In which I STILL don’t understand how people can know so little about the services they use.

If you were the majority of Floridian customers I assisted during my shift at work this evening, you’ve just been through a massive 500-year storm that destroyed tons of shit, you either don’t have power or you’re running a generator, and you’re astonished that you can’t watch TV.

You don’t have power! Why in the fuck do you think your cable and internet should work? Irma was one of the strongest storms in recorded history. It did at least eighteen billion in insured losses damage (not counting crop losses or flood insurance), infrastructure is destroyed, farms are destroyed (Irma took almost half of the citrus crop in some areas), you had to fucking evacuate, and you can’t believe you didn’t return home to functioning internet?

Really?! YOUR CELL PHONE’S OBVIOUSLY WORKING, AND THAT’S A GODDAMNED TECHNOLOGICAL MIRACLE CONSIDERING THE CIRCUMSTANCES, but you’re mad anyway?

I have compassion for you, I do. It must have been and must still be incredibly stressful. But being a dick to customer service reps because you haven’t had internet for four days is just weird. Shit’s broken, my people, important shit, and if your neighbors down the block have cable and you don’t, well, I’m sorry. Life’s not always fair. Go watch TV at their house.

Multiple customers told me it was absolutely unacceptable for an outage to last four days. They demanded refunds, threatened to cancel (which, please, if you could get service from anybody else you’d already have it, and we both know it). It was a 500-year storm! Read a book, be glad you’re alive, and chill the fuck out! There are innumerable people out there working day and night to restore power, internet, cable. It takes time!

One customer admitted she had no power at home and was charging her cell phone at the corner store, but still freaked out about not having wifi in her house. It blew my mind. EVEN IF there wasn’t an outage and WE WERE DELIVERING INTERNET TO YOUR HOME, sweetie, IT WON’T WORK IF YOUR ROUTER ISN’T GETTING POWER. How can you not know that?

Furthermore, how can you not realize that if your house doesn’t have electricity, the node providing your cable probably doesn’t, either? Sure, installations like that have generators, but they only run if you can get to them to put fuel in them. If gas or the generators themselves aren’t accessible, they’ll go down. The network is vast, interdependent, and complicated, and service crews can’t even start working on them until cleared to do so by authorities. Internet service doesn’t just fall out of the sky, for fuck’s sake. Power outages, destroyed equipment, line cuts: there are tons of them because A MASSIVE GODDAMNED ACT OF GOD JUST ROLLED THROUGH.

I’m sorry your kids are driving you nuts without screens to occupy them, and I’m sure it’s a bitch, but your internet and cable will be restored when it’s restored. You need to back the fuck off the ignorant attitude and be glad you’re all still alive with homes to return to. It’s not like your provider somehow fucked up; it was an act of God. And at least your cell phone still works. You may be going over your data plan, but at least you’re online.