The Case of the Guy Who Expected Me to Memorize Everything

[nickj6282]

Preface: I am a computer repair technician at an electronics retailer (I can't say where but it's not hard to figure out). I get calls/visits from no less than 10-20 people per day who want free tech support, and act all surprised when I won't give it to them. We charge for our services for a reason! That's not to say if someone has a quick or simple issue I won't help them without charging them, but I get people who call and want long complicated tech support issues taken care of pro-bono. No can do! Anyway:

SC=Very large sweaty man in a skull t-shirt and glasses
Me=Somewhat large not sweaty man in a polo shirt and slacks

SC: So I have this HP desktop at home and I borrowed this USB hard drive from my neighbor and whenever I plug it in I can't double click on the C drive icon. But when I plug it into my laptop, it works fine.
Me: Ok, do you have your computer with you?
SC: No, can't you just tell me what to do to fix it? (I get this all the time too, people who have questions/need help, and come into the store like they should, but don't bring their computer/printer/broken iPod/etc.)
Me: Honestly no. I can't really fix something unless I can see it. I'm not good at memorizing every little thing that can possibly go wrong.
SC: But you're [insert job title at company name here], you should have all this stuff memorized!
Me: My talent is fixing, not memorizing, sorry! If you want to bring me your PC...
SC (cutting me off): F**k this! You're a big waste of my f**king time! Thanks for nothing. You should just memorize all this stuff so that I don't have to spend a bunch of money getting something simple fixed! [storms off still ranting all the way to the door of the store]
Me: Wow!

That guy is my new favorite customer. Best part was when I went in back and we all laughed at him and his awesome skull t-shirt. And his extra awesome friend with all the tattoos and piercings, accentuated by the lighter through his left earlobe. What a couple of classy gentlemen they were!

[Dips]

Welcome to the boards.

Whenever someone blesses me out because I can't help them with something they declare to be "a simple fix," I always want to tell them:

"If it's really that simple to fix how come YOU can't fix it?"

But, you know, I can't actually say that. I just think it and try not to giggle.

[Automan Empire]

My stock answer to that is, "Many different things could cause that problem... the doctor will need to examine the patient to know why YOUR machine is [doing or not doing whatever]."

Never admit you don't have something memorized.

The next line is, "Do you want to have me find your problem, or have an abstract discussion of everything the problem might be? [then] Because we don't offer a free brain picking service here, but we do repair computers in exchange for money."

So you can't just tell me?

"Yes, with a $XX.xx exam I can."

[Amina516]

I know how you feel. My hubby does computer repair as a side job and holy shit. We get all kinds of random calls (unfortunately usually from family) half-assedly explaining a PC prob and them expecting DH to be able to diagnose and fix the problem in 5 minutes.

[Dark Psion]

Not any better in the greenhouse, I still get people calling me on the phone and what to know what's wrong with their plants.

Oh and when I came in yesterday there was a dead Scotch Broom on my desk. I don't know where it came from, But I can tell you it has not been watered in weeks and since the roots are still in shape of a gallon pot, I have to wonder if it ever was planted.

[Mnemjian]

Gosh, tech service must try one's patience to no end. Like Automan said, couldn't that be ten different things causing a problem? Maybe his mouse was just sticky...

[tropicsgoddess]

Welcome to the boards, Nick. I know the feeling, I do tech support, but I'm in a call center. My department does basic Tier 1 support for email and connectivity issues. Any other issues with your computer you have to either A: go to our Computer Help department (which is really cheap compared to other companies) or B: contact your computer's manufacturer, which is not free if you're not under warranty. I've had people scream at me and demand that I fix their stuff for free or hang up on me when I told them the amount they would need to pay for the Computer Help department to fix it.

[bean]

Try being the unofficial tech support for your family.

My stepdad knows just enough about computers to be dangerous. Read this as: He knows how to get to the control panel and system properties and majorly fuck things up, but can't fix them or remember what he did. Then expects me to be able to fix them without reinstalling. He also doesn't remember ANY of his passwords, he has his email password saved in outlook and promptly forgot it, his stock trading password is saved, all his web site passwords are saved, etc etc etc... so he's pretty fucked if I need to reinstall. Which I do.

His 1 year old laptop takes over 10 minutes to boot (I actually clocked it and stopped the clock at 10 minutes), it's a dual core Athlon with 2 gigs of ram, a decent sized SATA hard drive, running XP Pro - the laptop is better than one of my desktops that runs Vista and Vista only takes a minute or so to boot on it. The wireless network card doesn't work at all anymore (it'll list wireless networks about 1/10 of the time, but can't ever get an ip), the onboard ethernet won't get an IP from the router about 3/4 of the time (the printer and mom's PC get IPs fine, so I know it's not the router), the machine has tons of spyware on it that I keep removing (then reminding him he needs to stop downloading "free games" aka porn)... the machine is so utterly fucked that nothing but a complete reinstall of Windows is needed. And of course he can't find his restore CD or his expensive as hell stock trading CDs. The machine is beefy enough to run Vista easily, and Vista is a little more idiot proof, but he'll lose his $500+ stock trading software if I do any kind of reinstall.

</rant>

For comparison, my mom's 6 or 7 year old Sony desktop - Pentium 4 2.8, a whopping 512MB of ram, also running XP - is sluggish as hell as it's never had Windows reinstalled, but still runs circles around the laptop, even though it's loaded down with *ugh* Norton's latest internet security and antivirus suites. That crappy software pops up more useless dialog boxes than Vista does out of the box. But her machine never crashes, it's just as sluggish as one would expect from a 6-7 year old Windows install. And she actually writes down her passwords and saves all of her software CDs, and *gasp* MAKES BACKUPS! The only reason I haven't reinstalled for her is I haven't had the time to spend a day reinstalling all of her software.

[EricKei]

I know it won't help with the stock-trading software, but if he has those passwords saved in FireFox, he could use an add-on like Xmarks to upload them to a server which can hold and redistribute them (unless there are security concerns for that, which there might very well be in his case)

[jjllbb]

So he wants you to WORK HARDER to memorize those problems and answers so you can fix them quickly WITHOUT CHARGING HIM?

WORK HARDER....FOR FREE.


hmmm.......



NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

[MadMike]

Wow, memorize everything that could possibly go wrong with a computer? That list is practically infinite!

[powerboy]

I know how you feel. At my last job, I was the unofficial official IT. Once when a customers laptop went out. They asked if I could take a look at it. Ok, but I told them that if I have to do anything to it, I would be paid for it.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I know how you feel. My hubby does computer repair as a side job and holy shit. We get all kinds of random calls (unfortunately usually from family) half-assedly explaining a PC prob and them expecting DH to be able to diagnose and fix the problem in 5 minutes.

My parents have a friend who is a walking argument for why people should need a license to own a computer. They often have my parents over for dinner...so my dad can fix whatever his latest fuckup is. My dad actually installed a remote access program on his computer so he could control it from home and not have to drive 45 minutes every time he screwed something up. (The fun part was when he had me bring my computer over to the house and installed it on there to try it out first; then he sat in the living room with my computer and took over the the computer my mom was using in the kitchen. Was also handy when I needed to update some software that I don't know anything about; I turned on my computer before I left for work in the morning, and when I came home he had done the update and shut it back down.) The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, either. His son once managed to delete the whole hard drive somehow... My dad, being the awesomeness that he is, managed to get it back.

My stepdad knows just enough about computers to be dangerous.

I would ask if he was my dad's friend if my dad's friend had stepkids...

He also doesn't remember ANY of his passwords, he has his email password saved in outlook and promptly forgot it, his stock trading password is saved, all his web site passwords are saved, etc etc etc...

This is why I keep a file somewhere that has all my passwords for various websites, so when I go to something I haven't used in a while, I can go look up the password.

[irish76]

Ahh memory...

Yes, we all have memories as large as those on our computers!!

I work in the wholesale travel industry, not IT, and only with travel agents, but I kid you not, I had a travel agent, about 6 months after I started here, who wasn't impressed that it was taking me a while to figure out a price for her. (We need to check routings, pricing, seasonality, etc to make sure we're giving the correct rate - all by hand because this routing was 'speshul' and not built into the computer) After only about 3 minutes of waiting, she asks "So how much is it?"

I replied, "I've got the space going out and it's in the least expensive range, I'm just searching for the return, it'll just be another minute and then I'll be able to calculate it all out."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, ma'am, because this fare includes..blah...blah..I need to price it out direct from the contract, the fare won't come up for me on the computer."

"Well, don't you just know the price?"

Waa...huh??? No, I'm afraid I don't the the entire fare grid built into my head for every airline and every destination in the farking world. I did say as much to her, "I'm sorry but fares change from city to city, and contracts can be changed overnight, we just can't keep up with that kind of information."

"Well, you need to learn to do your job better, then!!"

I'll just get that memory chip implanted in my brain right away there ma'am!!

[Bright_Star]

IF it's a simple fix then he oughta fix it himself.