Cat nap while holding.

A Time Warner Cable technician replacing a defective cable modem was left on hold with the cable company so long, he fell asleep on the customer’s couch.

While the customer waited in another room, he could hear the technician calling Time Warner Cable’s customer service line to register and activate the new modem.

“I could hear the hold music from his call because he had it on speaker and eventually after about 15 minutes of listening to it from the other room, I walked out to find him like that,” writes the Reddit user DrinkingWhiteRussian. “Before doing anything, I grabbed my phone and snapped the pic, and then said ‘Excuse me?’ He startled a little bit, pointed to his phone and said ‘Sorry man, still on hold.'”

About 10 minutes later, a representative finally appeared on the line and presumably activated the modem. Only after the technician left did the customer realize nobody bothered to register the all-important MAC address in Time Warner’s system, which forced the customer to call and start the process all over again. After more lengthy hold time, a national Time Warner rep transferred the call to a local Time Warner office, which promptly transferred the customer back to the national call center.

“The guy that I got this time saw that they had never deactivated the original modem that was replaced,” says the disgruntled customer. “I despise Time Warner.”

One former Time Warner Cable tech explained many Time Warner Cable techs now call the same customer service line you do, and if you have ever been left on hold forever, so have the company’s own technicians and installers.

“I’ve spent up to an hour on hold after I completed a job just waiting to talk to someone in the call center so they can flip the switch and turn on your equipment,” wrote the former technician.

It isn’t known if the napping technician is a Time Warner Cable employee or one of their contractors.

Thanks to our regular reader PreventCAPS for the news tip.