Ramblings from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

Working here at the computer store is an interesting hobby, and for a disabled man like myself, a ray of sunshine in a dark world. I can work here and they fully understand my limitations, and then work with me as I endeavor to climb that mountain that all depressed people know so very well.

I have my moments when I wonder exactly what is going on with the minds of our customers. We do get our share of the odd and outré.

Take, for example, our first customer this morning. He brings in a computer that has trouble even coming on. There are nicotine crusts on the case, not just yellow stain, mind you, but actual amber colored deposits as if he had spit tobacco juice on it. Even the cables inside are stain with the stuff. Perhaps this is why he keeps burning up power supplies, an overdose of smoke. I dare not mention his smoking habits; I just smile and install the new power supply.

Then there are the people who want data transferred when a computer must be totally wiped and reloaded. We charge by a flat rate according to how many gigabytes need to be saved to our backups and replaced. Don’t they realize that we can see what they want transferred, especially when they are not in a folder like “my pictures’ and we must hunt for them?

One guy asks for his pictures to be saved and proceeds to have 5.5 gigs of pure porn. I have no desire to see such sickening stuff, and I wish I could say, “Oh, sorry, it was accidentally deleted.” But I must sigh, and let it go.

Another asks for “family pictures” to be saved, so I am thinking he wants his kid’s pictures, family occasions, etc. When I track down one of the folders he mentioned, there are porno scenes on the cover of the folder. Wow! I now know more about his wife than I needed to know.

Yesterday, a young lady kept me on the phone for fifteen minutes, loudly insisting that I get her Internet service back up and running. I checked everything, and there should have been no problem. Suddenly she exclaims, “Silly me, my computer isn’t plugged in all the way. I don’t have enough power. Yep! That’s it! Thank you!”

Can’t people check their stuff before calling? Can’t they save their own embarrassing pictures before the computer comes to the shop?

Another says her computer is “slow”. I check it out. I actually pull a soda bottle cap out of the huge dust bunny I find clogging the fans. A computer has to breathe to work properly. Another has cereal inside her computer clogged in the dust of ages. History is passing before my eyes. A good Sherlock Holmes would now know that she has a black dog, and could guess with fair odds at the breed of the animal.

We had a customer raising the very devil with my boss over a business computer. He brings it to the shop where my boss kindly hits the reset button. The computer works fine. This has been one of the steps my boss went over with the customer on the phone. Sigh.

We continue to have calls demanding that we do something that another business is responsible for doing. We are an ISP, but we are not responsible for other ISP services problems. This is something that for some reason people have a hard time grasping.

You either love my type of job or leave it, and I happened to love it!