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He said he was going to conference in a senior technician to help us fix the problem. I heard him dial. I heard another tech answer. And then he was gone like promises after a congressional election.

“Uhh…hello?” I asked.
“Can I have your name and mobile number please?” the new tech asked me.
“Where’s the other guy?” I wondered aloud.
“What other guy? How can I help you?”

I told him what had been happening, and that the previous tech was supposed to conference him in. And then it all came into focus.

“Did he just dump me on you?” I asked.
“Yeah, probably,” the new tech responded without the slightest hint of surprise.

My bet is that the first tech knew he couldn’t resolve my problem, so he called it an escalation or some such, and dumped me on some other poor schnook to protect his own metrics. Nice.

Well, the new guy sounded geekier at least. Not necessarily smarter, but somehow more nerdy and therefore, in my estimation, more likely to solve my problem. You know what they say about assumptions. After 30 minutes he said, “I’m going to need to read up on this and call you back.”

That call never came.

I called Sprint’s returns hotline and asked if I could walk over to the local corporate store, which is close to my office, and try a different device. Maybe something in the WiFi antenna had shorted out on the first one…?

You’re going to try to sell me a phone after what I just told you I’d been through?

“My company provides my phone,” I told him to push him off.
“Oh,” he said, “who do they use?”
“Verizon.”
“Well,” he said handing me his card, “we have better deals than they do. You should have whoever manages the phones at your company call me to talk about it.”

I should have done exactly that because the guys at Validas, where I work my day job, have made careers out of whipping guys like Chad into shape. But I was merciful. “You really don’t want me to do that,” I said. Then I walked out with my second new device.