The Technical Support Agents

Now, the first thing to note about our dearly beloved technical support agents is that they always fail to provide you with any useful information about your problem, often confusing you even more with their barrage of technical jargon that can literally bowl you over. It seems that their job philosophy is:

"Tackle the caller, then the Problem."

Which actually means to bombard you with bombastic terms and treat you like a three-year old kid when you say,

"I can’t run this cool new game I bought! Can you tell me why?"

Then they say,

"I need more information about your computer. Can you tell me what processor you have and the speed it runs at? Give me the brand of your motherboard and any daughterboards you have attached to it. How much RAM have you installed on your system? I also require the make and model of your sound card and the latest driver update you have installed for it. May I also ask if you have ever encountered this problem before? While you are thinking, have you ever thought of reading the darned manual in the first place?"

The most common reaction for the "unsophisticated" people is to hang up the phone.

Their peculiar profession is often highly demanding in terms of necessary qualification. One must be certified mentally unstable and physically unfit to be accepted to take the gruelling "Three Tests of Technical Support", the next step to become a technical support agent.

Firstly, the Test of Sonic Ability. This test is extremely straightforward. The candidate has to stand in the middle of a busy airport runway and shout loud enough to be heard from the Control Tower, the minimum height for which has to be ten storeys, preferably higher. Interestingly, the female candidates seem to perform far better here than the males.

Next comes the Test of Intellectual Insults. This test is probably the most difficult yet the most entertaining of the Three Tests. Candidates are paired and then locked up in a small cell. To pass this Test, candidates seek to drive each other mad by continuously hurling insults at one another. This process can last from a few minutes to days, provided candidates do not rip each other to pieces first. A strategically placed video camera in the cell can provide an evening or more of highly amusing and enriching entertainment. Who knows, you might even learn a few things about our language from the colourful dialogue used throughout. Why it is called the Test of "Intellectual" Insults still, unfortunately, remains a mystery.

At this point, you might be wondering whether these highly trained and carefully selected individuals have any technical experience in the first place. Well, the answer to that question is, of course, an emphatic "YES!"

Which brings us to the third and final test, the Test of Technical Aptitude. This written examination encourages new and innovative ideas to be cultivated amongst the technical support agent wannabes. They must use creativity to solve many problems in some imaginary situations. For example, they might be asked:

"A caller says that his monitor suddenly shorts out and stops functioning. What should you do?"

Tell him to send it back to the manufacturer for repairs.
Send one of your representatives over to check it out.
Tell him to whack it real hard with the biggest hammer he can find and if he were not able to find a hammer, tell him you would gladly whack it for him and charge for it.

The obvious answer, of course, would be option "c". Did you get that right? No? You mean you picked "a" or "b"? I can’t believe you picked that, but no matter. As you might have realised, the ratio of physical ability and brute strength to intellectual ability is about 2:1. It is a physically demanding job indeed.

The average life span of a technical support agent is about twenty-five years and four months. Taking into account the twenty-two years in which an individual spends drifting around in other more constructive professions, that leaves about three years or so for one to enjoy the life of a technical support agent, after which they slowly, surely but inevitably die the painful death of a madman. The worst part of it is, they do not even realise it.

Oh, is it not interesting how such a dangerous and risky profession is such an intriguing art form when studied objectively? Of course, I must first warn you that these people take their job very seriously and my advice is not to crack bad jokes about their livelihood in their presence, or the consequences might more often than not be…undesirable.

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