Dead Horse

[captain_slinky]

The customer called in, concerned because he had not been able to get on-line all day long. Early this morning his brand-new wireless router started smoking, went "Fzzt!" and then all the lights on it went out. Also, the "PC-Link" light on his cable modem went out. Despite the overwhelming evidence that suggested his router was kaput, I did the standard trouble-shooting anyways. Unplugged it, plugged it in to a different outlet, swapped out the cat5 cable, checked all connections... nothing.

I helped him bypass the router, hooking the modem directly to his computer. The PC-Link light came back on, he got on-line just fine, and this would normally be The End of our call.

"So... now that The Internet's working again, can you help me hook my router back up?"

I bemusedly explained to him that the smoke/all lights off/"FZZT!" combo isn't really a normal procedure for a router to go through and that it was dead.

This confused the customer, mainly because he had "...Just BOUGHT this Router like three DAYS ago!"

I explained Entropy, Chaos Theory, Life & Death, The Changing Of The Seasons, Cost-Effectiveness of Cheap Overseas Labor and anything else that came to mind regarding why the router might not be working right now even though "It was working yesterday just fine". I used simple, easy-to-understand words and terms, leaving phoenetical pauses where I beleived he might wish to interject with any questions. There should have been no question by the end of my lecture as to why Mr. Router had to take the big dirt nap.

"Well, yeah... but can we just *try* it again and see if it works now?"

Well sir... you can *try* to get back on a dead horse as many times as you like, but you ain't gonna get anywhere and you'll just end up smelling like a dead horse.

Comments

[agelesseuridice.livejournal.com]

Next time keep it simple and just explain the dangers of smoking. It can cause cancer, emphysema and dramatically shorten life expectancy. Also that's what warrantees are for.

[spazzychic.livejournal.com]

Did you end up trying it again? O.O

[nani-ka.livejournal.com]

Of course it was tried again. Our callers come from the section of the population where, when plugging a modem into one's computer, sparks fly and it blows the breaker for the house... the caller tries this AGAIN, not once, but TWO MORE TIMES.

Its amazing they're still alive enough to call us, some of the time.