Shut up and listen to me!

[Tigress]

I don't like playing the gender card, but this yutz made me wish I was a guy last night.

It was five minutes to close when one of the computer associates brought a customer up to ask me a question. Internet Explorer was not connecting to any websites on his computer. It had before, but connected to fewer and fewer sites until it won't connect at all. I immediately suspected some kind of malware on his system, but this idiot swore up and down that it couldn't be the issue because he has Norton (which is more than likely either a trial version or out of date).

And he had talked to BellSouth, which advised him to "buy" Firefox or use "F11" to cure all his ills. But if IE isn't connecting, neither will Firefox. And F11 is a system restore that will wipe his entire hard drive clean. I don't know what kind of idiots that they have working over there, but this guy was utterly convinced that either suggestion was going to be the solution.

What makes this situation all the more irritating was that the guy utterly ignored me as he explained his problem. He kept talking to the computer associate and didn't look at or even acknowledge the cute little geek chick that is paid to know all this stuff. And, of course, bringing his computer in was impossible because he lived out in the country.

He simply would not listen to my advice to bring the computer in or have one of us come out to his house. And the computer associate was no help by suggesting off-the-wall things like having us install Firefox for him (which isn't expressly forbidden, but isn't exactly kosher with company policy either). By this point, the dumbass had convinced himself that Firefox would fix his problem, especially after he learned that it's free. Then my knucklehead associate told him that we could put it on a flash drive or CD for him and send him on his way.

Fine, screw this. You, Dumb Computer Associate, obviously know how to do my job better than me, since you wouldn't shut up long enough to let me get two words in edgewise. I've been working literally all day and I am exhausted. I'll burn the stupid CD for you, Dumb Customer. And I'll see you next week when this turns out to not work the way you wanted.

Luckily, when I told my manager what happened, he ripped the associate a new one for talking over me and screwing the store out of a possible $200-300 repair.

Still, sometimes, I wish I was a guy.

[raven_illusion]

Sounds about right, I had heard rumors that bellsouth tech had dropped in quality since they left my call center, turns out that some rumors are true.

[bob the goat]

I dealt with this. We had a 35ish guy in the computer department that could not tell you the difference between Windows, IE, and Outlook as per his definition “they are all used for the internet”. He would bring customers over to me to “get another opinion” which means the customer wanted to do something more complex than play solitaire, and he was lost. I remember one old guy saying “well, this young pup does not speak our language” and walking away. Now, there are two things relevant here. I’m 28, and the other guy could not connect a plug and play USB mouse without a 200 page instruction manual and 5 calls to tech support. The funny part, the customer wanted to video edit and run Maya and AutoCAD. He needed a system with high end graphics. The guy sold him a dirt cheap Compaq, with only on-board graphics, no PCI-e slot, and only 512 shared RAM.

I laughed.

[draggar]

Most chauvinistic and egotistical guys are threatened by intelligent women.

[draggar]

because he has Norton

There's your problem!!! Kill Norton, get AVG, SpyBot, and Ad-Aware plus link housecall.antivirus.com in their favorites.

Problem solved!!

[lordlundar]

And he had talked to BellSouth, which advised him to "buy" Firefox or use "F11" to cure all his ills. But if IE isn't connecting, neither will Firefox. And F11 is a system restore that will wipe his entire hard drive clean. I don't know what kind of idiots that they have working over there, but this guy was utterly convinced that either suggestion was going to be the solution.

You should see a local cable ISP in my area. They provide good service, but their tech support is crap. I get people coming in where their connection dropped out. Their solution? "You need to buy a NIC" Despite the fact that their computer has one in the MBoard, and it works fine.

[draggar]

Still, sometimes, I wish I was a guy.

But then your feminine wiles wouldn't work on us guys.

[Imogene]

But then your feminine wiles wouldn't work on us guys.

That really depends on the guy, now, doesn't it?

[Shabo]

I once was talking with a female coworker of mine about how I wanted to be a computer tech for my career, and she told me flat out that if she ever got me on the phone, she would ask for a guy because she wouldn't trust that I know what I'm talking about. That really surprised me. I mean, am I a computer genius that can go in and reprogram your registry to fix every single little detail that's wrong with your machine? (heck, can anyone do that without a reformat? ) Most of my repair skills come from stumbling around trying various fixes that I do know. I've solved really tough problems before that way. Oh, and with Google. But I digress. I do, however, know a bit more than the average user, and feel confident that if I don't know how to fix it, I know where to go to find out.

At my current job, I've never really had anyone give me crap about being a girl, although one time a lady asked if I could send "one of the guys" over to the office. I think she thought I was my boss though. So we don't get much sexism here.

I did, however, experience this at my pet store job. I learn a lot by the "absorb as you go" method, and I'm pretty good at it, so after only a few months, I was able to handle most freshwater questions, but since I didn't get much time with saltwater or reptiles, I was still a little bit rusty there. One time, I had a guy come up and ask me questions about a new reptile we had gotten in, and I gave him all the answers I knew, then when I went to get him a bulb for the heat lamp, I was fairly certain about the wattage he needed, but thought I would double check with my manager (poor guy was standing there off the clock looking to make a purchase of his own) and the guy I was helping decided that my answers weren't good enough and started asking the manager the exact same questions I had just answered. Well, surprise surprise, the manager answered with the exact same answers that I had. All I could do was just stand there and do my best not to give this SC the death glare. After the SC was done talking to my manager, he walks off, and I start saying, "I just answered all of those questions with the exact same thing that you did!!!!" My manager helped calm me down by saying that the guy was an idiot for not listening to me.

Older guys tend to be the worst about not wanting to listen to young women. Used to push my buttons to no end. But then again, when they were growing up, women didn't hold positions in retail, and generally were lucky if they finished high school. Not saying this excuses them, but old stereotypes die really hard.

I once saw a lady struggling to carry a 40 lb bag of dog food through the store, and I offered to help her. (Keep in mind, I think I was 17 at the time and weighed around 100 lbs. I'm not a big girl at all, but I'm strong nonetheless. I've been slinging around 50 lb bags of feed since I was 12.) She took one look at me and said, No, I've got it. She takes a few steps forward and my manager sees her struggling and offers to help her, and she gladly accepts! I was like WTF?? I wouldn't have offered if I couldn't handle it! My manager looks at me fuming after he helps her to the register, and laughs and says to me, She probably thought the bag was going to break you.

To this day, (I'm still about the same size, just with more muscle weight ) I have people offering to help me carry 20 lb computers. I appreciate opening doors for me, since it's really hard to balance a tower in one hand while opening a door in the other, but seriously. I think I can handle a mid-size tower.

[Tigress]

I run into the "carrying heavy stuff" thing, too. This same Dumb Computer Associate offered to carry a desktop for me when I went to fetch one on my first week. I simply took it from him, hoisted it over my head and carried it myself.

A lot of older customers pick on me when they see me packing up computers after working on them. It's along the line of: "Oh, don't pick up that heavy thing!"

I merely smile and say, "I'm a lot stronger than I look."

[digilight]

I can understand the men wanting to carry heavy shit for women thing. I was raised to be respectful and "gentleman like" whatever the fudge that actually means

But my folks taught me the following:
Man walks on side of woman closest to the street.
Man Opens door for woman
Man kills spiders and various other creepy crawly buggies at womans request.
Man carry's heavy shit for woman (not because woman can't, but because thats how man was raised).

And my boy will be raised the same way, not to be a sexist, but to be respectful.

Now the men who won't take advice from women are just idiot douche bags, and the men who can't realize that some women are hella strong and can probably lift that "insert heavy object here" with out a problem are idiots.

[Shabo]

lol, it's usually women that offer to carry stuff for me. Men just hold the doors.

[skeptic53]

One of my friends is female family practice doctor. When she started her career in the early 1980's, women doctors were a lot less common. Her first day on the job she was the only doctor in the clinic. A male patient with chest pain refused to see her, tried to drive himself to the hospital, and died 5 blocks from her clinic.

Too bad they couldn't put "moronic level of sexism" on his death certificate.

[Andara Bledin]

One of my friends is female family practice doctor. When she started her career in the early 1980's, women doctors were a lot less common. Her first day on the job she was the only doctor in the clinic. A male patient with chest pain refused to see her, tried to drive himself to the hospital, and died 5 blocks from her clinic.

Wow. Proof that stupid can be deadly.

There's your problem!!! Kill Norton, get AVG, SpyBot, and Ad-Aware plus link housecall.antivirus.com in their favorites.

Problem solved!!

Our sysadmin recently installed Norton on all the systems. No problems so far, except for the one machine that has AVG and 3 different viruses. AVG is ok, but not one of the best. Norton does tend to be a resource hog, though. And the AVG firewall is notably lackluster.

Kaspersky seems to be consistantly rated the best, with Active Virus Shield by AOL being free and running Kaspersky under the hood.

^-.-^

[BookstoreEscapee]

Man kills spiders and various other creepy crawly buggies at womans request.

Does "AAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!!!!!!111!!!" count as a "request"?

I can't walk past my boss's office with a box in my arms without him asking if I need help. I have assured him numerous times that if I need help I will ask for it. I always test the weight of a box before I lift it. You'd think after a year he'd figure it out...