It’s often best to let the experts do their job instead of trying to do the job for them. Unfortunately, some people have to learn this lesson the hard way.

In today’s story, an internet technician is almost done installing the internet when a customer insists he can finish the job himself. It’s time for malicious compliance!

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Is the cable live? Then let me finish it myself

This one is from my early days when I was working as a technician for an internet provider company but it still brings a smile to my face when I remember it…and recently had a technician coming to install my internet and it all came back.

I was working mostly residential buildings and my job that time was pretty simple – come to the basement, find our distribution box, patch the cable to the right endpoint for the requesting flat, go to the flat, fix cable outlet when needed, verify cable is live (there is signal coming through and it is the right signal – this is somewhat important) connect modem, verify all good tell the happy customer the internet is ready to use and off I go.

One customer wasn’t very helpful.

One day I am doing my job again but got this know-it-all guy.

Had to call him to let me in the building and it was a blast right from the start.

First he told me he knew exactly where my company distribution box is only to lead me to the electricity provider box.

Then he is absolutely sure his flat is number XX while the papers state YY and indeed was YY.

The customer presents the opportunity for malicious compliance.

There were a few more “helps” from his side which I skip to avoid this becoming a book.

But eventually we are up in the flat and I am going to check the signal but the guy is like “come on, hurry up, need my connection, need to work on super important stuff”.

I tell him I need to test the signal first but here he opens up my malicious compliance window – he says “you do not need to do that, just connect the cable, if the cable is live, just go and I will finish it myself”.

He gave the customer one last chance…

I still give him a chance by explicitly stressing that test will take some minutes only, but if it does not work, I will not be able to come earlier than in a couple of days.

No, absolutely not, he can finish it by himself.

Okay, my man, you’ve got it.

He had to come back to fix the internet.

Already too long story, to make it short – cable was live, but the signal was from local TV antennae, not from our cable internet.

This was actually relatively common issue at that time (older residential buildings, reused wiring, cable patching to “a wrong one”) and was not so hard to fix once you knew what’s wrong.

I only imagine what the guy tried to make it work before calling our call center to schedule my visit again.

What I know is I came to the flat 3 days later only to be greeted by his lovely wife which made me some tea and thanked me for being kind and fixing the problem.

Things haven’t changed much.

To come to a closure – when a technician came to install my internet a few days ago I made him some tea and told him to take his time and do all that’s needed.

We had a little chat and guess what – the process and issues are still the same and recently he was telling his junior colleague why checking “if cable is live” is not enough.

It’s a good thing the wife was the one who was there during the second visit!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

The customer made a bad decision!

Arguing wastes so much time!

Here’s the perspective of another former internet technician.

This reader treated his cable installation tech well!

Another reader treated his satellite TV installer well.

I bet the customer’s wife told him to stay away during the second visit!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.