A curious modern phenomenon ...
... and something that the etiquette manuals of my youth in no way touched on:
Should you try to make small talk on the phone with the tech support person while waiting for your computer to restart?
Between dealing with every aspect of The Crazy Lady's digital existence, and the new-found luxury of having my own computer and AppleCare to boot, I've spent a lot of time on the phone with various tech support personnel recently. And I always feel like I should be saying something during the twelve minutes of dead air while Illustrator crashes twice, Photoshop refuses to close, and then I forget my password and can't log back in to my desktop - though I have no idea what, exactly, I should say. "Do you live in Nebraska?" "I swear I wasn't looking at porn." "So, looks like your job hasn't been sent to India yet." "Oh, wait ... should the computer be plugged in?" "I bet some people are really annoying on the phone, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?" At the very least, it seems like I should be giving computer-status updates: Okay, I'm closing Safari ... now Mail ... I just hit restart ... oh, wait, InDesign was still open, it's taking a while to close ... still closing ... now it's closed ... it just shut down ... there was the startup sound ...
So really: what's the etiquette? Do you need to chat, or should you just shut up and give the poor SOB three and a half minutes without some idiot yakking in his ear?
Should you try to make small talk on the phone with the tech support person while waiting for your computer to restart?
Between dealing with every aspect of The Crazy Lady's digital existence, and the new-found luxury of having my own computer and AppleCare to boot, I've spent a lot of time on the phone with various tech support personnel recently. And I always feel like I should be saying something during the twelve minutes of dead air while Illustrator crashes twice, Photoshop refuses to close, and then I forget my password and can't log back in to my desktop - though I have no idea what, exactly, I should say. "Do you live in Nebraska?" "I swear I wasn't looking at porn." "So, looks like your job hasn't been sent to India yet." "Oh, wait ... should the computer be plugged in?" "I bet some people are really annoying on the phone, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?" At the very least, it seems like I should be giving computer-status updates: Okay, I'm closing Safari ... now Mail ... I just hit restart ... oh, wait, InDesign was still open, it's taking a while to close ... still closing ... now it's closed ... it just shut down ... there was the startup sound ...
So really: what's the etiquette? Do you need to chat, or should you just shut up and give the poor SOB three and a half minutes without some idiot yakking in his ear?