[170] in Humor
HUMOR: Trying to be in the customer's "shoes"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Sat Apr 2 07:44:26 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 94 07:43:11 EST
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 94 17:57:10 PST
From: ckleinja@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
This is original with Max. I like the subject line, too (read on).
From: max@frame.com (max)
Subject: trying to be in the customer's "shoes"
Someone might possibly find this a little sexist, but this an absolutely
true tech support "nightmare" story that was told to me by the woman
involved.
Back in 1980, when I was working for Linotype, the company still supported
what were called "direct entry" typesetters. In otherwords, the dedicated
typesetting system had neither disc storage nor memory for scrolling text.
The operator entered typesetting codes and text, and was given a warning
when in the "hot zone" when a line ending decision would have to be made.
Each time the operator pressed the ENTER key, the text went from memory
directly to the typesetting film, and there was no record of what you had
typed! Then, he/she began typing the next line... (No, I'm not making this
up... I did this for a living back when the earth was still cooling.)
As you can imagine, technical support was a real challenge, because
customers would phone up and complain about garbled text, crooked
baselines, whatever... and there was absolutely no record of what they had
typed in! Technical support representatives had to be a virtual Sherlock
Holmes or Nancy Drew to solve most of the mysteries behind the problems.
My friend Peggy (who bore a strong resemblence to Olive Oyle) worked the
phones. She got calls 5 or 6 times a day from a woman in Pennsylvania who
complained about getting several paragraphs of garbled text on her output
that she didn't remember typing. Peggy was at her wits end, she even stayed
on an open phone line for 20 minutes listening to the customer type, trying
to wait for "it" to happen.
One day Peggy got a call from one of the sales reps, who mentioned that he
was at the Pennsylvania woman's site. Being the resourceful support person
that she was, Peggy asked the rep to stick around for awhile and watch the
woman using her equipment to see if he could witness whatever was causing
the strange, garbled output. After hanging up the phone, the sales rep
asked for a cup of coffee, and chewed the breeze with the woman, (who like
most good typesetters could hold a conversation while entering arcane
typesetting codes).
Unexpectedly, the phone rang, (the phone was kept on top of the typesetting
system). The woman stopped typing, leaned forward to answer the phone, and
her ample bosom plopped onto the keyboard. She got another paragraph of
garbled text. Mystery solved.
Being somewhat flat-chested, Peggy ended the story with, "no wonder I
couldn't duplicate her problem!"
