2010.02.22 Help Services Demographics

There's this guy, let's call him 03_Mark_A, and let's say he's tired and frustrated with the non-stop slew of lusers trying to get their TurboTax to work. Or, rather more likely for the majority, they happen to be trying to run TurboTax when their fundamental ineptitude intervenes. I can sympathize with 03_Mark_A for not being overflowing with job satisfaction at this juncture, here in the eye of the tax season storm.

What I have less sympathy for is 03_Mark_A's incompetence.

I don't apply the I-word here lightly, mind you. I'm not using it to refer to the part where he thought I was having problems e-filing, even though that wasn't part of my question - it was an understandable assumption, and probably one of those FAQ items he suffered through repeatedly. And I'm not even meaning to apply it to the part where we determined that there is, indeed, a bug in the FORM-5405 that was giving an incorrect output and he couldn't find a way to alter the function - it was probably outside the scope of tools at his disposal.

No, the part that I feel was naked incompetence was when it was obvious that we needed to move up the tech food chain, instead of doing so, or even creating a ticket, he just ended the chat. A chat that I had waited for the better part of an hour to come online, I might add. And which I had started by giving the necessary contact information to allow 03_Mark_A to get back in touch with me if necessary.

And, as the one-hour mark looms nearer for the time I've been on hold for the call-in help line, I've had time to think some more about 03_Mark_A.

Getting back to that original sympathy, it is true that I myself would have a terrible time doing any help-line work. It would drive me nuts, and I'm certain that my natural loathing of people would be glutted with excuses to be made manifest. But it's not like the suck-factor of the help job would be surprising. I imagine that there's a small demographic of people for whom the job would actually be just fine, but for the most part I theorize that the majority of people would go into such employment expecting it to suck ass. And, therefore, these are largely people with limited options.

Sometimes options just get limited. I picked pine cones for a while, and ate rabbits I bludgeoned on the university campus (OK, rabbit singular). Sometimes you've just got to do what you've got to do. Sometimes, you're stuck with having to do sucktacular things.

But, you know, there's also the aspect that some people can be limited to only sucktacular options because they, themselves, suck. But how can you tell if you suck or not?

Well, if you find yourself having to work a suck job, and you still grit your teeth and try to do it competently: you don't suck. Period. In fact, if you have to do a suck job and endeavour to do it right anyway - I take my hat off to you sir/madame. Bravo.

But 03_Mark_A? You don't not suck.