(idea) by geekaus Wed Dec 05 2001 at 8:27:50

<rant>

Did people have this much trouble with television?

I work as an internet sales consultant for a large Australian telecommunications company. In the course of my work I spend a lot of time explaining to people how to set up their computer. Unfortunately many of these setups involve me explaining to the user how to use the computer. Now, normally this doesn't bother me. People cannot be blamed for their ignorance when they first begin something. However I have just had a call from a woman who has had not one, but two previous accounts with us (both suspended due to tech problems). On this, the lucky third account, I thought I would not be required to explain the setup again. Wrong.

Now, I've heard some strange things in this job (including 'Microsoft Family Lagoon', 'If I send an email to Canada, is that a long-distance call?' as well as my personal favorite, 'What's the Internet?') and this one was not nearly as strange as those. But it pissed me off. I said 'Click on My Computer with the right mouse button' (I can't use tech-speak like 'right click'. She says 'It turns blue'. This is a normal response. I give her my standard reply 'No, you need to use the right-hand mouse button'. It works this time. She exclaims 'Oh! A menu popped up! I always wondered what the right mouse button did! Does it do that for everything?'. I swear, I could have leapt through the phone and strangled her.

Computers are in everyday use. No-one can deny this. This particular woman has had, as I said, two previous accounts with us. A quick look at her usage summary shows that she (or someone) uses it a lot. And she's not alone. From what I've seen, about 50% of people (or at least, 50% of my company's customers) are completely ignorant of the standard applications of these little beige boxes that control their lives. Judging by the number of people who keep calling the sales center when they want technical support, people can't use their phones either. Once I tried dialling my company's number, just to see how difficult it was. An excerpt:

Phone: Welcome to <company name removed to protect my job>. For all telephone inquiries, press 1. For all internet enquiries press 2.

Me: <BEEP> (pressing 2)

Phone: If you would like to sign up for a new internet account, press 1. If you are having problems connecting to the internet, press 2. For all billing related inquiries, press 3.

How could this be any clearer? Yet I still get countless customers saying 'the internet is broken' or 'about my bill...'

This internet thing will never last, people will kill it with their determined ignorance.

</rant>

Hey, this looks like the day for rants...

I know, I've gone a bit overboard with the formatting. But I think it deserves it. NOTE: This writeup does not display properly in Opera 6 (on Linux anyway). Please do not downvote it for the formatting, I noded it at work on IE.

I like it!