A Crusty Old Programmer Reflects on the Value of Shutting Up

One of the lessons I've had to learn repeatedly throughout my career is to shut up. Flapping my jaw has caused me more trouble than any other single fault or failing I have.

Occasionally, though, I get to watch someone else trip over their tongue.

In the late 90's I worked for a coding chop shop, which perpetually ran on a financial shoestring and a prayer. Paychecks were regularly handed out along with a plea to not to cash it before Tuesday, so that it wouldn't bounce.

In a bid to bolster our revenue, the owner decided to start reselling dial-up internet service from a local provider.

Kids, ask your grandpa about dial-up internet!

Part of the reseller program required that we provide front-line customer support over the phone. Since we were chronically short of people and the contract didn't say that the front-line support had to be any good, our receptionist was press-ganged to be our entire support team.

For her part, she did well enough. Most of our customer's connection problems were fairly easy to troubleshoot ("Pay your bill"), and she was able to pick up enough knowledge to do a little technical support as well.

What she didn't really pick up on was the Dark Art of Dealing With Difficult Customers. One customer in particular (there's always the One Guy everybody dreads getting a call from) was especially problematic. His grasp of the internet, his computer, technology in general, and basic literacy was loose, at best. He would regularly call with non-internet questions ("Why is my printer squeaking?"), and had real problems following basic instructions ("Click just the OK button, please" sounds of furious clicking and typing over the phone. "It gave me an error").

One particular day, our receptionist cum support team was struggling to get this fellow back online, and he was being unusually stubborn, or slow, or both. After a long, mostly fruitless troubleshooting session, he accepted that his connection was as fixed as it was going to get for the interim, and said goodbye.

In a fit of pique, she slammed the phone down and screamed "Some people are just too stupid to be on the internet!"

Kids, ask your grandpa about phones with handsets that you could slam down!

This was not an especially uncommon occurrence; she was a bit too high-strung for support work and frequently felt the need to vent about her more difficult calls, often at volume, and almost exclusively to people who couldn't have cared less (ie. everybody).

About 20 minutes after her outburst, a truck rolled into our parking lot. I call it a truck because that's what it was least unlike, but if there were such a thing as the vehicle equivalent of a natural disaster, this was it. A man stepped out wearing cowboy boots that were a little too big, a ballcap that was a little too small, and so much dirt you might be forgiven for thinking he was plowing his fields literally with his body.

He clumphed in through the door and aimed himself at our receptionist.

"I heard what you said, and I ain't stupid."

The receptionist's face was a study in shock, amazement, chagrin, and horror. Truly, I have never seen such confluent perfection of mortification in a single expression, before or since.

What she hadn't realized was that our phones were cheap Chinese knock-offs of cheap American business phones, and if you didn't settle them just right in the cradle-- say, by slamming them sloppily down while venting your spleen-- they would sometimes sit in there just cockeyed enough to prevent pressing the disconnect switch fully. Which meant it would leave the line open. Which meant that when she screamed about people too stupid to be on the internet, Our Favorite Customer could still hear everything.

She repeatedly stammered out a sincere apology, offered months off his bill, and generally kowtowed in a manner befitting the the greatest of customer support specialists. For his part, our grimy client did not raise his voice, nor engage in personal attacks, he only expressed his deep disappointment in our service and his personal offense at our assessment of his intellect.

His said his piece, which took perhaps five of the longest minutes of our receptionist's life, clumphed back out to his truck, and left, whereupon she burst into tears. The rest of us socially-inept troglodytes just sat around with our arms hanging out of their sockets, unsure of what to do.

It is this story which helps me remember that no matter how much I am capable of learning in the realm of technology, I am still an incredibly slow learner; even with such a standout example so early in my career, I have had to repeatedly learn the hard way to just... stop talking.