Is it me?

I'm going to have to change the name of my blog. Apparently I am destined to share only stories about customer service from here on out. My last post was about coworkers, but I think that, in the manner of the customer service stories, it reexposed a critical element of our society that is sadly lacking, and that is the inability to communicate. People don't know how to communicate, so they end up saying frustrating things to their customers, and that makes the customers go out and do silly things, like get drunk or blow stuff up.

So here I am, enjoying my new laptop computer, and all of a sudden the Internet just quits. I don't mean that I have no signal--I mean there is no Internet. I've got an Internet Explorer window with a couple of toolbars and absolutely no text anywhere else. I reboot. I reboot again. I check the Internet settings. I plug in a cable to see if that works. It doesn't. I decide that I'm going to have to contact customer service.

I'm not really in the mood to talk to someone in India, because that can be frustrating, since sometimes, as hard as I try, it's hard to understand. Also it ties up my phone line. Last time it was about an hour and a half.

I remember that we have two other functioning computers in the house, that don't seem to have a problem with the Internet. I go to one of them, boot up, and away I go to the live chat support page. At least I will be able to understand it if I can see it in black and white, right?

Am now "chatting" with my new boyfriend, Art. So far we've been online together for 29 minutes. He is very, very polite. He has mostly typed the words, "Okay, I see" or "Please hold, daltongirl," in response to my attempts to give him the information he needs. He has given me two ideas to try, neither of which worked. He has also asked me for several bits of information which I already gave him voluntarily, knowing that would help him help me.

I can only conclude that he is having my messages translated into his language, and that is what's taking so long. For example, It just took three minutes for him to find out what Web browser I'm using (information I gave him about twenty minutes ago), and to say, "thanks for the information, daltongirl. Please hold." Perhaps they have a slow Internet connection over there.

Fortunately, I can multitask--that is, blog while I glance over at the chat screen periodically to see if anything has happened.

Hold please, while I go to the bathroom . . . aaaand I'm back. Did I miss anything? Nope, doesn't look like anything happened.

Wait. I'm confused. He asked if I reinstalled my drivers, and I said no. I asked if he could help me with that. No response. And now he's "researching my issue." Is he looking up information on how to reinstall the drivers, or did he decide to take a different tack?

We're at 39 minutes now . . .

He's planning to provide me with a couple of troubleshooting steps. If they don't work, I'll have to contact my Internet provider.

Okay, here's another idea. Perform a System Restore. And the beauty of his instructions is that he told me how to save our chat session before I restore the system! But I'm not actually ON the computer that is having a problem.

After the instructions, Art says, "Will there be anything else I can do for you?"

Um, what about the other troubleshooting step? You said there were "a couple." Or maybe the two step instructions on how to perform the system restore were what you were referring to.

I say, "No. Thanks. I'm sure that will work. If it doesn't, I'll just head on down to Wendy's and grab a burger flipper to help me out."

And now he wants me to fill out a survey indicating how the support was. On his side, it was a great pleasure working with me. Should I just give them a link to my blog?

And I'm supposed to check the X at the top of the window to close the chat session. Only there is no X. There is a red box, but nothing happens when I click on it. Oh, no! Am I doomed to be in this chat session forever? It's only been 49 minutes and I already want out of this relationship!

So where are we? The System Restore didn't work. So now I have to contact my Internet provider tech support, also located in India.

And this leads me to wonder . . . the constant in all these frustrating situations has been me. Hmm.