I just spent well over an hour talking to idiots who work for AT&T Broadband. Do they have an incompetence/cluelessness test that these people MUST pass to get a job?
We haven’t been able to so much as view the “network status” section of their website, much less log in to the account management stuff, since the final switchover from mediaone.net. I was finally transferred to “second-tier support” today. The guy repeatedly tried to tell me that the problem has to be on my end, because if other people reported the same problem “it would be posted on the board.” I pointed out that the first-tier support hadn’t transferred me or reported the problem in any of the other many times I’ve called—they just say “the website isn’t working.” He finally tried what I was trying, and got the same error messages. And FINALLY, he finds out that no, this isn’t working for ANYONE in Georgia.
Okay@mdash;so when is it going to be fixed? He doesn’t know. He kept saying “it’s a routing issue.” Okay, so who handles routing issues? He doesn’t know. So how is it going to be escalated to someone who can handle it? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have a way to do that. And on and on and on. He finally said, “I guess it’s some tech who does it.” Gee, and here I was thinking it was the janitorial staff.
And I rather doubt it’s JUST a routing issue because he wasn’t in Georgia and got the same results when trying to use any of our family’s user names and passwords. If it was just a Georgia routing issue, he should have gotten past it. No, it looks to me as if it has something to do with how the accounts for people in Georgia (all brought over from mediaone.net) have been set up. But no, he’s sure it’s a routing issue. I don’t think he really knows what “routing issue” means. He was just repeating the phrase like a trained monkey.
I also attempted to find out why their news server is down 95% of the time. I was told that it has to be my Outlook Express settings. (I certainly am NOT going to tell them that I don’t even use the damned program, but have Hamster set up to pull articles from multiple servers and feed them to my copy of Agent). Well, that doesn’t make any sense—I don’t make any changes, and about 5% of the time, I can actually access the server. There’s no particular pattern to the times of day or night that it does or doesn’t work. They STILL want to check my settings. Okay, I humor them. Yes, it’s all configured properly. And then they want to mess with my connection settings, which are working very nicely. (Again, I’m not about to talk to them about our LAN, firewall/router, hubs, etc. Wouldn’t be prudent.) Finally, somebody admitted that this problem happens all the time for people in Georgia, and nobody knows why. Nobody seems to know when it may be fixed, either.
Logic obviously isn’t something they actually respect over there. Or basic quality control. Or pride in one’s work and product.
So anyway, during the boredom I did the Yahoo palm reading thing.
Intellectual matters are probably important to you, and you have a natural ability to express yourself well.
You have plenty of inner ambition and so many different talents that you have the potential to be successful in many different fields.
You have so many interests that you may have trouble deciding which ones to pursue.
There may be times in your life when you give in to feelings of sadness or depression.
Your personality is dynamic and attractive to most people. The more branches you find in your heart line, the more friends and lovers you will have. Your sincerity and compassion make people like you even more.
There are inconsistencies in your energy level, possibly triggered by external factors or emotional changes.
You have a basically strong constitution and should enjoy good health most of the time.
You were probably given a good start in life by your parents. This could be based on your general upbringing, or on physical characteristics you inherited.
A major illness or setback is predicted near mid-life. You have the ability to recover from this.
There is a strong intuitive side to your nature, which may border on psychic or mystical ability.
I feel so virtuous. I haven’t yelled at anyone all day. Of course, I’ve been alone all day, other than the dog and cat. I haven’t yelled at them, either—even though the cat dashes out the door every time I walk the dog. But I really wanted to yell at the ATTBI idiots, and I didn’t even get cuttingly sarcastic. It would have been wasted on them anyway.
Yes, I’m in much more pain today than usual, due to yesterday’s trip. I knew that I would be. And yes, that is causing me to be grumpier.
And R’s school wants 20 BOXES of tissue per student! It’s on the school supply list! We don’t go through that many boxes per person in our household in a full calendar year, much less an academic year—despite frequent entertaining and several family members who have constant allergy stuff going on.
