What Would You Do?

(A lady comes in with an external hard drive.)

Customer: “I backed up some pictures to this, but deleted them to make room. I need to get those pictures.”

Me: “Okay, well, let’s see if we can recover them. Do you know what folder the pictures would have been in?”

Customer: “What folder would I have put them in?”

Me: “Um… Often people make a folder called ‘Pictures,’ but they could have been anywhere.”

Customer: “Well, can you just give me step-by-step instructions on where and how to find them, and then I can look?”

Me: “Well, no. I don’t know where they are. That is what I am trying to figure out.”

Customer: “Well, my son put them on there and then deleted them to make room.”

Me: “Do you know when he deleted them? That would really help.”

Customer: “I don’t remember. When would he have deleted them?”

Me: “I really couldn’t say.”

(The conversation just kept going in circles, so I eventually looked at every recoverable file before I found what I was looking for.)