I am married to a computer programmer who has programmer friends. Naturally, this leads to interesting tales of tech support terror, where these men have to help panicking, angry people find out what the problem is and then fix it.Here is how to talk with tech support if something in your computer goes wacky at work.

Step 1: Remain calm.

Step 2: Explain exactly what you were doing and what the error was, then answer their questions. Tech support is trying to help you, but they can’t do it unless they know what went wrong.  (“It just stopped working” is not helpful.)

Step 3: Try not to get frustrated. It’s not tech support’s fault your computer is broken, so don’t take it out on them – no matter how much you want to.

Example: Alex works for a web design company that is part of a publishing group. So, he works for Company A. He helped build a website for a totally different company, Company B, which is filled with people like the pointy-haired boss from the Dilbert comics (one of the features they wanted for their site was illegal but they kept insisting — Alex’s boss eventually had to explain that they could set the site up like that, but they would have to buy a private server just for Company B so that none of Company A’s other clients would get shafted when Company B’s server got shut down — and I think they stopped insisting because of how much it would cost).

Company B, except if they want changes to the way their website works, has no claim on Alex as an employee.

But today, Company B foisted off a bit of customer service/tech support onto Alex. This is not his job. They are not his employers. He, in fact, regards them as incompetent nincompoops with too much time and too little intelligence. But Alex’s boss sighed and said, “Just this once.”

Alex emailed the guy, asking for exactly what he’d been doing when the problem occurred, and the guy didn’t answer, just got mad and ranted about the proper way to handle customers on Alex’s site. Which it wasn’t. Then the guy demanded that they talk on the phone. Alex prefers email, but he complied.

If you know my husband, you’ll realize he’s one of the most patient men in the world. He has a mild temperament, a gentle heart, and the excellent ability to seem pleasant when he’s completely frustrated. Which got him an award from his company’s sales team last year, for being such a helpful techie.

So when I tell you that he came and sat down beside me after that phone call and said, “If we had been in the same room, I would have punched him,” it was no little matter. The last time I’d seen him that mad was when the DMV guy made me cry.

This is how the phone call went: Alex tried to ask questions and the guy kept interrupting him, saying “It doesn’t work” in a really gruff, fast, frustrated voice. This went on for a little while. When it stopped, Alex sat down at the computer and wasn’t getting what the man was getting, even though he did the same things. Finally, Alex asked the man to read off the url (the web address). The man did and Alex said, “Sir, you’re on a different site.”

The man was calling tech support for Company B when he was actually having problems with Company C, who had a very similar company name. And Alex, at Company A, had to deal with him because Company B was incompetent and tended to foist their problems off on other people.

Of course, the man argued. Denied it. Said “No, it says right here” and read off the company name (which had a few more words on the end than Company B). Then, when he realized he really had made a mistake, he said he had another call coming through and hung up on Alex.

Alex sent him a pleasant and very sarcastic email, noting that “It was very nice talking with you” (sarcasm) and gave him the information for Company C’s customer support.

So the moral of the story is – be nice to your customer support and your tech support people. They have to deal with a LOT of crap that really isn’t their problem.