"I can't get online"

So, I got back from a weekend trip to Oklahoma pretty late Sunday night. My flight left OKC at 4:35, so I should have been home around 7:00 – not so. I have to tell you – there were some really stupid people traveling this past weekend. It is just not that hard to gather your belongings and exit the plane. This is not an event that should take an hour and a half! Of course, I was seated at the very back of the plane (right behind a lady with a screaming baby) so it seemed to take forever for it to unload, not to mention the 30 minutes we sat on the ground in Houston waiting to taxi to the gate. Needless to say, I was more than irritated when my ride was finally able to inch their way up to the pick up spot.

It was when I got in the car that my family informed me that the internet quit working after I left town on Thursday. Keep in mind, I have shown both of my siblings how to ‘fix’ the problem if it stops working when I am not there. (Usually you just have to unplug it and then plug it back into the wall.) Silly me, I didn’t think those instructions were hard to follow.

So, I go to the computer to get the problem resolved because no one has been able to check his or her email all weekend. I turned it off and back on again and it still wasn’t working. So, after a few tries, I decided to call customer service. It’s funny – you never know really know who or where you will be connected when you dial an 800#. After THREE AND A HALF HOURS on the phone with various techs, I learned all about the weather in India, the Philippians and New York City. I have to tell you, it is extremely frustrating when you are having problems with a technical instrument and the person that you have called to help explain it to you does not speak English. I probably spoke with 6 different people who all told me that is was someone else’s fault that I couldn’t get an internet connection. Sprint said it was a problem with the router, Linksys said it was a problem with the Sprint, and so they kept bouncing me back and forth. Every time I was transferred I waited on hold for a least 20 minutes before getting someone new on the phone.

As you may know, I worked in a call center for a little over a year. Because of this experience, I try to be especially kind to the people that field my calls. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm. I was at the end of my rope. I just didn’t understand. All I wanted to do was connect to the internet and check my email!! It was working before. How could it just stop working?!?! In the calmest manner possible, I tried to explain this the girl that was trying to walk me through reconfiguring my router for the 3rd time. To which I hear “Yes, Maridiee, (Marilee in Indian), I understand that you are frustrated. I am going to help you now.” To which I said “Great! I would love for you to help me. Please don’t put me on hold or transfer me back to Sprint.” (And please put down that script from which you are clearly reading and HELP ME.) As I am sure you can imagine – at this point I was about to lose it. It was then approaching midnight and I had been on the phone with these people since 8:30 trying to get this fixed. I didn’t want to hang up, because I had come so far. I picked up the router to shake some sense into it and release some frustration when it all came clear to me.

In my siblings attempt to handle the problem on their own, they managed to unplug the cable that connected the modem to the router. Now, for all of you who are not computer savvy, that would be the equivalent of not having the power cord plugged into the wall (which I check first). I felt SO stupid. I told the little girl (truly, she was probably 12 years old – slave labor) that was trying to help me “um, I think I may have found the problem.” She confirmed that the modem and the router do have to be connected and once that was done we were back online! What a relief. As a preventative measure, I did call Mindy and Matt into my room to show them what to unplug and what to leave alone in the future. Of course, neither one of them touched that cord, so it must have just fallen out of the plug – yea, right.