Creating a Web Page in 25 Steps.

1. Download a piece of Web authoring software - 20 minutes.

2. Think about what you want to write on your Web page - 6 weeks.

3. Download the same piece of Web authoring software, because they have released 3 new versions since the first time you downloaded it - 20 minutes.

4. Decide to just steal some images and awards to put on your site - 1 minute.

5. Visit sites to find images and awards, find 5 of them that you like - 4 days.

6. Run setup of your Web authoring software. After it fails, download it again - 25 minutes.

7. Run setup again, boot the software, click all toolbar buttons to see what they do - 15 minutes.

8. View the source of others' pages, steal some, change a few words here and there - 4 hours.

9. Preview your Web page using the Web Authoring software - 1 minute.

10. Try to horizontally line up two related images - 6 hours.

11. Remove one of the images - 10 seconds.

12. Set the text's font color to the same color as your background, wonder why all your text is gone - 4 hours.

13. Download a counter from your ISP - 4 minutes.

14. Try to figure out why your counter reads "You are visitor number -16.3 E10" - 3 hours.

15. Put 4 blank lines between two lines of text - 8 hours.

16. Fine-tune the text, then prepare to load your Web page on your ISP - 40 minutes.

17. Accidentally delete your complete web page - 1 second.

18. Recreate your web page - 2 days.

19. Try to figure out how to load your Web page onto your ISP's server - 3 weeks.

20. Call a patient friend to find out about FTP - 30 minutes.

21. Download FTP software - 10 minutes.

22. Call your friend again - 15 minutes.

23. Upload your web page to your ISP's server - 10 minutes.

24. Connect to your site on the web - 1 minute.

25. Repeat any and all of the previous steps - eternity.

Still More Ways Users Make Tech Calls A Living Hell

1) Failure To Pay Their Bill - Nothing is worse than a riled up customer going off on a rant in your ear about how they can't get online, only to find out they're not paying their bill on time. Not only does it set your mood in a downward spiral, but it embarrasses the customer when you type in their info just to discover what a slacker they are. (As chronicled in a previous post.) Some people get it, they call and ask to see if their account is still active. If they find out that it is indeed not active, they ask to be transferred to a billing rep. No embarrassment, no problem. But if their account is still active, then there's something else wrong, and we work on it. They aren't all worked up, and their displeasure level is much lower, and these calls generally work out okay. But as with all things good, they are few and far between.

2) Calling For Non-Internet Related Support - I get tons of these calls every week. The scope of support I am allowed to provide can only deal with Internet related problems. When users call me about Printer Issues, or why their mouse doesn't work, I have to politely tell that that I can't help them, and they should refer to another support line (if possible, I'll help them get the number to call). What's worse is when people don't like that answer, and continue to try to convince me to help them. I hate pulling out the "legal disclaimer", but sometimes I must. People, when I answer the phone with "Thank you for calling Internet Tech Support", exactly where in there does it say "And Hardware, and Games, and Printer Ink, and..."??

3) Not Writing Down Error Messages - Here's a classic exchange...

Me: Thank you for calling Internet Tech Support, this is Mike, how may I help you?
Them: Yeah, I can't connect to your internet service, I keep getting an error message.
Me: What does the error message say?
Them: It says I can't connect to you.
Me: What does it say *exactly*....
Them: ....I dunno.
Me: Did you write it down?
Them: No.
Me: Okay, we're going to have to hang up so it frees up your phone line, and then I want you to attempt to connect. When you get the error message, write down *EXACTLY* what it says, including the error code number, that's very important. Then cancel the connection attempts and call me back with that info.
Them: Okay. >click<

Error messages are very important. They tell me what's happening. Error codes can direct me to more specific information. I tell all my customers to put a notepad and pen next to their computer so they can write down the information that appears on the screen. I have one customer who keeps a log of what's running, what time the errors occur, what the errors are and what programs he was messing around in when they happened.

I think it's obvious why I like this guy. His tech calls have not lasted over 15 minutes in 3 years.

4) Calling 2 Minutes Before Closing - This has to be almost as annoying as trying to help someone who's completely blitzed fix a computer problem. Why people wait until the end of the day to call with a tech problem, I'll never understand. And I guarantee you that anyone who calls at that moment doesn't have a simple problem to fix, either. These customers generally are the ones who require a full TCP/IP rebuild. Most often, I ask them to call back when there's more time. If I wasn't a single father, I'd stay a little later, but as is my lot in life, when it hits 6pm, I'm outta there.

5) Not Calling About A Problem For Months - This is a general gripe and is squarely the fault of lazy people. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people will suffer through months of connection problems, and NOT call right away to get them resolved. They will instead just quietly curse our names and bad mouth us. Far be it from them to contact us when the problem begins (or at least within a week of it) and get it troubleshot and resolved. These people usually have a good rant built up over time, but here's a clue. If you don't call us, we can't tell that there's something wrong. We have a customer base of over 6000 people, and cannot track all of them. If you think we're going to notice one person having a problem out of all of that, you're smoking something highly illegal. We're not psychics. You need to call us RIGHT AWAY, not 3 months later to get things taken care of right.

Lookout! It's A Full Moon!!

The phone calls just keep pouring in today and it's become apparent that something's afoot. I fire up the old WeathermanX program on my iBook and look at the moon phase dates...

6/2 Full Moon

Well, now. That explains a lot.

First Call of the Day

Them: "What the hell is wrong with you people? Do you realize how much you SUCK!? I can't stand how bad this service is!!! It's slow, I can't get online, and now it says my password is invalid!? What is your explanation for it, huh? WHat kind of excuse do you have for it you sunova b***h!?"

Me: *type in their account name...* "Well, sir, it says here you are past due 2 months and owe us $39.90, and so your account was shut off."

Them: ".....>click<"

5 More Ways Users Make Tech Calls A Living Hell

1) Calling While Intoxicated and/or High - These are always 'fun' calls. Generally it can be difficult to understand what a customer is trying to describe when they're calling sober. But when they call slurring their words, ranting 15 times into my voice mail at 4am, or snickering and giggling from being high, it raises the bar on the difficulty meter. Also, if you're in this state, please don't move around. It has been my experience that the household furniture in said customers homes tends to jump out in front of them often. The sounds of a phone clattering on the floor and the various explitives uttered as a result are not any better than the afore mentioned yelling of "HELP".

2) Using Incredimail® - Nothing can irritate a tech more than when customers call complaining about a mail problem, and then it turns out to be the bug riddled, spyware program known as Incredimail. Why on God's green Earth this waste of electrons was ever created is beyond me. It mimics Outlook Express only in the most basic ways, but beyond that, it's a mess. And when it stops working, immediately, people want help getting their animated bouncy smiley crap back again. Email was NOT designed to be cute stationary with hearts and puppies and music and stuff. It was designed as a communication tool. Incredimail is about as useful as pink flamingos on the front lawn of a trailer home. And don't get me started on the connection between that and Tornados...

3) Claiming they have a son/daughter/cousin/neighbor who's good 'at these computer things'... - Folks, we don't care. Odds are, you've already had them look at it, and they either scratched their heads and couldn't help you, or didn't know enough to fill a bucket and attempted to fix it anyhow, and wound up messing it up worse. And simply put, they're not a factor now. If they were really as good as you claimed, you wouldn't have to be on the phone with us now, now would you!?

4) Calling on a Cellular Phone/Digital Phone - This is about as bad as calling in Drunk or High. Most users don't realize that about 90% of all tech troubleshooting doesn't need for them to be online. But instead, they assume the computer HAS to be online for us to get anything done, and so we attempt to put up with half words and dropped calls and static and God knows what else, asking the user to repeat themselves a half dozen time just to find out they have their password entered wrong. I've said this before, I'll say it again...Turn the computer on, do NOT go online, call from a landline phone! Celphone BAD! The only thing worse is if a user would call on a cel phone while drunk. (and that has happened)

5) Screaming Babies and Barking dogs - As a father, I understand that people with kids will have some noise in their life. It happens. I accept that. But when parent's call for tech support, and the call is constantly interrupted with the wails of a hungry baby or a dog that won't shut the hell up, it turns the moods of both the user and the tech very dark. Simply put, take care of priorities first, feed your kids, put them down for a nap, put the dog OUTSIDE, and then, when you have a moment of peace & quiet, then call Tech Support. Believe me, it will take half the time and your mood will be muuuch better in the long run.