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I've mentioned before that our computer store sometimes gets interns from a special needs school in the area.
It's nice because they're usually excited to learn about computer repair and they don't mind doing menial tasks like emptying trash or sweeping the floor. That's not to say that's all we have them doing - we actually teach them to test hard drives, run updates, replace memory etc.
I've had a kid coming in for about a year, we'll call him D.
This will sound horrible, but the kid is kind of an obnoxious little prick.
The teachers who keep an eye on him don't like him. He acts like he knows everything there is about computers. For example, the other day he was badgering a teacher about a particular high-end computer he thought the guy should purchase, despite the teacher saying he only wanted something for internet and email.
The teacher who basically keeps an eye on him while he's here overheard this and relayed the conversation to me:
D: You should buy *expensive gaming computer* - C at Stressed Out Computers would agree with me. I know pretty much everything about computers
Yes, dear readers - he actually said that.
Teach: D, did you just say you knew everything about computers?
D: I do!
Teach: My son works for Amazon. Before that he worked for Microsoft. And even then he would never say he knows "everything there is" about computers.
D: Maybe 80%...
Teach: Is that why you got kicked out of Stressed Out Computers last week?
D: I guess.... I don't know everything there is about computers.
Teach: No one knows everything about them. Remember that.
Now, I'm sort of telling this story in reverse. But you see how this kid thinks.
Here's what happened a week and a half ago:
I handed the kid a laptop. I told him to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials which is a pretty well-known antivirus Microsoft provides for free. It no longer works with Windows XP and for our XP holdouts, we've been selling them Kaspersky or putting Avast on for free.
The kid KNOWS what MSE is. He's installed it and uninstalled it before.
Well, for some reason he has a brain burp. It wasn't until a couple of minutes after he left but I noticed the window for the uninstaller was... not right. From across the room the colors didn't look right.
I took a closer look. For some reason, the kid had uninstalled Quickbooks from the guy's laptop.
And this wasn't $200 off the shelf Quickbooks Pro. This was $1000 Quickbooks Enterprise.
I go into panic mode. Fortunately, and by the grace of God, Thor, Loki, Shiva, or the deity of your choice, Intuit had all the guy's serial numbers recorded and we were able to have them emailed to us - then we just had to download and reactive the appropriate version of Quickbooks.
But Jesus Christ... the kid could have potentially cost me a thousand dollars if I had to replace the software myself.
So next day I call his school - explain what happened. They talk to the kid - he doesn't even know why he did it. It was just a mistake, he said.
Of all the things to uninstall, that was the most expensive mistake he could have made. Office, Java, antivirus... anything else I could have replicated for free... and that's what he decides to uninstall.
So I told them I don't want the kid back, ever. A couple of days later, his dad calls. (the kid's parents are loaded - the dad is a doctor or something) - dad apologizes for the kid, tells me how much he loves coming here, and makes sure to mention about 3 times that if I want D to come back, he'd love to.
So yeah... how much do you want to bet D asked daddy warbucks to fix things for him. That's the problem with a lot of these kids... their parents are well-off. The kids never learn responsibility or even how to properly take care of themselves. That's a rant for another time, but we've actually had to teach a couple of these kids how to properly use a broom to sweep a floor because their parents treat them with such kid gloves. These "kids" are usually between 17 - 20 years old. How are they going to learn to live on their own if something happens to the parents?
Anyway... D won't be back. Small errors I don't care about but a potential thousand dollar error - so long and thanks for all the fish. You're done.
And as you can see from the conversation in the first half of the story, even after getting kicked off a work site for uninstalling the wrong software, the kid is still an egomaniac who thinks he can do no wrong.
Oh... here's a funny side note: he's afraid of everything.
D is 19 years old and he was afraid of our basement. He was afraid of getting germs from touching a trash can liner. He was afraid of a waterbug (black cockroach looking thing) The best one was when I had a crossbow a friend of mine gave me. It needed to be strung.
Read: it had NO string on it. It was PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to fire a projectile from it in its present condition. I didn't have any ammo for it, anyway.
I told the kid to take it down to the basement to get it out of the way until a friend of mine had a few minutes to put a string on it. The kid was afraid to touch the crossbow because it might "go off". There is NOTHING to go off. It cannot without a string and there's NO AMMO IN IT.
My dad gave me a little lizard/dragon statue as a housewarming gift. He'd had it for years and I like red dragons, so that was cool. I had it sitting on the counter and D was afraid of the statue because it looked realistic. (aside from the wings jutting out from its back and it having 4 legs) I finally made him pick it up and put it on a shelf so he could see it was a goddammed statue.
The other kid I have come in on Fridays - no problems. He looks like Zack Galifanakas <sp> but tall and skinny, and he constantly speaks like the Horse Whisperer, but otherwise never had a problem with the kid. I try to encourage him to PROJECT HIS VOICE LIKE BRIAN BLESSED but it's against his nature to speak loudly. Nice kid. At least he doesn't brag about being a computer expert.
I guess the moral of the story is... just because you have some developmental issues doesn't mean you still can't be an asshole.
It's nice because they're usually excited to learn about computer repair and they don't mind doing menial tasks like emptying trash or sweeping the floor. That's not to say that's all we have them doing - we actually teach them to test hard drives, run updates, replace memory etc.
I've had a kid coming in for about a year, we'll call him D.
This will sound horrible, but the kid is kind of an obnoxious little prick.
The teachers who keep an eye on him don't like him. He acts like he knows everything there is about computers. For example, the other day he was badgering a teacher about a particular high-end computer he thought the guy should purchase, despite the teacher saying he only wanted something for internet and email.
The teacher who basically keeps an eye on him while he's here overheard this and relayed the conversation to me:
D: You should buy *expensive gaming computer* - C at Stressed Out Computers would agree with me. I know pretty much everything about computers
Yes, dear readers - he actually said that.
Teach: D, did you just say you knew everything about computers?
D: I do!
Teach: My son works for Amazon. Before that he worked for Microsoft. And even then he would never say he knows "everything there is" about computers.
D: Maybe 80%...
Teach: Is that why you got kicked out of Stressed Out Computers last week?
D: I guess.... I don't know everything there is about computers.
Teach: No one knows everything about them. Remember that.
Now, I'm sort of telling this story in reverse. But you see how this kid thinks.
Here's what happened a week and a half ago:
I handed the kid a laptop. I told him to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials which is a pretty well-known antivirus Microsoft provides for free. It no longer works with Windows XP and for our XP holdouts, we've been selling them Kaspersky or putting Avast on for free.
The kid KNOWS what MSE is. He's installed it and uninstalled it before.
Well, for some reason he has a brain burp. It wasn't until a couple of minutes after he left but I noticed the window for the uninstaller was... not right. From across the room the colors didn't look right.
I took a closer look. For some reason, the kid had uninstalled Quickbooks from the guy's laptop.
And this wasn't $200 off the shelf Quickbooks Pro. This was $1000 Quickbooks Enterprise.
I go into panic mode. Fortunately, and by the grace of God, Thor, Loki, Shiva, or the deity of your choice, Intuit had all the guy's serial numbers recorded and we were able to have them emailed to us - then we just had to download and reactive the appropriate version of Quickbooks.
But Jesus Christ... the kid could have potentially cost me a thousand dollars if I had to replace the software myself.
So next day I call his school - explain what happened. They talk to the kid - he doesn't even know why he did it. It was just a mistake, he said.
Of all the things to uninstall, that was the most expensive mistake he could have made. Office, Java, antivirus... anything else I could have replicated for free... and that's what he decides to uninstall.
So I told them I don't want the kid back, ever. A couple of days later, his dad calls. (the kid's parents are loaded - the dad is a doctor or something) - dad apologizes for the kid, tells me how much he loves coming here, and makes sure to mention about 3 times that if I want D to come back, he'd love to.
So yeah... how much do you want to bet D asked daddy warbucks to fix things for him. That's the problem with a lot of these kids... their parents are well-off. The kids never learn responsibility or even how to properly take care of themselves. That's a rant for another time, but we've actually had to teach a couple of these kids how to properly use a broom to sweep a floor because their parents treat them with such kid gloves. These "kids" are usually between 17 - 20 years old. How are they going to learn to live on their own if something happens to the parents?
Anyway... D won't be back. Small errors I don't care about but a potential thousand dollar error - so long and thanks for all the fish. You're done.
And as you can see from the conversation in the first half of the story, even after getting kicked off a work site for uninstalling the wrong software, the kid is still an egomaniac who thinks he can do no wrong.
Oh... here's a funny side note: he's afraid of everything.
D is 19 years old and he was afraid of our basement. He was afraid of getting germs from touching a trash can liner. He was afraid of a waterbug (black cockroach looking thing) The best one was when I had a crossbow a friend of mine gave me. It needed to be strung.
Read: it had NO string on it. It was PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to fire a projectile from it in its present condition. I didn't have any ammo for it, anyway.
I told the kid to take it down to the basement to get it out of the way until a friend of mine had a few minutes to put a string on it. The kid was afraid to touch the crossbow because it might "go off". There is NOTHING to go off. It cannot without a string and there's NO AMMO IN IT.
My dad gave me a little lizard/dragon statue as a housewarming gift. He'd had it for years and I like red dragons, so that was cool. I had it sitting on the counter and D was afraid of the statue because it looked realistic. (aside from the wings jutting out from its back and it having 4 legs) I finally made him pick it up and put it on a shelf so he could see it was a goddammed statue.
The other kid I have come in on Fridays - no problems. He looks like Zack Galifanakas <sp> but tall and skinny, and he constantly speaks like the Horse Whisperer, but otherwise never had a problem with the kid. I try to encourage him to PROJECT HIS VOICE LIKE BRIAN BLESSED but it's against his nature to speak loudly. Nice kid. At least he doesn't brag about being a computer expert.
I guess the moral of the story is... just because you have some developmental issues doesn't mean you still can't be an asshole.
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