(A customer calls me about a knob that has fallen off of her refrigerator. She doesn’t have the model number so I’m trying to identify the part.)
Me: “What color is the knob.”
Caller: “Black.”
Me: “Does it have any numbers on it?”
Caller: “No. All it says is ‘Colder’ and then 1, 2, 3, 4…”
(A woman comes in looking for a cable, and it is clear someone had sent her and she doesn’t know anything more than that.)
Me: “Hello, miss, can I help you find something?”
Customer: “I need a cable.”
Me: “Okay, no problem. What kind of cable?”
Customer: “It’s a cable.”
Me: “Hmm. What does this cable plug into?”
Customer: “It’s… it’s a cable.”
Me: “Okay, what does this cable look like?”
Customer: “Well, on one end, it’s a circle, but it’s kind of like a triangle…”
Me: “…and what does the other end look like?”
Customer: “Well, you know… it’s… it’s a cable!”
(I was a little new and went to get my manager, who ended up deciphering her request, ultimately selling her an XLR microphone cable. In my defense, it took about fifteen minutes for him to pinpoint exactly what she needed.)
(I’m the default tech support for my 80-year-old mother. I take care of any issues she has with her computer, TV, or any other tech she has in the house — yes, including her microwave. It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it. I was visiting my mother two weeks ago when she told me her computer was acting up. I followed her back to her room so she could show me the issue she was having. It was a common issue that usually solves itself with a reboot.)
Me: “Let’s reboot your computer and see if that fixes the problem.”
Mom: “Okay!”
(Mom reaches over and turns off her monitor, waits a moment, and then turns it back on. Then she opens the program she had opened before and the problem pops up again.)
Mom: “Nope, that didn’t fix it.”
(I stared at her for a moment, not sure what had just happened. Did she just…? Why did she…? Once my brain kicked back into gear, I showed Mom how to safely shut down her computer, wait at least thirty seconds, and then start it back up by pressing the button on the front of the case. Not surprisingly, her computer problem was fixed. Of course, that was not the end of it. She then spent the next five minutes arguing with me about how what she did, turning on and off the monitor, was the exact same thing. Deciding that she wouldn’t be happy until she proved herself right, I quickly made excuses, grabbed my purse, and hightailed it out of there. She called me two days later and apologized. Seems she talked to my older sister about what happened that day and my sister laughed at her for ten minutes straight. Thanks for having my back, sis!)
I’m helping my friend out in his recently opened computer shop. One day a man comes in; he looks like a businessman. He says that he’s opening a new office in Amsterdam and he needs computers and printers for ten workers. My friend shows him some models of printers and laptops and desktops, points out some possibilities to save money, and gives some advice on back-ups and antivirus software.
The guy seems to be pleased with the advice and orders desktop PCs, laptops, and printers to an amount of 15,000 euros. While my friend is busy doing the paperwork, the man casually mentions that he has a Skype-meeting in a few hours and asks if it would be possible to take one laptop now and pay it later with the rest of the order.
My friend says it’s no problem and tells me to prepare a laptop and install Skype on it. I tell the customer that it may take some time but the guy says he’ll wait.
When I’m in the back room, my friend comes in and tells me to call the police. He goes back into the shop and starts talking to the guy. I call the police and tell them to come because my friend told me so. I couldn’t give a reason but I know it’s urgent that they come.
Ten minutes pass and the police enter the shop. My friend tells them to arrest the customer for fraud. The police are reluctant but when the guy tries to make a run for it, they arrest him.
Turns out that my friend was warned about this kind of scam. The customer never intended to open an office. He just placed an expensive order so that my friend would give him a laptop for free. If my friend would have gone to deliver the order he would have found out that the company doesn’t exist and that there was no office at the given address.
My friend would have ended up with a lot of costs for returning the devices and one 1000 euro laptop missing.
He said he became suspicious when he was explaining things to the guy. The man really didn’t listen and was constantly asking for the most expensive portable devices in the shop. Why would you want to buy ten laptops at 1000 euros a piece when you just were told that laptops that cost only 500 euros would be good enough for sending and receiving email?
(My mother can do the basics and such with computers, but no matter what we do, she won’t go beyond that. For example, she saves everything she wants to keep to her desktop, refusing the use of folders, flash drives, or even the cloud drive, even though we’ve all told her repeatedly how important it is and made sure she knows how. Finally, the day comes when her old worn-out computer suffers a total hard drive failure.)
Me: “Well, that’s going to make things harder. I know you. You never did back up the tax records or anything on there.”
Mom: “Of course I made backups! I’m not stupid.”
Me: “Oh, good! That’ll make it way easier, then.”
Mom: “Oh, wait… Did you mean the cloud? I never did use the cloud.”
Me: “It doesn’t matter whether you used the cloud or something else. What’d you do, email it all to yourself? Is it all on one of the flash drives or something?”
Mom: “No. I saved everything on the desktop.”
(I swear, she’s really not stupid, at least about most things. Hopefully, this wakes her up enough to at least let an auto-backup keep running this time. In the meantime, wish me luck on the data recovery.)
