Dammit, Beth...

[protege]

One from today!

At the office, Beth has a well-deserved reputation for being computer illiterate. Within her first week, she managed to not only crash her computer about a dozen times, but jam up the printer a few times as well.

This morning, I got to work very quickly. Traffic was light--no school buses, no crackheads, no annoyances to deal with--meant I got to work about a half-hour early. Normally, I'd head down to the tracks to see if anything interesting was coming up the line. Not this morning, since it was about 35F and still dark.

I'm at my desk, flipping through an issue of Classic & SportsCar, when she walks in. I hear her computer fire up, and then she starts bitching about how it's not booting. Don't know if she's killed it, so it gets restarted a couple of times. Crashes again, so I swap it out for another.

About an hour later, she starts whining about how the new one is having issues. "Issues," because it's trying to install drivers (I'd set it up at my workbench, which has shitty monitors and old keyboards and mice), but is otherwise behaving itself. Since nothing is wrong, I ignore her, and go back to my morning routine.

After I got a couple of things done, I brought her computer over to my area, fired it up...and really didn't do anything else to it. I let it slip that there was nothing wrong with it, and she flipped. She went on a rant about how I "did something to it, refused to tell her what I did, and how there was more to the story..." There was no way I could have simply carried it across the room, plugged it in, and turned it on. Yet, that's exactly what I did

Bitch, if I was a fucking wizard, do you really think I'd be working here

[dalesys]

Bitch, if I was a fucking wizard, you'd be enjoying the flavour of flies.

Editted for the funovit.

[Gizmo]

hmmm... perhaps she's also a computer gremlin. I do know many people who can kill a computer at 10 paces without doing anything!

[Taurus52]

It is the "admin" gene. Issues never arise while you are paying attention; only when the (l)user is at the controls.

[emax4]

Since she's too impatient to wait, I'd have her move boxes, run errands, or do other things that don't require a computer. Even take out the trash. When she starts bitching at that, simply say, "no, you've made your displeasure about the PCs quite clear, so we won't have that now.. will we?"

[Andara Bledin]

I have a co-worker who kills machines.

Not only does she do the impatient clicking, but she cliks on things she shouldn't, doesn't click on things she should, but any system she touches does weird things. Like the printers with the dedicated IP addresses just up and changing to different addresses. O.o

^-.-^

[Sulhythal]

My father is a computer programmer/builder. My mother can kill a computer from across the room without ever so much as looking at it.

I'm somewhere in between...they USUALLY behave...but they behave oddly. Take the registers at work, the regular registers on the lanes are (supposedly) not capable of doing refunds. In fact, I was told that they aren't even capable of getting to the "refund" screens.

at least once a day when I'm on the registers, after I finish up one transaction and prepare to start the next, the thing just automagically swaps to refund mode...which I have to void out when I notice it, delaying things. I don't even push any buttons.

people are stumped.

[Racket_Man]

I had the opposite effect on computers.

When I worked as the IT guy for a family jewelry company, the registers were wonky as heck.. when a the register went for a walk in the Twlight Zone the stores would call me. half of the time all I had to do was either think evil thought concerning the machine or think seriously about explosives, duct tape, cliffs or massive trucks, then get on the phone and ***POOF**** the register worked like it should.

[Golden Phoenix]

My husband has that kind of effect on electronics. Especially when angry.

Seriously, he gets annoyed and the computer goes weird, the tv flickers and the lights in the house start to play up, it's like something out of a horror movie.

[Geek King]

My husband has that kind of effect on electronics. Especially when angry.

Seriously, he gets annoyed and the computer goes weird, the tv flickers and the lights in the house start to play up, it's like something out of a horror movie.

Is he a wizard, perhaps? <reference>

[Jay 2K Winger]

Is he a wizard, perhaps? <reference>

Dresden Files FTW

[PepperElf]

I have a co-worker who kills machines.

Not only does she do the impatient clicking, but she cliks on things she shouldn't, doesn't click on things she should, but any system she touches does weird things. Like the printers with the dedicated IP addresses just up and changing to different addresses. O.o

^-.-^

OMG that reminds me of two people I worked with - actually both in the same command... M and Cheese-on-Bread.

M got the computer infected because he kept trying to download MP3s from who-knows-where and every time a popup came up he'd just "agree" on it without reading.

Then he blamed ME because I installed google toolbar.


Cheese-on-bread was just impatient. He'd open a file and if it didn't open within x amount of seconds he'd double-click it again. and again. and again. So when the file finally opened he ... had to still wait because he managed to open it several times over.

[Gizmo]

I do have to say I can make computers boot really slow... I walk away from my work one whilst its booting or connecting to a remote source. >.<

However I can make them do things that other people say are impossible (sometimes good and sometimes bad!).

[Racket_Man]

Is he a wizard, perhaps? <reference>

Referencing Harry Potter as Muggle electronic stuff (at least in the 1990s) would wig out and not work inside Hogwarts.

[Lachrymose]

When I worked as the IT guy for a family jewelry company

That must have driven you nuts.