I had been troubleshooting for hours…
After hours of troubleshooting an issue, I realized that I couldn’t solve it myself. Not to be boastful, but I consider myself a fairly adept and qualified problem-solver. I’ve been shooting at my troubles for years. But this time, it just wasn’t meant to be. The realization dawned that I would have to stop this time sink now and raise a ticket.
If you’ve been in my position, you know the feeling that comes next. With growing dread, I logged onto the support portal. I knew I was jumping down the vendor support rabbit hole.
Sure enough, once the screen flicked on, I was met with the smiling, supportive face of…
…a BOT.
The Bot that never was!
Bots are well-intentioned, really. This one wanted to help. it had been trained with all possible scenarios, permutations and carefully curated information to resolve all possible vendor support tickets. Except mine, I guess.
It started off on the wrong foot, asking me, “Have you read this article about setting up LDAP integration?” No, I thought. My problem is object recognition. Why are we talking about LDAP?!
We started the ritualistic dance: Server version? Entered. Software version. Typed. Platform? (sigh) Yes. Blood type? WHAT? Favorite hockey team? WHY!
But I started this, so I took it upon myself to finish it.
Finally, (what felt like) a month and a half later, I was done typing in the FULL ticket issue, channelizing all my writing skills and years of experience. I double-checked and was satisfied. Shakespeare himself would’ve been proud of this piece. I clicked on ‘submit’ and was rewarded with an automatic notification with my ticket number.
Somewhere, my coding angels were hard at work.
