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The Italian Job By MindField

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  • The Italian Job By MindField

    Back in October of 2002 I took a job with a local merchant of refurbished and computer goods. We basically sold refurb computers, monitors, laptops and other computer hardware and accessories and the like. We also had our own line of new and decidedly crap computers. My job was as their PC technician. I was paid utter crap for a tech ($8/hr -- I took it for the experience so I had something relevant on my resume later) and the work was rather stressful. Not because being a tech is necessarily stressful. Because being a tech for an electronics/computer dealer who sells utter crap that comes back in for service as often as not is stressful. It's hard to justify your existence at a place whose products you couldn't believe in even if you still believed in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and tax relief. But it was a job, and it paid the bills -- but only just.

    Now, during the week I was the one and only tech on duty from 12:30pm to 9pm. My counter, where people come to tell me how crap our crap is and order me to fix it, is only open 'til 5pm, after which I close up the counter and dedicate the rest of my time to actually getting work done. At any given time I'd typically have 8-10 machines in the queue and one on my bench. We only had one test board in which we tested components, but we had three outlets so I could have as many as three machines all doing something at once -- virus scanning, cleaning, defragging, surface testing, or whatever -- if it needed to go through some lengthy process I generally had somewhere else I could plug a machine into to work on it while the others did their thing. It was tight, cramped, and I shared my tech room with shipping/receiving. As you might guess, this wasn't what you'd call a classy operation.

    So it's Monday. I've started work, and I'm dancing between customers at the counter, customers on the phone, and when there are neither, working on units. In walks an older Italian gentleman, whom we shall refer to as "Arsebag," or "AB" for short. He looks quite pleasant and professional in his sharply creased pinstripe and neatly trimmed salt & pepper moustache and hair. He didn't appear agitated so I didn't feel the need to gird myself against the arrival of a potential shitstorm. I was also in a fairly decent mood under the circumstances and figure starting off the conversation on a pleasant note should set a good example for the rest of the discussion.

    Me: "Hi, what can I do for you?"
    AB: [Places nondescript computer, one of ours, on the counter] "My daughter's computer doesn't work, so I need you guys to get it fixed."
    Me: "Sure, what seems to be the problem with it?"
    AB: "I don't know, it's my daughter's and she just said it's broken."
    Me: "Okay, no problem, I'm sure we can figure it out."
    AB: "Good. I'll come back in, what, an hour or two to pick it up?"
    Me: Oh lord, not another one. Why do they always think they're my only customer? I try and be nice though and explain things clearly. "Actually Sir, it will take 3-5 days before I can get to it, since there are a lot of units ahead of yours, but I will get to it as soon as I am able."
    AB: "What?! That's unacceptable; my daughter needs this for her schoolwork! Put mine at the front of the line!"
    Me: "I'm sorry Sir, but that would be unfair to all of the others ahead of you, who also need their computers as soon as possible. All I can do is work as well and as quickly as I can."

    We bantered back and forth like this for another minute or so but he finally realized that I wasn't going to budge. "Fine," he said as he left. "You just get it done ASAP and call me the second you're done." I'll get right on that. The unit was only a few weeks old so it was covered by warranty, but I couldn't help but wonder how his daughter managed to become so dependent on this machine for her homework in just a few weeks, and what did before she had it that she couldn't go back to in the mean time. I concluded that maybe she was just stupid, apples rarely falling far from the tree, after all.

    Perhaps it was naive of me to believe I wouldn't have to think about this for another few days yet. I did indeed have a pretty good pile ahead of me and most of tem were of the heavy load variety -- virus/spy ware/absurdly fragmented systems that needed tedious, long-winded scans and a whole mess of manual registry cleanings, file deletions, and in some cases restorations. It therefore came as an unpleasant surprise when Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of being swamped, I get a phone call.
    "Is it done yet?" AB asks impatiently.
    "No, sorry, I have not gotten to it yet, it will be a few days yet," I replied, mentally adding You coprophageous monkey.
    AB wasn't please. "Well hurry up!" And with that, hangs up before waiting for a response. Asshole was the nicest thing I could call him. I continue to work on machines for the rest of the day and evening. I continue to not work on his, though his is getting closer to the front of the line, if a little slower than expected -- I had one ornery machine that utterly defied diagnosis despite a battery of tests all turning up clean, so one slot on my bench was occupied for several days on that one machine alone.

    Wednesday comes. My naiveté insisted on having me believe that yesterday's call, which included the reminder that it would be a few days yet, would stick and I'd be left alone to do my job. My naiveté hadn't yet been exposed to enough SC’s to kill it. Little did it know its demise was at hand. He calls again -- this time in the evening when I don't normally take calls. The guys out in front are usually good at keeping the calls away from my bench so I can get some real work done, but this one was put through, presumably because AB's suckiness had then put him through because he didn't care what I was doing.
    "Is it done yet?" he asked yet again. I am beginning to lose my patience, but keep things civil.
    "No, sir, as I said it would be a few days. Yours is coming up shortly, I should know more by tomorrow."
    "Well what the hell is taking you so long?" he yells. "I need this thing done! My daughter can't do her schoolwork without it!
    God forbid she actually has to make a trip to the library or, you know, use a pencil or anything, I thought. "I understand Sir and I am working as quickly as I can." is what I said.
    "Just get the fucking thing done!" Click.
    Oh, I'd like to get something done.

    Thursday. I finally get to the machine. Power, but no POST, nor any diagnostic beeps. Check out the hardware. RAM checks. Cards check. CPU checks. Hard drive checks. AB calls. Crap. The usual ensues. I tell him I'm working on it but do not have any diagnosis yet so am as yet unable to determine the proper course of action. He tells me he'll be in tomorrow to pick it up. I tell him I can't guarantee it will be done by then. He tells me fucking well better be. I tell him one possible solution is for me to insert it into his rectum. At least, that's what I wish I had told him. Instead I wimp out and tell him I will do what I can, but that I will call him when it is done. He hangs up without a goodbye -- obviously SOP for this SOB.
    "I don't want any part of your crazy cult! I'm already a member of the public library and that's good enough for me, thanks!"

    ~TechSmith 314
    HellGate: London

  • #2
    Closing time comes without resolution. Resume operations the next day, Friday. Finish all tests and arrive at the conclusion that the motherboard is toast. This was unfortunate, because our company had the most ass-chappingly abstruse policies known to man, including but not limited to such hits as "Exchange only, no refunds unless you threaten staff with a vest full of armed C-4," and "No exchanges on complete systems, repair only, even if you have a vest full of armed C-4." By repair, they really mean repair -- board-level repair. They'll take a motherboard and check it by trace by trace for faults. Why they wasted that much time and money with higher-end techs instead of replacing the damn thing outright was beyond me, but sadly it was just the sort of abject dumbassery this company was all about. AB was not going to be pleased, because this meant the entire system was going to have to go back to head office so the solder jockeys could pore over it. Or maybe that's pour over it, considering what I've seen of their solder work. Either way this was going above me, which meant any number more days. There was nothing I could do about it, and AB was going to have a square dance with apoplexy, petechiae and aneurysm. With me right in the middle.

    Lovely.

    I set this all up with head office so they can prepare to receive the unit and know what needs to be done with it, then spend the rest of my time waiting for that phone call, my gut a washing machine in the agitate cycle. And it did come. And I did explain, attempting to be as neutral and polite as I could, hoping that a note of deference and sympathy might take the edge off. This, then, would be the part where my naiveté gets brutally beaten to a fine, pasty pulp and dumped down the sewer. AB goes off. He screams. He yells. He invents new and exciting expletives -- I think some of them were even English. He discovers wondrous, uncharted forms of conniption medical science will require years to research. I was quite convinced that if he were standing in front of me his nose would be gushing blood as the veins in his forehead bulged in an alarming reenactment of Scanners. I started to wonder if the screeching was coming from the phone, or if I just heard him from where he lived.

    It was only through the kind of inhuman self-control one musters from times of extreme duress that I was able to restrain myself from telling him all of the wonderful things I would like to do to him with a variety of exotic weapons after the three new body cavities he had tore me. Somehow though, I did, and explained as best I could through the ranting that it was beyond my control and that its repair now rested in the hands of the techs at head office. More screaming and cursing and suchlike, and eventually -- presumably because he ran out of voice, if not steam -- he finally accepted what was to be and hung up.

    I closed my service window, then sat down out of view, literally quivering with pent-up rage. I couldn't see anyone at that moment and I was far too upset to get any work done. I wanted not merely to knock this guy into next week, but to take a good solid aluminum bat to his genitals to make absolutely sure he never bred again.

    It took a good fifteen minutes or so before I was calm enough to conduct myself in anything even resembling a halfway calm and coherent manner. Later that night, before closing, I wrote up a note for R, the weekend tech and very cool guy. "R," said the note. "This absolutely must be ready to go on the Sunday truck or we're all going to be an episode of The Sopranos." The obvious implication being that if his unit didn't make it to head office on Sunday's truck AB would return and gun us all down, Tony Soprano style. There was no racial implication intended of course -- R had no idea who this guy was (since he only works weekends) so any intended racial inference as a result of the Sopranos crack would have been lost on R anyway. It was simply my way of bringing a little levity to what was otherwise an extremely dire warning to make absolutely sure this was taken care of. I trusted R to take care of it, so I wasn't worried. I go home to forget about the Week from Hell.

    Remember my naiveté? Turns out it wasn't completely dead after all, but on life support and clinging by only a few meager tendrils. I discovered this because of the phone call I received at home Saturday afternoon. The one that pulled the plug on what remained of my naiveté.

    Things, apparently, went a little like this:

    AB shows up at the store, bright-eyed and bushy-horned, before R's shift was even started and demanded the manager get his computer so he could take it to head office himself. J, our store manager, Really Nice Guy™, and sadly, spineless wimp, folds like a cheap shirt and takes him into the tech room to retrieve his machine. (A no-no; no one but staff is supposed to be allowed in) AB sees his machine. AB sees the note taped to the top of his machine. AB becomes mortally offended, because AB thinks I'm calling him a biker.

    Let me rewind that.

    AB sees his machine. AB sees the note taped to the top of his machine. AB becomes mortally offended, because AB thinks I'm calling him a biker.

    Yes. A biker. The WTFing may commence. You see, I could have certainly understood a Soprano = Mafia = Italian slur connection. That would have actually made sense and I could have understood if he took it that way. (I didn't even consider the ramifications when I wrote the note, it just came to mind and seemed funny at the time, but in reconsideration I understood how it could have been construed as a slight)

    But no, he wasn't offended because it implied he was Mafioso just because he was a well-dressed Italian. He was offended because it implied he was a biker just because he was a ... well ... dressed ... um. Italian. Wait. What?

    Yeah. So, moving on. AB screams at J. J is not amused. AB fumes and storms off with his computer. He makes his way to head office -- from Brampton east through Woodbridge, Concord, and north to Richmond Hill, quite probably over an hour drive from our location. On arrival he dropped his computer at the reception counter and proceeded to blast the receptionist, who then got the owner, who in turn caved like a soufflé in a nightclub by giving him a new computer. AB was pleased. Except for one last thing. He wanted me fired.

    The owner called J. J, CEO of Towing the Party Line, called me. Bye- bye job. Just like that. No two weeks notice (I was one freaking day away from my 3-month probationary period, so this was all legal), no word of warning, just ... "we have to let you go." The EEG hooked up to my naiveté flat lined; time of death called; burial scheduled and last will and testament executed. It left me a big chunk of jade.

    Thus ended my brief career as a PC technician in a suburb of Hell.
    Sometimes life is altered.
    Break from the ropes your hands are tied.
    Uneasy with confrontation.
    Won't turn out right. Can't turn out right

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