The free Wi-Fi at one McDonald's here in Vancouver, B.C. has a habit of going out of commission for days, and weeks. Management has told me they can't fix it in-store. It requires a phone call to Bell Canada, the service provider.
The McDonalds I'm referring to is at Broadway and Granville. The free Wi-Fi has a bad habit of slowly getting harder to connect to -- day-by-day -- until it stops working altogether. Oh, the signal's still there -- full bars, but it stops taking connections. If enough customers complain, it gets fixed, and the cycle begins anew. Management says it's not as simple as rebooting a router, like at most coffee houses supplying Wi-Fi. No, McDonald's has to call someone.
Well, we're very near the "not working at all" end of the cycle. Time to begin complaining. This evening, I spoke with a young manager. I won't give her name, but appropriately it rhythms with "handy." She didn't know a thing about how the Wi-Fi worked, or who to call. I extracted a promise that she would pass it up the line, and then she surprised me. She didn't know if it would help but she offering to "turn it off, and on." She went and did this. I watched the "BELLWIFI@MCDONALDS" signal disappear, and reappear, and bingo, I was able to connect. I told her it had worked, and wondered why no other manager had ever tried this. She gave me a big smile, and expressed the heartfelt opinion that it was because she "was young."
The McDonalds I'm referring to is at Broadway and Granville. The free Wi-Fi has a bad habit of slowly getting harder to connect to -- day-by-day -- until it stops working altogether. Oh, the signal's still there -- full bars, but it stops taking connections. If enough customers complain, it gets fixed, and the cycle begins anew. Management says it's not as simple as rebooting a router, like at most coffee houses supplying Wi-Fi. No, McDonald's has to call someone.
Well, we're very near the "not working at all" end of the cycle. Time to begin complaining. This evening, I spoke with a young manager. I won't give her name, but appropriately it rhythms with "handy." She didn't know a thing about how the Wi-Fi worked, or who to call. I extracted a promise that she would pass it up the line, and then she surprised me. She didn't know if it would help but she offering to "turn it off, and on." She went and did this. I watched the "BELLWIFI@MCDONALDS" signal disappear, and reappear, and bingo, I was able to connect. I told her it had worked, and wondered why no other manager had ever tried this. She gave me a big smile, and expressed the heartfelt opinion that it was because she "was young."
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I was pleasantly surprised to have the Wi-Fi working when I came into McDonalds this morning. Thanks Sqwabb and the nice lady at McDonalds.
Karen
Yes. Whatever switch that "handy" McDonald's manager flipped, it's still working this afternoon. I connected instantly.
HAHAHA. All hail the miraculous reset button :D
Have you tried accessing dsldevice.lan while you're there? Purely for the sake of curiosity you understand... and this also assumes your local McDs uses DSL.
Our building upgraded to fibre quite awhile back but for awhile there when the internets were getting painfully slow I was able to cycle the connection from the router's web interface.
I don't think they use DSL. I should look into it. I'm just happy when enough Wi-Fi particles fall on my laptop so I can commune with the Great Cloud in the sky. Oh, and a big hand for the wonderful arrogance of youth.
Heh. I definitely feel the same way about free internets. I'm like a pig in muck with my shifty Tor access right now even though it's as slow as a wet week - it's 20:40 so every wo(man) and her/his smartphone are sucking on the teat.