“No, I won’t fix your computer”
22 01 2003Recently, Paul wrote this article for a Uni project: “No, I won’t fix your computer.”
When writing it, he asked me to read it few and bounced a few ideas off me. I believed it was an astonishingly accurate piece of work that tapped directly into the mentality of every computer geek who is torn away from his life (as non-existent as that may be…) every 15 minutes to fix someone else’s computer.
The article is no more relevant than today, when I was called upon to set up someone’s internet connection. It’s not that I mind helping people who are stuck, especially, it’s just that I mind being called upon to PLUG IN A CABLE, for this is all that was required of me. I exaggerate not. Everything else was ready to go, bar the cable. Worse still, when I did the deed, they said “Oh, even I could’ve done that!” as if it was some amazing feat of intellectual strength to plug the cable into the only hole on the computer that it snugly fits.
It did, however, take an amazing feat of emotional strength to stop from screaming “WELL WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU?!” back at them.
Y’know, perhaps it’s for the best that they didn’t try to plug it in themselves. I once saw a very nasty case of an RJ45 connector successfully jammed into an onboard modem phone socket…
Anyway, cheers for the p1mp@g3 and the writing advisage ;-)