Not really a rant, but I'd like to share some of the nonsense I have to deal with every now and then.
As some of you may or may not know, I work for Cisco Systems (under Sutherland’s un-watchful eye) in their presales department as a hardware specialist. I basically tell engineers what works and what doesn’t when putting together a solution or upgrade.
So, every now and then I get a call from and engineer or network admin who gets paid triple what I do. Today I get a call from a guy who right off the bat says he will never purchase from Cisco again and he's calling to complain. (I'm not Customer Service BTW) He has a 6 year old Pix firewall that he said has been working seamlessly since he bought it (yeah, what else would you expect), and he recently did an "upgrade" and he can't get in to the PIX and his network is f*cked blah blah blah, and our Tech Center wont help him because he doesn't have a service contract with us.
Well he's all pissed because he's claiming security breaches and we suck because we can't help him. He refuses to buy a service contract and won't buy from us ever again. (FYI, if you don’t have a service contract, you're SOL, this isn't the run of the mill Linksys stuff, it's like teaching someone how to fly over the phone, if you don't know what a friggin CLI is, don't touch it!) Anyways, come to find out, he did a Java update and it's not allowing him to access the GUI interface of the PIX. He hasn't a clue how to console in to the damn thing, and it's OUR fault. The PIX is working dandy, but this smartass decided to update the JVM is EVERY computer on his network, and he's locked out of the only way he knows how to get in to the PIX. And yeah, it's Cisco's fault, we suck, we don't care about the small businesses, blah blah blah blah. Who's paying these guys? I need their job. The sad thing is Cisco is now making their way in to every home across the globe to market to theses SOHO and small businesses. I can't wait till the calls start rolling in, in fact, I probably won't.
