…to talk like this and act like that.

Most everyone has had to call a tech support phone line at some point. No matter who I have conversed with on this topic, they usually feel roughly the same way about it.  They’d rather have their eyes poked with rusty forks then have to go through a call to a technical support line. I understand their pain. Perhaps more than they might realize since I have actually been stabbed by a rusty fork…not in the eye, but it still really hurt! And sometimes even I would rather be stabbed again by that fork then call a support line. Too bad it’s part of my job.

Generally, I don’t really like to talk about my job, much less write about it. I’ve always been warned…don’t ever cross the streams, that would be bad. But it’s a little bit unavoidable in this topic, so there’s that. I understand the pain more than a fork in the eye, I’ve spent a great deal of time on both sides of those types of calls. There is the side where I’ve been the tech support person on the phone trying to impart some sort of arcane wisdom from the dark reaches of cyberspace to help solve why a mouse pointer keeps changing into an hourglass. Those conversations can be left for another time. This little anecdote is about the other side, my own calls into tech support.

Over the years I’ve been through it all on IT support calls. Quick and painless ones or long drawn-out multiple hour-long affairs. Some conversations that proved very helpful, others that you wonder if they have ever even seen a computer. And I have heard hold music, far, far more than my fair share of hold music. Minutes, hours, days and weeks of hold music. Hold while they talk to their boss, hold while they look up your question, hold before anyone will actually even start talking to you. I’ve even been put on hold for an hour and a half to wait for the next available technician with 23 other calls ahead of me, only to be disconnected when finally reaching the very end of the queue.

When most people complain about their experience on a tech support call, they inevitably mention they were connected to someone in India that didn’t know what they were talking about. My experience with off-shore tech support is a bit different. First of all, on some topics, I’ve found some of the Indian tech support agents to be the most knowledgeable that I’ve come across. I’ve spoken to engineering agents and teams of agents from India that write and explain code that would make the heads of their US counterparts just spin in bewilderment. I’ve also spoken with agents from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, France, and Italy, as well as others from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head and were just the ones I had bothered to ask about location. I am sure that if I dug deeper, there would be many other countries represented in my pool of experience as well. No matter where the agent is from, there is one thing I have found in common with all of the techs of all nationalities. The good ones make sure that you both understand each other.

There is a Kilimanjaro of vital information that can be lost in translation and it doesn’t matter if the language is nationality-based, or jargon-based. Whether someone is speaking in Urdu or in tech acronyms, they first must make sure that the person listening actually comprehends the words being said. This concept can get tricky when one is speaking a language that is actually their second language. This is also where your internal translator can get a workout when trying to filter what you hear into what you understand.

Most of the time, I am fine with comprehending accented English. It can be kinda fun to guess where a person is from based on the inflections and words they pronounce. Even though I find the conversation still works, I do find myself having to work a little harder at comprehending the words I am hearing.  My brain chugs a little as it spends time re-verifying that I heard correctly, and I can see where that would be mental tripping hazard for a lot of people. I can also see how that trip up could cause instant frustrations and bias when encountering the same sounds again. This whole idea became very clear to me one day after I had a particularly challenging hour long troubleshooting conference call with four pretty smart people all working to solve a problem together. All four people just happened to be from different continents speaking with their own accented English. I honestly had a little bit of a headache when I hung up, it was exhausting, and all I was really doing was internally translating variations of English!

A stunning illustration of how much extra work your brain is forced through when processing accented English comes when you see how an automatic message transcription service translates a technical call from a person speaking English as a second language.  I just so happen to have some great exhibits where the results speak for themselves.  There shouldn’t be much background needed on the problem being solved, and I won’t say which country the tech was from.

After working for several hours on some ongoing issues one day in the relatively recent past, we took a break from our phone call for my helper to do some research.  He called back some time later and left a message for me.  My messaging service translated the following:

Call #1

Eric Riley from the social and support team calling in regards to an incident so that it really sure what this means. So hoping … that there will be a you that the hotel H A … you can come home and is for candy supposed to supposed to be so please it’s urgent … I wanted to confirm this notification press onto any means of a little bit. Thank you have a nice day

It seemed to start off pretty well there at first, but you can see that it quickly went downhill. I knew in great detail what he was supposed to be calling about but I couldn’t even come close to figuring out what that text implied he was saying. It really didn’t get much better than that either. The issues continued and I received several more calls from the same company. The next message I got on this problem was from a different agent…

Call #2

Yeah hi Denise this is louis from Microsoft in supposed been calling in regards to in case the last week we will be sleeping so hopefully … I e of the do this via the Internet and phone is giving us the just wondered who is about on this case you do because I am suspended pending snow storm … please let us know how you wanted to close to do this is thank you.

At least we got a company name out of that one! Over the next couple of days I received a few more messages on the same support issue from 2 different support agents, with varying degrees of translation success.

Call #3

Hey hi this is louise from Microsoft into for the call is in regards to a new this severely sure we will … you just been tied off all food inc. if you know the proposal template in this case. Thank you any line is that nobody.

Call #4

Yeah hi could … I was hoping this is for this … So hopefully just wanted to discuss this issue … selfish and wondered were doing on this is … for the defer those belts that is listed you as part of the dentist office there but if you do the whole beach and wonderful to this message. So Beach … she’s on the Fulton. Please take me to work with me please two donation’s love..

Call #5

Hey how you please visit with from Microsoft me supposed to be this is in regards to Juanita supposed to be open the same we have received a non issue will continue to investigate and I will be do that you had it in time and open each of Alan and … I was hoping for me to just … that she said he’s only do it and send the other two phone calls from your side as want to the city to make it sounds good? But I have been off so please let me know how you wanted to thank you this is Willy.

Call #6

Yeah hi liz this is Lee from Microsoft beautiful in this call is in regards to an interest in either insurable. If anything’s couple of days … you had … ovations from the back and say they can support those for sex and the city. So just wanted to check over the issues is what I did know talk. I was not any minute not want anything just wanted to call and thank you in advanced.

By the way, at no point were these conversations ever actually interacting with anyone named Louise, Liz, Lee, Juanita, Denise, Fulton or Willy.  I’ve known more than a few techs that shortened their given name so that it would seem more pronounceable for Americans, but the name Willy was never one of them.

I was able to call these agents back and we eventually worked through our technical difficulties, but I did find myself amazed that we were able to collaborate at all through our linguistic difficulties. It helped me be more appreciative of what the human brain can comprehend and interpret. Think of your brain doing those same translations the next time you call in and get Raj from India. I would bet you are translating his instructions a lot better than the hopeless text above! Think of what Raj’s brain is having to sift through as well, I bet his is doing more work than yours, never mind the cultural differences.  Sure, both your brains will make some mistakes, it will be frustrating, and you might get a bit of a headache.  But think about how cool it is that you can even communicate with each other at all…and remember, Raj probably has a headache from listening to you too!

The other day my wife and I decided to go out for a dinner at the local Lone Star Steakhouse. This was the first time in quite a while we had been tempted to go to that particular place. There were several reasons for our absence, but since the recent revamping of their menu, and quasi-update to the decor, we decided to give it another shot.  There were quite a few very interesting new things to try, the prices were better and overall it was a very enjoyable meal out on the town.  We were finishing our dinner and the glasses of tea were getting very nearly empty when something happened that I found completely derailing to my inane dinnertime banter. It kicked off a bit of self psychoanalysis that completely preempted our crucial discussion of whatever our cat was doing just prior to leaving the house.

A waitress (not our own) was passing by, carrying a stainless steel pitcher. She stopped by our table, gesturing with the pitcher towards my one-third filled glass of tea in the universal gesture of “would you like a refill?”. She supplemented her motion with the fairly simple question “you had regular tea, right?” 
Believe it or not, I froze for a moment while I had to process her question. I verbally stumbled for a moment, and then replied in a way that she didn’t understand at all.  But before I get into that, I need to supply a little back-story.

Unbeknown to me previous to this fated evening, Lone Star had augmented their menu of drinks to include several fancy flavored iced teas.  As our waiter was running through the list of flavors, I practically pounced when his list reached “Blackberry”. I didn’t really care what else was on the list, I would float away on a river of blackberry iced tea and would be unnaturally happy for doing so. On hearing the list of flavors, my wife, also pleased by the options, changed her drink order from water to Prickly Pear Iced Tea. I will freely admit, prickly pear cactus as a flavor was quite intriguing to me, but not enough for me to change my order. Besides, it would be very simple just to try a little of my dinner-mate’s drink without losing any precious blackberry.

As dinner went on, I was provided with an additional glass of my chosen beverage before even half of my wife’s was gone. By the time the meal arrived, hers was also ready for a refill. A manager that brought the meal noticed the empty prickly pear glass and said she’d get it filled right away. However, our waiter efficiently noticed the same thing as well and in no time at all, my wife had two new glasses of prickly pear iced tea that she could never possibly finish. Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, I kindly offered to help with one glass and we both spent the remainder of the meal happily sipping on the cactus flavored goodness. 

This brings us back to my moment of mental incapacitation. When the kind waitress stopped by to pose her question and fill my glass with tea, my brain tried to determine what the correct answer was and it had an hour-glass moment. The simple question of “you had regular tea, right?” shouldn’t really be that difficult to answer, but I might as well have had a “Loading…” sign over my head like a lagging computer.

I ordered blackberry tea, so that is technically what I had. But, I switched and was now drinking my wife’s extra prickly pear tea. I never really ordered it and our waiter didn’t know I switched, and she wasn’t our waitress. How were either of them to know? On the other hand, I could have just had her fill it up with regular tea at this point and drank that instead.  In reality, this girl didn’t really care what I ordered, she saw an empty glass and thought she had the right stuff, so she was going to fill it.
Why was I hesitating?
Trying to pick the “correct answer” was more difficult than I anticipated. So what were my options here?

1. Answer directly: “No, thanks though!”


2. Answer directly but tell her what I actually had ordered: “No thanks, I ordered blackberry tea””


3. Answer directly but tell her what was in my glass: “No thanks, I have prickly pear tea””


4. Answer her implied question of “do you want me to pour this in your glass?”: “Yes thanks!””


5. Answer her implied question, but explain anyway: “Yes! I had a different flavor, but regular is fine.””


6. Answer the larger question if I actually wanted any more to drink: “No thanks, I’ve had enough””

So there are six options…and each one could have led with a positive or a negative response, so that’s twelve.  The way my brain works, I had to pick the “correct” one. I had to pick the one answer that was the most precise.  The problem was, they were all fairly similar, if spoken correctly.
She stood there patiently as the gears of my mental engine clicked, sputtered and coughed. I turned the key and cranked the cranial starter again and again as the minutes ticked by, the poor girl’s arm weakening and lowering from the weight of holding the full pitcher as I stumbled through my intellectual stall.   Ok. It wasn’t really that bad, but it is pretty crazy how long a couple seconds can feel in that kind of scenario.

Of course what really happened is that I paused thoughtfully for a moment, selected the right answer and calmly replied.
Right?
Nope. I panicked.
“Uhmmm……” I eloquently replied, “I had the cactus one”
“The what?!”
At that moment, I realized that it was very possible that this poor girl probably had no idea that prickly pear was supposed to be a cactus flavor instead of some sweet tree fruit.
I had fumbled, but I tried to recover.
“The prickly cactus tea…”
Blank stare. Another fumble.
“Err…the prickly pear cactus tea”
She paused, very bewildered, clearly wondering what I was really drinking.
“Um…I don’t know what that is…”
She sheepishly shuffled away.

If I hadn’t been a complete socially inept buffoon and had I selected any of the other twelve answers, we could have avoided some unpleasant awkwardness, and we both could have gone on happily with our respective days.  Somehow though, I had managed to pick the thirteenth option from the list…the one that makes practically no sense at all. A mild case of internal panic kept me from just being conversational and answering a simple question.

I know others can relate to that feeling as well, but I seem to have a close personal relationship with the awkward, paralytic pause over the inconsequential. 
I need time to process! 
Is it a matter of being slow? 
Is my cpu missing a core or duo? 
Or am I just getting old?
Actually I know it’s not age since I have been this way ever since I can remember. I remember thoughtfully filling out long essay questions on tests with simply six or seven words.  Each word carefully chosen to say exactly enough to be correct, but not an extra word more. 
Precision should be efficient! 

Precision in conversation though can be quite annoying. The pause for thought breaks up the flow and can be awkward. For some reason, I feel the need to divine exactly the correct words. Typically I don’t find them, so it comes out awkward anyway! You’d think at some point I’d try to give up on precision and just say stuff. You might think that is what I’m doing here by writing this, but, no. You’d actually be laughing at how long ago “the other day” (from the start of this story) has turned into….so, I won’t tell you. I’ll give you a hint though, it wasn’t this week.

One day I hope to master this thing you humans call “conversation”. 
Clearly I still have a bit to learn. 
Latest lesson: when someone offers to refill your tea, just say “yes”.

This isn’t a recent story, but even though it is just a little old, I thought it would be a good thing to share as a cautionary, yet humorous tale.

It was summer, and my wife an I traveled down to Peoria Illinois for my brother’s medical school graduation. It was a great day and I was very proud of my formerly little brother on his big day. He had worked very hard for years to get through medical school, and it was great to see him pass this significant milestone. After the graduation ceremonies, the family spent time in the hotel restaurant and lounge area talking, eating and having a generally great time. In the middle of our evening, a tornado warning interrupted our celebration and the hotel staff whisked us off to a conference room to wait out the demon wind. In the end, the storms came and passed with lots of bark, and luckily, not much bite. All the excitement from the celebration and predicted doom of storm was more than we could possibly handle, and figured it was time we adjourned for the evening to spend time with our beloved sleep.

Back in our room, we began unpacking all of the things that we pretend to be a necessity for an arduous two-day journey 110 miles from home. Creature comforts that we, never quite successfully, attempt to transport from from our home-life and inject into the fabricated reality of a hotel room. After making as much of a temporary home as possible out of 350 square feet, I turned my attention to the very practiced art of the bedtime routine. Of course, this routine relies heavily on the not-so-artful practice of packing with foresight. Very quickly, an error in the forethought process was uncovered: a missing container for my contact lenses. Normally this wouldn’t be much of an issue except for the detail that the contact container was for my Clear Care lens solution.

If you are not a contact wearer, the name of this solution may mean nothing to you, but allow me to explain. One type of contact cleaning method uses two solutions. Step number one uses a mix of chemicals that remove enzymes on the lenses, and the second step uses another solution to rinse and neutralize the harsh cleaning chemicals that you use in step one. Clear Care is a one-step hydrogen peroxide based liquid that reacts in a special container over 6 hours to clean the lenses and, in the process, break down the hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. I’m sure you noticed the choice of the words “special container”.

Yes, it is THAT special container that I had so brilliantly left out of my “packing with foresight”. But, being the prepared, resourceful and ingenuous Eagle Scout that I am…no hold on, that should actually be Dr. Eagle Scout…and perhaps more important, it is not actually me, but my freshly graduated brother. So to rephrase with even more accuracy: being the tired, unprepared former b-average college science major that I am, I started to formulate a plan for getting this contact solution to work without it’s so-called special container!

Step one, figure out how this solution works. Here was how my brain broke it down: Clear Care is based on a low percentage solution of hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is sensitive to exposure to light and oxygen and will break down quickly when in the presence of one or both. So, therefore if this is a low percentage solution, and it is exposed to air overnight and then sunlight in the morning, it should break down some of its potency and should have a similar effect as using the special container…right?

Let me state at this point, that I’m normally not prone to this type of dangerous experimentation, but exhaustion was creeping in quickly, and I just wanted sleep. I wasn’t really thinking about how smart this was, and I wasn’t really thinking about…well I can stop there…I wasn’t really thinking. I pondered the wisdom of my idea for only a moment or two and then spent a significantly longer amount of time than that mumbling aloud about how silly it was to forget an item so simple. No matter, on to step two. I grabbed a clean hotel glass, squirted in an eighth inch of Clear Care liquid, and dropped in my sight-saving discs. This whole process took a frighteningly short amount of time to clumsily rush through. At this point, it was easy to stumble on to step three: collapse on the bed and fall asleep to whatever fascinating, albeit mildly blurry program that was playing on the History Channel.

After sleeping in for a sufficient amount of time to clear a foggy thought process, we awoke to a bright and sunny morning. It was at this point where I began to question the wisdom of my eye care plan of the previous evening. I rehashed the logic in my mind, and I had a nagging doubt if this was going to work correctly. However, I had convinced myself the night before and I was not dissuaded so easily. I approached my contacts with only slightly hesitant confidence. I fished the first disc out of the crystal clear liquid in the drinking glass where it had been lazily floating all night. I placed the contact on the tip of my finger as I stood in front of the mirror and paused a moment. “Well, here it goes!” I placed it in my eye.

It is a little difficult to describe what happened next since the descriptive timing is very skewed compared to how much time actually elapsed. It seemed as though about 10 seconds passed as I waited for my vision to adjust to the contact, but in actuality it was more like a tenth of a second before I started to feel that something may be wrong. And when I say that I could feel that something “may” be wrong, I mean that I became very disturbed by the sort of hyena-type howl filling the hotel room, while simultaneously feeling as though I had somehow managed to place only my left eye in the path of a shooting jet of molten lava. I concede that it would be very difficult to imagine what the searing pain of a volcano vomiting directly into your eye could feel like, but I still contend that it would be about as equally comfortable as what I was feeling at that moment as I hopped up and down in front of the bathroom mirror.

I believe a total of 2 seconds of jumping and howling had passed before I started frantically clawing at my eye to attempt removal of the shard of flame sticking in my cornea. At first I could not overcome my eye’s seemingly sensible instinct to clamp the eyelid shut to protect itself, but it was too late for protecting and was now just in the way, it had to come out! I finally managed to pry my eye open through the pain, but now I had difficulty actually holding still long enough to stick my fingers in to pull out the contact. Removal attempt one failed miserably, more hopping ensued. Attempt two failed, as did attempts three through ten. It seemed as though it was not only sticking on and melting my eyeball, but was burning a hole right through my head to the back of my skull.

After many painful attempts, I was finally able to wrest the offending circle of silicone from my eye and I practically threw it onto the counter expecting some sort of relief. In more ways than one, I was sorely disappointed. I did know that one of the worst things to do was rub my eye, but the temptation was impossible to resist, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t think at the time that It’d do much more damage than a magma bath. I was conscious enough to stop rubbing and remember that the best thing to help in this case was an eye wash. A little luck! The hotel had one of those high arc faucets in the small, cramped counter space that passed for a kitchenette. This gave me just enough room to stick my head in the sink and have my eye directly under the flow of water. Although the wash provided some abatement in the pain, having my body doubled over the counter with my head under a running faucet was far from my ideal way to start the day.

After about ten minutes of running water directly on my eyeball, I felt safe to retreat from the sink. At this point I felt immensely relieved, but far from comfortable. My eye was sore and throbbing a strange combination of numbness from the cold water and menthol-like burning from the caustic liquid. I could feel the veins in my eye bulging and rubbing against my eyelids, which were tender from some twenty minutes of prying, and now the whole side of my head was wet and dripping cold water down my shirt.

Then, I looked in the mirror. What I saw looking back at me was a little frightening. There was no “white” of my eye anymore, it was now completely red. I don’t mean “ow, I got an eyelash stuck in my eye and now I need some Visene” red. I mean full-on “oh my God call a priest, we have a total Exorcist possession and I can see Satan glowing in his eyes!” red.
Really…it was freaky.

I was still hurting, but after a quick trip to Wal-mart for an eye wash kit, and some more rinsing under the handy-dandy hotel room faucet, the danger was gone. The rest of the day was spent trying to hide my eye by holding it closed, wearing a baseball hat down low, wearing dark sunglasses, anything to shield my satan-eye. I had to tell the whole story several times to the rest of the family…which fortunately for me, contains several health care professionals. A couple of examinations inevitably ensued to ensure that there was no serious damage…after which everyone was free to laugh at the situation. Other than my bruised ego, there was no long term damage.

Every now and then I look back on this experience and seriously question my sanity. The packaging of Clear Care is now a little more jarring in its warnings about how to NOT use their product, and it is possible that it may have helped me avoid that painful experience. But I have to be completely honest, it’s also possible that I would have done the exact same thing. It is a little hard to say, but my little bout of ingenuity might have even over-powered the bolder and stronger warnings of impending liquid doom.
And there is where the moral of the story arises.
Even if you’re not using a Red Ryder bb gun, be careful, you can still shoot your eye out!