Mr. Fart’s Favorite Colors
I've run into the programmer vs normal person difference in thinking quite often with regard to customer support calls.<p>Occasionally I will be called by someone from some company or government department because they want to notify of something. Lets say for example, I forgot to pay my insurance bill.<p>At some point in the call they will ask me "I just need to verify your identity with some security questions." and ask me for something like my date of birth or my home address.<p>The only correct answer to this is "I can't give you that information. You called me. I have no idea who you are."<p>I'm always met with complete incredulity at this concept. About 50% of callers don't understand at all what I'm trying to get at. Most of the rest just don't have any idea how to continue.<p>What I tell them at this point is that the correct way to handle this is that they need to give me an extension number for them personally and I will find the external number of their company/dept myself on their website and then call them back.<p>Unfortunately a lot of these callers either can't (due to not having a personal extension number) or wont (it's off protocol I guess?).<p>The problem is, I feel like an asshole for taking a stand on things like this ("Why is this guy trying to make my job difficult"), but more people need to understand that it's all too easy to be socially engineered!