What is pissing you off this time?

[xoxoxoBruce]

English teacher, not math or logic which seem beyond her comprehension. I suppose it would no good to correct her.

[footfootfoot]

Yeah, they really should have enacted No Teacher Left Behind first.

[Griff]

My brother is a department head in Engrish. He tells me the War on Teachers™ has pretty steadily reduced the quality of his applicants. Bright folks don't want to be abused by the politicians and press while trying to survive the first 5 years of teaching when the prep hours are horrific and you're more likely to be bumped in a layoff...

Maybe the pendulum will swing back a little when Betsy DeVos saves education from its unprofitably.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Yeah, they really should have enacted No Teacher Left Behind first.

Heh. That's funny, right there, I don't care who ya are.

[monster]

This school has some great English teachers. He had one last tri. this one is a Devos Special ahead of her time

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by monster

This school has some great English teachers. He had one last tri. this one is a Devos Special ahead of her time

Confession: I just tried to figger out what Devo had to do with anything.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Devos
Devo's

Like black lives and commas, apostrophes matter.

[Clodfobble]

Dell's technical support team can LICK. MY. BALLS.


I have a hardware issue, either with the video card or the motherboard. It is 1000%, no-possible-alternative, crystal-clearly, a hardware issue. Dell support says we have to go through a few hours of diagnostics and OS reinstalls and "create a new user to see if it happens over THERE" bullshit. I already did all that troubleshooting myself, but they have a protocol, fine, I get it. We go through the rigamarole. Three or four times the guy asks me to describe again what exactly is happening, which is this spastic screen flickering and image rendering issue. He can't see it when he remotes into the desktop because it most reliably happens during bootup, which kicks him off his remote session. After checking everything else, he agrees it is a hardware issue, sends me a box, I send in the machine.

A week later I get my laptop back. They have replaced the LCD screen and the hard drive, neither of which were suspected to be the problem. Within an hour of beginning to set my machine back up, it full-on bluescreens. Fuckers. I try to keep going, the bluescreening gets worse, and meanwhile the flickering issue has not resolved in the slightest, despite being "checked for full functionality" before leaving the repair depot.

It now occurs to me to take my phone and record a video of the flickering issue. I do so, put the video on the desktop, and call IT support again. The woman wants to run diagnostics, refuses to watch the video I've helpfully created for her. After 30 minutes, at exactly the stroke of 7:00 PM my time, she has "internet connectivity issues." 5 minutes later I receive an email saying I can call back, give them this reference number because she is now off her shift. Internet connectivity my ass.

Shortly after, I get an email from the guy at the repair depot. "Just confirming that everything is working great! Reply if there are any remaining issues." Oh hooray, maybe I can skip the first-tier support bay and start with people who already know what's been done so far. I reply. He does not. I wait all weekend (really I was too busy to deal with any of this anyway.)

Monday morning. I open yet another chat session. I say please look at the previous logs. The problem is described in detail, and the failed attempts to solve it should be too. It's a hardware issue. They need to replace the video card and/or the motherboard. "Let's just check and see if we can correct the bluescreen errors first." FUUUUUCCK. YOOOOOOOU.

I ask her to watch the video. She ignores me. She spends the next 2.5 hours fucking around with drivers and diagnostics, then it helpfully bluescreens again. She calls me, I tell her what the error was, and connect her again. It bluescreens again. I tell her what the (different this time) error was, and connect her again. I ask her again to PLEASE just watch the video. She ignores me. She spends another 1.5 hours finishing her diagnostics, has me try to reproduce the flickering issue ("Yes, it's still happening." "Okay, try again now." "Yes, it's still happening." "How about now?" "Yes." "It's still happening?" "Yes." "Describe again what exactly is happening." "I took a video. It's on the desktop.")

She finally watches the video. "Oh. This clearly looks like it is a hardware issue."

NO. SHIT. SHERLOCK.


They're going to send me another box. So I can send it back to the repair depot and get the video card and/or motherboard replaced. Or maybe they'll decide to replace the memory this time, because why fucking not?

[Gravdigr]

That would have given me a stroke.

I thought I was supposed to mellow with age. My temper is actually getting worse. And it was pretty bad to begin with.

[BigV]

Hey Clodfobble.

Motherfucker.

I have great empathy for you. I am that guy on the other end of the phone all day long, remoting into other peoples' computers... Dell fucked up, as you already know, all too well. I'm sorry you had to suffer that, as my friend. I can't do shit about Dell's culture wrt tech support. But! I suffer what you suffer too. I can't always fix it. Just today, my last call of the day, I eliminated a LOT of stuff it wasn't then told the customer, my customer, they should open a ticket with their vendor of their unique, industry-specific application. I couldn't fix it.

I'm really sorry, that is total bullshit.

eta:

Sometimes, like for gear that simply can not be down, the premium support contract from Dell can pay for itself. As you know, the hardware can sometimes fail. And as I'm sure you also know, it's usually not the hardware. But identifying the hardware problem by eliminating all the possible software possibilities can be an exercise in frustration (understatement). But the top tier pre-purchased support contracts have delivered for me, not FOAF, me, personally. I have had occasion to call Dell because the server that ran our email went taillights. I called them in the morning and I had a new server *that afternoon*. No shit. Now, I wasn't paying for the gold contract or whatever the name of the tier was, but trust me, there *is* a level of support that will take care of that shit. Posthaste.

Is it worth it? Well, that is the question. But I assure you, it exists.

[Clodfobble]

Yeah, Mr. Clod's company has always had good support from their Dell contracts. I think most of it is corporate vs. consumer. It's not that they did a bad job (well, the repair depot didn't think too hard about the problem) but that they didn't listen to a word I said. At this level they have to deal with morons so often that they can't conceive of someone who knows a useful 30%.

And to be fair, it's not like I was on the phone with them for all those hours. I was intermittently cooking, working, eating, and watching a Maria Bamford special on Netflix on my old backup laptop while they were wasting their hours.

[footfootfoot]

That kind of customer service is why people go postal.

The good news is, I'm sending my resume to Dell's technical support team!

[BigV]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

That kind of customer service is why people go postal.

The good news is, I'm sending my resume to Dell's technical support team!

Seeking work as a postal carrier?

[BigV]

Pissing me off today?
I just broke a tooth.
I'm spitting out chunks of what feels like gravel and looks like it too, mixed with the occasional tooth fragments..

Goodbye lower-left-bicuspid. I'll miss you.

[Gravdigr]

I gotta stop clenching my jaw. I, too, recently broke off the front corner of the most recently broken upper molar.

Like Kirk Douglas said in a movie I can't think of ATM, after getting (yet) another tooth knocked out in a fight, "I miss the big ones."