Computer Tech Told To Pretend He's Not In Middle Of Blackout

A technical support representative was having coffee with a coworker last night and explaining how he'd been forced to work through a blackout. He said that when the power went down everyone had initially celebrated, thinking that they might get a breather from answering calls or perhaps even sent home since none of the computers worked and without them they were unable to access any information about the customers or their computers. However, the blackout had not affected the phones and because the company he worked for was an outsourcer, they were paid by the manufacturer based on the number of calls they handled. Therefore, his manager had made them continue taking calls - in the dark. The manager had also stressed that they should not let on that they did not have power as this would make the customers suspicious, and instructed the support reps to continue acting as if they were looking up the customer's information despite not having any functioning computers.
His coworker asked how the manager had suggested that they get access to the information they needed to actually solve people's problems.
He told us to wing it, the rep said, and if we were wrong they'd call back.