With Halloween coming next week and everyone needing a good fright, we bring you Tales from Tech Support. I spent five years working over the phone tech support, most of it with Comcast in Baltimore. Oh, the stories I can tell…
During my short time working Apple the most famous person I spoke to was the grandson of Admiral Bull Halsey. The guy who sat cate-corner from me had an LPGA golfer. Didn’t really get too many famous people. At Comcast they had a whole VIP section you could call, so that Cal Ripken or any other famous people wouldn’t have to wait on hold as long as the regular peons. That didn’t stop former Ravens quarterback Kyle Boller from calling in on the regular line though.
Only one time did I ever have someone drop the dreaded phrase “Do you know who I am?” on me. He was a really young person (at least it sounded like that from his voice) and his cable modem was not activating. He had been passed from person to person until he got to me (OK that part I’d be a little mad at too). I found the error and sent the request to have it cleared. When he asked how long it would take and I couldn’t tell him since some errors cleared easier than others so he asked me if I knew who he was. I simply responded “No” and that was that. Guess he wasn’t as famous or important as he thought. If he had made an issue out of it I would have told him I had just moved to Baltimore and since I worked the night shift I couldn’t watch the evening news to keep up with everything. By that time the error was cleared and I was able to activate his modem. Problem solved.
I did google his name afterwards just to see if I could find something. He was a doctor at a local hospital.