Returning to Roost
I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I returned from lunch to the sight of an all-too-familiar van in my parking lot. I inhaled and cursed my mind for playing tricks on me; I was surely just imagining things… there are lots of rust-covered vans in the world, right? And as I walked into the store, there stood Lenny, computer in hand.
A quick glance at Lenny was enough to remind me why I loathed dealing with the man, in person. First, he’s the paramount of bad hygiene¹: there are sores on his arms that he’s constantly picking at with his yellowed and infected fingernails, he smells like dog excrement, his front teeth are half-rotted and he looks like he hasn’t bathed in quite some time. Further, his clothing belies the same attention to detail as his hygiene and is usually torn, covered in grease and full of holes located in strategically unfortunate spots.
“Lenny, what can I do for you?” Damnit, I know that it’s been almost a year, but I banned you for a reason.
“Jason said it would be alright if I brought my computer by.” Of course he did… as the Store Manager, it’s really hard to take the afternoon off if your Assistant Manager is out dealing with a corporate account. Damnit, Jason!
“That’s fine, tell me what’s wrong with the computer and then I’ll have a look at it.” Yeah… I know when I’m beaten.
“Oh, well you see…” This is the other reason I hate having Lenny in my store. When Shakespeare wrote that brevity is the soul of wit, I imagine it was on the heels of having a conversation with someone a lot like Lenny. 5 minutes later, all Lenny had told me is that the computer wouldn’t load into Windows and that Lenny thought this might be due to overheating… which is dead wrong. That’s like telling me that your car has a flat tire and you think it’s because the car is out of gas.
Anyways, I finally convinced Lenny that it was time for him to leave so that I could look at the computer and that I was, in no uncertain terms, going to work on it while he waited. So, with Lenny finally out of the store, I actually took a look at his computer. A quick glance caused me to do a double-take. Lenny had removed all of the tamper-proof stickers. And what’s more, the rivets I had put in place last time to ensure that Lenny stayed out of the computer had all been removed. A closer examination revealed that Lenny had not stopped at the rivets necessary to open the case and had removed several of the rivets that were holding the case together. And, for the Pièce de Résistance, Lenny had replaced all of the rivets with three-inch wood screws.
Standing agape, I went back and got Jason and all of the technicians to have a look at the case: it was a wonder to behold. And yet, opening the case, it was immaculate: it was as if Lenny had gone to all of the trouble of taking the rivets and the stickers off just to look inside. It was obvious Lenny had touched nothing and believe me, if he’d done something, I would have noticed. I’ve seen Lenny’s work, to put it nicely, it matches Lenny’s appearance perfectly: if he’d been fucking around inside of this case, it would have been as obvious as a toddler taking to the wall of the Sistene Chapel with finger-paints.
So, before I canceled Lenny’s contract, I figured I owed him a phone call. “Lenny, I took a look at your computer and I noticed that you’ve been in there in breach of your contract… could you tell me why you did that?”
“Well, like I told you, I thought the thing was dusty and overheatin’, so before I called y’all out there and paid for more service time, I figured I’d clean it out myself.” Coherent and oddly logical, is this Lenny? Lenny on his meds, even? Surely not!
“Alright Lenny, I’m going to talk to Jason, but I think we’ll let it slide this time, provided that you don’t do this again.” Believe me, I’d just as soon stay out of court, which is probably what voiding his contract would lead to.
“Thank you so much. I’m really sorry, I just didn’t want to come all the way into town or have y’all come out.”
“Alright Lenny, I’ll get back to you.”
At this point, given that there are 6 months left on the contract and with the state of things, voiding his contract would just be silly, so I talked to Jason and decided that we’d just seal the computer back up and give Lenny another chance. Fixing his computer took all of 30 minutes and then we took out the rest of the wood screws (the ones holding the case together), riveted it, sealed it and called Lenny. And, seeing that Jason had already left for the afternoon, Lenny got to come in and get his computer.
Unfortunately, there were several other customers there to drop off computers and Lenny got to talk to them. One of the customers, showing uncommon good sense, scooted away from Lenny, who was looking and smelling like he’d crawled out of an open sewer. My other customer, inexplicably, stood and talked to Lenny and listened to all of his crackpot ideas about what was wrong with her computer. As a result, by the time she got to the counter, she was convinced that her computer wouldn’t power on at all because of a problem with Windows. To expand on my earlier example, Lenny was telling her that her car had a flat tire because she hadn’t waxed her car lately.
So, yet again, it was with great pleasure that I watched the door hit Lenny on the way out. And with any luck, it will be another year before I see Lenny again.
¹Many of you will notice that I find bad hygiene epidemic of my worst customers. Think about that: if you give no thought to your own health or presentability, it’s unlikely that your personality will deviate from that too much. In other words, if you don’t care about taking care of yourself or putting effort towards social graces, it’s unlikely that you have invested any effort in your interpersonal communication or your computer. Put frankly: you’re probably a slob and a jackass and those rarely make good customers.
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