» Clients Are Stupid

Sometimes it pays to be nice...
Being the only guy in a company of (at the time) 1000+ employees who actually went to people's desks to provide support, I could contribute quite a few stories.

One of my favorites came from the simple fact of my being very nice to the idiot. Extra nice. Trust me. Falling-all-over-myself nice. Why so nice, you wonder? As the one of very few clueful people in my department, I was occasionally appropriated by the executive staff for non-work-related stuff. In other words, the friggen president of the company called my boss and told him to send my ass to their house and fix their 13 year old daughter's computer.

So, I go out. And it's a typical one-sound-card-too-many-dumbass incident. I get it all fixed up, optimize the O/S a bit, showed her and her mother how to do a few things to keep it running smoothly.

The mother says to me, "Boy, you're a lot nicer than the last guy who came out here. He made us feel like everything was our fault and we didn't know what the hell we were doing." I didn't realize that one of my other department members had been out there. Sure enough, I find out it's Mr. M. God's gift to the world of computing and networking. An ego so large it dripped out of his ass. And utterly unable to communicate with other humans accept by belittling them incessantly.

The end result? I get a personal, handwritten letter of thanks from the president himself with an offer of a promotion. What did Mr. M get? Laid off. On his birthday no less.

Sometimes there is justice my friends. Sweet, sweet, justice. The look on his face the first time he looked at me after he was informed his position was being eliminated was utterly and completely priceless. Him, the God of all things computing, shown up by a 21 year old kid. I even got the employee-of-the-month award thingy before his termination date finally came around. And people thought I was just grinning like an idiot because I was happy I got the award. ;)
(Wed 31st Dec 2003, 18:44, More)

» Clients Are Stupid

Just one more...
Same company as my previous.

A village was deprived of its idiot with this fella in our midst. It's a long story, but I'll keep it terse.

Mr. C (who we occasionally refer to as Three-Fingered Willy after a snowblower "incident") bought a car from the one of the other guys in the department, an old, yellow, beaten Chevrolet Chevette (pic of one for reference) for US$500.

Mr. C had only two modes of driving. Foot to the floor on the gas pedal, or foot to the floor on the brake pedal. I suspect he thought of them as on/off switches, personally. Consequently, he would get rear-ended often. He'd be going like hell, someone would be behind him going like hell, then it was time to stop, so the brake pedal went to the floor, and WHAM!

This finally happens in the chitvette. The insurance company declares the car totalled, of course, since it was more than US$500 in damage. This didn't really matter anyway because he only had liability coverage anyway. The insurance wasn't about to pay him a dime.

Mr. C is pissed. So he pays out of his own pocket the US$1000 to 1500 or so that it took to fix the 500 dollar damn car.

Now, having "learned his lesson" about liability-only insurance coverage, he goes out and buys FULL coverage for the chitvette.

With.... with.... think about it now... you know what's coming. But it can't be true you're thinking?

Yes, boys and girls, it's true. He bought the full coverage insurance plan that required a US$500 deductible.
(Wed 31st Dec 2003, 19:04, More)