In Which I Look Like a Complete Idiot

[Dips]

I came in this morning and found a rather desperate email from a customer having trouble entering his license key. It said what he had entered and quite a bit of it was missing.

No problem. The full text is inside the cover of his CD case, but people sometimes miss it or mistype it. Occasionally we goof and don't enclose.

So I looked it up, copied and pasted it into an email and sent it to him letting him know that we apologize if the information was missing from his CD.

After that I looked up another license for another customer who emailed me and answered that.

Then I turned my attention to my voice mails. The first one was from the same fellow who had needed his key. He told me about the email he sent and that he is leaving the country today and really wanted to have his software working before he left.

I checked my email quickly to see if he had received my email. I saw nothing to indicate that, so I called him so I could tell him the key verbally just in case he couldn't get his email.

Right. I dialed the number and got his voice mail. This the message I left as best as I can remember:

"Hello. This is Dips at Awesome Software returning your call. I did receive your email and included your full license information in it. If you did not yet receive the email, I'm going to give it to you again. It starts with [insert the first part of the text which is the same for everyone and which I've memorized]..."

[It was at that point that I realized that I didn't know the rest because I had the second guy's license information in front of me. Shit.]

"...[insert a very loooooooong pause with a couple of um's and ah's as I looked up the guy's license] OK. After the 'e' there is a space followed by [rest of the key]..."

[It was at this point that I saw that he was had just activated, which meant that he must have gotten himself licensed.]

"...I see that you did get activated just today. So it looks like you are all set. If there is anything else we can do for you, just give us a call at [number]. Have a nice trip."

I'm so embarassed. I guess I can't complain any more about people calling me when they're not ready.

[Aethian]

Poor Dips. It happens to the best of us. Just gives us a bit of extra patience when someone calls and they suddenly have to get that piece of paper that was just there in front of them but somehow managed to get under the desk.

[Dips]

Aww. Thanks for the sympathy.

After I posted that I tried to be a little more careful the rest of the day. That afternoon I did something even stupider. A customer sent me an email with the subject: "Activating Version 8" (note: not the real version number).

The body of the message had all of the required information I needed to send them back a code, except the version number. So I wrote back.

"Are you trying to activate version 7 or version 8?"

Their reply was very restrained and simple:

"8"

I looked at it. Then at the subject. Then at the identical subject of the original email. D'oh!

My reply:

"Of course it was 8. Just like it said in the subject of your original email. I apolgize; I should have seen that.

Your code is..."

At least both of those guys were pretty nice about it.

So anyway, I figure today's a new day and I can start over, right?

I get to work today and realize I've forgotten to bring the lunch I packed. I left it sitting on the counter at home.

So I called my daughter to put it in the fridge for me, since I knew her first class wasn't until 11:30.

Girl didn't hesitate to laugh at me.

So then I hit post on this and noticed I needed to edit...