Protocol: Press Help, RTFM & beg

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Is it pointless breaking out in a sweat, carrying a garland of garlic around your neck and carrying a crucifix while gnashing ones teeth over the prospect of opening a trouble ticket with IT support?

Is your support experience one of those smooth, prompt, courteous and relationsip strengthening affairs where even the most cynical non-tekkie arseholes like me would melt into an admiring gung-ho “support the support team” fanatic?

No, I thought not. I hear you ask why?

Well if like me you cannot be damned to RTFM or beg for help, your blogging days ahead can become rather filled with anxiety albeit it in a psuedo-phsyco way. Y’see, you must RTFM before begging and also get used to inputting loads of serious emotive pleading into the trouble ticket you will be forced to raise. The Protocol demands it. No, there is no phoning the helpdesk anymore. Those days are long gone. Committed to the tip along with the millions of bakerlite phones.

If you get completely freaked out and begin ripping your fingernails off because you cannot be bothered to RTFM before hitting ‘install’, your online life as a blogger will forever be governed by The Protocol.

The Protocol involves a number of important elements. Two of the primary elements are either the Telephone Menu System Monster or the Trouble Ticket which I call the ‘deli-counter-system’. Yes folks, you will need a number to track the TT’s progress, the  patience of Job coupled with an enviable ability to wait patiently in line while ill-mannered, non-hygenic blood-starved support staff slice off Mrs Maudlin’s 250g of Worcestshire Oak Smoked ham. And you are required to not make a sound. And just in case you ask, this is a metaphor for the horrid time wasting the deli counter queuing system at British supermarket deli counters enforces you to succumb to for a few ounces of fresh spam.

And so it was two weeks back that I found myself subjected to the Protocol. Or rather, I came face to face with the other side of the Protocol. Y’know, the dark side where the sun doesn’t shine and Satan’s spawn infiltrate support teams to ensure you are never bored by prompt, streamlined, slick n groovy query resolution. Oh yes, that would be too easy and way too good for us.

So application software developers, IT company owners and call-centre tycoons met in total secrecy in Transylvania one night when the full moon hung lazily low across the horizon and they enjoined with and made a pact with him. The one whose name is never mentioned.

And that is why support from your favourite helpdesk or support team is so crap! They are not humans. They are either android/humanoids with sharp teeth and red rimmed staring bloodshot eyes who only work at night. Yeah, they never come out in the day. At least not when I need them. Timezones could explain a tiny bit of their absence but when I try USA, they are not there. Later when I try Australia, they are gone aways. I might try UK next time. And provided the helpdesk has not been outsourced to India or Estonia where werewolves really do exist, I might strike it lucky.

This is my Rant on Tuesday theory for this Tuesday.

Blog on!

Protocol: Press Help, RTFM & beg