This one comes right out of the support center I worked in right after getting out of the Navy, so say 2008ish.
Two weeks before this call we had our first call from a sweet old lady who worked at a veterinary clinic, if memory serves it was more of a small town/rural vet clinic. One of the techs had helped her download and install Internet Explorer 6 on her machine so she could check the webmail for her clinic. The call took quite a bit longer as it was a dial-up clinic and a larger knowledge gap. Another ticket closed and on to the next one.
Now to the call in question, this same lady called and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t seeing new emails, she was rather frustrated and it took a while to understand what was happening. I was mentoring a newer tech and he was struggling to explain that she needed to connect to the internet to get her email. After going around several times I decided to take over and see if I could help.
It took a bit longer and in the end, I ended up telling her that she needed to dial-up and download the latest update to the internet so all her mail would be downloaded and updated. She wasn’t entirely sure, but after walking her through dialing up and “downloading the internet” she was happy again. I explained that she would have to do this periodically and the “internet” was always updating, frustrating I know.
When the call was over the green tech looked at me confused and was struggling to understand why I didn’t keep trying to explain to her how the internet worked. I told him I did that we helped her do what she wanted, but sometimes jargon and persistence aren’t going to resolve the issue. She wanted her email so I walked her through getting her email in a way she understood and could accept.
Sometimes you just have to travel a different path to get where you want to go, like downloading the internet.