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.