stupid people still exist

i’m in a bloggy mood today – enjoy while it lasts…

my workday today offered a complete ‘what the fuck‘ moment.

as with any company, we have “that customer”… the one that no one in the office can tolerate. the one that makes you cringe whenever you see their name on the caller i.d. the one that i had the pleasure of working with today.

it should be first noted that we work on a pay-in-advance model. you buy time, and then we help you for up to that amount of time. this particular customer always has zero or negative time available, and always disputes that fact. getting the customer to buy a single hour of time usually involves an unbillable hour of something like this:

“well, it looks like you don’t have any time available, please log in and place an order and we can get started… no, i’m sorry, it shows you have zero time available…. you are welcome to discuss that with our accounting person, i can have her call you back shortly… no, i’m sorry, we can’t move forward until you purchase time, or i receive approval from accounting… no, he’s not here, and i’m afraid he’d tell you the same thing… i’m sorry, i can’t answer that question without time available to move forward…”

etcetera, etcetera.

although this individual has a linux box doing nat (sharing his internet connection with his office pcs) and acting as an e-mail server, the user doesn’t even have the most basic knowledge of windows.

anyway, this individual calls in today and reports that he can’t get online — none of the pcs in his office can. i can ping his server, so i’m pretty sure it’s not the server. i tell him that, he doesn’t care. of course, he has no time available, so we can’t move forward.

user: how can i order time? i can’t get to your webpage??

i inform him that i can fax him an order form, and he can complete it and fax it back. oh, and it’s also worth mentioning that we’ve suggested he keep at least an hour of time available for just such events.

user: my fax is an e-fax, it goes to my e-mail, which i can’t get.

i know that he’s in a shopping plaza, and can only assume he has access to a physical fax machine somewhere.

regardless, finally i ask accounting, who asks the boss, who finally agrees to an arrangement that more or less involves me doing the work on faith.

turns out, the customer’s network card in windows xp was disabled. i walked him through re-enabling it, explained that i have no idea how it got disabled in the first place, and all was then well….

..until he asked how much time i was billing him for. you see, its our policy to charge a customer for all time we spend with him. since i had spent a lot of the time going “around and around” on the phone with him, the total length of the call was about 30 minutes. so, 30 minutes is what we charge him.

he doesn’t like that. since it only took 5 minutes, he should only be charged 5 minutes. never mind that he knows that we bill in 15 minute increments.

of course, he refused to follow through with our agreement that he place an order, and instead demanded to hear back from my boss.

after a conversation with the bossman, it was decided that i would only bill him for 15 minutes instead of 30. ok, fine. but here’s what irks me… it’s about a $40 difference, and over an hour of time was spent overall to argue with the guy, to get the time approval, and to explain the whole situation to the boss. thats all time that i could have been working on any number of other projects i was completing.

and that, ladies and gents, is my vent for the day. there’s a ton more to it, but i’m hungry and dana is cooking. 🙂