There are really very few things in life that will really get me upset. The seeing red kind of upset.
One of which is when someone treats someone else bad for no reason. Just such a thing happened today.
A little bit of background first:
A computer's warranty only covers the hardware of the system. Software is a whole other monster. Hard drive fails under warranty, you will get a new one installed, no charge have a nice day. But if you actually want your operating system and files (if any could be recovered) our boss makes us charge you for that. Sucks but we have to pay our bills too.
On to the story!
So a few days ago a guy comes in, laptop hard drive is on it's way to hard drive heaven. While he was here, one of our awesome techs who is no longer here (darn budget cuts) managed to save his most important files. Hurray!
He arrives today to pick up his laptop. As I was the only one here able to cashier, I had to ring him out. I let him know the price and get a "huh? I was told everything would be covered". Sigh
So I give him the usual speech run down of why it's costing him, blah blah blah. But then it dawns on me. Whom ever worked on it should have gotten approval to do the reinstall. Every once in a while the customer will have the know how to do it themselves.
I look up the call ticket and sigh. Of course. It's "HD connect to power supply" diptard tech that worked on it.
I go talk to him, inquire if he got approval first. He just stammers around. I roll my eyes and leave, attempting to think of a way to explain the situation to the customer.
Oh fluffy crackers, diptard is following me.
He insists on talking to the guy and proceeds to very poorly explain why the guy needs to fork over the money. His tone and word choices only serve to upset the guy.
Again he explains "but I was told everything would be covered."
Diptard: "okay. fine. I go erase everything then."
*blink blink*
No fluffy way did you just say that to a customer. Yes, that would be one way to solve the situation but for the love of tulips, don't tell a customer to his face you are going to delete all of his data!!
Until that moment the guy had been very calm and was just simply wanting to solve the miscommunication. Now, he was pissed.
Diptard continues to "explain" things but only serves to more piss off the guy. Hmmm yea I think telling someone "no no, you listen to me." is really going to make them not get upset.
A number of times I advised diptard to go get our manager. He would shake his head and refuse.
Oooo bad move there.
For a few brief moments he walks away to go check his notes. In that time I managed to calm the guy down and was just approaching a solution to the issue when DT had to come back and loudly exclaim that in fact the customer was a lier and had in fact approved the reinstall.
Round 2! Now the guy is really pissed. Explains to DT that he does not appreciate being spoken to the way he is (I couldn't agree more) and is getting rather upset.
At this point one of the older techs jumps in and lays it out that only the manager can solve this problem. Guy isn't too pleased but agrees to come back tomorrow as magically manager is no where to be found.
After he leaves, DT attempts to come up and "explain" his side to me. Not going to happen. I read the notes, no where did you state you got approval to do reinstall. Plus, you just treated a customer in probably the worst manner I have ever seen.
"You want to stop talking and walk away. Now" was my only response to him when he opened his mouth. I knew if he pushed it, some rather nasty words were going to escape my mouth. Amazingly he didn't seem to comprend what that meant and continued to speak. I repeated myself and same older tech stood between us and advised him to walk away as well. The words seemed to finally make their way through his thick skull and he left.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Pointless Meetings
There seems to be really only two types of meetings I am made to go to. Either the glorified sales pitch meeting or the "training" meetings. The sad thing is I usually learn more in the sale pitches than trainings.
Take today for example. A mandatory meeting was set up a few weeks ago for today. All we were really told was that it would be about Apple stuff and how to better serve people on campus. Being an Apple tech (as well as Windows), myself and the other Apple tech were singled out as especially having to attend. Cool, I'm always up for learning new stuff.
About the only thing I learned in the "training" was that Apple campus rep doesn't know the first thing about how computers work. They started out showing us how to register people's Apple computers on the wireless network here. Ummm yea. I do that everyday. Have been doing that every day for oooohhh years? I realize and accept the fact that the printed out, step by step instruction sheet on how to register, which are handed out and placed about campus are a wee bit too complex for today's college students (picture books seem to be a bit too complex for kids these days), I would have hoped they would know that a tech would know how to do this. So for the next hour and a half, they "trained" us on the very very very basic computer usage.
The highlight was when they were explaining that software updates are important. The campus rep piped up, trying to sound all smart, "Yes! So if someone comes in and like, their computer just won't power on or is acting funny, ask them if they have been keeping up to date on software updates. If not or they are unsure, have them update. It should fix everything."
Saaayyy whaaaa?! First off, if the computer will not power on... how in flying baby Jesus are they supposed to update?! And secondly, good going moron. Now the other people who don't know any better are going to start telling other people who don't know any better to go do that. And guess what? When it fails horribly, they're going to come to me all pissed off. "Well they told me to do this and it would fix it and it didn't!! I demand you fix it. NOW. For FREE!"
But then again, they want to pay me to sit in a meeting and "learn", by george I'll go sit in a meeting. Just have to remember to bring some coffee along
Take today for example. A mandatory meeting was set up a few weeks ago for today. All we were really told was that it would be about Apple stuff and how to better serve people on campus. Being an Apple tech (as well as Windows), myself and the other Apple tech were singled out as especially having to attend. Cool, I'm always up for learning new stuff.
About the only thing I learned in the "training" was that Apple campus rep doesn't know the first thing about how computers work. They started out showing us how to register people's Apple computers on the wireless network here. Ummm yea. I do that everyday. Have been doing that every day for oooohhh years? I realize and accept the fact that the printed out, step by step instruction sheet on how to register, which are handed out and placed about campus are a wee bit too complex for today's college students (picture books seem to be a bit too complex for kids these days), I would have hoped they would know that a tech would know how to do this. So for the next hour and a half, they "trained" us on the very very very basic computer usage.
The highlight was when they were explaining that software updates are important. The campus rep piped up, trying to sound all smart, "Yes! So if someone comes in and like, their computer just won't power on or is acting funny, ask them if they have been keeping up to date on software updates. If not or they are unsure, have them update. It should fix everything."
Saaayyy whaaaa?! First off, if the computer will not power on... how in flying baby Jesus are they supposed to update?! And secondly, good going moron. Now the other people who don't know any better are going to start telling other people who don't know any better to go do that. And guess what? When it fails horribly, they're going to come to me all pissed off. "Well they told me to do this and it would fix it and it didn't!! I demand you fix it. NOW. For FREE!"
But then again, they want to pay me to sit in a meeting and "learn", by george I'll go sit in a meeting. Just have to remember to bring some coffee along
Monday, June 2, 2008
How did this guy get hired?!?!
About 7 months ago this unique tech was hired in.
It soon became clear to any of us with half a brain that he knows literally nothing about computer repair work. We let it slide because we were told he was more hired for server admin work.
Apparently that wasn't true as he has no experience doing that sort of thing. Awesome.
Myself and another tech took him under our wing a bit and tried to show him the ropes and where everything is located. I am not sure if it is just his way of learning or he's just an ass but he never seems to believe anything he's told. He demands on researching it, not just googling, he has to go to the source (manufacturer's website). And print out the instructions. I could understand this if he was wanting it in writting so he could go down a list and make sure he got all the steps. But that's not what happens. It gets printed out and filed away, never to be looked at again. Way to waste paper and time!
Moving along, this certain "tech" has a habit of stealing ide to usb adapters, while they are in use. When we scan a hard drive, we take it out of the computer, hook it up to these nifty usb hard drive connector thingys and then plug them into our test bed machines. Now the general rule is if a connector is in use, you don't touch it. You may however inquire as to the status of it, see if it is completed or will be soon and call dibs on it. This fellow however will just unplug it and walk off. Doesn't even check to see if scans or file transfers are running. I have lost hours of transfer time due to this guy. Not to mention it usually leaves me without a connector and thus having to wait. Grrr!!
So today I spotted him doing something that is beyond moronic. I saw him wandering around with a laptop hard drive in his hand, eyeing the work benches. Knowing that look, I went over to where I had a drive scanning, to guard it. I could hardly believe what he did next. I watched him attempt to plug in the hard drive....to a power supply tester. To anyone with a working pair of eyes or really even one eye or hell, even a blind person could tell there is no humanly possible way that drive would ever plug into the tester. Forget the fact that is says in big letters "power supply tester" on it. He spent a good 3 minutes attempting to get the two to be friends before giving up, looking very confused. I didn't know if I should laugh or just shake my head at him. I choose to just keep staring at the viruses found counter. Mmm Limewire
It soon became clear to any of us with half a brain that he knows literally nothing about computer repair work. We let it slide because we were told he was more hired for server admin work.
Apparently that wasn't true as he has no experience doing that sort of thing. Awesome.
Myself and another tech took him under our wing a bit and tried to show him the ropes and where everything is located. I am not sure if it is just his way of learning or he's just an ass but he never seems to believe anything he's told. He demands on researching it, not just googling, he has to go to the source (manufacturer's website). And print out the instructions. I could understand this if he was wanting it in writting so he could go down a list and make sure he got all the steps. But that's not what happens. It gets printed out and filed away, never to be looked at again. Way to waste paper and time!
Moving along, this certain "tech" has a habit of stealing ide to usb adapters, while they are in use. When we scan a hard drive, we take it out of the computer, hook it up to these nifty usb hard drive connector thingys and then plug them into our test bed machines. Now the general rule is if a connector is in use, you don't touch it. You may however inquire as to the status of it, see if it is completed or will be soon and call dibs on it. This fellow however will just unplug it and walk off. Doesn't even check to see if scans or file transfers are running. I have lost hours of transfer time due to this guy. Not to mention it usually leaves me without a connector and thus having to wait. Grrr!!
So today I spotted him doing something that is beyond moronic. I saw him wandering around with a laptop hard drive in his hand, eyeing the work benches. Knowing that look, I went over to where I had a drive scanning, to guard it. I could hardly believe what he did next. I watched him attempt to plug in the hard drive....to a power supply tester. To anyone with a working pair of eyes or really even one eye or hell, even a blind person could tell there is no humanly possible way that drive would ever plug into the tester. Forget the fact that is says in big letters "power supply tester" on it. He spent a good 3 minutes attempting to get the two to be friends before giving up, looking very confused. I didn't know if I should laugh or just shake my head at him. I choose to just keep staring at the viruses found counter. Mmm Limewire
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