I should be in Tech Supp

[Slytovhand]

Yep.. after this derierre beret called, at any rate.

His problem was simply that the website wasn't doing what he wanted it to, at the speed he wanted it to...

Now - I work in a call centre - not in tech supp. That being the case, I have absolutely nothing to do with the website (and when you ring at 11pm and expect things to just jump for you because you need something done before the morning... well - you're hoping!)

I do, however, know exactly what his problem was...

Why?

Because, for the 15 minutes or so that I had to listen to him prattle on about how bad it was and what was wrong, all he did was read the damn instructions on the page - and do exactly what they said! I added absolutely nothing to help him.

I did, however, manage to find an FAQ, and I mentioned that the system was optimised for IE. His response, because he was using a Mac, was that 'it had better work, or he'd take it to court for platform discrimination'. Ummm.... 'platform discrimination'???? yeah - right!

Careful all you retail and hospitality workers... if the 'race' discrimination card doesn't work, you just might start getting 'platform discrimination' calls - then you'll know you're in serious trouble!


Oh - I should add - when bitching about something not working properly, and you keep getting sent back to the registration page with the highlighted problems, that : and - are not, indeed, numbers. I'm sorry if there are people reading this that wish to argue this point that was established many hundreds of years ago when writing was invented and shown to the rest of the world. But that's just the way it goes... so - if it says 'type in the ID number', try to make what you type in, to be, actually, a number.....


(sort of like our nightly "What is your 6 digit pin number?" ... 'Is it a word?" - "no - it's a number" - that's why I said 'number' - just to confuse you...."oh - ok... is it FRED?".......)

Game over dude...

[gunsage]

I thought platform discrimination referred to, like, those spinny platforms in various Castlevania games where when you jumped on them, they basically acted as trapdoors of sorts that could spend you falling into oblivion.

[Difdi]

More and more these days, I'm running into people for whom the word 'discrimination' is a dirty word. It doesn't matter to them what form the discrimination takes, it's evil as far as they are concerned.

To them, discriminating by skin color is evil. And I agree. To them, discriminating by success/failure or right/wrong are equally evil. I disagree most strenuously. But there seems to be an ever-growing supply of such morons.

[protege]

Not long ago, I had some idiot send me a nasty email because the scrolling trains on my website didn't work. He was running some ancient version of Netscape, so the code wouldn't work. No matter how much I tried to tell him that they *wouldn't,* he got pissy and demanded I "do something about it." Well, I did--I told him to fuck off and get a real browser

[Dips]

LOL at "platform discrimination." Some customers come up with the darndest things.

For example, we had one customer upset at us because the 1995 version of our program didn't work with Word 2000. He demanded to know why we didn't make the 1995 version "forwards compatible" with Word 2000.

[Boozy]

He demanded to know why we didn't make the 1995 version "forwards compatible" with Word 2000.

Well?

Explain yourself.

[Dips]

At the time we got a lot of calls from folks who updated Word and hadn't updated our software. Most accepted the simple explanation that were unable to develop for a version of Word that hadn't been invented at the time.

In other words, Microsoft didn't make Word 2000 "backwards compatible" with earlier versions of our program (which is fair enough; we are pretty small potatoes).

There were two possible solutions available. Either update our program to a version which works with Word 2000 or save their Word 2000 files as Word 97 files (luckily Word 97 did work well with the 1995 version of our software, even though it came out after it).

For the most part people were cool with that and thanked us for our help. Many of them chose to buy the update. Others couldn't swing it, but were pleased that we openly suggested the second solution to them and it was cost-free.

But this one guy wasn't happy with either option and insisted that we were at fault for not making the 1995 version "forwards compatible" with Word 2000 and demanded to know the reason.

Of course, the reason was that time travel wasn't available in 1995 and hiring clairvoyant programmers just wasn't economically feasible (and still isn't, btw).

Naturally we didn't give that explanation to customers as it gives the perception we are openly mocking them, which is frowned upon by the boss.

[Andara Bledin]

Naturally we didn't give that explanation to customers as it gives the perception we are openly mocking them, which is frowned upon by the boss.

Yeah. It's much better business to mock them behind their backs, and over here.

^-.-^

[Geek King]

To them, discriminating by skin color is evil. And I agree. To them, discriminating by success/failure or right/wrong are equally evil. I disagree most strenuously. But there seems to be an ever-growing supply of such morons.

Well, there are times when even skin color discrimination is acceptable. If police are looking for a bank robber, whose discription includes the fact that the robber is a white male, it doesn't make sense to to stop non-white men during the search.

Casting for certain movie/TV/theatre roles is also acceptable discrimination, if the part calls for a certain skin color. Say, casting Henry VIII for a period piece. Or Othello.

Its all in the application and circumstances.