Jim Carrey could do better
My father received an e-mail from a friend of his asking if fixes I made earlier in the year might interfere with the installation of cable internet happening at that moment. Apparently, the cable guy had been there for 2 hours trying to get online from my father’s friend’s laptop. When I showed up to figure out if it was my fault, I immediately diagnosed the problem: the cable modem wasn’t getting an IP address. The laptop had a fine connection to the router/modem, so it couldn’t possibly be something wrong computer-side. I pointed this out to the cable guy, and he relayed my message to tech-support, whom he was on the phone with. The curt reply, “It’s fine”, only vindicated my opinion that the front lines of support for technical services almost never know what’s really going on.
Of course, it wouldn’t be reasonable to think that “solving” the problem would work. To hire technically savvy people on the front lines would be wasting money and aggravating for everyone involved. It would be just like my situation, only in reverse and happening far more frequently; technically savvy people usually become easily frustrated when dealing with those who aren’t technically savvy. Even so, it wouldn’t kill companies to assume that they screw up every once in a while. I predict that the cable guy will be there for another 3 hours before he figures out there’s nothing for him to do.