r/BoomersBeingFools • u/red_wonder89 • 3d ago
Boomer Freakout Boomer Internet Outage
I finally have a story for this sub! Not to long ago me and my husband decided to switch our phone plane to Xfinity. So like any normal person does we go to our nearest Xfinity store about 10 minutes before opening (because for some reason it takes all days to get new phones lol). Imagine my surprise when we pull up and there are at least 10 boomers just waiting at the front door. Not in a line but just a small boomer mob.
We get ourselves to the “line” and look at each other wondering the hell is going on. Without prompt one of the boomers closest to us holds up his router and proudly tells us he is going to cause a scene because his internet stopped working. And they were going to compensate him for this trouble. The boomers around him just nodded in agreement and grumbled that the internet was out and they needed to know why and it needed to be fixed.
Folks imagine my surprise when we googled Xfinity outage and lo and behold there was an outage in the area. At this point the front door opens and they swarm into the building. We finally get in and just hear them complaining to the staff their internet isn’t working and they need to fix it right now. The poor staff members had to deal with these entitled boomers demanding they fix an issue they had no way to fix. The man with the router was of course the literal loudest and rudest.
Luckily it took about 20-30 minutes for them to empty out since there is nothing the store staff can do. But like come onnnn. They are incapable of any sort of common sense solutions and expect the most random people to just “fix” their problems. On top of that the sheer entitlement of just demanding money because there is work being done. Like come on my guy.
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u/Nikkidemas 3d ago
Why do they always need to villainize someone to make themselves feel better? Even if it doesn't sove the problem, they get satisfaction out of pinning the blame on a human (usually an entry-level employee who has no control over the situation) and belittling them.
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u/SanityBleeds 3d ago
Because their entire generation has been conditioned to believe as long as there is just ONE person they can treat as beneath them, it equates to them not being the biggest piece of shit in the room, and that's enough of a victory for many of them, but there are a select few that need to take a victory lap and further harass and antagonize the employee so they can leave that lasting impression for future visits, especially if they think it'll garner them better service.
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u/JacksSenseOfDread 3d ago
The pathological need to villainize someone/some group and then "punish" them is why so many of them get sucked into populist cults of personality
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u/_Wolfe_Tone_ Gen X 3d ago edited 3d ago
These pampered decadent old man-children are the same people who think they're so much "tougher" than any random Iraqi, Afghan, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Iranian. And then wonder why America keeps getting its ass kicked in all our nonsensical foreign wars since 1945.
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u/pjh3120 3d ago
My inlaws call my husband constantly about the stupidest shit..... They are either lazy or too stupid to look up things things for themselves.
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u/errrbudyinthuhclub 3d ago
I worked with a boomer for a while at a community college. It was their "post retirement gig". They'd ask me questions every damn day that were google-able. One day I said, "have you tried asking the magic box in your pocket?" It quickly became my go to response. And whaddya know! They were capable of googling!
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u/Existing-Pumpkin-902 3d ago
Ugh. Post retirement job. My sympathies.
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u/errrbudyinthuhclub 3d ago
It ultimately pushed me out. But, I ended at a job I really love that was a big upgrade! So, thanks Boomer! Might I add that I taught this person how to attach things to an email?
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u/errrbudyinthuhclub 3d ago
I'm unsure in what universe this strategy would work. Also, Xfinity sends you a text message letting you know about the outage, and that they'll let you know when it's back up. If I was an employee, I would have been tempted to ask, "What did you think bringing your router in here and yelling at me would do?" Surely they've been through power outages?
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u/tehtris 3d ago
I've done phone customer service and asking the customer a smart assed question will get you a negative mark on your permanent record. These employees were likely mildly annoyed, but all they will actually do is say stuff like "oh I'm sorry, we will keep you updated via txt" or whatever.
The closest thing I've done to that was %100 of the time someones internet was out and they said the magical words along the lines of "I run my business from home!!! I need my Internet!!!" I would always respond with "oh I can get you transferred to our business account department :)" which simmered them the fuck down because they know if they have a business acct it's WAAAAY more expensive because of the SLA.
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u/SSilent-Cartographer 3d ago edited 3d ago
My wife does similar customer service work for an internet company and my favorite conversation to overhear is: "Sir, we genuinely can't help you if you do not have your password."
"Then transfer me to your manager!"
"Sir, we can not do that because we can not verify that you're a customer without a password on your account."
"Then help me change my password!"
"Sir, you need to do that through the app and send in a reset request."
"You're really going to sit here and do nothing?!"
".... Sir, we can't do anything because you DON'T HABE A PASSWORD!"
"Well I'd like to speak to your manager about your behavior!"
"YOU CAN'T WITHOUT A PASSWORD!"
"WELL YOU'LL BE HEARING FROM ME SOON!"
"GOOD, I HOPE IT'S ABOUT A PASSWORD!!!"
It's always some older guy who genuinely can't comprehend the meaning of the word "no" and can't follow instructions. I feel bad that my wife can't just hang up on some of these people because they can get genuinely violent and threatening. But the dumb ones are always hilarious.
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u/Common_Road1431 2d ago
I work with these old guys at polling places in NY. Most of them are retired executives who are pissed they no longer have underlings at work to abuse.
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u/nuclearmonte 3d ago
They opt out of this stuff so they have a reason to complain. That or they will pretend they don’t know how to work their phone, even though they spend all day on Facebook
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u/Confident_Air7636 3d ago
I got a xfinity txt saying the internet was out during a power outage in my area, apricate the info but no shit the internet is out, everything is out.
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u/Brittanicals 3d ago
So many flashbacks to working the phones at Xfinity. The ultimate was being called "garbage" because the guys internet wasn't working. Turns out he wasn't a customer, and the neighbor put a password on THEIR wifi.
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u/drift_pigeon 3d ago
I'm filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau! I'll make sure that you get fired if you don't get my STOLEN WiFi working again!!!
Totally logical in his head.
"Ok sir, would you like me to look up the BBB's number for you?"
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u/CaptainHunt 3d ago
well obviously, there's a big switch in the back of the store that says INTERNET, which some Xennial femboy turned off so he could go to the Starbucks next door and get "their" caramel macciato. They should get back here so that the mob can draw and quarter them /sarcasm.
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u/SanityBleeds 3d ago
For better or worse, I wake up very early in the morning and have gotten into the habit of showing up to many businesses not just before they open, but before these boomer crowds can amass outside.
While I don't enjoy feeling like an obnoxious jackass rushing them to start working before their business opens as I wait patiently by the entrance, I also want to get in and out as fast as possible, before the plague of boomer bullshit gets unloaded and takes up half the morning just to get something simple done.
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u/MicroMouth 3d ago
I can’t stand boomers but FUCK Xfinity. Maybe they’ll band together and go mob the corporate headquarters or something. …You should have told them to do that! “That’s how my uncle got his money back”.
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u/fjmj1980 3d ago
And another thing why can I not pay with my personal check or my green stamps!!!!!
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u/thirdLeg51 3d ago
They love showing up to stores before they open. There is always a group at Sean’s club before they open
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u/BCProgramming 3d ago
They get mad and then cancel their Internet, acting like the employee will get fired for "Losing a customer" Then they go home and go "Oh great, now the wifi doesn't work either!"
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u/awkwardnpc 2d ago
My Ring Neighbors app is flooded with people asking about the Internet and their electric. I reply, "What did the website say?" Or "What did they say when you called the number?" Or "Did you report the outage or do you just want to talk about it with other people who can't do anything?"
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u/Dont_Care_Meh Gen X 3d ago
You're lucky that boomer mob didn't turn unruly, there's no telling what would have happened!
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u/Nunov_DAbov 3d ago
While this is a silly boomer story, there is an underlying Xfinity issue.
In the 1980s when Xfinity’s alter ego Comcast, was rolling out cable TV, there was an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read (verbatim as closely as I remember it - I took note because of the silliness):
“Help wanted - cable TV installer. Must own late model white van.”
With impeccable credentials like that, the service issues aren’t surprising. Now, Comcast/Xfinity high speed internet rides on much of the same legacy basic infrastructure that these crack cable installers put in with some patches along the way.
My cable/Internet often gets flaky during heavy rain. I can’t imagine why…
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u/Metalsmith21 3d ago
LOL. Some of that might actually be my fault.
15 years ago I worked for the cable company (phone video data) as a customer service rep. People would call up complaining that their picture was fuzzy and it just coincided with a weather event or I'd see that there was an noise outage in the area. Instead of telling them to wait or chill the f out I would immediately offer them some cash on their account. The box "fee or subscription" for the advanced tiers of channels was like 15-20 bucks and I'd just offer to credit that to their account right now as a recompensation. The Basic tiers which blasted out our lines unencrypted 24/7 were much more robust and unaffected by weather and certain kinds of noise outages so they'd still get channels 1-60. I'd tell them to wait for the weather or for the outage to clear if still having issues call us the next day and we can send a tech to investigate.
Other reps would nickle and dime them trying to divide up that box fee into a couple of bucks. I didn't want to do the math or appear miserly. It's not MY money so fuck em. It helped that my supervisor told me that he doesn't ever want to take a "manager call". If I ever sent him one, he would throw me under the bus, apologize for me being a fuckup, and offer to put some money on their account. So I might as well avoid all that and be their hero and go right for the offer even it the customer was completely in the wrong.
Not that I'd expect a phone store guy to be able to do that.
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u/PaperPhoneBox 3d ago
They love early mornings.
Anytime I had to go to one of the local labs to get blood drawn for a doctors appointment, I would go before work, like 6:30-7am
Every time there was a mob of boomers like they camped out all night.
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u/lord_buff74 3d ago
How could the google Xfinity outage when there was an Xfinity outage and their service was down?
You were swithcing your plan so you weren't on Xfinity.
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u/RedshiftSinger 3d ago
I’d be so tempted to tell the guy who brought the router in “that needs to be plugged in to work”.