» Clients Are Stupid

This was only a few days ago... (It may be a little long too..)
A little background info: I work in the support/installation department for a software company that provides specialised software for running hotels, restaurants etc. We provide support 24/7 for our PMS (Hotel) software, but not for the POS (Restaurant) - that's just how it is, ok?

Anyway it's 8pm Christmas Eve, I'm not on call and yet I get a call from a client on my personal mobile number (I recognised their number as a result of numerous calls....) It's the restaurant manager of an installation I did about 3 months back telling me that the software has totally crashed.

First things first. Me: You need to call us on the tech support number, this is actually my personal number so I'm not able to help you. (I found out later he got my number off I girl I have stayed in contact with from the hotel)
Him: I did that, and there's no one in the office. I left a message, but no one has called me back yet.
Me: Did you listen to the full message? It explains our office hours and gives you the number to call for after hours support.
Him: Oh.
Me: Anyway, what do you mean by the software has crashed?
Him: We've just run out of thermal paper for the receipt printers and we keep getting an error message (from windows) that the document failed to print.
Me: So the software is working correctly you just can't print cause you have no paper?
Him: Uh, yeah.
Me: Right, well for a start we don't do after hours support for POS software, it's stated in your contract.
Him: But we need paper, it's christmas eve and we can't print receipts.
Me: Did you order more paper through us?
Him: I don't know.
Me: Do you know if an order was placed for more paper at all?
Him: No.
Me: Would anyone else there know if more paper was ordered?
Him: I don't know. Do you know where we can get some more from?
Me: Like you said it's christmas eve, nothing is open, and won't be for 2 days. I'm not even familiar with suppliers in your area as I'm on the other side of the state. If you did order the paper through us (which they didn't) there's nothing I can do about it as you haven't followed it up soon enough.
Him: So what can I do?
Me: Nothing basically, do your ordering on time in future and for now, manually write your dockets. Bye.

He had almost the exact same conversation with the guy who was actually on call 5 mins later and is being charged for both calls. zeppelin.
(Tue 30th Dec 2003, 3:28, More)