Sometimes tech support is the villain

Posted by xcski_paul@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 20 comments

I was a software developer at a company that doesn’t exist any more. It was in the late 80s/early 90s. I went to a customer site in another country to do some custom programming. Our product had a programming language, and because the customer was in a country with a strict hierarchy and a macho culture, I basically was under orders not to tell them that the way they were using our programming language was wrong, bizarre and illogical, I had to adapt our programming language to work the way they wanted it to. Needless to say, it was a long and frustrating assignment.

But the worst thing was when I called back to head office to check my voice messages. And discovered that my extension no longer existed. Oh, I should mention this was only a few months after we’d gotten an actual “dial in and type in your extension” switchboard instead of asking a receptionist to connect you. And I guess tech support never got the memo, because for their own convenience, if you were out of the office, they CHANGED YOUR EXTENSION, putting everybody who was out of the office in a particular set of numbers. Oh, and if you didn’t know the extension, you could type in the name of who you were calling using the letters on your phone, EXCEPT THE PHONES IN THIS COUNTRY DIDN’T HAVE LETTERS ON THEM. And without an internet connection to look this stuff up (we were sending files over UUCP on the phone network), I had to figure out what letters belong on each key through a bit of trial and error, and put a chart beside the damn phone so I could find my own extension to get my voice mail. Oh, and did I mention that the company management had, when we changed over to the automatic switchboard, gotten everybody to put their extension number on their business cards? And that when you came home from being at a customer site, they wouldn’t even assign you the same extension as you’d had before you left, meaning you’d have to toss all your business cards and order another pack?

Oh, and in spite of the fact that changing everybody’s extension numbers was

A) stupid and

B) went against corporates desire to have people’s extensions on their business cards and

C) stupid

I still had to fight the tech support people all the way to a VP before they agreed to stop changing people’s extensions just because they were working in a smokey and un-air conditioned office in Madrid in August.

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xcski_paul@reddit (OP)

Besides which, have you ever heard of land lines? They don’t have predictive text.

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meunbear@reddit

But they’ve had letters assigned to the numbers basically forever. You made a big point that you had no where the letters were. Have you ever heard of a phone?

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xcski_paul@reddit (OP)

Maybe you've never seen a phone, but in the US and Canada, the numbers have letters on them. If you wanted to enter, say, "Paul", you'd type 7285. Now that was ambiguous, but hopefully there was nobody named "Qcvk" or any of the other letter combinations that same number could spell out. If not, you'd be given a choice of which one you wanted. I have never heard of a system of disambiguating before T9 came along, and that was mostly for the benefit of texting.

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bakanisan@reddit

If one's name is "Qcvk" then it's 7722288855, business as usual, no? Now it's a bit tricky if they have 2 letters on the same number.

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xcski_paul@reddit (OP)

Like I already said, there was no standard disambiguation method back then. You entered the name (actually last name, not first) and hopefully there weren't multiple matches. If there was a Qcvk and a Paul in the company, the voice response system would say "press 1 for Paul or press 2 for Qcvk".

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bakanisan@reddit

Thanks for the info. I didn't know it was kinda convoluted like that.

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ChatahoocheeRiverRat@reddit

Qcvk-named people of the world, unite against the oppressor !!

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xcski_paul@reddit (OP)

The company I'm talking about probably went out of business because they passed over people with ambiguous names.

dreaminginteal@reddit

I once had an internal tech support message asking if I had submitted a ticket for an issue. The message itself was part of the ticket that I had indeed submitted….

I was confused why you didn't simply use T9 layout but I googled it and T9 was introduced in 1995...

Akemi486@reddit

T9 is predictive text, not the “ABC” and so on

That's the closest reference I can use to call "text on number" layout. Just like how young people call floppy disk "the save icon".

I don't actually know the name of said layout lol.

Schrojo18@reddit

My household phone growing up had all the letters with the numbers and that was from at least as early as 1990

Ackapus@reddit

No-one expects the Spanish Lost-Extension!

IntelligentLake@reddit

Their chief weapon is surprise! And changing extensions.

KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit

Our two weapons are surprise and changing extensions! And obsoleting business cards.

jonsteph@reddit

Get out. Now.

All right, but when I come back, I'll have the COMFY CHAIR!

Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Lovely spam. Wonderful spam!

jnmtx@reddit

company assigned email addresses were:

flastname@company.com

this is on business cards, used with vendors, customers, online accounts with tech licenses, etc.

New idea comes around, make it:

First.Last@company.com

but forward emails addresses to flastname@company.com to your new email.

That is all fine until- everything gets taken down and rebuilt due to a “security event”. Oops. Now all you have is:

What happened to emails to your old address? bounced or just discarded. Missed a little bit of airline flight information due to this before I realized what was happening.

Now the old forwarding rule is back, and I am systematically changing online accounts to the new email address. Of course that means I sometimes get 2 copies of some marketing emails from vendors.