If You're Having a Bad Day at Work ... Think "I'm Glad I Haven't got THIS Guy's Job" Found on the Internet Half a year ago a customer sent in a message saying that he wanted another email address, and he wanted to know how much it would cost. I replied that customers were allowed up to five for no added charge. All I needed was a name and a password for each account. I have changed the names in the following exchange to protect the idiotic. Customer: Oh, then I would like Jane Doe for my wife, John Doe for my son, Jennifer Doe for my daughter. I'll ask them what passwords they want and send you another message. Me: I'm sorry, in my earlier email I was not very clear. I apologize for any confusion. I will try to be very clear in this message so that there will not be any problems, but if you do have any, you can always call. All email addresses must be between four and twenty characters. A character is any lower case letter, number, the dash or -, and the underscore or _. You CANNOT use any spaces or other special characters. The same rules apply for your password. Here are some examples to help you in your selection. The usernames of: Jane Doe, John Doe, Jane_Doe, and John_Doe are NOT usable because of the capital letters and the spaces. These would be fine: janedoe, johndoe, jenniferdoe Or you could use: jane_doe, john_doe, jennifer_doe If you wanted something shorter, you would need to use middle initials since your first initials all start with the same letter. For example, if your son's middle initial was "p" you could use: jpdoe Their first names would normally be another good alternative, but someone else already has "john". So you could use "jane" and "jennifer" but NOT "john". "johnny" has also been used, but "jonathan" has not. Do you have any further questions? If this is not clear to you, you can call during office hours and ask for me, or call after hours and get whoever is on 24 hour tech support. Customer: I think I have it now. How about this: jane, with the password of as4you* bunny, with the password of ^to^ johnny, with the password of astronaut! Are those okay? Me: As I said in my last message, there are no special characters allowed, so the passwords given are not usable. Just so we are clear, when I say special characters, I mean ~!@#$%^&*()+=`[]{};:'",.<>/ and ?. NONE of these can be in the username OR password. Also, you can not use "johnny" because someone already has it. If you can get me usable passwords for "jane" and "bunny" I will put them in the system immediately. Then we will only have to worry about your son. Customer: Oh. Now I get it. Then I want to use these: jane doe with the password of supermom kitten with the password of kitten, unless they can't be the same, then I'll use daughter starranger with the password of blaster Can you tell me how to set those up? Me: I put "starranger" in the system with the password you listed. The instructions on this page are how to set up the extra email accounts on your computer. If you have ANY trouble with this, or if ANY error occurs, call out help line. The number is xxx-xxxx. All of us can help you with setting up these email addresses. Just print out this message and have it with you when you call. This is a 24 hour tech support line. In fact, I suggest you call and let us lead you through it step by step over the phone. It will be much easier. The bad news is there is still a problem with the other two addresses. "kitten" is being used by someone else already, and I can not put in "jane doe" because of the space. In case you still wanted them, I did put in "jane" with the password of "supermom" and "bunny" with the password of "daughter". Are those okay? Customer: I don't know what is happening! I set up johnny, with the password of astronaut, just like the instructions said, and it always gives me an error saying that the password is bad! What is wrong! I don't want to try and set up kitten and jane till you tell me what is wrong. Me: Sir, as I stated in my earlier email, johnny is not available. Why don't you call the 24 hour tech support line so we can work this out faster than through email? Believe me, it will be easier. Customer: I CAN'T CALL THE HELP LINE! I don't get home till you are closing! There won't be anyone in the office! I WANT to do this over the phone but CAN'T because you close so early! Me: Sir, as said many times before, this is a 24 hour help line. Even though we are only in the office from 9am to 6pm, the help line pages us. In fact, this week is my rotation with the pager so any time from now till Sunday you can speak with me. This will be to your advantage since I'm familiar with the situation. Customer: (sent to my boss, then forwarded to me) I have sent several email messages to your tech support and received NO REPLIES! All I want is a few additional email addresses, and I learned from your site that I can get four more for free. But when I send email to the technical address, I get no answers. Can you help me? Me: (to my boss) He is lying through his teeth. Here are his letters and my replies. (I included the emails here) My Boss: Okay. I'll call him. That was the end of the email exchange for a while. My boss called the man and asked him if he had ever gotten any replies from the tech mail address. The customer denied that he had. So my boss read him one of my replies and asked if the customer had gotten it. He denied that he had, so my boss read him his next email and asked why he was replying to mail he never got. The man then broke down and explained that he was: Confused by my telling him that some names were not available. Could not call the tech support line since it was only open on the weekdays during office hours. Found the instructions on our site too confusing. My boss then spent over three hours on the phone leading the man through setting up the other email accounts. The next day the man called tech support to complain that he had changed the mail accounts to "johnny", "jane doe", and "kitty" and that they had stopped working, so he was going to call on the weekend to have us help him again. He never called back about the email. Three months later, his computer broke down, and he brought it to the shop. I worked on the machine. He had "uninstalled" some software by deleting the directories and then wondered why the computer would not boot up. He remembered seeing many of the programs putting things into the "windows" directory, so he had deleted as much of that as he could. Miraculously, re-installing Windows fixed his machine. When he came in to pick up the machine, I asked about the other email addresses. He said they were too much trouble for him, and that he just started using hotmail instead. I told him that that was probably a better choice for him. But it gets better. Throughout the next five months, we had no less than two calls a month from this man. His settings, including the DNS numbers, email addresses, home page, and so on, would mysteriously change. He blamed viruses, his kids, the weather, and everything but than himself. One day he called to cancel. He explained that his son was moving away to college and would have access there, and so since his Internet access had only been for his son, he would no longer need it. We threw a small office party after he hung up. We shredded his account on the server and sighed a great sigh of relief. Three days later he came in with a laptop. He wanted his account back. Apparently he had terminated his account because his son was taking the computer with him to college. But this guy's job, "a sensitive job with the federal government," required him to have Internet access from home, and apparently it had been this way all along. His boss had apparently asked him what was going on when email to him suddenly started bouncing. So he was supplied him with a laptop so he could continue working at home. We set up the laptop for his account, and he took it and went home. Less than an hour later, he called. He had changed his access phone number, his primary DNS number, his WINS numbers (which we don't even use), his password, his email server names, and his email address, and had put a password on the laptop that he did not remember. We fixed it over the phone. The whole time he denied having changed anything but admitted to "checking on the settings." It took over two hours. We are hoping for an act of nature, or that he will get fired and they will take back the laptop. - o -