Trust
“It don’t work!” announced the poorly-groomed individual to whom I attributed the ungodly cloud of body odour tinged with the scent of tobacco and what I presumed to be the residual smell of excrement.
It don’t? Speak to me in riddles.
“Well sir, what exactly doesn’t work?”
“That goddamned video card I bought from y’all a week ago. I hooked it up Saturday, it worked like a beaut for about 30 minutes an’ then it just quit.”
On the up-side, this tells me that it’s probably not his monitor and really isolates about a dozen other potential causes. In any event, I offer to test and replace the part.
“Why you gotta test it? Ain’t my word good enough?”
Sure is buddy… I don’t know you from Adam, you’ve spent maybe $100 in my store. But I’ll give you free hardware.
“Well sir, my vendor’s policy states that I must certify a part as non-functioning and sign off on it in order to get my money back. In order to do that, I’ll have to test the video card.”
“Oh… well I didn’t bring it! Can I have the replacement now and drop the part by tomorrow?” I’m starting to smell a rat.
“I’ll tell you what, sir. You can buy a replacement video card today and when you come by with the old video card, I’ll refund you your money.” He doesn’t look too happy, but I guess ‘a bird in the hand’ and all of that.
Fast forward to this morning.
My redneck friend has returned. Oh joy of joys!
“I told you it don’t work!” Taking the video card from his hand, it was as if it had sat in a factory smokestack for a year rather than in my customer’s hovel for a week.
I went to hook the unit up when I cut myself on a sharp edge on the unit. Taking a closer look at the scraped heat sink on the video card, I had a sudden epiphany. “So, did you have any trouble fitting this in your computer sir.”
“Well, yeah, but then I just got my tools out and took this here extra metal off and it worked just fine!”
“Sir, removing the cooling on this card invalidates the warranty. I can’t accept this.”
My redneck friend flushed bright red, “The hell you can’t! You told me yesterday you’d take my card back! You’ll give me my money or I’m gonna call the police!”
“Sir, you may call the police or the Better Business Bureau or anyone you’d like. If you invalidate your warranty, I can’t help you.”
“You can keep the card, I’m gonna get my money!”
Well, this should be exciting. I’m keeping the card in a plastic bag in case he wants it.
That’s really kind of impressive… that kind of resourcefulness coupled with complete ignorance isn’t something you see every day.