I just received a call from Nissan service for my car which is great. They were reminding me that my next service on my car is coming up and they wanted to schedule that for me. They asked about my email and address to make sure that it was correct. I then asked what the mileage should be for my next service. The lady on the phone didn’t speak very good English and I had to ask her twice what the mileage needed to be. At no time did she slow down and try to enunciate the correct mileage. After the 2nd time I just let it go and I figured I would just look in the manual for the correct mileage. I believe that if you are a phone operator trying to get someone’s business then you should speak the native language fluently and have good diction.

A lady comes in with a used computer she purchased the night before just as we were closing. She brings the computer in as soon as we open and needs help with it. She removed the anti-virus and installed a different anti-virus with registry cleaner and file remover capabilities. She uses the new program remover to remove necessary files from the computer and now the computer doesn’t even boot. She told us she did this. She is all upset with the equipment and with us and she needs the computer right away for a court case she is involved in. She caused the problem with the laptop, but she won’t own up to it.

I take the computer in the back so a technician can look at. She proceeds to tell another person in the office that she has been involved with the law her whole life and she is in the middle of suing someone right now. (I wonder why she brought this up, maybe she is looking to coerce us into doing something, or maybe I am cynical). We end up checking the computer in to be looked at for free.

She then asks about another computer she dropped off for repair. The laptop she dropped off for repair needs a motherboard and it is old so we tell her it isn’t worth repairing because of the cost. She then questions what exactly is wrong with the laptop. We tell her that we ran diagnostics on the computer, we changed out the ram, we tried another ac adaptor, we tested her ac adaptor, as well as a bunch of other diagnostic things. She isn’t happy with that and says that she has 2 other techs look at the computer before us and they say that the dc connector is bad. We tell her that that is part of the laptop and because of the age it isn’t worth fixing. So we go round and round with her trying to explain that the laptop is old and she shouldn’t put any money into it. We are trying to help her not throw her money away, but she can’t see it. She takes the laptop that came in for repair, but she changes the pickup paperwork wording to state that she is unsatisfied with our work and then she signs the paperwork.

We end up giving her a full refund on the laptop she purchased the prior night because frankly, ” we don’t want to deal with her anymore”. She is antagonistic and I don’t need people like that in my life. Have you had an experience like this?

A customer comes into the store and asks several questions on how to fix their computer. I spend 15 to 20 minutes with the customer answering his questions. I believe that knowledge has value and my time has value. The customer asks if we have any canned air. I say sure we have canned air and the price is $7.99. The customer proceeds to tell me that he can get canned air at the dollar store for $5.00. Now if I was the customer I would have purchased the canned air for $7.99 instead of trying to nickle and dime the store owner for the extra $2.99 because the store owner just spent time helping him out with his questions. Isn’t my time and knowledge worth something? It would have taken him hours to research the information I gave him for free and he probably wouldn’t have fixed his problem without the knowledge I provided. Has this ever happened to you?

We tell them that they should be careful of what websites that they go to and that they should be careful of opening email attachments also because they can re-infect the computer. We also tell them that they should remove Limewire from the system or we can do that for them because you can get viruses from the files that you download from that p2p software.

We clean all of the viruses and malware off the system and tell them it is as good as it can be without a full reload of the operating system. We tell them that Windows updates need to be done to protect the computer and we took care of that for them, but in the future you should make sure that they are done. We also install a free anti-virus like AVG Free anti-virus.

Sometimes the customer takes the system home and they re-infect the system again within a few days. They call us in a huff and tell us that we didn’t do out job right. We explain that they went to where they were supposed to go on the internet or that they opened an email attachment with a virus attached. The funny thing is that they go home and check their email and click on the same attachments or go to the same websites and re-infect their computer all over again doing the exact same thing that caused the problem the last time. It is a viscous circle. The customer doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand. Have you been on either end of this?

We went to a restaurant over the weekend and had some lunch. The waitress came over and asked us what would like for lunch. We ordered lunch and the waitress went away to get our drinks. At no time during this conversation did the waitress show any positive emotion in any way. She was very monotone and she obviously didn’t want to be there. She was just going through the motions. The interesting thing was that on the window of the restaurant they were looking for help. I wonder if there is a correlation between the help wanted sign and the waitress’s attitude. Makes you think. Have you had an experience like this?