And Then...

Warning - offensive language...read on if you like, but don't come crying to me because you don't like me using the f-bomb.


I called Toshiba. I bought a new Toshiba laptop earlier this year and for some weird reason, my keys switch from working to not working. Let me rephrase that - it goes from letting me type some characters to only letting me type other characters. I have a multilingual keyboard (didn't really notice it and no one thought to point that out when I bought it). The keys have 5 or so different characters, and I don't know how to access them. Today it was the question mark and apostrophe. All of a sudden, I couldn't get them to work. All I would get was French letters, or characters I didn't want. So I thought, let's call Toshiba and see who can piss me off there. It didn't take long. All I wanted was to find some document or help page that explained how to use the multi-lingual keyboard. He tried to get me to find the manual on my computer. I told him it wasn't there. I had already been through THAT before. We searched anyhow, using "user manual" as the search terms as directed. It came up with about 1400 files...none of which were user manual. So how did it come up with so many things there were clearly NOT user manual. 497 of them were my photos! WTF? So then he tried to reason that it found a bunch of web pages I had visited that might have those words on the page. Um, no. You fucking idiot. They are photos. My photos. I just told you that. The words are not in the title and certainly not found cryptically within a photo of a tree...we finally determined that it brought those things up because they were in the "user" file. Sounds stupid enough to be right. 


Okay, so then he went to check online for the manual. He found it, I did not. I asked him to point me to it. He ignored this request several times. I wanted to look with him, in case he did really find something about my keyboard in there. Then he tried to explain to me that it was not actually in the manual. Okay, where can I look then? So he starts rambling on about some shit that I have no idea what he means by it, and when I tell him this, he says nothing at first, and then starts in again on the manual, wanting me to download a copy. Why? It won't fix my problem, we have already determined this. I explained to him again, I just want some sort of guide to my physical computer. How is it that I can spend over a thousand bucks on a computer that does not actually have a guide to it's physical use. I don't need help with the software, the battery pack, the charger cord, or how to clean the fucking screen. I WANT TO KNOW HOW TO USE MY KEYBOARD! Finally, I gave up and hung up on him. 


Enter idiot number 4 for the day. I called back to Toshiba, as we still had not resolved the problem. I get another immigrant who can barely speak English. Great. I explain my problem to him and he wants to go immediately to the user manual. I swear, if I was sitting near him, I would shove my computer mouse clear up his damned rectum. I painfully explained my last call and that all I wanted was a guide to my keyboard, and someone to fix the damned issue. He told me to hold down shift and control and it will switch languages. Which one, he couldn't say. I tried this, it worked. But what about all of those other functions on my keys I can't seem to access? Where can I find information about that? Well, his answer was that there is no guide. Really? Well how are people supposed to find these things out? By calling your adept call centre again and again? I fucking hope not. So then he wanted me to remove all of the languages that are not English so I can avoid this problem in the future. Um, no...I don't want to start deleting shit when you don't even have a guide to follow. Then starts a very condescending conversation about Windows. That's when I hung up the phone. Clearly this is not going to be a good "phone" day and I should just go back to bed. Fuck it.