When things don’t make sense and feel out of control, mental health experts say, humans instinctively feel threatened. Though you would like to think you can employ reason in this situation, you’re really just a mass of neural impulses and primal reactions. Think fight or flight, but you can’t do either because you are stuck on the phone, which provokes rage.

Of course, companies rated best for tech support often charge more for their products or they may charge a subscription fee for enhanced customer care so the cost of helping you is baked in, as with Apple’s customer support service, AppleCare, and the Amazon Prime subscription service.

You can also find excellent tech support in competitive markets like domain name providers, where operators such as Hover and GoDaddy receive high marks. Also a good bet are hungry upstarts trying to break into markets traditionally dominated by large national companies. Take regional internet and phone service providers like Logix and WOW, which rank near the top in customer support surveys.

But tech support veterans and mental health experts said there were other ways to get better tech support or maybe just make it more bearable. First, do whatever it takes to control your temper. Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Losing your stack at a consumer support agent is not going to get your problem resolved any faster. Probably just the opposite.

“I definitely remember seeing parts of myself I didn’t know were there as far as getting irritated with people and using passive-aggressive behaviors,” said John Valenti, a video producer in Rochester, who worked as a tech support agent at an internet phone company from 2007 to 2012 to put himself through graduate school. He made an absurdist film about it for his master’s thesis at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Mr. Valenti, like several other tech support workers who have posted confessions online, said rudeness generally gets customers placed on hold for long periods or “accidentally” disconnected. It also may result in the agent fixing the immediate problem but not the root cause. So you’re only going to have call back when it happens again.

Don’t bother demanding to speak to a supervisor, either. You’re just going to get transferred to another agent who has been alerted ahead of time that you have come unhinged, Mr. Robbins said. Also, be aware that your words are being recorded and might be printed on posters in the call center.