COPPING OUT:
MY HELL AT DELL
by ran scot
Taking the Dogma for a Walk
When I was about thirteen I became fascinated by Catholic indoctrination and the almost cult-like following the Virgin Mary receives. The main reason had nothing to do with Catholism at all, but the total misapplication of the dogma system; the Jonestown Massacre, Manson Family, and the Republican Party. I had forgotten that contemplative summer, which involved all this deep thinking while crayfish trapping. There's a correlation, think about it. Like any good brain washing cattle run, Dell had the mind inoculation entry points laden with gold. After sedating us with a three course extravagant breakfast (the last free meal you'll ever get), the promises of a Utopia were laid out before us. A real land of milk and honey. Their stock jumping through the roof was displayed in all their grandure, the seemingly unstoppable profits and capital gains, and, most of all, a special message from our brave new world leader and then personal hero, Michael Dell.
I know you have seen those late night infomercials where this toad-like human is pumping up a crowd of paid actors for whatever flavor of the month hype he is peddling this time. This was not unlike those, and yes I was getting paid to care. During this mind inoculation, I asked how they expected this trend to continue with their newfound status of saturation of the only highly profitable PC market sector. I believe this was their first inkling maybe I was not corporate material. Either way, I do know it was more than likely marked in my permanent Dell record.
Arrival at Dell
But I smiled and accepted their half-truths and boldface lies because above all else I wanted to believe I too could become rich, and quick. So, like a desperate man down on his luck at the end of his finical rope about to throw in his hard saved $500 dollars in some born-again Amway scheme, I bought in.
Instead of cash to the hustler, I gave Corporate America a part of my soul. Only then I did not know.
When I was in high school a friend once showed me a rather odd trick. If you place a frog in a pan of luke warm water and slowly heat it up, the frog will hang out no matter how hot it gets. Slowly the water turns to a boil and the poor amphibian dies a slow death, never realizing its fate. Not even as he's last breathe is drown out of him to cascade up with the bubbles of now scorching water. This is the best way I can describe my assimilation into the Church of Corporate America, Domination Dell.

Tending the Cattle While Being in the Herd
One of the few things I can thank Dell for was a crash course in PC Architecture and OS Design. As I long have been known to be able to pick up rather complex skills quickly, like chess, a hard science, or language, in an insanely short amount of time, so did computers and I have a mind meld. See, Dell saw my promise in multi-media design, but I was a firm worshipper in the cult of Apple, whose loving arms I can say I am gratefully back in, again (A second to clap for Steve Jobs on becoming CEO, woo hoo!) I had a Dune royal seal so I could be trusted to always side with Mac, a condition Dell never broke me of.
Dell did not hand me the keys to the media lab, yet they did not want me to wonder off before they poured some projects out of my soul. So they hired me in as a rather dubious title Senior Level Computer Technician. I was to find out later this translated to nothing more than glorified phone monkey, a phone monkey in a vivisection lab that is.
Austin had long been strip-mined of anything resembling tech talent, and my class of techs reflected the lack of veins of true talent left in the mountain. Though the class was a robust thirty, I could count on one hand the people worthy of driving out of the rock with a pickaxe. Dell was really panning the stream here, but they did find some diamonds in the rough, and I still have a closeness with them and members of the JEDI team that is not unlike war buddies reflecting back of the front line. Though I will not name names due to obvious legal problems, I have decided to use nicknames worthy of the most notable fuck-ups Dell had hired:

The Turtle
The Turtle was the prototype of older person Dell seemed determined to employ, even though they usually had an antiquated skill set and were for the most part untrainable. The old dog/new trick syndrome. Our Turtle would crash his computer about twice daily, and one occasion caused a hardware meltdown of which defies explanation by physics, as we understand them today.
The Turtles as a group would last about six months on average. After I shot through the ranks of responsibility with a few others of my class, I remember taking at least three escalation calls my Turtle had personally caused. He was a temp-to-hire, Dell loves this since they do not have to give benefits, and after his contract ran out I guess they chose not to renew. This was odd since it was a well-known fact on the tech floor of Round Rock, Dell will keep any fool in a cube as long as they help keep the queue of customers complaining about their sub-par machines down to acceptable levels.
The queue never ended, for two reasons. One was that Dell would never continue to train their techs, not even on new products Dell would offer. I remember at least five occasions I found out we were selling a new item because a customer called in saying they were having a problem with it. One of those occasions it was an illegal configuration, which means it required an extra spot on the IDE chain (like 3 hard drives, DVD, IDE Zip, AND CD-ROM, sales reps loved to do shit like this) or required an IRQ or PCI slot, which everyone in the computer industry knows Dell is notorious for overfilling. Basically the techs on the floor were blind-sided from one direction for poor training which Dell fully knew of and always promised fix, but of course that meant money and was never really achieved. From other directions came machines that would never work sold by a sales rep, increasing faulty equipment. Dell sold a 3-COM modem for almost two years that even the 3 Com Engineers could not get to connect above 26.4 kbps; and which took a reg hack (coincidentally supposedly unsupported by Dell) to uninstall, and overbearing-slave-tactic-loving management. But more on that later. I personally think Dell was more afraid of the Turtles reaching retirement age on them. The pure misery of Dell is what drives the company.

Gun Boy
This guy was pure-bred-nut-fucking case. We did the dry ass "What Would You Take to a Desert Island" exercise to break the ice in class, and he said he would take his guns and his dog. The guy was married and he would rather shot himself with his guns than bring her along. Ahh, love in the 90s. The last I knew of this bonafide sociopath was still on the phones. Though not as a scary as Thunder Bunny (he gets his own part of this story), he was nonetheless a guy you would avoid on the street, much less call up for advice. They scary part is Dell seemed to love to hire this prototype, too. That is a dark area I am still trying to shed light on today.

The Mole
Or the rat. This guy had entrenched himself thoroughly into the bureaucratic machinery of Dell. He would leave to join the queue Nazis and then be hired away. His most memorable moment was being asked by me to step outside for lies he was spreading about my stats and a few others in fear we might jump him on the toady rank. He would kiss my ass after that til he left.

The Tool
Oh the Tool. This was actually half of the class though they acted as one, like the Borg. But instead of being a kick ass killer race, they are slowly bringing corporations to a new intellectual low. Be extra careful not to assimilate. One of the more classic Tool moments came when I was in class with Tool 1038. They were all identical, so Dell gave them badges to tell the difference, of course 1038 is a reference and not some one's actual badge number that would be just to mean. But Tool 1038 was set up to fail, because me and a couple of the other competent monkeys were playing with administration controls and he was watching. He took his knowledge and decided to play a prank on the class. He sent out a "global" email without truly understanding what global meant. Basically, he sent an email to every employee at Dell he was now the super root administrator and we should all bow down to him. When everyone in the class got it he laughed. When my friend leaned over and mentioned what he had really done, he went sort of pale. Believe it or not, he was not fired. But he is still on the phone after almost two years.
These guys become lifers on the phone. They are the backbone of Dell, especially technical support. Though completely harmless, the converse is they are to the same extreme non-beneficial. They are seat warmers like the Turtles and Gun Boys of Dell, expect a lot less scary. And they know how important your time is, and are eager to take your call.

The Elf:
I could tell he was being groomed for a design position, but not much was going for him there. Maybe it was because he lacked focus, competence, or the cocky attitude designers need to survive. He would annoy me and Master Mac (the best tech at Dell, hell the world, hands down) with inane design projects and less than clever pop culture motifs. Don't get me wrong; he was a nice guy, just not my kind of guy. Nor would he ever jump the fence out of the tech bullpen.

The Chatter
All these guys are short-timers, very short. Many had computer skills far beyond the tools, hell my crew for that matter, but they had an Achilles Heel. Their addiction to chat. They could not help but to use IRC, BBSes, MUDs and many GUI based chats on the Internet. Most were walked during class. One of the most amusing things I saw a Chatter do was trouble shoot a system while they were cyber sexing on AIM. He was mysteriously walked a few days later, like all Chatters. It's an addiction like alcoholism, only so much more lame.

The last group includes me and a few other real people. We were mostly hired for skill sets outside of tech support, but Dell wanted to make sure we were competent monkeys before we got our high price positions. Or so we thought. After training we were dumped onto the floor on teams supposedly at random. We believed this, but once there we realized everything Dell tells you was not always true. After doing very well in class and obvious notice of my hot shot, fighter pilot style of tech support, I was placed on a kick ass team called the Jedi Knights, and damn if we weren't. This team had the highest percentage of bad-asses on the entire floor than any other. I could have easily taken the members of this team and started one of the legendary computer companies of our time. With a few exceptions.
Now you have a good idea of the cattle in the thundering herd and it is time to enter my house of horrors. Be warned that from here on out it does not get pretty. If you are having a nice day, I'd stop reading now.
To set the scence, I need to tell you what a day in the life of a Dell technician is like. To begin with, Big Brother is always watching. They kept track of every second, AND I MEAN EVERY SECOND, of your day. If you logged in 15 fucking seconds late after a break, the Queue Nazi would call you and ream you out.
Dell's Bitch
If the queue of calls was high, they would deny you breaks, the mandatory lunch hour they had promised, and sometimes force you, under the threat of termination, to work overtime. These were never polite requests, but heavy-handed demands they would brow beat you with. They would take every opportunity to demean and belittle you so not to fight their demands. These are not unlike the slave labor tactics you hear about overseas.
I got a name quick on the floor for being one of the few to flat out tell the Queue Nazis to fuck off, even defending other people who did not have the courage under fear of their jobs, and young children at home. Even with my fighting their soul crushing ways, I was slowly being brainwashed by constant "1 on 1"s and arrogant mid-management telling me how worthless tech support was and how Dell would be better off outsourcing them than deal with pricks like me.
THIS, people of the world, is how Dell treats their award winning tech support. The morale, and moral for that matter, is in the gutter. The attrition rate is rumored to be around 30% a quarter and management seemed to love it. Those sadistic assholes relished in the pain and suffering they were causing. I know this because I was there.
Why did I not quit, you ask? Because they kept coming at me from all sides I felt hopeless. Bewildered. A deer in headlights. Plus there was the constant promise of a big stock pay off just at the end of the rainbow.
To make matters worse, Dell, like all computer companies, knowingly shipped products with known issues, most horrific. So they would require us to "white lie" about these problems under, again, threats of losing our jobs. Yeah, it was real fucking great to be at Dell.
So with all this pressure and malcontent we were forced to face a very computer-illiterate public with a smile. My god the things people would do to their poor computers. From sawing apart the motherboard to their claims the monitors were sending mind-altering messages, the masses are pretty wild. They often got mad with us for having to replace parts; even if it was to replace a keyboard they split coffee in. Like I could fix that over the phone.
So while the management pressed us down under their thumb from above, customers were screaming and up our ass from below, all the time winning award after award in magazines and media.
Another thing I was known for on the floor was my wild style I handled customers with. I didn't put up with shit from anyone at any time. One time I actually had a guy under his desk crying. Humorous for me, until I found out I was being listened to by Big Brother. Oh well.
Fuck it; I had nothing to worry about. I repeatedly put up the best stats on the entire tech support floor, along with the other Jedis. I was a loose cannon, but I generated results a-go-go. Most of all, they knew I could design. It did not take long before the requests started coming in. I started redesigning tech docs and support material, far exceeding the quality they expected. They kept trying to trip me up with more complex projects, but I kept producing, ahead of schedule and under-budget.
Believe it or not this pissed some people off. But not nearly as bad as I was about to become. See, when I came to Dell I was told I would work the phones for seven months then be set free. I should have gotten that in writing. Even with my off-the-chart stats and track record of quality design, which I did while taking calls, Dell reneged on their promise of my due promotion. It was just one of many, many lies.
The thing to remember while reading this, this is just my story. It was being reproduced in more troubling fashion all around me. It was not like I was alone in misery, we all were in HELL. We complained in mass in shouts and screams, but were ignored as if we were just peeps in the night. No amount of complaints filed to the right channels of human resources would do any good. Once they finally had a meeting with me (which took two months to get), they agreed I was hired in below my skill set, and then politely told me to politely shut the hell up. Seems I was giving spirit to the tech floor, as my own spirit was breaking more everyday. I got a meeting with an area manager, but he was a known liar, too. He once got caught in a bold face, yet rather complex, lie on a conference call and nothing happened. He was constantly putting up smoke screens to hide the tech moral from higher ups, and the amount of smoke he blew up my ass would rival even the Driesdig Firebombing. Since my manager walked around with his nose up the Area Manager's rectum, I was at a loss.
Remember while all this is going on I got the Queue Nazis screaming at one end, customers at the other, and the Jedi Team was about to be screwed hard. See, we were the best hands down, the best team at Dell. Every six months Dell would break apart teams and re-align them for a few reasons beneficial only to management. First, they did not want camaraderie because that breeds solidarity. One of Dell's greatest fears was one day techs might unionize against the sweatshop-style atmosphere we were forced to work in. Again, we did not quit, because most of us needed the paycheck and lure of the stock was too much. Plus they tried to break your will to leave. With constant re-alignments, the techs could never adhere. Second, managers were constantly passing off bad techs to each other like a game of Old Maid. And last, this kept the techs jumpy and fearful for their jobs. Dell operates their tech support system based on principles of strangling and oppression. Besides the soul sapping and nervous breakdowns of people, it works fine.
After about a year of cowboying in tech support and doing professional design for twelve an hour while taking calls, the higher-ups decided to set me up for a fall to shut me up forever. Unfortunately for them, it backfired and it made me well-known among my peers. See Michael Dell had promised Tennessee Dell would have the Nashville plant going by June. Human Resources realized there was no way traditional hiring methods would get the job done in time. What to do, what to do...
Well, they got four of us techs, told to us to make a full interactive, live action, real time, realistic job environment, applicant screening program. And oh, have it done in a week for presentation. I shot the film, edited it, made a final cut, and designed the GUI while the others wrote a beautiful code worthy of acclaim. We developed the server, integrated the film to where it was fully-interactive in real time streaming, did QA, and implemented it ahead of schedule and under budget. All for five thousand dollars, an outside vendor said they would do it for quarter of a million. To this day Dell still uses it, and it has never crashed!
This got people huge promotions, except of course, for the four people who made it. Our reward for this design piece would be a pat on the back and to be put back on the phones.
Within two weeks the other guys had resigned, as did I. Dell countered and promoted me to a full-time Designer position. I was free, free at last. On top of that I was working with some of the coolest people in the industry. Our manager was great, and I actually felt bad about leaving the design team. Due to her helping me refine some rough points on my design principles I am now a hot shot design on Madison Avenue in NYC, and the friendships I had developed with the other members of the team made me cry when I left. I would spin tales of the tech support area, and they would stare in amazement.
But I would only stay at Dell a few more months; the mental scars were too deep. The humiliation to hurtful to recall. Mostly, I could not work for a company that treated their employees this way. It actually took time for me to be deprogrammed as so greatly shown by Master Mac. Master Mac was promoted a few weeks after I was to the same building as me. I was finally returning to normal, no fear of management heavy hands or Queue Nazis screaming at me. I would go to the bathroom when I had to, a luxury people in tech support did not have, no matter how grave the situation. Master Mac wanted a cigarette, and he looked at me and sighed maybe at break, or squeeze one in a lunch when he realize he could actually get up and leave his desk, like a human being. He was through the looking glass, too. But to this day it is hard for me to talk about certain events from the floors of Dell tech support. My hell was Dell.

Hell at Dell
Layers of Management,
Dell Style
The one thing that I think allowed managers to get away with their antics and poor treatment of their employees was a vast layering of management. They had set up impenetrable walls to people who would be horrified at the condition of the morale in tech support. Their jobs depend on it, so do their egos.
You could never get past your manager to file a complaint, and even if you did it was futile. With these layers, no one was responsible for anything. Zero accountability. Asking around, I realize all corporations are run like this. Just seems like Dell management uses it for evil, and it seems the demographic of 40 to 60 year olds is pretty useless. Since they have no currently viable skill set, they create work for themselves by gross mismanagement and busy time jobs for techs. Another of their favorite pastimes was setting up conflicting policies and then have countless meeting about them. Though they never produce a product tangible, to the naked eye they are busy as hell. Dell is full of people like these. Michael, you were my hero, I even lived on the same floor of Jester Dorm as you did. The whole reason I came out there was because I was proud as shit to say one thing, "I work for Micheal Dell, self-made billionaire." You not only won the game, but invented a whole new one. You rule, but the people you got in lower management is horse of a different color. If Dell, or other corporations are to be saved, here a few guidelines to help:
1. Poll your low level employees, in Dell's case your techs, customer service representatives, and sales representatives about morale, manager corruption, and stress levels. Do it personally because your management team has been lying to you for years now.
2. Fire all the dead wood. Being a cutthroat businessman is what got you where you are today and made you my business idol. The biggest deadwood at Dell computers today, and the root of all the problems in tech support is the Baron of Bedlam. Figure out who that is, which won't be hard once you personally start asking around, and a new golden age will occur for Dell.
3. Last, improve morale; you have techs going ballistic on the floor. Because if you don't, Dell may make the news for bad reasons like employees cracking due to the immense stress they are under. We both know this has already happened, and I am about to tell the world. Your PR people will not be able to suppress it this time. Let's hope no one else experiences the next two stories, both of which happened on my team, and were not bleeps on the radar, but huge glaring red lights that what they were doing to people was wrong.

The Legend of
Thunder Bunny:
The Dellumbine Incident
As mentioned before we had a guy we called Thunder Bunny on the team. He garnished this name because for all intent and purposes, he was a nice guy. However, the atmosphere of the job was driving him over the edge, far more than most of us. He was a pressure cooker constantly exploding, on time with almost deadly results.
It was last summer and I think the heat wave, the asinine ways of the Queue Nazis, and a poor performance review finally sent him over the edge. This sucked because he sat right next me and Master Mac. Have you ever seen someone go insane? I mean balls out, eat a family of five, shoot people from a tower, mass murdering insane? I did that day, and will never be the same. There was no humanity in his eyes, only rage. He rose up out of his seat and began to soundly beat the shit out of the phone, that doubled as a leash to his desk. In the next move he grabbed his keyboard and began to smash it repeatedly into his monitor and phone, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs in such anguish, it was no longer English, but in the tongue of a mortal man sailing the seas on insanity. I am usually a fast on my feet kind of guy, same with Master Mac, but this display had us frozen. He finally turned his rage toward us, but by then the Wackennut SS was there to take him down. If they had not been there a second sooner, we would have had to defend ourselves against the deadly force. He would not have been lashing out at us personally, only the situation he was in. He had completely lost it.
We did not see him for several weeks, and we asked around. He was on psychiatric leave, hopefully permanently. Dell was too cheap to let him go, because then he could pull disable workers comp on them. Instead, they did a patchwork psyche job on him and put him BACK ON THE PHONES. Now, I swear, he wears a black trench coat to work, and twitches ever so slightly. When I was promoted to a different campus, I counted my lucky stars. The worst part is he so messed up now; he doesn't view quitting as an option. I guess Dell's mind washing psychotics did their jobs. At least he has not been deadly, like the next story.

The Day the Wheels Fell Off
Some still debate what truly happened, my guess is Dell's PR people have tried to hide suppress the story, though it did briefly make the news before being squashed. On a fateful night, a great Dell tech shot and killed another one and held another hostage during the early morning of a rather calm Sunday. The reasons are still shaky due to reasons just explained, but it did happen. The stress level was definitely a major factor. It ended with the murderous tech taking his own life, but not without calling some members of the Jedi about what he had done. So for a sure tally I know first hand, Dell's way of running their tech support officially has blood on its hand. But I guess there is no war crimes tribunal for Corporate America, but maybe there should be.
Peace, and by the way, let's burn this system down.

Last but not not least, here are some mad shout outs for my Brothers I left behind. Master Mac, you fucking rock like a llama in cage. You're mad monkey skills are still the best I've ever seen. Wookie, it's all good, play the game like the player you are. Swankster, fucking get the hell out of there, XFL Unix Admin, saw it on Monster.com, you know it's your destiny. Jive Ass Turkey, when am I getting your DJ project cds? Steve and Doug, you two were the best design duo ever. Cathy, I know fonts now, it's rather funny. Edgar and Mike, I hope this article finds you employed elsewhere. And to the rest of the Jedi Knights, may the force be with you.