Failure to Communicate

My internet connection was doing strange things last week; every 20 minutes or so it would just stop working.  I would lose my work, freak out and then suddenly be connected to the internet again.  Annoying, but since I couldn’t find the problem, I wasn’t going to worry too much about it.

I depend on my internet connection.  I get downright squirrelly without it.  When it goes out, I am cut off from my work, from my friends, facebook (which I am sadly addicted to) and Sinfest comics.

Then my internet connection just up and died.  I called my friendly internet provider people and was immediately connected with a cheerful robot woman.

It is just me, or does it seem that automated menus are deliberately designed to be frustrating?  Ideally, it would be easy to route your call efficiently through the voice menus to the right person the first time.  Usually, I end up on the voice menu roundabout with no end in sight.  It’s like those birthday cards that say “How to Entertain a Moron (turn over)” and on the back of the card — which is glued shut — it says “How to Entertain a Moron (turn over).”  Repeat endlessly.

By the time I am connected to Steve, a friendly tech person, I am frustrated and cranky.  I tell Steve the problem in a slightly hysterical voice. 

Steve is very calm. 

“Do you have a cordless phone?” he asks.  I tell him I do.  “It’s probably the phone switching channels.” 

I’m ashamed to admit this, but, I glared at my TV when he said this.

Steve then launches into an explanation of how to fix the internet connection.  This is what I heard:

“Basically, you just plug your rice cooker into the modem and hit the switch under the plug behind the thingy and yell “BING!” real loud.”

I am barely listening to Steve.  I’m still puzzled about my cordless phone.  The phone has channels?  Really?  Why did I not know this?  Who makes a phone with channels that can mess with the internet? 

I ask Steve to go back to the phone channel thing, because I still can’t seem to comprehend this and unfortunately Steve can’t seem to explain it either. 

At this point in the conversation, I’m feeling really frustrated and stupid.  I know that we are speaking the same language, but we are simply not connecting.  The more he talks, the further I am from understanding anything he’s saying.  By the end of our “conversation” I am not even listening.  I’m simply agreeing with everything he says just to get off the phone before I lose my temper and pitch the computer out the window.

I’m trained to make sense of things, to ask the right questions so I get clear answers that I can understand and use.  I have done this a million times so I could write about it for someone else.  I have helped other people avoid the frustration I’m feeling right now, so why am I so frustrated myself?

Is this how users feel while reading poorly written manuals?  Do I ever make my own users feel this angry?  Is someone out there right now saying, “That McTavish woman couldn’t write a clear sentence if her life depended on it!”?  I sure hope not.

I called my boyfriend, Joe, and explained things to him and we got everything fixed.

Steve could have helped me more by not speaking in technical jargon or at least finding another way to explain the technical stuff.   I could have asked more questions and been calmer instead of feeling frustrated.  I guess learning to listen without getting involved emotionally will be a good skill to perfect.