I’ll admit that I’ve never won the award for being the most patient person in the world. In fact, back in my teenage years, I had virtually none. It started to change back in 1998 (wow, make me feel old) when I prayed to accept Christ. Amazing how quickly a total transformation can happen. After working in ministry for over 2 years, I’ve grown even more (definitely need lots of patience and understanding in this line or work). All that to say this: I can proudly say that it takes a lot to get me to the point of being upset or mad, and even more for me to actually show that I’m mad.

Now, on to the story. We have a plastic card printer and software that’s used to print keytags for our children’s checkin. It needed to be moved from one computer to another - no big deal. Well, at least that’s what I thought. I get the software all installed on the new computer, enter the license key, etc. and it notifies me that this software is already activated and I would need to contact support to have the activation reset. So, I called the number provide and got an immediate answer.

I explain to the support rep that I’ve migrated to a new computer and need help activating. She asks for my license key and proceeds to say in a somewhat nasty tone “Looks like you tried to activate this several times.” I did click “OK” two or three times before I called, but didn’t consider that excessive. Then, she says, in the same tone “What is your hardware ID?” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I politely asked where I could find said hardware ID. I’m greeted with another not-so-nice response “On the machine you installed it on.” I still have no clue what she’s asking for or where to get it.

Before I ever even had a chance to explain to her I didn’t know what she’s asking for, she replies “We’ll just do an automatic activation.”  She does something on my end and asks me to try again. I do, and it activated successfully.  I assume we’re done and proceed to thank here.   Now, at this point, I’m slightly irritated, but no where near upset yet.

Little did I know we weren’t done yet. The rep proceeds scold me (in a very incriminating way) for the nasty deed I had apparently done by calling and asking for help: “Now I reset this for you today, but this will be the last time. Next time, you’ll have to buy a new copy.” Keeping my cool (although it was becoming difficult to do so at this point), I very nicely point out to here that the license agreement I’m looking at says that it can only be installed one computer and that I only had it installed on one computer. She comes back, the tone of her voice getting even nastier, “Yeah, but it can only be activated once.”

At this point, I’m getting more then a bit irritated. I very politely asked here to send me a copy of the license agreement stating that the product can’t be transfered to a new computer. She asks for my email address, which I gave here, and she says’s she’ll send it right over (same nasty tone) and then proceeds to hang up on me. Now, I had moved past the irritated stage.

I took a few minutes to cool off and called back and asked the operator for a supervisor. I spoke to a very nice guy who apologized and said he would send out a memo (I wonder if the memo actually got sent). He was great to talk to and seemed to actually be interested in the fact that I was a customer. Why can’t they have people like this answer the phone to begin with? I never did get that license agreement I was promised…

Fortunately, I was able to make it through the whole ordeal and keep cool about it. I guess things like this are put in our path as an exercise to help us grow in our faith. Gods word tells us over and over how to deal with people like this and these type situations: Ephesians 4:2, Colossians 3:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:14, and 2 Timothy 2:24 stand out to me. I’ll be the first to tell you though, dealing with difficult people can be, umm, difficult.