Dang DSL
My DSL Internet connection has been down for most of the night. I have had to fall back on regular old dial-up. The horror of it all!
When I couldn’t get online earlier this evening, I ran through every combination of things that could possibly be wrong between my modem, wireless router, and computer. No luck. I bypassed the router and tried a direct connection through the modem. No luck. This is one of the many things that I do at work. Troubleshooting the network in my department. I couldn’t get things to work but generally confirmed it wasn’t a problem on my end. So I broke down and called technical support.
At this hour (it was 9 p.m.), I get to speak with a nice Indian technician named “John.” I’m not convinced that was his real name. He started just about every sentence with “And would you now please kindly…” Very helpful guy, but I’m always a little concerned about the accents. He has an accent, and I’m from Texas. So do I.
I could understand his accent well enough. He seemed to be doing perfectly well with mine. But we hit a slight snag in communication as we started.
He asked for my full name. I told him my full name. Check.
Then my phone number. Check.
Then he asked, “How would you like to be called?”
Long pause from my end. I thought “by phone” seemed to be a viable option. But, as I thought about it more, it seemed to be a less than plausible choice since we were already on the phone.
In my confusion, I asked what I thought was a logical question at the time. I asked. “When?”
Long pause on his end.
He said, “While we are talking about your issue. How is it that you would you like to be called?”
Again, I thought “by phone” and again dismissed that as a poor answer.
I said, “I don’t think I understand.”
He spoke slowly in a patient voice as if he were speaking to a customer who did not fully grasp English, “How… would… you… like… me… to… call… you?”
Somehow that actually helped. I don’t know the how or why of it, but it helped. I finally realized that he might be asking “What name should he call me by?”
I ventured an answer: “Jeff?”
He said, “Very good, Jeff” in an approving tone. I know that tone. It is the same tone used by every math teacher I ever had when I finally ventured the correct answer to some horrible word problem.
I would say, “The train from Chicago would be going 40 miles per hour??”
And hear, “Very good, Jeff.”
John and I continued through the troubleshooting process and were able to determine that everything on my end appeared to be in working order. I could have told him that to start with. The line itself was showing an error.
According to his system report, the DSL technicians in my area were currently conducting “System Enhancements” to the network.
I’m going to translate that from DSL-marketing-speak into Texan as “Some dang sumthin’ broke and we’re fixin’ it as dang fast as we dang can. Now stop dang calling us. Dang.”
I’ll be on dang dial-up until they fix this dang DSL. Dang.