Warning: I'm not in a good mood. This may not be pleasant.

What exactly is the pool from which technical support representatives are chosen? Remedial readers? Vocational school drop-outs? I'm pretty sure that at least some are drop-outs from speech therapy classes, mumbling into headsets that are probably not even in the vicinity of their mouths, making us constantly ask "What?" "What did you say?" Now, some of that may be due to my advanced years, but I don't think so.

And what is that "you're the one calling for help so you must be the idiot" attitude all about? Clearly, anyone who can make it through the telephone maze to actually speak with a live tech support representative has proven that she isn't stumped easily.

My current theory (it changes a lot) is that technical companies know they can't help you. The lack of personnel who can read a technical manual, much less understand and interpret the information, has forced companies to outsource technical support to other countries while they work harder at creating more and more complex telephone systems to thwart our attempts to reach them in the first place. Aarrgghh. A lot of people, after hours of trying to get to the one person in the company that might have been able to help, give up and just buy new equipment.

Today, at the top of my list is the telephone company, which just happens to also provide my Internet connection. Sort of when it's working if the planets are aligned just right and there are no sunspots or gamma rays The gap between services promised and service delivered is big enough to, you know, get something really, really big through.

I'm not saying they don't try to deliver what's promised. I can't actually say whether they're trying or not. I only know that after two onsite visits and conversations with more than a dozen different tech support staff, the person who finally figured out what was wrong was me. Furthermore, part of the answer was found (by me) in their own product specifications.

Now maybe I'm being picky or maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. It seems like the technical support staff of a company should know something about the technical specifications of the products that company sells. No?

But, then again, maybe we should feel sorry for the person having to handle complaints about bad equipment only to find that the user hasn't actually turned it on yet. Most software companies don't bother with the expense of providing user manuals anymore, since they discovered that the very last place the average user will look for answers is the manual. So perhaps I shouldn't judge so harshly. After all, politely explaining to users that the "printer must be connected to the computer in order for it to work" must take its toll. Maybe tech support staff deserve a break but I don't think so.