Chicken Soup Works, As Seen On TV!

(I work at a rehabilitation facility. The set up of the facility is a community-based one, and is an office, which previously was a residential dwelling. The houses that our clients live in are also regular houses that were previously neighbouring properties until the organisation bought them. Therefore, our houses’ landline numbers end up being contacted often by scam calls. This is hilarious for a number of reasons, given that our client population have all experienced severe traumatic brain injury, and while very independent in some areas of their lives, there are some concepts about the world they just cannot grasp. Scam calls are one. The one doing the rounds at our site at the moment happens to be the good old “your computer has a virus.” While the staff at the office usually deal with this call by immediately hanging up — a tragic missed opportunity in my view — sometimes the clients get these calls, instead. I just happen to be coming into one of the houses to help out one of the clients when I notice him fiddling around behind the television. I notice him on the phone, which he puts down when I come in.)

Me: “What are you doing?”

Client: “My device has a virus.”

(I note he is putting blankets all over the TV cables.)

Client: “Well, if it has a virus it must be sick, so I thought blankets would keep it warm and make it feel better.”

(He also needed to be persuaded that chicken soup did not work on TV devices. I am mostly thankful he had no ingredients to attempt to prepare this concoction, or after staff leaving he may have tried this. We did keep a close eye on him and his “Sick TV,” though! Another house receiving a similar call with another client a few weeks later responded with the glorious, “Okay, but what is a computer?” Another client, again in a different house, ended up hanging up on the scammer by pulling the cord for the phone from the wall, thinking that this was “rebooting the modem,” and then, while recalling the event to staff, reported, “I must have fixed the issue, because they hung up and haven’t called back.” I am holding out for when they try the office again and I get to answer. This website has given me so many pro tips!)