After Apple

Sure, the Genius Bar has its share of crazy people, but technical support is where the loonies go from the convenience of their own asylum. There’s something about being able to call in to someone from your couch that makes a person feel empowered and intelligent, as if they were on the hotline to some secret base in the depths of a mountain stronghold asking the source of it all what could possibly be the problem. In reality it’s one lost monkey calling another, just without the poo flinging that normally comes with that.

Once again, I warn the masses that these are atypical events. The majority of calls are just tedious, nothing more. Getting upset over this only goes to reveal which side of this article you’re on: the one I’m briefly mentioning here as typical or the one I’m writing about and you probably gave me fodder for.

Power Loss Girl

Late one stormy evening, as I sit in my dimly-lit cube near the large panel windows staring at the rain, and about ten minutes to the end of my shift, I get a PowerBook call. I answered with the typical tedium and deduced this poor lady was out of her support period. I tried to fudge the line on that, so I asked for the problem anyway “to direct you to the proper resources if you don’t want to pay, or to even see if it’s something we could fix on the phone.” The story was long, wild, and ended with: “So whenever I turn on my computer it turns off in like ten seconds.”

My technical support trigger flipped: power button, ten seconds, off. She’s holding it too long. “Well, that’s certainly something we can fix, but I have a hunch that it’s simpler that you think. Now how are you turning it on?” She replies, “Well, I’m making darn sure it comes on, if that’s what you mean!” Suspicion confirmed. “Making darn sure it comes on” usually means pressing and holding the power button “so that it gets power.”

Some banter back and forth as I try to hint at the solution to her (if we give it without a support agreement, we’re toast). No amount of clues would sink in. She needed to be flat-out told. So, resigned to the evil, I say, “Alright, well, if none of that works, then let’s go ahead and do the support agreement, then.” A few minutes later I gave her the bad news that it was how she was doing it, not the computer itself. She tried it by pressing it and releasing, like I’d alluded to often, and it worked. She was giddy, happy, and loving it … until the $49 sunk into her head. “So I paid $49 to be told not to hold the power button down?” “Yep,” I said. Worst. Feeling. Ever.

Well, other than if I’d been QAed on the call and been caught handing out free support in a break-even organization. That wouldn’t have ended well in that position. Later on, in higher groups within Apple, that was something acceptable to do for free because of the nature of the customers and the agreements, but entry-level monkeys must adhere to the rules all the time, no matter how stupid or inapplicable they are.

Moral: Phone monkeys are trapped by procedures. All the good intentions in the world are lost if they’re prevented from helping. Get a phone support contract if you plan on calling, or expect to buy one. Your extortion is their empowerment. Once you lift the barrier and let the agent go, you’ll get the answers you want. If you still don’t, the next guy up has more leeway and experience, so shoot for it.

Starving Artist

Again, late one night at the end of my shift, I get a call from a lady whose PowerBook has decided to be erratic, unstable, unreliable and otherwise resemble its owner, as I’d soon learn. Again, a lady without support of any kind, but I offered to at least hear the problem and see what options were available. It was clearly hardware, and it was far enough out of warranty that nothing could be done.

The next few moments are fuzzy. I explained this to her and said that the repair might run a few hundred dollars and require it to be mailed in. She freaked. She screamed. Not at me, she just screamed like she’d been stabbed by a guy in a funny ghost mask. Then she cried. Then she told me the long and crazy story about how this was a “gift to herself” and how hard she’d worked for it and how much it meant and that it was a “treat” and her “baby” and so on. About ten minutes into this I realized I was one of the last guys there and it was well after closing. Every time I tried to cut her off she snapped at me and kept going with her story.

I’m good at shutting people down. Really, I am. If you’re going on about the unladen airspeed of an African swallow for more than a minute I’m going to ignore you and start discussing the problem again. This woman? No. Snapped like a turtle and yelled and cried until she could keep on with her story. Her endless story. On a call she hasn’t paid for, and I can’t hang up on her (the only faster route to unemployment than hanging up on a caller would be to commit a crime on Apple property).

About forty minutes later, she shuts up, having lost her voice crying and screaming about her “little dead baby.” I finally get to squeeze in, “And that price is what we charge for a mail-in repair. If you find someone local who can repair it in-house, it might be cheaper since it’s probably [insert part here].”

Silence. A pause. A scream: “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THIS BEFORE?!“

Well, because you wouldn’t shut up, for one.

Moral: Shut up and let the tech talk to you. You called to hear him talk, so let him. There’s a lot of things he wants to say, and very little that he wants to hear from you. Your puny lives really mean nothing to him. You’ve talked to five people today, he’s talked to two dozen, and will get two dozen more tomorrow. You’re a number. Next?

The School of Death

iBooks are sturdy little suckers. I’ve seen them take a three-foot drop onto tile and a five-foot slide off a table onto carpet before. They’re made of mostly-kid-proof plastic and can be stuffed in a backpack with books and make it home.

It sounds sturdy enough to use in schools, in fact, but never underestimate the destructive power of a caffeinated and sugared human spawn with a backpack full of expensive equipment.

When I worked in Education I had a call that every education agent dreads: the end-of-year repair call. The technical co-ordinator at a school has a spare lot of iBooks to replace those that go down during the year. They try to fix them and put them back out into service during the year and about a week before school ends we get the call that starts off with: “I have 62 iBooks that need service. Ten have broken screens, five have missing feet, six won’t power on, fourteen won’t read media, and the rest have various other problems. Which one do you want to start with?”

whimper

So we ask for an email with serial numbers and issues and setup the repairs. One. By. One. I had some things to help me do this, but it’s still tedious as hell. I performed exactly one of these, was told it was perfectly normal to get five of these calls per agent near the end of the school year, and immediately sought exit from the education team.

I feel for you guys, but … no. Hell no. Mudder-freaking hell no. No. Just … no. I just … I … no.

Moral: Give the tedious work to someone else, please.

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

Every single time this line came up in a conversation, I had one of two reactions: laughter, or depression. Nothing else.

“So after it does all of that, I get this error on the screen that says it’s not working and to contact the network administrator, but … I am the administrator.”

Either I get depressed about the future of the call, or I just laugh at the situation. No other response.

Moral: If you said something stupid, funny, or both, and can’t hear the background noise anymore, just sit back and take your licks, he’ll be back when he recovers.

Two Expressions

I’ll wrap this edition up with a wise phrase seen posted on the call floor:

“At any given moment a phone agent has one of two expressions: exasperation or bewilderment.”