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I Am Not Customer Service

Have you ever caught yourself in a store wearing the same color shirt as the employees? For example, going to Best Buy wearing a blue shirt, or Circuit City with a red shirt? It happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. Of course, this leads to people assuming I work at the store and asking for help. Since I happen to be Mr. Nice Guy, I will point them to where they need to go. After all, my poor choice of clothing isn’t their fault.

Today was just plain weird, though. I went to Target in order to buy a wedding gift for some friends that are going to be married next week. Of course, I first stopped at the customer service area in order to check the registry. I went behind one of the computers and started tapping away, thinking nothing of it. I am facing the inside of the store, and there is a wall that is about 3-1/2 feet high in front of me, and the monitor is peeking just above that wall.

As I am browsing, a woman walks up to the other side of the wall and asks me if I know where the optical department is…apparently she thought I was in the customer service department. I then explain that I do not think there is one in the store, but am not sure. At that point she realized her error, apologized profusely, and walked over to the REAL customer service desk.

I wasn’t even wearing a red shirt.

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And Then There Were Three…

The company I worked for laid off some people today…including a (now former) cube-neighbor in Tech Support. I’ve been through that myself, and its a pretty crappy feeling to have the rug pulled out from you like that…I told her “Good luck” when we said goodbye.

I had a bad feeling something was going to happen when the president of the company said we were “breaking even” a few weeks ago. The girl who was let go was hired after I was, but for that fact, I probably would have been the one tossed on my ear.

Its dead quiet in support today…I don’t really feel like cracking jokes myself. Of course, we had a meeting where everyone was assured that “everything will be fine” by the higher-ups, but I’m not sure I want to stick around to find out. After all, I’m probably the next one down on the list…

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Just Sayin’

Note to pundits and economists: The average citizen DOES NOT CARE if the economy is in a recession or not.

What we see is our paychecks getting eaten away by increased costs of living and rising health care costs, neighbors and friends losing jobs, and lots of cash being thrown to the people who put all of us into this mess because of their greed (Wall Street) or incompetence (Federal Reserve).

So while the country as a whole may not meet the textbook definition of “recession,” lots of working people are in trouble.

The Subprime Mess Explained: http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?revision=_latest&fs=true&docID=ddv7hj34_03774hsc7&skipauth=true

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The Cost of “Success?”

Things are quiet at the ol’ support desk right now. REALLY slow. I’m-about-to-fall-asleep-in-my-chair slow. No crashed servers, or corrupt databases, or nimrods who can’t figure out that our stuff doesn’t work on Vista Home…just quiet, save for the incessant yakking of the sales weasels. Its nice because I’m not being bothered by pesky people, and it also means that stuff is working, but geez, its boring as heck.

The downside is that the days just drag on, and I can feel the fluorescent lights slowly sucking the life out of me…there’s just gotta be something else out there.

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DAMMIT!

I’m something of a clean freak and this extends into the computer and video game worlds as well. I don’t like having extra crap lying around, so every time I saw that unused “Player 2” gamer profile on my Xbox 360 it gnawed at me. Well, in a fit of cleanliness, I finally decided to nuke the damn thing, and deleted MY OWN profile instead…all of my save games, gone to binary heaven…FARK!!

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NAY/C

This started out as a look at my relationship (or the lack thereof) with alcohol, but that got tossed out in favor of some strange goings-on in Casa De Randomizer9 earlier this evening.

It started out as just another Saturday night, which meant videogames and doing stuff on the computer. After getting my head handed to me in Mercenaries 2 for a bit, I decided to fire up the ol’ PC and browse around the internets for a bit before going to bed.

All was well, I was working on the aforementioned alcohol-related blog entry, when I smelled what my instructors in junior college called “the smell of money.” This is the smell of melting insulation/wires/electronics, and if you are a repairperson, it means you are going to get PAID. Of course if you are the owner of the source of the smell then you will be doing the pay-ing.

RavynX has had some adventures with his machine as of late (i.e. it died) so the first thing that I did when that smell hit my nose was hit the Windows key followed by the “U” key twice. This shuts down my PC (I don’t need no steeenking mouse) and I hoped that whatever was getting ready to give out would hold it together long enough for me to shutdown.

Much to my relief, my PC shutdown properly, so I pulled the power cable and prepared to get a face full of blue smoke as I removed the two thumb-screws that held the case shut. Much to my surprise, there was no smoke to be found, and no obvious signs of blow-upage. I then started checking the various heat sinks (after grounding myself, of course) expecting to find one that was extra-hot to the touch. No dice. Next on my list of “how to find the piece that’s not working” was the ol’ smell test (also handy for determining the ‘wearability’ of clothes, well, for guys, at least). I catch faint wisps of the odor but nothing really stood out.

I figured I would power on the PC again…AFTER disconnecting my main hard drive and booting off the spare, which happens to have OSX on it (more on that later, or maybe not). There isn’t any important data on it, save for a Def Leppard CD I ripped as a test, so I figured if it went kablooey, I wouldn’t lose anything terribly important.

I pulled out my PC so that I could keep close to the power cable. That way, I could yank it out quickly if stuff started smoking, sizzling, sparking, or all of the above. I nervously pressed the power button. I then heard the usual sounds of the fans and drives spinning up, and then the POST beep. Everything looked normal on the screen…well as normal as it gets on a Hackintosh, anyway.

As I’m doing all of this, I keep smelling that smell…and I’m starting to wonder where it is really coming from. At times, the smell even seems to be getting stronger. The freak-out fire in my head isn’t burning yet, but the pilot light is definitely on. I initally dismiss it as the byproduct of opening up the PC’s case, but as time goes by, I am coming to the conclusion that the smell is not coming from the PC.

I then wander around the living area of my apartment smelling anything and everything electrical. Nothing. I disconnect the surge protector my TV and gaming consoles are plugged into and also the UPS. Nothing. I check the bedroom and bathroom. Still Nothing. Then a scary thought enters my head…what if there is a fire somewhere in the building?

I toss on a T-shirt and some shoes, and go outside. I pray that I don’t see smoke coming out of a neighbor’s apartment. I look around the building, and to my relief there is no smoke, no fire, and no smell, either. Bewildered, I go back inside and the smell just won’t go away. I’m getting a little sweaty as well…I check the thermostat. I had it set to 74 (yeah, I know, bad, bad Randomizer) but the temperature reads 75, and I notice that air conditioner is not running. I turn off the air-conditioner, and try to run the fan to circulate the air. Nothing.

I go to the bathroom and partially open up the access panel in the ceiling. Sure enough, I am greeted with a fresh whiff of that blue-smoke smell. Aw, damn, the A/C went out…I think to myself as the pieces fall into place. Curiously enough, I had asked that my air filter be changed a few weeks ago, and also earlier this week. I was assured that it would “only take a day or two.” I would have just bought one myself, but at my last apartment, they used some odd size that I couldn’t find in any stores, and as this one looked similar, I decided not to bother.

It looks like I’ll be calling the office in the morning. I’m not expecting any miracles, but hopefully they can have it fixed by the weekend, as I am expecting guests. There is a cool front coming in tomorrow night that will keep temps in the 80’s all week, so I guess if this is going to happen, this is a good time for it. Oh well.

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Learn-O-Stat

Awhile back, the apartment complex where I live sent out surveys to everyone. I filled mine out to complain about the garbage not being picked up in a timely fashion. I usually go home to have lunch, and lately, the garbage I left by the stairs at 730 AM is still there at noon. Eww.

One question on the survey that piqued my interest was “How can we help you save energy?” I’d like to say I thought about it out of altruism (you know, “save the planet” and all that) but the truth was, I was trying to spend less cash so that there would be more left for Fun Stuff. For what its worth, I do recycle my newspapers, plastic grocery store bags, and soda cans.

I thought to myself: “What uses up the most juice?” Since this is South Texas, the answer was quite simple: The Air Conditioner! Despite leaving it off when I was not home, and using fans to help keep the apartment cool, I was somewhat shocked to find my electric bill jumped to $82 in July. But what could I do about the A/C?

On a hunch, I figured that installing a digital thermostat would save electricity for two reasons: first, it would allow me to exactly determine how high I can raise it and still be comfortable, and second, it would actually work as advertised, since the existing one was probably as old as the building and perhaps didn’t work as well as it used to.

I smiled at my ingenuity, dropped the survey in the mail, and forgot all about it.

Then, one day, I returned home from work to find a new digital thermostat installed on the wall. I was pleasantly surprised, even more so when I discovered that the installer left no instructions on how to actually use the thing. Fortunately, my Google-fu is strong, and I was able to find the instructions out there on the tubes. For the most part, it worked just like the old one, but has all these neat buttons that I’m pretty sure do something. I never did bother to program it, though.

I figured I would be happy if my electric bill dropped five or ten bucks or so. After all, it didn’t cost me anything to have it installed, so any savings would be gravy. I continued to use the A/C as I had before, thinking that any change in habits would break the experiment.

I got about $24 worth of gravy in one month: that $82 electric bill for July (719 KWh) turned into a $58 electric bill (561 KWh) in August. Granted, it is a one-month comparison, and there were 2 fewer days in the August billing period, but I will gladly take the 21% decrease in electrical usage and the cash!

I don’t know if the trend will continue, but for now, I’m pretty happy. Thanks, apartment people!

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My Familiar Face

I apparently look like a lot of people (or do they look like me?) because at least once a month, I get asked if I am somebody else. Its pretty disorienting, especially when I am enjoying a sandwich at a and someone in fatigues walks up to me and asks if I was in so-and-so unit at base so-and-so…

My response: “I’ve never even been in the military…SIR!”

Its just weird, but I can’t help but think that there’s gotta be a way to turn it to my advantage somehow.

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Randomizer’s 5 Rules of Tech Support

This is just a start, I’m sure that more will come to me as time goes on:

Rule #1 (People Suck rule): Customers are filthy liars. They change things, screw up their system, and then call you and insist that “it just stopped working out of the blue.” Okay, yeah, sometimes Windows or Visual Studio will randomly goof something up. The only thing that truly happens “just out of the blue” though is hardware failure. Everything else is either the result of something a customer screwed up or an new update that was automatically installed (or wasn’t installed in some cases). Customers will almost NEVER fess up and say what they did to goof up their system, though. Instead, they will make something up or just answer “Yes” because they think you’re working from a script.

Rule #2 (Sherlock Holmes rule) If all possibilities are eliminated, the impossible has to be the answer. When dealing with Windows and Visual Studio, sometimes weird stuff does just happen (see above). Hell, we’ve had Microsoft tell us: “Yeah, we know about that bug, but we aren’t going to fix it.” No matter how much a customer insists your suggestion will not work, insist that they do it. Even if it sounds obvious or weird to you, give it a shot, IT JUST MIGHT WORK.

Rule #3 (Mr. Rogers rule): Customers are like little kids; they want the newest stuff, they whine when it doesn’t work, they threaten to tell your parents (supervisor) if you don’t do something for them, you have to hold their hands and walk them across the street, and you also need to pat them on their head and tell them they’re special every once in a while. Always keep this in mind, especially the head-pat bit.

Rule #4 (Time Warner/Comcast/your cable company rule): If you are unable to help the customer (or cannot), always give them the illusion that you are trying. Every support team has certain customers that “cry wolf” and specialize in making mountains out of molehills, or that want help with somebody else’s product (usually Windows). Fark ’em. Give ’em what I call the “cable company” answer: “We’re working on it.” Wait, and then give ’em the bad news. If they think you tried, they will be less likely to get angry when they get the bad news.

Rule #5 (Lion King rule): EVERYTHING IS YOUR FAULT. Its your fault that the customer spilled tea on the keyboard. Its your fault that the power supply on their database server blew up and they have no backups. Its your fault the head programmer left and the source code for the app was on his machine that has already been re-imaged. Learn to live with this. Water off a duck’s back, baby.

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