IT support for the public
First post ever!!!

Many years ago, I once worked for an IT company that decided to branch into a retail outlet in a small town.

Some of the highlights included:

One woman brought in her family PC, wouldn't boot, hung at windows98 splash screen, etc. After checking all the usual things, dug a bit deeper and it turned out her 14 year old son had aspirations to be some kind of hacker, so he had downloaded a virus writing kit off the web, wrote a particularly nasty virus....then unleashed it onto his own PC.

the guy who couldnt get his PC to reboot when it hung, so instead of pressing the reset switch on the front, he decided to flip the voltage selector on the back of the power pack from 230v to 110V. Bang! 1 dead PC!

The woman accompanying her 12 year old son who, when we listened to his PC problems and reckoned a clean install was the best course of action, asked what we were going to do.
"We'll format the hard drive and re-install windows".
"Format?" she asked.
"We'll wipe the drive" we replied
"Do you get a special cloth for that, son?"

God bless them, we'd be out of a job otherwise
(boogibassist, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:20, 2 replies)

"wrote a particularly nasty virus....then unleashed it onto his own PC"
Wonderful. If only all virus writers were that diligent...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:30, closed)

<Clicks>
All classics ... and the last line is why I know my job is secure.

Potential Client: Um so can you convert the data from our existing database?

3in7: Depends ...

PC: It is multi-tier database George has written

3in7: ~~Turns to George~~ Ah, so George, what is it written in can can we have a schema and a backup?

PC: Sure no problem - I'll email the data over to you - it's written in a couple of Excel spreadsheets

3in7: ~~Silently screams while fearing the worst*~~


* a work sheet per first letter of the surname, some with extra columns, and a separate xls for the schools they attended
(Biff..., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:16, closed)