My brain hurts.

Today, I realised just how sucky a phone system is for IT support. Also, I realised just how close a phone call can drive you to kill a man.

AngryRussian is a regular caller from our Sydney office, and loves to pretend that he knows everything about IT. Change is a horrible force for him, and I'm sure still resents the fall of the Wall. He recently got a new laptop for work, and I was tasked (cursed?) with setting up Outlook for him.

Just to be clear - while AngryRussian has a slight accent, his English is of native-speaker level.

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Me: "Ok, so just type in sydserve into the server name field, and we're done!"
AngryRussian: "sydserve?"
Me: "Ah, sorry. s-y-d-s-e-r-v-e. V for er...vacuum" (I nearly said 'vulva')
AngryRussian: "Ah ok...its not working."
Me: "Oh? you've typed it correctly? s-y-d-s-e-r-v-e?"
AngryRussian: "Oh, a "d"!...ok...still not working."
Me: "s-y-d-s-e-r-"
AngryRussian: "Yes yes as you said it, ok, I got it."
Me: "Oh...ok, sounds like you're not actually on the network. Can you click on Start, run, type in cmd, then push enter for me please?"
AngryRussian: "Yup, ok, black screen is up, Microsoft windows square bracket version 6 point 1 point 2 poi-"
Me: "Ok, that's it! Please type in "i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, then push enter."
AngryRussian: "Why didn't you just say ipconfig?"
Me: *twitch* "Just being sure. now, in the information that came up, can you see a line that says IP Addre-"
AngryRussian: "C colon slash documents and settings slash my name slash ipconfig, blank line, windows ip configuration, blank lines, wireless lan adapater configur-"
Me: *mini-seizure* "Ok that's great, what's your IP address?"
AngryRussian: *more talking to himself, repeating all info, thankfully he actually has an IP*
Me: "Ok, that's weird. Can you type "ping 192.168.0.1", then push enter for me?"
AngryRussian: "ping192.168.0.1 is not a recognized program or-"
Me: "Sorry, my bad, please put a space after the word ping and the numbers."
AngryRussian:  *mutters* "Should of said that the first time..."
Me: *rage level climbing* "Ok, you see 4 lines come up, yea?"
AngryRussian: "Yea....but why is sydserve coming up?"
Me: "That's the name of the server, it's been like that for at least 2 years."
AngryRussian: "Nono, you said it was sydsereve!"
Me: ".....sydsereve?"
AngryRussian: "yea, s-y-d-s-e-r-e-v-e."
Me: *rage level critical* "No, there's not e after the r."
AngryRussian: "Oh, so it's s-y-d-s-e-r-e-v? That doesn't make any sense"
Me:  "......................................no, s-y-d-s-e-r-v-e." (yes, the pause was that long)
AngryRussian: "Ohhhh! Ok, I'll change it in outlook....it works! God, fucking computers, ay?"
Me: "Ok, all done, I'm going to lunch now, please call <my boss> if you have any more problems" *click*

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It was still mid-morning, and I knew that the rest of the day was to be forever tainted by AngryRussian.