All I Hear is Static

To help myself get through college financially, I worked as a Hardware Support technician for the University’s Computer Services. One day, on my phone rotation, I received a phone call from a man who was rather annoyed that he couldn’t access his e-mail from home. Our school had a dial-up system (it was the mid-90’s) where students could log in to check their e-mail.


“…All I hear is static,” the man proclaimed. Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed that his modem speaker was simply left on after he connected. I proceeded to give him instructions as to how to turn off the modem’s speaker when he cut me off. “I don’t have a modem.”

Trying to be as polite as possible, I explained that he needed to have a modem to access the system and I gave him recommendations for certain brands. The phone conversation ended well, and he was on his way to the store.

A little over an hour later, I received another irritated call from this man. “The guy at the store says I need a computer for one of these things,” he said.

“That’s correct, sir. I’m sorry — I was under the impression you had one. May I ask, sir, how is it you were hoping to read your e-mail?”

“I thought there would be some nice undergraduate student that would read it to me.”

Needless to say, the poor guy was very embarrassed.

Contributed by David North

Related posts:

  1. The Difference Between POP3 and IMAP
  2. Touch Screen Cell Phone
  3. How to Keep Your System Administrator in Good Books?
  4. Don’t Brushoff Privacy!
  5. “Do Not Intrude” is Oxy Moron

Filed Under: Archive Categories

About the Author

Abhinav Kaiser is a certified project manager (PMP) and an expert in IT service management. He has been writing on several blogs for over 6 years and has been a source of inspiration for many budding bloggers. He recently started a blog, Abhinav PMP and his latest baby in the works needs special mention - Success Mantras. Click here if you need to get in touch.

Leave a Reply




If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar.