My first company was an ISP. There were 4 of us. We were around 19. No business experience. No networking experience. How hard could it be, right?

I configured my first router by calling our provider and saying we'd set things up but something was wrong, and having them echo to me what they did on their side so I could "check" our side - they charged for the setup, but this way we got it for free.

We literally lived in the office for the first year, and one of my most entertaining experiences was answering the phone at 2am on a Sunday morning and the person on the other end expressing surprise that someone answered - they'd just called out of sheer desperation and expected it to ring forever.

Then there was the person who spent three hours terrorising us before it transpired he'd not connected his modem, nor turned it on, or in fact taken it out of its package - something the person talking to him found out call by call, while the rest of us tried to not audibly laugh, because surely nobody could be that stupid? (a "learning experience" - it was how I came to understand why support people ask all those really obvious "stupid" questions.

I can't make up my mind if all the network issues were the worst part, or if the support calls were.

This was 26 years ago, and I have just about gotten over the soul-sucking parts of it by now.

I even contemplated setting up a local ISP again... I don't know why.