I just spent, no lie, ten minutes on the phone trying to get a woman’s e-mail address right so I can send her some stuff from the library. The connection wasn’t good and she was old, and everybody who works on the phone a lot knows that can make it really hard to hear.
So she’s spelling out letters, and part of the e-mail address is something-b-t. The something is a P or a C or a B or a T or something like that. And she keeps saying, “No, * as in *!” I know she’s saying a word, and I get the vowel sound in the middle, but she could be saying pond or tom or bond or con or I don’t know what the hell. And her accent, which is similar to mine, has a hard time distinguishing that kind of sound over the phone sometimes.
SO JESUS CHRIST LADY PICK ANOTHER WORD! She NEVER tried another word. I kept asking “Is it T as in turkey” and she’d say “* as in *!!!”
I kept guessing. It was P as in persnickity. That was my last choice. She NEVER understood what the problem was. Never. She never, ever tried another word.
Grrrr. I like it when it’s a P or a B or a V and you say, “P?” and they say, “No, _______!” without ANY “as in _______”. Look, lady, just repeating the unclear letter without clarification gets. me. no. where.
I was once buying a gift certificate to a German beer pub for my boss. It’s a family-run, good pub, but it’s run by quite an old man. As owner, this gentleman had to fill out the gift certificate by hand, and my boss’s name is a multi-syllabic hard-to-pronounce Polish name.
Gad, that took a long time, as he was a stubborn old guy and either was a poor listener or rather deaf. In the end, I took his pen and wrote the name down on another slip of paper, and he copied from that. And he got it wrong, too.
Somebody on another board just wrote about the old man that kept saying nope when asked if they could help him. The guy complained to the boss, because he wasn’t being helped. The old guy wanted rope.
I feel your pain, because I do phone support and run into the same shit.
You have to straight out say “Look, I don’t understand what you are saying. CDEGPTVZ all sound the same on bad connections and I have NO CLUE which letter you’re trying to give me, so please give me a hand here and try a different word with that letter.”
The worst was the other way around. I was trying to give the woman a word to type in and she just couldn’t get it. I think she was terminally stupid, because it wasn’t a difficult or uncommon word, but she just couldn’t manage it. Finally, I spelled it phonetically, even explaining “A as in Alpha, B as in Bravo, E as in etcetera”. Stupid bitch started typing in alphabravoetcetera.
Um, NO. Look, the word is (this), just type in that (fucking) word, ok?
I tried that! I said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, this connection’s bad and I really can’t understand the letter you’re saying. Can you say another word?” and I swear to god she said “It’s * as in * again!”
This will make me smile on those days I’m spending a half-hour spouting alpha-numeric sets to the yard; already, I get bored enough to start making up words instead of using regular call signs. So far nobody’s had to ask me to repeat, but I’ve caused some coffee to go out some noses.
The ‘ROPE!’ guy is making ME laugh out loud right now.
Sorry sir, we don’t have any Nope. We have rope in the hardware department, and soap over in housewares. I’m told that you can buy dope from the guys over at the shoe store down the mall. The psychiatrist down the street can help you cope, the goth kids can show you how to mope, and either the church or the lottery may help you with some hope.
How appropriate that this thread should pop up now. I had the opposite problem just this afternoon.
Over the phone, I needed to get an elderly man to write down a website for his elderly wife. I happen to know that the man does not have very much experience with telephones. The website was something like “mdpa.gov.” The exchange went something like this:
Me: Got your pencil? Okay, it’s M-D-P-A dot G-O-V. That’s Mary, David, Peter, Adam dot George …
Him: Hold on now. “Mary…” [saying it slowly, as if he’s writing “Mary”]
Me: No, no. Sorry, it’s just [enunciating with exaggeration] M-D-P-A …
Him: …
Me: … Period … Gee, Ohh, Vee
Him: … It was “Mary, David” something?
Me: …well, yes, it’s M-as-in-Mary…
Him: …
Me:…
Him:…
Me: … then D-as-in-David
Him: … Wait a second. “Mary”?
Me: [Tying not to sound patronizing or annoyed] Sir, it’s four letters, then a period, then three more letters.
Him: [If there is such a thing as confused silence, this is it.]
Me: So it’s EMMMMM … DEEEEE … PEEEEE … AAAAAY … period … GEEEE … OHHH … VEEE
Him: Oh.
Me: Okay. Got it?
Him: Yes.
Me: Can you read it back to me?
Him: …
Me: [sigh] Okay. Let’s start over.
[SNIP]
[A bit later]
Me: Okay, read that back?
Him: M - D - P - A - period - Government.
Me: Good enough. Thank you sir!
I also had a reverse experience. I was ordering a pizza to be delivered to my job at the mall.
Me: “It’s Bigass Mall, the address is 1000 Bigass Mall Parkway”
Them: “One Bigass Mall Parkway…”
Me: “No, One THOUSAND Bigass Mall Parkway.”
Them: “One Bigass Mall Parkway…”
Me: “Not one. ONE THHOOOUUU- SAAANNND. One Zero Zero Zero.”
Them: “Ma’am, you just keep saying one!”
Me: CLICK!
Anyone remember the days of DOS? I was working support and I’d need the user to read back to me the contents of the autoexec.bat or some other file. The command to look at a file was “type <filename>”. You can see where this is going…
I finally learned to ask the user to “please type the following: Tee Why Pee Eeee space <filename>” and then have them read back what displayed on the screen.
I work at a grocery store. Therefore most questions I get are about the whereabouts of various foodstuffs or stuff like aluminum foil.
Last night someone asked me where the Tofu was, but his accent (he’s asian of some variety) baffled me. When he talked about white Japenese stuff that you break up and put in soup–I got it, and took him to the appropriate aisle.
His second request was for corndogs, frozen corndogs. That one baffled me not so much because of the word/accent but because of the concept. You just picked out tofu and now you want corndogs? OK, sir, if that makes you happy.
This is one perk of living in DC, where everyone works for the government. Everyone and their mother knows the phonetic alphabet.
“What’s your email address, sir?”
“It’s sierra-Mike-November-foxtrot-dot-gulf-oscar-victor.”
“I copy…sierra-Mike-November-foxtrot-dot-gulf-oscar-victor?”
“Yes”
“Thank you for calling Verizon. Are you happy with the service I provided today?”
None of this drawn out, repetitive “as in” stuff. Learn it, love it.
That’s like the classic where the tech support or instructor tells the client to “right-click,” and the client dutifully writes C-L-I-C-K. As a former computer instructor, I can attest to its truthiness.
I’m in tech support and been through this countless times. The worst:
Me – OK, we’ll start a WebEx session so I can see your system. Open your browser and go to company.webex.com.
Idiot – How do you spell WebEx?
Me – That’s W as in whiskey, E as in echo, B as in Bravo…
Idiot – Wait a second. What does W stand for?
It doesn’t matter what it stands for, you dolt! You already know that the first letter is a W!
