Forgive the formatting, on my phone. Another post related to my days in a STEM curriculum provider and the joys of dealing with public educators. So while I was working at this place, the company was paying for me to get a second degree (in software development) as such, they decided I would also provide technical support as well as curriculum advice and general assistance. A call comes in through the tech line, and I am greeted by a very jovial “You are speaking to the new robotics and electronics teacher for (school redacted) in DC public schools.” This was kind of cool because he was in a good mood, and I intended to keep him in one. However, he was a TALKER!!! This guy would not stop talking about everything on his mind. It took me 10 minutes to discover this guy needed help installing a program called Multisim on his laptop before he went to the training sessions our company requires teachers have before we let them handle our curriculum. To put it bluntly, Multisim fucking sucks. It is a program that allows you to design electronic schematics, as well as simulate the existence of circuit boards. It is a gigantic download because the makers of it (National instrument) won’t separate their installers and versions. When you download this say for windows 10, you get the previous windows versions sitting in your hard drive somewhere, wasting space, and doing God knows what. Additionally, there is a large secondary install you need to do for its drivers called Xilinx. It is a gigantic pain in the ass. This call is going to be at least an hour. I politely suggest that he starts the download, and simply call back when the download is done, and I would be happy to walk him through the install at that point. No good, he wants me there in case something goes wrong, as if I could troubleshoot his network over the phone. So I have him navigate to a support page we have and open up our install directions to reference, and prepare to wait. I sit there for 45 minutes waiting on the download,listening to this guy talk, he claimed to have played for the Red Sox from 1983-1985 (I did a detailed search on this guy as he babbled on, he may have watched a MLB game once in a bar, but he never played). I ask him if the download is done for about the 15th time, and he says “I think so.” Good, we are making progress. I ask him to open up the installer, but he can’t find it. I spend 15 minutes trying to explain to him how to check where Chrome is sending his downloads, and another 10 trying to get him to open up File Explorer and look for the damn thing. It’s not there. OK, fuck it, I will just install the damn thing for him. I manage to get him to navigate to Fast Support, so I can remote into his computer and get this program installed. Hopes dashed, his school’s security has it blocked. This is where things get bad. Me: OK, please think carefully, when you hit step 4 of the install guide and the window popped up asking what directory to install this to, did you deviate away from where Chrome wanted to send this? Him: No, no box appeared. Me: What? Why did you not say this 40 minutes ago. Him: Hey I clicked on step 4. It’s starting to dawn on me what is going on. Me: Did you just click on the picture in the guide? Him: Yeah. Me: And you believed this would install the software? That would be akin to me watching a video of a guy changing oil on a car and then wondering why the oil in my car is not changed. You actually have to perform the steps in the guide. Him: How? Me: By minimizing the PDF install guide and actually doing the steps. Him: I don’t know how to switch between the guide and the “computer”, and I don’t like how you are talking to me. Me: Are you legally licensed to teach robotics and electronics? Him: WHAT!? Me: Your district has signed a legally binding agreement with us that you are licensed by your state, (or in this case, the District of Columbia) to teach these topics. I do not believe for a minute that someone who has professional experience in the field of robotics and electric circuit design would be struggling as much as you. Are you infact employed by your school or a volunteer? (big red flag, can’t use volunteers, must actually be legally employed teachers) Just dead silence on his end. Me: I will be reporting this interaction to my supervisor, our legal team, and your supposed supervisor. Have a good day. At that point I hung up the phone, told my boss, and our legal team, and contacted his district. I ended up getting a very light slap on the wrist for being rude near the end of the call, the district withdrew him from training (denied a refund), and my supervisor clipped the last two minutes of the call and sent it to everyone on the team. This ended up being a big LOL event as my coworkers bombarded me with how to videos for the next two weeks combined with dumbass questions like “Hey OP, I watched this video on gardening, will that make my plants grow?”.
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