My Linux Life

Stage One: Bewilderment
Customers used to be amazed in my expertise.  Even in High School, computers and technical knowledge just came natural to me.  I felt comfortable near them.  What few friends I had were stunned at my quick learning.  In the job field, when a customer saw how I fixed their problems, they were just in awe.  I felt good about myself.

Stage Two: Appreciation
As I moved into the Fortune 500 companies, I would take call after call.  To each end, I would hear praise of my ability to fix their problems without even seeing the machines they were dealing with.  To them, it was almost divine.  They were so thankful and would sometimes offer me gifts in appreciation.

Stage Three: We are a necessary nuisance
As time passed and everything got outsourced to other countries for cheaper labor.  Customers felt wore down by having to constantly call back.  When they did get an American support person (me), they were no longer happy about it.  To them it didn’t matter how much we helped them. Whatever problem they had, it was somehow our fault they had to call. Even if we had nothing to do with their problems. We’re still at fault and they began to treat us like shit.

Stage Four: Alien Language
Due to stress of the previous years and the near death of having suffered heart attacks from that stress and sadly some previous unhealthy living practices.  I have removed myself from doing tech support to focus on my weight loss and heart health.  I still heavily practice technical knowledge and education, but I rarely show it off to those in need.  When I do… For example: the other day a customer tried to use a credit card and the reader locked up.  I explained that the device was suffering from a memory leak in the poorly written Java programming that runs the device and that I needed to reboot the device so they could have a successful transaction.  The man looked at me in fear.  Like my knowledge was somehow impossible to have as an average human.  He looked as if he was about to run for his life by his facial expression. Or perhaps he wanted to throw his feces at me like a primate would.

Has the world population really fallen that far?  That there are people so dense in the brain that they can’t handle those of us with knowledge?  Then again, I refer to nearly every news outlet and those who believe it all.