I'm gonna kick you off the inner-net.

You sure did, Billy.

My job for the last 5 years has been internet support over the phone. Let me introduce you to one of my favorite phrases I hear on a regular basis........

"You people keep kickin' me off the inner-net."

This statement is usually followed by, "What's yer problem down there?", or, "You better quit it or I'm gitt'n a new pervider."

To the brilliant individual on the other side of the phone that phrase is all I should need to fix the issue. Many times they are annoyed that I need to ask them further questions to find out what the hell they are talking about. "Kicking me off the internet" basically means "shit quits working". We need to define what the "shit" is. Sometimes a customer's entire computer will keep shutting down on them and they interpret this as "us people" fucking up their "inner-net". Let's look at an example, shall we? The answer is yes.

Customer - Yes, you people keep kickin' me off my email.

Me - I'm sorry to hear about the trouble, what program do you use for your email?

Customer - I use you for email.

Me - I understand that you use the email address that you get with our service, ma'am, but you can use your email on our website or, like many people, you use an email program like Outlook or Outlook Express.

Customer - Well, I just go to my email and use you. (Can being extremely vague be considered a super-power? I'd buy that comic book.)

Me - Ok, when you go to your email do you open Internet Explorer like you were getting on the web, or do you open a separate program.

Customer - I don't know.

Me - Well, in that case, just describe to me what steps you take to get to your email. (I'm proud of myself at this point, thinking she has to tell me something specific, even if by accident. Wrong, this question just pisses her off.)

Customer - This is rediculous. I told you the problem. You people kick me off my email when I'm typing a message. Then I have to go back in and start all over.

After putting my phone on mute and calling this lady a few names I was able to decipher that she was indeed using our website to send mail. She was taking over 20 minutes to type an email and then when she went to send it the site had logged her out automatically as a security precaution. I explained this to her and walked her through setting up her address in Outlook Express so she wouldn't have that problem.

The mistake a lot of customers make is that they see a computer as an internet box, nothing more. Solitaire won't open - internet must be down. My screen says 'fatal error' - internet must be down. My computer keeps freezing up - what's wrong with the damned inner-net. The tower is smoking and my monitor won't turn on - must be an internet outage. I don't entirely blame the customer for their complete ignorance, Bill Gates has made computers so popular that everyone thinks they should have one. You may say to yourself, "But Nickhead, if it weren't for Bill Gates and Windows, the internet would not be half of what it is today, and you wouldn't even have a job." Shut up. I hate it when you're right.