The Computer Shop when I was 16
I never quit at anything I do. But I did once get "laid off".

Many years ago I got myself a little Saturday job whilst I was still at school.

This was at the time when Amiga computers were trying to make a bit of a come back. This shop had just been taken over by a new owner, and had been well known for still selling Amiga stuff when most other places weren't anymore.

For those that didn't know, in 1998 there was still a die hard Amiga community that believed Amigas would come back and be better than the PC or Mac. At the time, high end modified Amigas actually stood up damn well against a PC. As a die hard fan myself, I got the shop running with Amiga stuff once again, as the new owner had no idea what one was!

The funny part was, I was being paid cash in hand. And that was all of £5 a day plus 10% commission on anything Amiga I sold! Yeah it was peanuts but I didn't care, I was getting a load of experience in the world of work and was supporting the Amiga. Which was all I cared about at the time. Later on in life, I grew a pair of bollocks and started going after girls :)

Not only did I get a load of work experience. I also got a load of experience on corruption as well. The shop also bought computer bits and Playstation games off customers as well and resell them as used... Well they were resold as used if they didnt look new. One bloke came in complaining as there were saved games on his disk :)

The worse thing that happened, is I sold an Amiga system to this young guy who.. Well.. OK, he was a little of the retarded nature. Should I be politically correct and say he had learning difficulties? :) He was a bit of an irritating feller but generally he was a nice guy.
A few weeks later, this guy comes in selling an Amiga. I put it on the bench booted it up and was like.. Oooh this is the one we sold to that other guy. I was wondering why he was now selling it. My boss on the other hand was quicker than me to realise the situation. Before I had a chance to finish testing the machine he said "Yup no problem" gave the guy a ridiculously low amount for it and off he went quick as a flash.

A few days later, the original guy comes in again asking if anyones tried to sell us his computer as he had his flat broken into. Suddenly boss jumps in again "Nope sorry we will let you know if they have" His computer was sat on a shelf in the back. I felt so bad for this kid. My boss told me to keep quiet about it.

Anyway, his machine had loads of bits swapped around in it between another one and was sold again and this guy came back in and bought another one of us.

What an asshole my boss was for that. And what an idiot I was for not doing anything about it at the time. But I had literally just turned 16 and was incredibly naive and obviously over my head on this one.

One time I came into work and the shop was locked up. Someone came to the door and opened it. This guy I had no idea who he was until he showed me his police badge. Reports of stolen property in the shop. Oh what a shock :) This lot turned out to be a load of knocked off Playstation games which my boss had bought from a guy on the market!

He was selling PCs like hotcakes, he had gotten hold of a load of components for next to nothing and we were building them up and installing pirate copies of Windows 95 and Office on there. He was also bashing out copied software as there was a CD Writing machine in the back. This was at a time when CD Writers were quite expensive.

Now comes the part where I quit. I got a phone call from my boss saying he was ditching the Amiga side of the business and obviously I wouldn't be needed anymore. He saw the whole thing as a bit of a joke anyway. He wasn't buying in any Amiga bits to put on display anymore anyway. So I knew it was coming. This all happened after a hard drive upgrade went wrong. We had bought a drive in to upgrade a customers Amiga and it just wouldn't accept it for some reason.

What my boss failed to realise was that as an Amiga enthusiast it didn't take me long to find out he'd actually hired someone else to continue with the Amiga side of things. I knew everyone who had Amigas within a 100 mile radius, so quite how he was going to hide that from me I have no idea.

So I set about my revenge. I wrote about everything I saw going on in that shop on the internet and posted an apology to the kid who had his computer nicked and what really happened to it. Whether he ever read it or not I don't know. But 5000 other people did. My website spread around school like wildfire! Also, this was at a time where you could quite easily manipulate search results by using Meta tags and hiding text in your website to make it show up first. So a Yahoo or Lycos search of the name of the shop brought up my website first :)

Of course he found it. And what comes through the post? A letter from his solicitor ordering me to take it down. I say his solicitor. Ive never heard of a "Wheeler Dealer Solicitors" before :) Sadly my mother whom I was living with at the time saw this letter and believed it and ordered me to take it down thinking the Police would be round any minute. I mean I really couldn't substantiate the claims. But the website certainly did its damage. I kept getting messages passed from my boss to me telling me to watch my back and not go anywhere near the shop and stuff like that.

He was soon back on the Internet though in a more official capacity when he was thrown in Jail for GBH :)
(Miggyman, Sun 25 May 2008, 15:04, 1 reply)

Last time you wrote this....
it was a PC not an Amiga that was resold. You did waffle on more in this post though...
www.b3ta.com/questions/dirtysecrets/post91565

I suppose there is some irony that your new guilty secret could be reposting old stories with new details!
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Thu 29 May 2008, 11:31, closed)