Why is it that when about 80% of the population sits down at a computer their brain turns off? On a daily basis I have to answer questions such as the following

Customer "How do you spell that?"
Me:" It's your last name."
Customer: "Can you spell that for me?"


Customer: "It keeps telling me to retype my password"
Me: "Did you try to retype your password?
Customer: "No, I thought it was problem on your end"
Me: "How bout you retype your password and try again"
Customer: "Hey it worked"


Customer: "I cant send email / get web pages"
Me: "Are you connected to the Internet"
Customer: "No."
Me: "Well how bout you connect and try and see what happens"


Customer:" It says I am connected but nothing is happening"
Me: " Well you need to open Internet Explorer or Netscape"
Customer: "I didn't have to do that with AOL"
Me: "Well this isn't AOL"


That is just a short list of the everyday questions that I get. Now we provide service for a University in the area, and the school gives all the professors account for free. These people have to be the worst of all the customers. One, they pay absolutely nothing for service and two they talk to you like you're a fucking retard, yet the problem is always something they fucked up.

The next 5% to 10% of people that I talk to are the people that have a piece of paper from some tests they took stating they are networking professionals but still don't have a fucking clue. The people are the dreaded MCSE, granted not all of them are retards just a major percentage of them. They are the ones that always insist that the problem is on your end not theirs because they are so smart because they read a book and took a test. Granted I have no experience in networking other than working at an ISP. I have however taken 2 of the MCSE Tran sender practice exams a passed them both. So I can't imagine it being that hard to pass. Here are some of the questions that I get from the lovely MCSE people. You might ask how I know they are MCSE certified? It is actually quite easy because it's the first thing they tell you when you answer their call, so I will leave that part out.

MCSE: "What's wrong with your mail server"
Me: "Nothing"
MCSE: "That what you think"
Me: "Well what kind of errors are you getting?"
MCSE: "Error 550 Mail relaying is not allowed"
Me:" Ok are you connected to us?"
MCSE: "No"
Me: "Well see that would be the problem since we don't have an open relay server"
MCSE: "Oh (Hangs Up)"


Later in the night I found out this particular MCSE actually does tech support for an ISP I used to work for which makes that conversation even worse.

MCSE: "What's fucking wrong with your server now?"
Me: "What are you talking about?"
MCSE: "It keeps telling me I can't find the server"
Me: "What is listed as the server?"
MCSE: "127.0.0.1"
Me:" Well see the problem is that you don't have the mail server typed in"
MCSE: "Yes I do"
Me:"127.0.0.1 is a local IP. So your machine is our mail server now?"
MCSE: "What are you talking about?"
Me: "It seems that in your classes they would teach you what an internal IP address is"
MCSE: "Umm"
Me: "How bout you type the right mail server in and give it a try"
MCSE: "(hangs up)"


I love being a dick to people like that. They call up yelling and screaming about something on our side being broken but it is 99.9% of the time something they fucked up.

Next people that piss me off are our web-hosting customers. I get calls every day and it starts with "I am the webmaster for blabla.com what is wrong with your server" These range from the following things.

You have all the images linked to your hard drive that why it does not work.
Your domain name is not registered
Your domain name does not point here
No, you can't check your email from aol.com
My frames are not showing up right. Well you have no frames on your page.


These people are the one's that piss me off the most because now I have to go to school and get a piece of paper that says I know what I am doing instead of just going out and doing it.