Search This Blog

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Process - Pah!

The Gorse Fox's laptop was behaving well and he had just prepared some minutes for a meeting. Unplugging said laptop he waddled off to the meeting only to find the laptop in a serious sulk. No matter what he did he could not release the screen nor move characters or cursors on the screen.

The power-off button was beckoning, and in the end the Gorse Fox succumbed to temptation. The problem was that the laptop would not restart properly. It got part of the way through the Windows startup and then just hang there. using the Safe Mode, GF managed to gain access to the files and applications, but not the network. Files were immediately squirrelled away onto an external drive.

He called "engineering" in Starfleet. Scotty wasn't there but a dusky sounding maiden told GF he had to run a full virus scan and then a disk cleanup. GF responded that this was not a logical response to symptoms and please would she book him in for a laptop rebuild. Patiently, she replied that until she had received the diagnostics from the actions she had requested she could not take further action. GF fingered his Phasar, but realised that he was up against "process". Process is not there to apply logic and solve problems. It is there to torment and to get them caller off the line.

Four hours later the diagnostics are still running and nothing has been found. GF is not best pleased and may have to be Mr Grumpy when he calls "engineering" back



2 comments:

James G. said...

There is nothing that riles me more than dealing with tech support people who follow "process" even though my own diagnoses are at least two steps ahead...

I've forgotten more about desktop support than you'll ever know, phone centre droid!

The Gray Monk said...

I'm glad I am not alone in thinking these thoughts when calling "support" for a Microslosh operated problem ...