Sometimes technology is not very user friendly, and it’s pretty bad when even the tech support employees understand just how frustrating it is for the average person to use a simple website, for example.

In this story, a tech support supervisor takes a call from a customer who had been waiting awhile to talk to someone. The caller had multiple questions, and the solutions the supervisor provided weren’t exactly providing the results the caller wanted.

She didn’t know she was talking to a supervisor, so she asked to speak to someone else, kind of accusing the supervisor of not knowing how to do what she needed to do. Keep reading to see how the caller reacted when he informed her that he is a supervisor and he does know what he’s talking about.

“I AM the supervisor!”

As a supervisor, I take customer calls only if a customer requested to speak to a sup, or if a call was waiting more than it should & nobody else was available.

One day, the queue was 2 minutes deep, so I picked up a call. It was a middle aged woman using a web site that provided info that used to be only available via direct snail mail, and she wanted to be able to print it.

Since the page didn’t have its own print or print preview link/feature, I advised her how to do that using her own browser, which I could tell was a bit of an inconvenience to her.

The caller had another request.

Then, she wanted to save the info displayed on the page for her records.

What site wouldn’t let you print a digital form easily? This one – It completely integrated the info into this gateway type of page (not even in a separate FRAME/IFRAME), and it was not available to download as a separate file (PDF, JPG, etc.)

In a situation like this, tech support becomes an art where the custom solution or workaround must be crafted with beauty that is in the eye of its beholder – In this case, a middle aged woman who didn’t want to be inconvenienced with technology – A potentially tough critic.

I advised her how to save the info as a HTML web page on her PC.

This sounds frustrating.

She wasn’t thrilled with that, so she asked me if there was a way she could open the payroll info in an MS Office document.

So I even showed her how she could attempt to copy the payroll information to a Word document.

At this point I had no doubt she was tangibly frustrated with how the formatting was turning out and how finicky text selection was on the web page with the payroll info.

“Can I talk to someone who knows how to do what I want?”, she told me in an annoyed tone.

The caller actually seemed pretty understanding.

“Ma’am, I understand your frustration with this process because I’ve used this web site myself for quite some time, but I AM the supervisor. I happened to answer your call because I saw you were on hold, and I can assure you that I am coming up with the best possible solutions given what we have to work with here.”

“Oh…okay” she said in slightly meek tone.

I asked her if she had MS Excel, which she did. So I had her copy & paste the payroll data into a spreadsheet there, and by the grace of God, she said that this spreadsheet solution would suffice.

OP was happy with how the call ended.

“Anything else I can help you with ma’am?”, I asked in half anticipation that she’d inadvertently self-discover another way this web site wasn’t user friendly.

“No, you’ve been helpful – Thank you”, she said in a pleasant tone before she hung up.

Those are the kind of moments that make my career worth while for me.

If you have never seen the Chappelle Show’s PopCopy training video (NSFW language) referenced indirectly by this post’s title, do it now!

It sounds like that website isn’t user friendly at all, but I’m glad the caller ended up being happy with the workarounds OP provided.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who volunteered to help promote a church event for free, then was surprised to find she had to still pay admission to get in.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person compares tech support to car repair.

Another tech support worker weighs in.

This person references the PopCopy sketch.

This is an interesting response.

What I love about this story is that the tech support worker understands how frustrated the caller must be. He understands that she’s unable to do what she wants to do very easily, and he offers her multiple solutions to try to come as close as possible to helping her do what she needs to accomplish.

I also love that the caller didn’t get angry at him. He’s not the one who built the website. He understands it can be frustrating to use.

In the end, they both seemed understanding of each other’s situation, and that’s more than you can say about a lot of similar calls.

A little understanding can go a long way.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who spent nearly 3 decades climbing the ladder at work only to be fired in a meeting that lasted less than a minute.