I'm a teacher during the school year. Right now I'm only what the school districts around me call a "guest teacher," or a teacher that fills in for their permanent teachers when this teacher calls in sick, has a meeting, etc. It's pretty much the same thing as a substitute, only more dignified. I don't mind this. I still get to interact with students and help shape their learning experience (by being awesome!), but that means that I need to keep a part-time job on the side.
I work retail. Yup. Retail. Now, you'll never find a better collection of scum and villainy than by looking at the average customer once they step into a retail store. I like to think that I'm not a total douche bag on a regular basis (other than by being my normal, smarmy, charming self), but I know I've lost my temper at employees before. I gotta figure it's because of the chain of screaming (look up the How I Met Your Mother episode "The Chain of Screaming" for an explanation), but I digress.
I bring this up because lately I've been keeping a list of the absolutely, insanely ridiculous things that happen to me on a regular basis now that I'm working more hours (because it's summer here, and there's no school for me to go guest teach). It's not for a book I'm working on. No, no. That would make sense, though. I'm keeping the lists because, after an eight+ hour shift at work my mind is so fried (we also don't have a working air conditioning unit where I work) that I can't remember anything that happend during the previous eight or so hours. Then, when I get home and my girlfriend asks me about what happened at work, I have nothing to tell her. Hence, the lists. Since I have the lists anyway, I figured I could share some of my experiences (and it also makes for good blog fodder when I just have nothing else to talk about). This happend to me about a week ago (the first day I started...the lists):
1: The weirdest customer of my day will also usually be the first, which sets a fun precedent for the rest of my work day. Today was no different. Today, the first customer that I dealt with brought in her laptop, saying there was something wrong with it and she wanted us to run a diagnosis to see what was wrong. I open the laptop and fire it up. It boots into a screen that says that Windows did not shut down normally and and then has a number of options. Anyone who has worked on computers has undoubtedly seen the screen in question.
So I ask the customer if she had installed anything recently, hardware or software-wise. She says she hasn't. After about forty minutes of questions and poking around at the settings, running what little tests Windows can perform without booting up (it can run quite a few, but they don't tell much), during which I noticed that the PC was branded as being installed with Vista, but the machine kept trying to load up XP Pro, so I asked if she had any Windows restore disks. She says the computer never came with them (a common occurence, especially by the time Vista came out). I point out the fact that Vista is supposed to be on the machine, but XP is what is on the machine now (it wasn't uncommon for people to load XP onto Vista machines and at one point Microsoft offered the Windows Rollback as an option to consumers), and she says she doesn't have the disk for that.
Finally, the customer confesses that it was an illegal copy of XP. Now, I can't say for sure that that is what screwed up her computer, but it didn't help. Especially since whoever put it on that laptop for her didn't make the partition for the OS restore. In case, say, the machine won't load into Windows. One of the tests also said there was at least one damaged sector on one of the memory sticks (sector 78, which I can't remember if that has any of the OS boot info on it) and I told her that it could be just that, and that we could take care of it for about $100 (40 for the memory install, plus we sell her system's memory for 59.99), but I had already convinced her it was the hack-job done on installing the XP OS.
2: As is evident from #1, I work with technology. Salesman, IT guy, that's all me. So I'm wandering around the computer area, and I stop to ask if a woman and her friend have any questions on the laptops. The woman, who we'll call 1, lights up with a smile. Now, I didn't write down exactly what she said, but it was somewhere along the lines of, "Why do the prices on all your services suck?" She then goes on for about 10 minutes on how our PC start up services, anti-virus subscriptions, protection plans (they aren't extended warranties. They're not. They actually do cover more than the manufacturer's warranty), etc. While she's doing this, she's adding up all the prices I give her in her head like she's some kind of math genius and somehow got the total of around $2,000. Now, me being an actually intelligent being capable of doing semi-basic arithmetic, actually added up the totals in my head (I did round to the nearest dollar, like any normal, not insane person would do). The approximate total of what she wanted: about $1,100. Still, that doubles the cost of the laptop she claimed to have wanted. Now, when we sell a computer, we aren't one of those places that practically force our tech service or PPPs on anyone. Well, I don't anyway. And nor does a customer have to buy ALL the services we offer.
If ya don't need the PPP, fine. Don't need us to stick the MS Office disk in your machine and take the ten minutes to install if for you? Fine.
So, as best as I can figure, this person was just waiting for someone to ask if she needed any help just so she could go off on her tangent about how she would buy the machine from us, but the services (and warranty) elsewhere.
#3: A customer called to ask why she had virii on her computer. I asked how she knew that she had a virus. Her computer told her she did. How and when did it tell you this, I ask. While she is surfing the web, she says. So a pop-up, I ask. Yes. It wants to run some kind of scan and there are bars and folders and things.
Did you push the start button?
No, should I?
No, that's a pop-up window to make you think you need to run a scan but it really puts malware and viruses on your computer.
So I should close it?
Yes.
It says that if I close it, that my computer may still be infected. Are you sure I should close it?
*Palm to face*
Yes ma'am.
So is that why it said Internet Explorer at the top of the window?
Yes.
Oh, ok. Bye.
Didn't even thank me for my help...
#4 I actually felt bad for this one. The customer had never heard the terms "Hardware" or "software" before.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
I've kept more of these lists over the past week, so I'll probably post more later.
Remember to see my previous post about getting a copy of my book, Project Zero: Bulletproof, for free, now through August 1st.
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