The Most Thankless Job in Tech Support

Tried to use the web without paying the $10 extortion tonight. No go; way slow. So I went to the upgrade screen and authorized the billing. But nothing changed—still super-super-slow, as billg would say.
So I called the tech support line, cringing all the way. Can you imagine a worse job in tech support than fielding calls from semi- to fully-clueless people paying $250+ per night at random hotels, trying to get their hopeless Windows laptops onto the web? People in airports and hotel lobbies regularly ask me, “Can you help me get the wireless working?” And I say, “Windows? Sorry, I use Mac, no idea. Would help if I could.” The support guy was not totally clueless, but he was basically working from screenshots, and I’m running down ping speeds (1,500 ms!) and packet loss (35%) and MAC addresses, and sub-netted IP addresses, and he’s not sure what to do with it all. The symptom presented as if the hotel network had cached my MAC address and was routing it through the old connection and slow equipment. The ideal “hit it with a hammer” fix would be to clear the router cache located somewhere in the bowels of the hotel. Good luck with that, Notio!
What worked was to plug in an ethernet cable, fooling the laptop into thinking the network port had changed, then switching back to wireless, which for whatever reason got things working again. At least it’s not as bad as Minneapolis in 2004, when Internet service was provided by housekeeping. OMFG, that was scary, but worked out okay in the end.