As a general rule, calling product support while drunk is not recommended

This article recounts a humorous story from a retired Microsoft product support colleague about a drunken customer seeking help with a Java applet on a fan site for Van Halen. The interaction highlights the challenges of providing support under unusual circumstances.

From the article

In a reminiscence about product support stories, a now-retired colleague related a story of a call that they took when working the product support phone lines for Microsoft FrontPage, a Web site authoring tool from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

The call came from a person who was creating a fan site for the rock band Van Halen . They had a java applet on the web site that played music, this being back in the days when java applets on Web pages was a thing, and the applet wasn’t working.

This was not a FrontPage issue, but my colleague figured they could try to help out anyway. “But man, was this person lit.” The sound of ice clinking in a glass was readily apparent, and as the call went on, the customer got more and more drunk.

Share this resource