Phone Calls

Phone calls

Various entertaining phone calls I had over the years working at Heathkit...

After spending a lot of time on the phone explaining some complicated concepts to someone, they said,
"Well, I understood everything you told me. Obviously, you are not very competent!"
and they hung up on me. Apparently if they understood me, I could not be worth talking to...

I had someone call trying to figure out what things they needed to attach an external SCSI hard disk to their Macintosh. After explaining the different connectors, the terminator, the cables and thinking we had figured out what they needed, there was a slightly awkward pause, then they asked me,
   "What is wrong with them?"
   "What do you mean, what is wrong with what?"
   "You keep saying they are 'scuzzy'"
oh. well, Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) is often pronounced "scuzzy", but there's nothing wrong with it.

I don't recall if this happened to me or if it was someone else at the store, or if it was someone pulling someone's leg or an honest question. So lump this as an "urban legend that might have happened". Someone called asking for the "Book of Don'ts"
   "The What?"
   "The book of Don'ts"
   "I'm sorry, but what are you refering to?"
   "My Computer came with a book of Dos. I'm wondering about the Don'ts"
Oh. MS-DOS. Does kinda imply an MS-DON'TS...

One day, I answer the phone, it's a guy from our biggest customer, in fact, probably the chain's biggest single customer. It's my job to keep him happy. Larry's got a tough job, he has to go out on site and do a lot of installations and when things go bad, he (rightly) gets frustrated. He's not happy at the moment. And he's letting me know it in no uncertain terms. I let him go for a while, then finally say,
   "Larry, are you yelling at me because of something I did, because of something my store did, because of something my company did, or are you just yelling at me because I'm the only one who will listen to you?"
    (brief pause, followed by laughter)
   "You are the only one that will listen to me, Nick."
   "Ok, let's see what we can do to take care of your problem."

I answered the phone, caller asks about our Zenith SupersPort 386SX, our best laptop at the time List price: $4995.00.
    "What's the price on that?"
    "Fourty-nine, ninety-five"
    "Oh great, I was hoping to keep it under fifty dollars"     "No, sir, you misunderstand -- that's four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars -- basically five thousand dollars"
    "OH MY GOSH! THAT'S EXPENSIVE! But it's so small, why is it so expensive?"
well, ya see, computers are not sold by the pound, but by the technology in it, and this thing has the best technology available at the moment...