In which this is pretty much what I do. All day, every day.

“Okay, so, if I understand you correctly, you can’t connect to the Internet and you swear that your computer is giving you absolutely no error messages. Is that accurate?

“Well, before I can offer you any useful tech help, we need to get an error message. My records say you’re using Windows Vista, is that correct? Yes? Okay. Well, frankly, Vista’s dial-up networking implementation pretty much totally sucks, so we have to force it to give us a useful error message. To do that, we have to dial up from a particular place.

“Are you in front of your computer now? Is it booted up? Good.

“First, let me have you click on Start, and then go to Control Panel. Do you have something called Network and Internet? No? Okay, well, there do seem to be a couple of different versions of Vista. How about Network and Sharing Center, do you have that? Yes? Great. Okay, let me have you click on that for me.

“Yeah, that’ll be a left click.

“Now, on the left, under Tasks, the second-to-last item in the link list says Manage Network Connections. Do you see that? Yes? Okay. Click on that for me.

“Now, under the Dial-up header, do you have an icon labeled BMI? Yes? Good! Double-click on that.

“Double-click. …No. Double left click, please. It should open a new window called Connect BMI for you, once you do it right.

“Okay, now: are we speaking over the same like the computer uses to connect? We are? Okay, well, I’ll hang up now, and if you don’t connect to my server in 60 seconds, I’ll call you back. Remember: if you can’t connect, I need you to write down or remember the three-digit error code you’ll see, okay? Okay. Talk to you soon.”

Or if not that, then:

“So you can’t get online with your DSL. Gotcha. What brand of modem do you have?

“Uh, your modem is the little box you have plugged into both the wall jack and your computer. I need to know what brand it is.

“You don’t know where it is? Um. Okay, well, how about this: is there an Ethernet cable plugged into your computer? There is? Okay, trace it back to see what it’s plugged into.

“Yeah, see, that’s your DSL modem! Good job! What brand is it?

“It’s an Actiontec? Okay, well, do you see the Internet light on it? Is the light green, or is it red?”

And so on. Over and over, all day, five days a week. Srsly. Freaky thing is, I actually like this work. What’s wrong with me? (Wait. Don’t answer that.)

tech support n. a service provided by a computer or technological company for aiding or advising customers of its product or service, usu. by telephone or email; see ha ha. ha.