I had no choice. I’d already tried running Scan Disk in Windows, running Scan Disk in DOS, running Scan Disk on an Amiga, defragging the drive, bellowing the word “NOT!” at the monitor in various threatening tones of voice, spritzing the area around my computer with eau de lavender in order to “relax” it, and spending several hours on the phone in order to let it sulk in peace. I’d Dustbusted every single solitary cat hair out of the keyboard, to no avail. I’d disconnected all the peripherals, in vain. I’d cajoled. I’d begged. I’d prayed. I’d even unearthed the manual, hacked the ossified dust off of it with a chisel, and thumbed through it in search of mentions of voodoo death. Nothing helped. I had to call Microsoft customer service. And I really, really didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to call because the call itself would cost money, and because that call would refer me to another call that, while toll-free, would cost me thirty-five dollars, and because I felt as though Microsoft should give me the thirty-five dollars and not the other way around, since I hadn’t designed the damn Windows Update system so I would click on a damn update link that didn’t do a damn thing, save perhaps corrupting a teeny tiny itty bitty little melodramatic file that had probably orphaned itself and then slit open the belly of an MP3 and crawled inside, shivering and lonely and impossible to find, and so my hard drive is beating its chest and tearing its hair and wandering through the streets La Llorona-style, wailing, “WHERE IS MY CHILD THAT I DROWNED IN THE RIVAAHHHH,” and it’s bad enough that I have to tell an inanimate object to take a damn Xanax already, but I don’t think I should have to pay for the privilege, much less have to explain several times to several different people on a long-distance call to Redmond, WA that yes, I had in fact crushed up a Valium and stuffed it into the CD-ROM drive, and did they want to make something of it at eight cents a minute?

But I had to. I had to call. I called. I spoke to Vikram. Vikram gallantly ignored my sobs and helpfully referred me to Eric. Eric heard me out, sounded dubious about the possibility of actually fixing whatever mysterious thing had gone wrong, waited for me to blow my nose, and dutifully transferred me to Bryan.

Ohhhh, Bryan. Bryan is my hero. Bryan laughed at my jokes. Bryan waited patiently with me through approximately thirty-four restarts. Bryan talked baseball with me. Bryan read The Vine while we watched yet another interminable program execution fail. Bryan asked every other tech on the floor what they thought about my problem; Bryan promised me that they’d have Ozzy Osbourne as the hold music next time. Three hours on the phone, and the indefatigable Bryan would not and did not give up until we had to resort to a Win 98 reinstall, which…wait for it…worked. If you have thirty-five dollars to spend and a problem of any kind, call Bryan. Bryan rules.

I have already written to Microsoft, to thank them for hiring Bryan and to order them in no uncertain terms to get the man good tickets for the next Mariners home game, but I wanted to commend Bryan here also, because when it comes to customer service, a good Bryan is hard to find. I’ve come across Bryans before: Patrick at Sprynet, for example, who sat on the phone with me for two hours and helped me correctly reconfigure my entire Internet connection. My problem, in the end, had nothing to do with Sprynet per se, and consisted mostly of idiot fixes that I should have sorted out on my own, but Patrick hung in there with me and got to the bottom of the problem. He even emailed me the next day to check in. That’s customer service, people. That’s excellent customer service. Why? Because I still talk about Patrick two years later. Because I would recommend Earthlink still, today, even though they’ve got a shady pricing plan and their dial-up service works about as well as a Pinto, because one guy did a little bit extra for me.

I have a long history, of which my friends constantly make fun, of sending letters to companies when a product craps out on me or the new version isn’t as good. Other people joke around, like, “I oughta write a letter.” I actually write the letter. And when it gets results, I mention it, because it’s good customer service. Take the Goody Corporation. In one week, bristles fell out of not one but two Goody hairbrushes I’d bought, so I wrote them a letter and told them to use better glue. Five days after I’d sent the letter — FIVE DAYS, people — I got a Fed Ex package with ten new hairbrushes in it and a note apologizing profusely for the problem. And the new brushes’ bristles didn’t fall out. I still have a few left. That’s customer service. That happened four years ago, and I’ll tell anyone who will listen that the Goody Corporation is a wonderful little outfit. Why? Because they got my letter, realized that they’d pissed off a customer, and addressed the problem promptly.

Of course, writing angry crazy-old-lady letters is a great way to get free stuff. I wrote to Trident and bitched at them to bring back fruit flavor and I got enough gum in return to sink the Queen Mary, but that isn’t the point. The point is that many customer-service reps and departments don’t seem to understand how to provide the customer with actual service, and it’s really not difficult. When I call a hotline, I’m not happy. I’m upset. Something has broken or gone horribly wrong, and I want comfort, first of all. I want the customer-service rep to listen to my story, to say “uh huh…oh, dear” sympathetically, to reassure me. And then I want the rep to get on the problem. “Get on the problem” does not mean telling me that you don’t know how to fix that, sorry, or that, well, I should have checked the warranty, because you don’t “do that here,” or transferring me into a voice-mail system designed by Daedalus and dumping me there. Good customer service means knowing how to fix things and solve problems, and if you yourself don’t know how to fix it or solve it, it means getting off your headphone-wearing ass and finding someone who does, or a phone number I can call where someone will, or some sort of resource that will serve me. The customer. Who called for service. Yeah, I know that “it sounds like it’s broken.” I broke it, fool. Tell me how to fix it or your manager’s getting an earful. Yeah, I know that “it’s lost.” Find it. Resend it. Credit me for the shipping. And if you don’t know how, ask. And if nobody you work with knows, make a call. And if the calling doesn’t turn up anything, call someone else. No, no. No “it’s not my job.” It is your job, and if you don’t like your job, get another one, because that’s not my fault. But you should like your job. You should like trying to help people get things sorted out, and you should do your best, because when you succeed — when you save my computer, or you get my system straightened out, or you locate a package that went where it shouldn’t have and offer to resend it at no additional charge, even though UPS fucked it up and it’s nothing to do with either of us — I’ll tell other people and I’ll continue to do loyal business with you, just as I’m telling other people right now about the friendly folks at Amazon, who happily agreed to re-ship Glark’s birthday present without complaint when the dickweeds at Glark’s old address stole the first shipment.

I don’t envy the customer-service people their jobs. Customers can suck. I’ve worked retail; I remember. We all have bad days, and we all get yelled at by idiots, and Bryan told me a couple of stories about assholes he’d dealt with that curled my hair. But give us the benefit of the doubt. Try to help us. Work with us.

And for the customers in the crowd — dudes. Don’t yell at the rep as soon as she picks up the phone. She didn’t break your vacuum. She didn’t send the wrong size. She’s just answering the call. Calmly explain what happened. Tell her you need a replacement part or a change in the order. Give her a chance to figure out what went wrong. Don’t scream. Don’t threaten. Have your receipt and credit card ready. Thank her for her help. And if she does a good job, tell her so, and tell her supervisor so. These people get whaled on all day, and they’d really like to hear a compliment now and then, and the customer isn’t always right in the end, but they have to spend all day every day pretending otherwise. Give the Bryans their due.

About five years ago, I phoned up the Lakeland Bus Company in a snit because the driver on the route that day had point-blank refused to turn on the air conditioning. I’d spent fifty minutes with sweat pouring off me on a packed bus that also contained pregnant women, a guy had opened the emergency hatch to get a breeze going, the bus reeked by the time I got off, and I had loaded for bear, and when a nice lady named Jean picked up my call on that ninety-five-degree day, I let her have it with both barrels. As soon as I finished ranting, she said, “Oh my God. That bitch.” Jean clucked, horrified. Then she took down the driver’s name and the route number, and gave me an address where I could send an irate letter, and then she graciously accepted my apology for taking her head off. So I hung up the phone and went over to my computer and typed out a letter bitching about the driver that day, but saying that I felt much better after talking to Jean, and also that the regular driver on the route, George, kicked all kinds of ass over and above keeping the temperature at a comfortable level, and that someone over at Lakeland should give them both a raise and boot No-Air Lady to another route, or I’d start taking the train instead.

It’s a week later. I’ve forgotten all about Boilingbusgate. I get home from work and leaf through my mail, and there’s a fat envelope from the Lakeland Bus Company. Hmm. I open it up, and inside, I find a string of bus tickets, good for a month (retail price: fifty-five bucks), a letter telling me that they’d switched the sweaty driver to nights (ha!), and a nice handwritten note from George saying that he’d posted my letter on the bulletin board in the union office, because he’d never gotten fan mail before. (Sniff.) But George should have gotten fan mail, lots of it, because that commuter bus sucked every inch of my ass; only George made it bearable. But that’s the thing. Only George tried to make it bearable. Nobody else seemed to care — well, except Jean, and whatever kind soul decided to hook me up with a month’s worth of bus fare.

That’s the secret. If you work in customer service, or you have a company that deals with customer service, you have to care. You have to say “how can I help you” and “that’s absolutely no problem” and “I’ll look into that right away, just let me put you on hold” and “wow, that sucks — let me sort that out for you,” because not enough people do it, and because when you do, I’ll remember. I know the customers bitch and whine and don’t read the instructions. I know that they forget to put their street addresses on the form, and that they return stuff that they already wore at least twice, and that they try to scam you and then start bellowing when it doesn’t work. I know all that. But if I call, and if I can tell that you’ve done your best to help me, I will remember you, and I will go around talking about how you ruled, and I will hope that that makes it worthwhile for you to continue.

Especially you, Mark at Mars Inc., because I didn’t even want free M&Ms when I called to complain about the blue ones, but you sent me free M&Ms anyway. Mark is also my hero. Thanks, Mark.

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