Grad Students Using Coke To Solve Their Problems
In the mid-1990s, I worked in tech support in a campus computer lab for the English department of my university. A grad student came to me, nearly in tears. The floppy that contained their thesis was unreadable. Could I help?
After several attempts, it was obvious that the disk was beyond repair. Sorry.
They shifted to plan B. Could I use the scanner attached to my computer to scan in their thesis? I was on the clock, and it was a slow day. Why not? So, I proceeded to scan their thesis using ’90s-era OCR software on an ancient flatbed scanner. It took forever.
When I gave them their file — with a caveat that the text was sure to be full of errors — they gave me a Coke.
In hindsight, they got off really cheap. But we were both poor college students, so I was happy with the Coke.