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Imagine working in tech support, and your performance is partially judged by how quickly you wrap up each call. What would you do if one caller really didn’t understand much about computers and needed extra assistance? Would you rush through the call anyway or take as long as necessary to help them out?

In this story, one tech support worker was in this situation back in the early days of the internet. He was supposed to complete each call in an average of 8 minutes, but one call was taking much, much longer.

Keep reading to find out what happened when his manager confronted him about this phone call.

How to make a senior manager roll his eyes and cringe at the same moment.

Backstory: Back in 1998-1999 I worked for a company that had a contract to do tech support for a dial-up internet provider, which you probably can guess.

This contact stated we had to have an average call time of 8 minutes which is super hard to do because walking people who literally just put their computer together and now wanted on this new thing called the internet.

I had a few calls that I struggled to help them with and took 20-30 mins at times to fix.

Let’s get this story started…

Cast

Me

Senior manager (aka my boss’s boss boss) Nice guy and the first time I ever talked to him.

Story: One day a senior manager came over “Hey do you know you have been on this call for over an hour?”

OP explained what was taking so long.

My reply “Yes sorry I had to teach this user how to double click icons.”

The manager rolled his eyes and cringed after a minute for him to recover from this knowledge and a look of pity. “Are you almost done with the call?”

I replied, “Yes I am wrapping up I will hopefully be done in the next 2-3 min.”

The manager sounds awesome.

Manager “Good I will see to it this call is removed from your average stats. As I don’t think it’s fair to count this call against your stats.”

I replied, “Thank you for doing that.”

The manager walks away shaking his head.

Stats like that really aren’t helpful. Not all calls or callers are one size fits all. Some really do need extra assistance. The manager sounds like a great guy.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

Another person who worked at a call center during that time shares their experience.

This person knows how frustrating it can be to try to help someone understand how to use a computer.

One person shares their former colleague’s experience.

Some people will never understand computer basics.

It’s harder for some people than others to adapt to new technology, and the internet was new technology at that time. Eight minutes isn’t all that long for a phone call, especially when some customers might be quite confused about what to do.

I’m glad his manager helped him out.