A customer comes in with a laptop infested with malware and illicit third-party software that have essentially turned his computer into a slow paperweight.

Me: “You’ll need to delete all the software that’s causing the issues, sir.”

Customer: “No! You need to replace it or fix it! I have a lifetime warranty!”

Me: “Sir, that warranty doesn’t cover these types of issues.”

Customer: “Get me your manager!”

My manager comes over and the same complaint is made. My manager refuses to replace the laptop.

Customer: “No! I have a lifetime warranty!”

Manager: “That only covers hardware issues. This is a software issue — and a third-party one at that.”

The customer slams his fist down on the keyboard, breaking a surprisingly large amount of it.

Customer: “What about now?”

Manager: “Congratulations! You just converted your lifetime warranty into a lifetime ban! Get out!”

I got my first computer in 1998 and quickly downloaded the ICQ messaging software. Yes, I’m old! A few hours after setting it up, I heard a sneeze. Then another sneeze. I called the computer store.

Me: “I think my new computer has a virus!”

Store Employee: “Why do you think that?”

Me: “It keeps sneezing!”

Store Employee: *Obviously trying not to laugh* “Have you installed ICQ?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Store Employee: “Someone is messaging you!”

He then gave up and laughed at full volume into the phone while I hung up, embarrassed.

I had a woman from the Midwest call us on a Monday morning. Over the weekend, her church, which had a 100-plus-system computer lab, had voted to make her the new administrator.

She had never touched a computer before.

Caller: “How do I use this Windows thing?”

Me: “Ma’am, we just made the antivirus software. Teaching you how to use Windows is not in the support agreement.”

Caller: *Angry and demanding* “I want to speak with your manager!”

There was an hour-long back-and-forth between my manager and the customer.

We were never sure how it ended. For years, I would ask him occasionally, and he’d give me a different answer every time. My favorite was:

Manager: “I picked up a Windows For Dummies book and shipped it to her.”

I went to a client’s office to install some apps for a telemarketing platform they wanted on their server.

Me: “How can I put the apps on your server? Would a flash drive work?”

Client: “Sure, bring them on a flash drive and plug them into the external contractor’s PC so I can transfer them to the server where you’ll install them.”

I went there the next day and plugged in the flash drive. Nothing happened, so I went to [Client] and asked him about it.

Client: “Oh, security blocked all our USB ports and CD readers on our PCs. You may have to download it from the webpage, instead.”

The webpage was blocked, as well as almost every other website we tried to visit. 

Client: “That’s bad. Just send them to me through email.”

And that’s how [Client] and I learned that any email that was not from an address at “[Client] dot com” would have its attachments purged, no matter the file extension.

There’s security, and then there’s THIS.

I was working for a temp agency in the 1990s, and they sent me to a “business center”. It was a small mall in the 1980s and had now been turned into four or five businesses in the same space, sharing the general facilities — lunch room, copy machines, etc. I was brought on as a tech as these businesses really weren’t big enough to have their own IT departments. I was told that the previous guy in the position, “Joe”, had left for a more stable job, and everyone in the place was sorry to see him go.

The first week I was there, I started finding problems with the guy. I came into one place and was told a computer was acting up. The business owner looked like she was about to burst into tears.

Owner: “When the last computer did this, Joe said it was broken and I had to get a new computer.”

I fixed the problem in five minutes with a free antivirus program and set up the rest of the computers in that office, as well.

Me: “What did Joe do with the old computer?”

Owner: “Oh, he took it home for parts since it wouldn’t work anymore.”

And all that week, I kept running into things that were really simple fixes, but good ol’ Joe had either taken all frickin’ day fixing them or announced that the machine was borked and had to be replaced. And Joe was apparently the designated recycler.

One owner said Joe was always in the office, working on the system; he’d be all day working on that computer. It turned out that before he’d left, he’d tried really hard to convince the owner to turn that tower over to Joe, and Joe would replace it “for free”. But the owner decided not to do that; he told me he just didn’t trust Joe all that much.

After taking a look at the computer, I could see why Joe wanted to take it with him; it was full of adult material grabbed from the Internet. After I showed this to the owner, Joe became persona non grata at that place.

It gets better.

It turned out that Joe couldn’t hack it in the real world and ended up going back to the temp agency. He asked for his old job back, but no, I had that position. So, he came to the facility and tried to bug me into quitting. I reported him to the agency, and he was written up and told not to return to the facility for any reason.

And when he did return to the facility, I informed building management, who called the police. Upon seeing the po-po, Joe took off like a cheetah, trying to exit the building through the back door — but failing because it now had a lock on it due to a break-in a few months previous.

After he tried (and failed) to resist arrest, the cops called in a request for his records and found out that Joe was wanted for suspicion of dealing. I had been talking to the cops at the time, and upon hearing this, I had my own suspicions. I went to check that computer that Joe had spent so much time on.

Sure enough, hidden in the files was a partial record of Joe’s activities back when he’d worked there. I printed out the file, handed it to the cops, and told them I’d send them anything else I found on the computer.

The next day, the feds showed up and took the computer. Joe went to prison for five years.