Above And Beyond
This is my all-time favorite interaction with tech support. Late one December evening a number of years ago, I got an unexpected call from my boss. He said there was a fire at the office, and I might want to come in and see what was going on.
So I did. By the time I got there, the fire was on its way out, and I and a couple dozen others were standing around in the parking lot waiting for the firefighters to give us the all-clear to enter the building.
We had Internet service through an awesome local ISP at the time. The kind of small company that really cared about service. While I was shivering next to a fire truck, my cell phone rang. It was one of their techs, whom I had shared on office with at a different company years ago and knew well.
Me: Hello?
Tech: Hi. Just wanted to let you know that our monitoring noticed your Internet link is down, and we’re working on it.
Me: That might be because it’s on fire.
Long pause. Then:
Tech: Did you just say it’s on fire?
Me: Yeah, there was a fire in the building. I’m standing next to a fire truck right now. They aren’t letting us in yet.
Tech: Ah, well OK then. I’ll assume the problem is on your end. click
Despite the cold and the uncertainty (how badly damaged was the office, etc), I couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of it all. But because that tech was awesome, less than five minutes later he called back to say, “I just checked, and we have two portable generators that aren’t in use right now. If you need them. Just say the word, and I can have them there in two hours, any time, day or night. No charge”. Our contract with them had nothing in it about generators.