I work in IT. More specifically I work in Networking. So every fucking day.
Best one was when I was working for an internet provider. Customer was complaining every other day their internet was not working to spec. They ordered a 100Mb service and could never get more than around 60Mb. Somehow they got it into their head that our on prem gear was the issue. But our on prem gear was gigabit capable.
But they never listened and eventually it got to the point where ceo to ceo calls were happening.
My ceo managed to make them agree to a call out where if no problem was found in our gear they would pay the $120 callout plus time for the 2 hour drive to the customer office but if I found a problem on their side we would compensate them for the services until it performs as ordered.I get there plug my laptop into their network and sure enough I get 60Mb speed tests. Moved my cable from their firewall to the spare port on our gear and get the full speed.
They wanted me to do the tests a few more times and I do and get the same result.
I looked up the spec sheet of their firewall and third line down of the throughput graph shows their setup only has a rated capacity of about 60Mb. Never heard a peep from them after that.I had a similar issue, except from the customer side. I had worked IT for 20 years in the US Air Force, and when I retired 2 years ago, I moved back in with my elderly dad in my old childhood home. I found out he was paying for 40Mb service (the best offered to our secluded countryside home), but we were lucky if we could get 15-20Mb at the best of times.
I spent several weeks troubleshooting over the phone with his ISP and they insisted it was a problem on our end. I rebooted our modem so many times, even configured it from scratch several times. I ensured the WiFi router I set up to extend the range across the house wasn’t slowing anything down along the way. I swore there was nothing out of place on our end and they needed to check the connection to our house. They didn’t believe me; thought I was just claiming to be an IT expert to skip steps and get someone out to our secluded neck of the woods (fair, but still…)
Eventually, I convinced them to send a technician out here, an hour away from their offices. The tech connected to the line outside the house and immediately packed up his tools and went back to his truck. He said he doesn’t even need to check my equipment; there’s definitely something wrong with the external line.
Turns out they have a service box at the end of my street. They don’t have a dedicated 40Mb line for my home, so they paired two 20Mb lines. One of the lines was completely disconnected; removed during maintenance and they forgot to reconnect it. The other was a shared line with my small neighborhood, which explains the drop in connection during high usage hours. The service tech connected the second line and we got twice the speed we used to.
I ended up dropping that company for Starlink shortly after, since they had no higher speeds in my area. Which was a significant improvement (200Mbps), but not quite the speeds I had hoped for. Now, thanks to Biden’s high speed Internet initiative, I’m getting Gb speeds to my neighborhood this summer. Can’t wait for that; as much of an improvement as Starlink has been over my old connection, it’s still slow compared to what I’m used to from my military service.
thanks to Biden’s high speed Internet initiative, I’m getting Gb speeds to my neighborhood this summer.
That’s actually happening this time? I’ll admit I haven’t payed any attention to this, but I kind of figured the isps would just pocket the money again.
My hometown had to request a local ISP submit a grant request to the federal government in order to fund the expansion of high speed Internet in our area. My town and 2 others were approved; a 4th town in my area was denied and needed to re-accomplish and resubmit their grant request.
I don’t know all the fine legal details of the grant, but I know that the ISP is required to put the funds toward development in the areas outlined in the grant request.
The last time our president attempted a high speed Internet initiative (I think it was Bush Jr?), they just gave money to ISPs and told them to spend it on upgrading their networks. There was no accountability, so most companies just pocketed the money.
Yeah Verizon did this shit so hard in West Virginia. Sure they pulled fiber all over the state, but they stopped at the cities. They made so much money, but hardly anyone could access the network.
I got fiber to my home 15 years later from a different company.
Many times. It’s never as rewarding as you’d like, because the other party is rarely objective, and thus rarely acknowledges their defeat.
It’s usually better to ease up when you get close to a total victory and allow the opponent to save face.
After all, no matter how objectively correct you are, if you don’t change the other person’s position even a little, you’re just wasting time.
Yes. It’s always a good question to ask yourself:
Would you rather be effective or be right?
IMO it’s even worse when the other party admits to their mistakes and apologizes.
Takes out all the wind of your sails
I am someone who does that because I’m objective enough to recognize my own fallibility and that if I’m presented with reasonable and logical evidence, i will accept it and change my perspective.
It also usually stops fighting and helps progress to a constructive discussion.
I do that, too, and I regularly get the “you’re always right, I’m always wrong” commentary. I respond, no, I’m often wrong, I just don’t make a big deal out of it so you don’t notice. I’d be happy to move on without a fuss when you’re wrong, too, if you’ll allow it.
Because seriously, being wrong is not a big deal. Everybody is wrong at some point, and regularly. Just correct yourself and move on, it’s not a hit to your identity or person.
I agree wholeheartedly. Being wrong is a good thing sometimes, it means you are indeed living life and learning. There may subjectively be better things to be wrong about sometimes, but it’s usually only a big deal if you make it one.
Yeah I like to acknowledge when I’m wrong, it makes me think carefully next time I think I’m right about something, and to challenge my assumptions about things.
I know someone that dismisses 95% of media as “Western media propaganda”. They include Al Jazeera in that list 🤦🏻♀️
An ex and I were on an hour-long bus trip to the next city over where we lived in Korea. The subject of there being a subway in said city came up, and I insisted there was not. She insisted that she saw one there once. I further insisted that there was no way the city was big enough to have a subway. It got quite heated. Anger. Hurt feelings.
She was talking about the sandwich restaurant, I was talking about underground trains. We were both right.
This is a good one. So right yet so wrong at the same time
In the 2nd grade. When we got to school each morning we went to our classrooms and dropped off our stuff, then we went to the gym to wait for school to start. I was in a split class (2nd & 3rd grade in the same room) and while in the gym a 3rd grader came up and asked me what I’d do if my box of crayons went missing. I had the Crayola 128 mega box, with attached sharpener… top of the line.
Of course, when I get to class, my crayons are missing, and Tommy has a box in his desk. I walk over and tell him to give me my crayons and he says they are his. A fight is brewing, so other kids gather round. I reach down and grab the box from his desk and put them behind my back, then simply ask “If these are your crayons, where did you get them?” and he replied “My mom bought them for me at Piggly Wiggly”… I pulled the box from my back and showed everyone the ‘Wal-Mart’ sticker on the back. Then I put my crayons back in my desk.
I was always a small kid, always being picked on… this was one of my few wins as a kid and it felt so good.
You proved it with a Walmart sticker? Smart thinking.
Not to be mean to little you, but your name should’ve been on that box - on each side, and one on the inside for good measute.
“If it’s yours then why is my name on it in 5 different spots?”
And if my grandma had wheels she would be a bike!
Yes, and in my experience it rarely if ever has the “gotcha” moment of victory that one fantasizes about. Either it was something with low stakes and the response is just “oh okay”, or it’s something more emotionally charged and the opposing side will deflect, change the subject, pretend that you’re agreeing with them or that they believed what was correct the whole time. It never seems to matter.
In college I used to study a class ahead to be ready with questions. A professor said that something couldn’t be done analytically, but I just hours before had learned the proof of the analytical solution so I told them it could be done, he said it couldn’t, I said I can prove it. He gave me the chalk I went to the board and prove the analytical solution. He was like wow, I didn’t knew that. He gave me extra credits on the final for that.
didn’t knew that
Stay in school, kids.
This person is probably Brazilian given the domain of the instance they’re in. Given that you didn’t assume that they speak another language, I’ll assume that means they know probably twice as many languages as you, and tenses are really hard to master.
Don’t be a prick to people for no reason.
Their post history indicates a clinical obsession with… being an asshole about shit that doesn’t matter.
But that’s what most people spend most of their time on the internet doing!
I do disaster planning for counties,hospitals,big companies,etc.
I had a presentation for a hospital and basically showed them very very detailed how they need to prepare for flash flooding. And I was absolutely shot down and basically booed out of the room. “We never can get flash flooding here, it is impossible, you have no idea what you are talking about!”
Exactly two weeks later you could see them on national news, they had 120cm(around 4 feet) on their ground floor, including their ED.
Even if they had signed us it wouldn’t have changed a thing (our recommendations take years to show effects) and people died (it is actually part of one of the worst flash flooding disasters in history,over 220 people died). So I can’t be happy about it at all.
But my team and I were very very very much proven right. (And meanwhile even multiple court ordered experts have agreed on our assessment)
Did those dbags get any repercussions or are they still on their yachts?
Old one for me, but as a kid walking home with friends from school, I realised there might be a better route that would significantly shorten my walk and make little difference to them. I mentioned it and was fobbed off. So later I pulled up the route online and actually measured it. Not only was my suggestion a better route for me, but it was actually shorter for everyone else too! I triumphantly took my findings to my friends who to my surprise and disappointment really could not care less, and a little part of me died because they were not my friends.
What if they liked walking longer to spend time with each other or possibly some place they wanted to see on the way. Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination
Thats what I thought too. I have definitly used longer paths before just to spend more time.
The shorter paths is not necessarily the best. Maybe they just like that path
When I was working retail in a technical environment I had a customer come in wanting to buy product X. Since I’ve always just wanted to help people I suggested product Y for its superior quality and longevity at a slightly higher cost. The customer started raging at me how dare I try to upsell him something he didn’t ask for. Other customers turning their head and all. He left fuming saying he’d go to another store.
A day later said customer came back into the store and I was already bracing myself. Turns out he compared the products on the website and read some reviews and realized I was right. He apologized and bought the product.
It was not really satisfying, just turning a negative into a neutral I guess.
They didn’t have to come back and tell you you were right; could have just bought it elsewhere and avoided you (out of shame for their own ignorance) so I consider that a win at your end. You can totally own that!
One example comes to mind where I almost did.
I used to drive an older Pontiac. It wasn’t the fanciest car, so it wasn’t the most performant.
One day, I was leaving a restaurant with a girl I was dating, and had to merge into traffic up a hill. I knew the car would need all the power it could get to do the merge safely, so I turned off the air-conditioning. Confused, the girl asked why I did that. I explained that air conditioning affects the performance of the car. She disagreed. She was raised a bit privileged and had only ever driven nice cars, so never noticed the performance hit of having the A/C on.
We bickered back and forth for a minute or two before I said “okay look I’ll show you” and reached to turn off the A/C. Before I could, however, she hit me with “you know, you don’t always have to be right”. I didn’t end up getting to prove it to her.
In her defense, I can be very stubborn when its something I am confident I’m correct in, and we actually argued a lot about stuff. Another example of an argument we had was over the fact that prairie dogs can carry the plague. She didn’t believe me and I remember we had to look up the answer. And that was on our second date.
I think about that line she hit me with a lot. But I also realize that in a lot of our “arguments” I was still having fun. To me, there’s a playful aspect to a good argument. As long as nobody is yelling or getting feelings hurt, it’s a fun way to pass the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize she wasn’t having fun like I was.
I feel this. Some people, like us, enjoy discussing and analyzing things. We can separate who we are as people from the things we think. If someone shows us something we hadn’t considered, our response is “Awesome, I just learned something new!”
Not everyone is like that. For some people, their self worth is tied to knowing things and being right. We need to be aware of the differences.
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Once when I was little my mom was yelling at me about something or other. In the heat of the moment she called me a son of a bitch, and I went “Oh?” with a single eyebrow raised over a smirk. She laughed, and that stopped the yelling.
Wait, does being funny enough to distract someone equal winning an argument? In my universe it does
I once got in an argument with someone who claimed a fish isn’t an animal. And I laughed and said “of course it is. What else would it be a plant?”. They said “It’s not an animal. It’s a fish!” So I said “which is an animal we can look it up if you want”
The reply I got was “I don’t need to look it up I know a fish isn’t an animal”
I got stunned into silence so I think in their mind they believe they were absolutely objectively proven correct. I don’t put much worry in arguments since, easier to let things go and realise people are just stupid and ignorant.
I had this exact same argument with someone when he said he was a vegetarian. We were looking for a restaurant to eat with coworkers. Two sentences later he said he could eat fish, so I said “fish is meat, I thought you were vegetarian” expecting something about “it’s just easier to say I am, but really I’m a pescatarian”. But no. He said “fish is not meat”
I think people get “animals” confused with “mammals”. Also there’s some weird thing with Catholicism where fish isn’t defined as meat for the purposes of Lent. But man it’s infuriating to meet someone like that.
Capybaras are also safe for eating during Lent.
Apparently giant rodents are not meat either.
Muskrat is allowed too, not sure I’d try it though.
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Yes, a few times. Didnt make the slightest difference though, it almost never does. Such is life. Still, at least others viewing the discussion who were on the fence/ unsure will have been presented with the evidence needed to convince them
Yes. My company wanted me to get a corporate credit card with Bank of America. I said absolutely not, they have a terrible reputation and I want nothing to do with them. In response, I was told in an email (which was Cc-ed to some VP of Finance) that this wasn’t true, and that Bank of America has a great reputation.
Now, if you’re gonna claim I’m wrong and start cc-ing people, you better be able to back it up. This pissed me off, so I googled for lists of the worst banks in America. Of the three first surveys on the topic that I found, two of them had Bank of America as the “top spot” as worst bank, and the third one had it in third place. I emailed this back to the person. I never heard back. I happily continued not using their corporate credit card ever after.
I knew a dude in highschool that you could literally perform a scientific experiment in front of multiple times, reproducing the same outcome every time and he would still deny it and say whatever opposite day inane bullshit he was claiming to be true.
Otherwise almost every other day with my sister. Especially if it comes to video game knowledge. She at least realizes she was wrong once proven wrong though.
