Tech Support Drone

I talk to people all over the world in my job, and over the past six months I have noticed a few fundamental differences in how they approach their job.

Europeans are my baseline. They are generally very knowledgeable about what they do – not all of them, but most of them. They are no-nonsense and interested in solving problems without assigning blame because they do understand Murphy’s Law very well. French customers will always ask for French support even when their English is quite good.

I seem to get a lot of Americans whose knowledge of the subject matter is very basic. Not all, mind you – but a lot seem to require much less advanced help than Europeans. Management escalations also seem to be more common and more serious for them.

Japanese customers are very precise in their questions and will want to know the answers in unending detail. They’ll often follow up with questions for clarification or further details. It seems like they want to know every quirk and every contingency. I think this is their way of covering themselves in case their co-workers, bosses, or customers ask them and they do not want to have to reply “I do not know”.

Indians are the most “difficult” of the bunch. They seem to lack creativity and they will often ask a question multiple times, even after it has been answered. For example, I had one customer who asked me every few minutes “Can just reboot the device on our end?” – to which I repeatedly told him, “No, do not do this, you will lock yourself out of it.” They also expect you to babysit them the most, and they will very often ask you to “give them an official answer in writing for my management”. The reason for this is very simple; it seems that in India, an employee can – and often will – get fired for the smallest mistake. I actually can understand it – if there is almost no job security, you will not want to risk yours by taking any chances. Still, it makes working with them a little difficult at times. At least the Indian guys are unfailingly polite and exceedingly patient.

I may be a terrible geek, and rather plain-looking too, but I can proudly say I have had plenty of relationships over the years. However, it seems that most of these relationships are really, really weird.

My current “girl of interest” is a Chinese girl who lives in Japan. Let’s call her Lin. She isn’t officially my girlfriend – the distances involved are way too large for this. However, we spent some great vacations together in the past, in Japan, China, Thailand, France, Germany, and a few other countries; and we talk to each other almost every day.

Of course we’ve discussed the problem of distance in the past, without any real conclusion. It’s just very hard for me to learn Japanese, or Chinese for that matter; and even if I did it would literally be years before I could speak the language well enough to live there.

Things have moved ahead a little recently; two months ago she told me that she signed up for German classes, which would begin in May. She claimed there was no deeper reason for it. “After I was in Germany, I simply became interested in the language.”

Right.

That’s not the weird part yet. Near the end of April, she suddenly disappeared for a few days. I was already starting to get worried, but she showed up online again and everything seemed back to normal. Except she replied to my text message with an email, didn’t want to be called on Skype, and significantly changed her behavior online as well.

I finally figured out what is going on, partially at least. Her email shows that she’s currently located – get this – somewhere near Berlin. She’s completely avoided mention of this, pretending to still be in Japan; and she hasn’t showed up here in Munich either.

I am fairly certain she didn’t find herself some other guy in Germany; and when I asked her why she’s acting so oddly she said she would explain it soon, but it “wasn’t anything bad”.

I am not sure whether I should be happy – because she’s learning German – or angry – because she’s not telling me what’s going on. I guess I just have to wait and see what happens.