the company the easier it seems to be for idiots to keep their jobs.

Case #1 ; A customer who has one of our "swipe card" terminals linked to their PC with our software driving it. They were on support up until december but due to their head office wrapping them up in red tape they didn't renew their contract, we billed them for it but the head office returned the invoice with all sort of excuses not to pay it, mainly because they hadn't ordered the renewal.

Normally we'd ring the local site and ask them to sort it out but we had the same problem last year and no-one was interested, so this year we decided to sod them, they are not on support any more.

On monday a lady from the local office rang me to ask if it was OK to move the computer, it wasn't the most stupid question I'd been asked on monday but it came close, she wanted to move it to another desk two yards away, we don't give support on the computer, its not our equipment its theirs, and anyway, they're not on support anyway, I said yes of course you can, I think she was just looking for someone to tell her to do it rather than have to make a decision for herself, but her question was a bit like ringing an electrical retailer to ask if she could move her TV to clean behind the back of it, they'd have said yes too.

Five minutes later she's back on the phone complaining that she can't connect to the swipe card terminal and despite the fact that she's not on support I take her through all the obvious things to check as she's unplugged everything out of the back of the PC in order to move it.

the more the conversation goes on the more I'm convinced that she really does not know what language I'm talking as she doesn't know what the various bits of the equipment are called, it takes us five minutes to establish that shes got an external modem linked to the Pc as well but she doesn't know why, or where it was plugged into.

I suspect that she's managed somehow to get the swipe card and modem serial plugs the wrong way around but because she thinks shes broken it she won't unplug them to swap them around now, we talk some more and she reveals that she's also plugged another cable into a telephone outlet in the wall, which seems reasonable but its not the lead out of the modem its a lead that seems to go into a junction box that belongs to our equipment.

She decides to go get someone from their IT department to sort it out, which to my mind is the last act of a very desperate person as IT departments tend to be the most unhelpful of all corporate bodies, especially if you've just interrupted their game of Super Mario, she hangs up and is gone from my mind.

She rings yesterday, I get the person who answers the phone at our end to tell her that shes not on support and we can't help her unless she calls us out, and as her company is located a 90 minute drive away then shes got at least four hours to pay for.

And of course she doesn't accept this, seems to think its my fault for giving her permission to move her computer six feet in the first place, we hang up, she rings constantly all afternoon but with caller display we don't answer the phone, she's ringing now as I type this and in two seconds she'll get the answerphone like she did 47 times yesterday, but she refuses to speak to the answerphone.

Sometimes I just don't want to help people despite running the help desk.