What If The Surge Protector Doesn’t Like Your Vibes?

This story was told to me by my father. In the 1980s, he worked at a university library and archives. All of the staff had their own offices in the back. They all had gotten desktop computers at some point recently, and most of the staff were pretty comfortable with computers having used them for years.

Apparently, at some later time, university IT sent surge protectors to the building to plug the desktops and monitors into, instead of straight into the wall. My father passed them out to everyone, explaining what they were for.

Several weeks later my father was speaking with a colleague at the colleague’s office. My father noticed that [Colleague] had the surge protector plugged in and turned on and had it sitting on top of the desktop case… with nothing plugged into it. The computer and monitor were still plugged into the wall! My father asked the colleague what he was doing with it on the case and explained that he had to plug the devices into the surge protector.

Colleague: “Oh! I kinda figured it was an aura thing.”

My father said the librarian was older but had also been working with computers since punch cards. Maybe he was really optimistic about technological progress.