Helpdesk in Thailand

I had my first encounter with an IT technician team today. My internet has been down, so they brought in their IT team to investigate. Working in office settings, you definitely have your share of interacting with helpdesk. At my last job, they were called helplessdesk, sometimes flat out nohelpdesk. Turns out the rules of helpdesk in America are not bounded by borders.

Rule #1: Assume it's the user's fault. They figured the problem was the fact that I have a Macintosh. A few minutes later they said the problem was that it's because I have a laptop. The laptops are always the ones that have the problems connecting to the internet, apparently. Hey, they're the experts.

Rule #2: Don't listen to the user. I told them that I'd been able to connect to the internet before without any problem. I know how to connect to the internet, and I can tell when it's not working. Unfortunately they didn't hear me.

Rule #3: Check the least likely source of the problem first. They thought the problem might be a faulty ethernet cord. They did a test on my cord to check that it was still functioning properly. Astonishingly, there was nothing wrong with my cord. (See rule #2).

Rule #4: Waste the user's time. They had me go in to other people's apartments with my laptop to check the internet connection in there. Why do I care if I can connect in room 820? I live in 808, buddy. Then they take me to the server room to try to connect in there. Then they take me to the basement server room so I can see if there is a connection from the dungeon. Not sure why anyone would want to spend time down there. Period.

Rule #5: User gets frustrated over language barrier. If you work at a big company, or have ever had to call a helpdesk hotline, you know when you're talking to someone in a different time zone. It was hard for me to complain, because I was the foreigner, but if only I knew the phrase: "I think you need to restart the server" in Thai it would have saved us all a couple hours of our afternoon.

Internet is working again, everyone is happy, and I learned that helpdesk is helpful in the same ways anywhere in the world. Good helpdesk workers are few and far between. Give yours a high five if they really do live up to their name.