SonOfWinds5198

Once upon a time... (like all good stories begin)
...I worked as a support technician for one of the biggest ISP's in Sweden. I got the job all in a sudden. A friend of me had just started working there and told me they needed a lot more employers so I wrote an email at Wednesday, got an answer Thursday that I could start at the next Monday... So I got to hurry up a bit. To most people that's quite hasty but my life where a bit more complicated then just "me". I had a house and a lot of animals (sheep, hens, cats, ducks, rabbits) but at the end of the week (Sunday) I had given all my animals new homes and where heading towards my new "job".

To be totally honest with you I was a noob in so many ways. Didn't know much about computers but they had a course (2 weeks) and good support tools so I gave it my best... and was there for over two years (so I guess I did something right...)
One of the most frightening things was an angry costumer. Nobody liked that and everybody feared it. I remember three angry customers whereas I could help one of them so in fact there where only two, in over two years time. Pretty amazing. But I do remember some funny stories... there where plenty of them.

This was fifteen years ago and Sweden had some sort of "computer program", everyone that was employed could via the union buy a computer very cheap. And many people did and the majority of those didn't know anything about computers (but some did)
One particular costumer had this problem with his password. It was a dial up connection and the server rejected his password. First thing to do was to check the pw on our computers. Did so and it worked just fine. OK then, let's get started!
Removed the pwl files, rebooted the computer and tried again. Same error. OK, i did everything I new for at least 20 minutes when I knew that he didn't typed the password right. So I asked him to open notepad and type the password in plain text so he could see it, and then copy and paste it but did I succeed? No... after 30 minutes he said he had to take the kid to his hockey training but I think he then knew he was too "stupid" to type the password right...

People in the cities are more hasty then people in the countryside. Evidence? Sure, here is one.
If a server went down in Stockholm customers immediately called us and asked what was wrong... And to hell with all of us if it wasn't running soon! But then a customer from called us from Norrland (thats the region far north in Sweden and it's mostly sparsely populated)
He also had this problem, couldn't connect, wrong password. He have had this problem for over a year! Tested it and it was in fact wrong. Told him I would send him a letter with new ones and that it probably would be working the next day and then he replied: You didn't need to be that hasty! (this one is far more funny in Swedish... sorry...)

Another customer had a problem with her email. Don't remember exactly what kind of problem she had but she used Outlook Express. One solution for that kind of problem was to erase the inbox (or outbox or whatever depending of the problem). You did that by throwing the files that was the inbox (two files). When you rebooted your computer they "emerged" again and mostly things worked well after that. But not this time... When her computer started again it got a black screen with a message (in white) where it said that it had a memory problem (don't know exactly what kind of but it was not the sort of problem that we should take care of).
I explained to her what it was and then she asked me: Could I have my old problem back, please?
Nope, couldn't do that but a friend that was online on ICQ helped me to help her so in the end she was a happy customer. :-)

This was a few of all the stories that I carry from that time. The angry customers are long gone and that's the great thing about life, it's more easy to remember good stuff. :-)

Let's be careful out there!