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badstarSo today's been a nice easy Thursday. I've had very little to deal with. Nothing going on. Easy stuff. Lots of RMA status checks and "quick questions" that for once actually were.
And then The Call comes in. So this guy is telling me about a unit in Iraq. He's calling me from California. Video conferencing over ISDN. Joy. *jump* Starts out with "So we're getting this error message: "error. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." What's that?
Can't call one of our test sites in CA, sounds like he's talking to someone in Iraq having them do the work. I have him call another in MA...same. I give him a call from a test unit here in my office- AFTER we go through the mess of getting his ISDN number- initially, he asked me for it!!...connects.
Somehow it never registers in my mind that he's having me call a California phone number. And he keeps talking bout this unit being "over in Iraq"- note, he's very distinctively pronouncing it eye-raq, not ih-raq.
I start asking him questions about his BRI box...he's saying he's looking at it, all the lights are green, we're going back and forth and something is very wrong. I ask him how the unit is connected to the BRI. With cables, he says. But it's in Iraq? Yes, he says. And the BRI is in California? Yep. but the unit is in Iraq? Yep. And what is it connected to? The BRI. They're connected directly? Affirmative. How is the BRI in California connected to the unit in Iraq? Phone cables. (Insert several rephrasings of this question, getting me nowhere.)
Finally, the only thing that seems to get my message across is to say "Sir how is it that a videoconferencing unit in the Middle East is connected directly to a BRI in California? Those are some really long phone cables."
37 minutes into the call, I could hear the lightbulb go on.
"Oh, no...it's not in eye-raq. It's in a rack. In a closet here in my office. "
And that's when I killed him, your honor. Reached right through the phone and ripped out his trachea.
And then The Call comes in. So this guy is telling me about a unit in Iraq. He's calling me from California. Video conferencing over ISDN. Joy. *jump* Starts out with "So we're getting this error message: "error. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." What's that?
Can't call one of our test sites in CA, sounds like he's talking to someone in Iraq having them do the work. I have him call another in MA...same. I give him a call from a test unit here in my office- AFTER we go through the mess of getting his ISDN number- initially, he asked me for it!!...connects.
Somehow it never registers in my mind that he's having me call a California phone number. And he keeps talking bout this unit being "over in Iraq"- note, he's very distinctively pronouncing it eye-raq, not ih-raq.
I start asking him questions about his BRI box...he's saying he's looking at it, all the lights are green, we're going back and forth and something is very wrong. I ask him how the unit is connected to the BRI. With cables, he says. But it's in Iraq? Yes, he says. And the BRI is in California? Yep. but the unit is in Iraq? Yep. And what is it connected to? The BRI. They're connected directly? Affirmative. How is the BRI in California connected to the unit in Iraq? Phone cables. (Insert several rephrasings of this question, getting me nowhere.)
Finally, the only thing that seems to get my message across is to say "Sir how is it that a videoconferencing unit in the Middle East is connected directly to a BRI in California? Those are some really long phone cables."
37 minutes into the call, I could hear the lightbulb go on.
"Oh, no...it's not in eye-raq. It's in a rack. In a closet here in my office. "
And that's when I killed him, your honor. Reached right through the phone and ripped out his trachea.
