University Tech Support Is Notoriously Aggressive And Poor

Me: "I'm having problems connecting to sites outside the University."

Tech Support: "What operating system are you using?"

Me: "The latest version of Linux."

Tech Support: "What programs are you currently running?"

Me: "Nothing much ftp, telnet, X, Netscape, sendmail..."

Tech Support: "It's not our fault you can't connect anywhere if you're running sendmail. You have to get mail centrally."

Me: "But sendmail has nothing to do with ftp access, web access, or anything else."

Tech Support: "It's not our problem."

Three months later, it was announced on the University web site that there was an "untraced fault" on the network, and everyone had to reduce the MTU on their computers to. A few talks with various technicians revealed that this had been known and repeatedly reported by a great many people, who had received just as unfriendly a response as I had, over those months. The official story was that the technicians were waiting to see if the problem would clear up on its own. It took another six months of complaints before they finally got someone in to fix the router.