In which I go through such absurdity with women customers sometimes.

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]hone rings.

I answer. “Tech support. May I help you?”

Woman’s voice, in full-on baby talk mode: “I have an iPhone. I can’t send mail.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that. Apple seems to assume that all outgoing mail servers use SSL, but ours doesn’t. So probably you just need to disable SSL. That’s usually the issue.”

Baby talk: “Can you… like… I mean. Alright, fine.”

Me: “Sorry?”

Baby talk: “How do I do that.” She probably has me pegged as a dick-slicing lesbian because I assumed she was a human being and answered her question without talking down to her.

Me: “Well, I don’t have an iPhone myself, so I can’t give you step-by-step instructions. But I used to have an iPod Touch, so I think what you’ll be looking for is in Settings.”

I wait a beat, assuming she has her iPhone in her hand. “Click the Settings icon on the main screen.” Beat. “Choose your mail settings, and drill down to the outgoing — or SMTP — server settings.” I wait another few beats, assuming she’s following along, and continue to speak slowly. “You’ll just want to make sure the server name is ‘out.bmi.net,’ and that the SSL box is unticked. You might have to go into Advanced settings to find the box, though. I’m really not sure.”

“None of that is on here! I don’t know where any of that is! So you’re just not going to fix this?”

Um. What the fuck?

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I must have misunderstood. I thought you said you can’t send email from your iPhone?”

“That’s right.” Now baby doll voice is bitchy baby voice.

“Well, actually, I literally just told you how to fix that.”

“Yeah but I don’t know where any of that is.”

I get flustered, because now she’s just being stupid. “I just told you. In the Settings. You probably need to disable SSL. In the outgoing server settings.”

“You’re really not being helpful.” She’s being condescending, and due to that I suddenly have no interest in googling shit for her. Besides, it’s an Apple product. How fucking hard is it to click the Settings icon on an iPhone?

“If you need screen shots, you can find them online by searching for ‘iPhone third party email settings.'”

“Fine. If you’re not going to help me, transfer me to {THE MAN I REPLACED}.”

“I’m sorry, he went to another company. I do tech support now.”

“Oh, too bad. I’m going to miss him. Well.”

And then. AND THEN! She fucking hung up on me!

Let’s get some things straight, blondie:

1. I am not required to support your cell phone. Your cell carrier does that. So fuck off.

2. Newsflash! {MAN I REPLACED} didn’t put up with your bullshit helpless female act of out the kindness of his heart, he put up with it because he probably thought you sounded like a M he’d L to F. Congrats! You’re the chick that makes men think all women are stupid and manipulative.

3. I gave you perfectly adequate support. I’m sorry I didn’t also have a penis and flirt with you.

4. It is your responsibility to learn how to use the shit you own. It is also your responsibility to be smart enough to understand that tech support personnel cannot just fix things through the ether without any effort on your part.

About once a week, on average, I have a woman ask to be transferred to a man when I can’t reach through the goddamned phone line and solve a problem she’s too girlie to do anything about. It’s tech support by phone, bitches, you have to click on what I tell you to click on and you have to be able to read. If your problem isn’t magically solved it isn’t due to my gender, it’s due to the fact that you’re too femme to bother to listen or try.