Free Money

“Can you help me with a problem that I’m having with my computer?” If I say no, will you call someone else for help?

Before I could even finish thinking about runing this guy off, he was off to the races with a series of symptoms. As I half-listened to his litany I thought to myself, “You can tell a lot about a person by how they explain their technical problems… maybe I ought to write about that.” Sensing that the litany was coming to an end, I queued up my response.

“Sir, I’m afraid that I’ll have to take a look at your computer to give you a diagnosis of what’s wrong so that we can figure out a solution…”

“But you’ll charge me for that, won’t you?”

“Why yes, sir, there is a small charge for a diagnosis.”

“I don’t want to pay for a diagnosis, so could you try to tell me what’s wrong over the phone.”

Stop… wait… hold it. Do I look like a charity? Because I’m pretty sure that I’m working for The Computer Store to draw a pay-check. Yes, I’m a part of the free enterprise money-grubbing machine… I’m a part of the Problem, not the Peace Corps. This isn’t The PC Ashram where we provide tech support for those whose lack of intellect stands between them and a virus-free computer.

So, before I actually unloaded on this guy, I paused and took a deep breath. He probably should have bolted when he heard the unusual calm in my voice. “Sir, you do realize that I work for a computer store, right?”

“Yeah…”

“And how do you suppose computer stores make money?”

“Selling parts, of course.” Ah yes, he’s thought about this one.

“Actually sir, computer part sales have a vey low margin on the… the vast majority of my salary is paid through repairs. Thus, it would be somewhat counter-intuitive for me to give out free phone to support not to mention slightly insulting for you to insinuate that my time isn’t worth being paid for. If you want to come in, I will give you a quick diagnosis and a quote for repairs, but I’m afraid that I can’t really help you over the phone.”

Oddly enough, my lecture actually straightened him out. Instead of the whining and complaining that I was expecting, he came in for a diagnosis about 20 minutes later. Maybe there’s some hope for Texans after all.

Paying for Less Than Quality

The phone rings, unusually interrupting a quick Starcraft break instead of the usual.  How refreshing… in an annoying sort of way.   Getting the usual shtick out of the way, my customer starts out with the familiar “can I ask you a question?”

No.  You may not.  Call elsewhere.

Unphased, she pushes on.  “So, I think I need to back my computer up.”

First, that wasn’t a question.  That said, she’s a step ahead of most of her peers in that she’s actually thought this through a bit.  I’m encouraged.   “Alright ma’am, how much data do you need to back up, how sensitive is it and how critical is it?”

“Well, this is all of our client data for the last 15 years.”   So… critical, sensitive and massive.   I press for more specifics.

“We took this hard drive out of our old computer, so all of our files are on this hard drive.”

“Do you have any existing backup procedures.”

“Nope… just this hard drive.”

Ah… I love this line.  The clincher: “Ma’am, what would you do if tomorrow that hard drive crashed and was unrecoverable.”

Insert the predictable pause followed by the gasp.  “We’d be… we’d… I don’t know if we could do business.”

I begin going over the various backup options and running down the costs versus the effort and the level of security and protection provided by each.  Two or three options in, she stops me, “Do you have something for around $50?”

“Ma’am… you just got through telling me that this data is worth easily $50,000 to your client and is irreplaceable.  Your entire business rests upon the security and availability of this data and you wish to find the bargain-basement backup option?”

“My boss is an accountant.”

And suddenly, it becomes clear.  I hate working with accountants.

“Well ma’am, I suppose I could sell you a thumb drive and you could back up your files once a month.  It’s nowhere near as good of an option and hardly sufficient to your needs… but it’s cheap.”

Needless to say that’s the option she went with.  I expect we’ll have developments within the next 6 months, but only time will tell.

Money Talks

“So, is there anything I should be buying besides this stuff that I’ve already got?” Jonny asked, peeking out from behind a stack of roughly $600 of premium merchandise.

Thinking quickly, I selected another C-note’s worth of odds and ends for him, grinning madly the whole time. “I think this ought to suit you.” I love it when Johnny comes to visit.

Johnny is a trust-fund “kid” from Old Oil Money… and I think he’s somewhere around 30. I see Johnny somewhere around once every 3 months when his party schedule cools down long enough for him to check up on his toys. I should have problems like Johnny has problems.

Johnny is part of my small subset of customers for whom money is not an issue. Chief among this group are the trust-fund teens and tweens (usually Oil Money), the trophy wives, the doctors and the lawyers.¹ They make wonderful customers precisely because cost isn’t an issue, simply performance. As I often tell customers: “You can have it fast, you can have it cheap and you can have it good, but you can only have two of those three.” These guys are the ones who want it fast and good, but money isn’t an issue so long as there aren’t any hassles.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have problems with this subset of customers, because I have problems with every subset of customers. The difference is that this sort of customer firmly believes that a problem can be solved by throwing money at it. And while that might not be universally true, at least in my store, if you throw money at me and tell me to fix your problems, I WILL fix your problems, and fast. After all, as the aphorism that AC/DC so eloquently put to music reminds us: “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

¹ This isn’t to say that I don’t have affluent customers who are accountants and business owners, but to these, especially the accountants, money is a big issue and pennies are to be pinched wherever possible. Yeah… I hate working with accountants.

Social Affliction

Looking like he’d taken a bath in a frying vat, covered in zits and sporing a patchy beard and long, stringy hair, my first customer resembled what I can only presume rms looked like at age 16. “Dude! This store! It’s AWESOME!“

Definitely afflicted with a terminal case of geekiness. “Thank you, sir. What can I do for you today?”

Before I as the socially well-adjusted assistant manager beloved by employees and customers alike, I was a student of Computer Science. In other words, I was a nerd and geek of epic proportions. Not that I’m not still, but my years of employment and management experience allow me to blend into the “real world.” Even so, having shed my social ineptitude, I can relate and interact with guys like this customer. While their extreme inability to relate to people embarrasses me on their behalf, I suspect that’s a vestige from when I was in those shoes…

The wretched smell is what still sticks with me. It was that awful smell that hit me before I felt the heat radiating off the side of my head where John had decided to use my hair as kindling in the latest prank in the perpetual hazing ritual that he perpetuated against me. Patting out the blaze on my head in a blur, I hurried out into gym, passing my coach and ignoring his queries as he noted my obvious state of shock.

It took a whole day for me to give voice to my unpleasant experience – and 3 years of similar events over the course of middle school before I could finally assert myself. And another 4 years and a high school diploma to give me the confidence to shake off a shy introspection that had plagued me since the discovery of bullies.

So when I interact with the inept geeks that come into my store, I do so from the vantage of experience. This isn’t to say that it makes it any easier for me to communicate with the interactionally-challenged, but I do know the lingo. And I’ve got Fabreeze to mask the signs of their passing.

Whither Thy Computer?

Once a month, I have a short checklist of things that I go down for tasks that I hate doing but simply must be done.  Somewhere at the top of that list is checking for computers that we’ve been holding for 90 days and get the paperwork rolling for parting them out and sending the accounts to collections.

Now, for some of these computers, I completely understand the rationale behind leaving them at the computer store indefinitely.  For instance, take Joy’s computer over here.  The tag reads: ”Computer rendered nonfunctional in lightning storm.  Diagnosis: motherboard is fried, as is power supply and 1 or more sticks of RAM.  Estimated cost of repair: $400.”  Bear in mind that this computer might be worth $100 to an unsuspecting moron… and that’s assuming that it were running.  If I were Joy, I’d be tempted to skip out on the $50 diagnostic fee… but then I’d remember that the Assistant Manager loves to send ornery customers to collections just out of spite and I’d try to talk him into taking $25 to close the account.  I mean, knowing the Assistant Manager, he’d rather take $25 now than $35 in a year when the collections people finally force it out of Joy.

Those are the cases I understand.  The ones I don’t get are the ones for people like Dianne.  Dianne’s computer is conservatively worth $1000 and is less than 2 years old, fresh out from under warranty and having just lost a hard drive.  Not surprisingly, it’s a Maxtor (one day, I will give a list of all of the parts companies to avoid), but the data recovery was successful.  So, Dianne is looking at roughly $200 in repairs, netting her a hard drive that is quadruple the size of her old one with a fresh copy of Windows and all of her old files saved on the new hard drive… all she would have to do is pay $200 to get her computer up and running.  Well, I’ve had her computer up and running for 4 months now and she still hasn’t come to get the thing.

Every now and again (once in a blue moon, really), a customer reads the fine print at the bottom of the standard service disclaimer and gets to the fun part.  Well, really, all of it’s fun, but I’ll get to that some other time.  But the relevant part at the moment reads:

Unclaimed computers that remain on the premesis for over fourty-five (45) days are no longer the responsibility of the store and may be sold to offset outstanding accounts. Accounts remaining unpaid for more than ninety (90) days will be considered in default and will be sent to collections and/or pursued in court.

At this point, I sometimes get a “pursued in court?!”, oftentimes a chuckle, but most often I’m asked, “Why would you sell my computer?”

Because, you dolt, you owe us money and you don’t seem interested in paying up.  In all honesty, I rarely part out computers at all, but when I do, it’s after the customer hasn’t said word one in three months.  After all, if I’m talking with a customer, I either want to keep offering the bait of their computer if they’d just come pay the damned bill, or the customer is being a hostile jackass and then I hold on to the computer because forget the collections agency, we’re going to court.

Now, I’m an ethical Assistant Manager (mostly) in a reputable Computer Store, so I wouldn’t do this.  But remember that most computers have sensitive information on them, and that’s not even delving into the personal stash of pictures that you have of you and your wife that you’ve hidden in the depths of your My Documents next to some tax files: yeah, we found those.  And yeah, we’d hit her too.

Anyways… as I was saying, I’m an ethical guy, but in most cases, if you leave an outstanding bill with a computer store and there’s anything remotely damning or even sensitive on that computer and I wouldn’t be surprised if it winds up on the internet.  Or, at least, I wouldn’t expect that computer store to be taking any precautionary measures before selling your computer with the old data intact to cover their losses.  Remember, leaving a computer store with your computer is a dangerous thing: it’s a lot like leaving your wallet behind in a restaurant after you just stiffed the waiter.  Why would you do something that stupid?

I guess what I’m getting at is that I really can’t think of a good reason to leave a computer at a computer store.  The best case scenario is that they sell your computer for parts and leave an outstanding bill for services rendered.  I mean, I suppose it could be a crappy computer store that you never want to do business with again and that might work out, but you’re then assuming that crappy computer store also has very scrupulous employees and solid ethics… things that rarely go hand-in-hand with bad service.  On the other hand, they could send you to collections, shoot your credit to hell, pursue you in court or give the computer with all of your finanicial information on it to out-of-work crackheads.

Oh… in my case, I do eventually part the things out and attempt to offset the bill with selling the parts or using them as scrap for my side projects.  But the fact of the matter is that the bill never really gets offset and so the customer is sent to collections and pursued and then blacklisted unless he actually makes good.  And bear in mind, The Computer Store is really the only place in town that will reliably fix (did you note the emphasis on fix) your computer… so if you’re blacklisted, you’re in trouble.  Of course, if you were stupid enough to go down this path in the first place, you wouldn’t know any of this… so why am I warning you in the first place?

Oh… right.  Because your computer is taking up space in my store and I want you to come pay for it and get it the hell out.

He Likes Me More

Let me tell you a secret: the Better Business Bureau likes me more than they like you. You want to know why? I pay membership dues and you don’t. Oh sure, they’ll pretend to like you and be your friend, but as long as I keep paying my dues, I would have to either break the law or fail to carry through on a written promise to get BBB to side with you. You got that? BBB is my friend, not yours.

I was standing at the front desk on one of those dreary days on the week after New Year’s Day and business was dead. The Christmas rush had come and gone, Christmas returns has trickled through, and we were in that dead period at the beginning of the year before corporate budgets start kicking in and companies start buying new equipment. But that wouldn’t happen for a week or two… we were still at that point where nobody is really back at work from the holidays. Yes, they’re back, but not really doing anything.

So when a middle-aged lady and her daughter walked in the door, they had my attention by virtue of the fact that there really wasn’t anything else for me to be doing. After I ran down my standard “Hello, how are you? Welcome to the Computer Store, I’m the Assistant Manager, is there anything I can help you with?” spiel, the lady told me that she needed a new video card.

Upon inquiring as to what sort of video card she wanted, the lady told me that the video on their computer had gone out and she needed a replacement. As I told her, there are two parts to a computer’s video system: the video card and the monitor. Well, technically there are three, but nevermind. The point of this is that without testing the computer, it’s impossible to tell which of the components has gone out when the display stops working: it’s kind of like a string of those old Christmas lights… you have to figure out which part is bad before you can make it work and until you do, all you know is that one of the bulbs is bad.

My admonishment fell on deaf ears as the lady “knew” that it was the video card. Selecting a sale-priced unit of ~ $200, she strode up to the counter to make her purchase. Standing around looking equally bored, Jason decided to take part in the conversation with an admonishment of his own, “Now ma’am, I just need to tell you that we have a restocking fee of 15% of the original unit price for returned merchandise unless it’s broken. If you’d like to bring your tower in we can check that for you free of charge and even install the video card for $10.”

Muttering something about wanting to get her computer working tonight and not wanting to pay to have us fool with her computer, the lady payed and left. And yes, you guessed it, she returned the following day with the opened box and receipt in hand. As Jason and I had foreseen, she had returned with the video card.

“I’d like to return this please.” So I’ve noticed.

“Was there any problem with it?” She probably should have been clued in by the ring of falseness to my Helpful Manager Voice.

“No, but it turns out that I don’t need it.” Gotcha!

“Alright ma’am… the unit was $250, 15% of that is $37.50 off of $200.” Punching away a second, accounting for tax and all, her total came up something like $163.50.

“But I paid $200 for this video card!”

“Yes ma’am, but as I told you yesterday, there is a 15% restocking fee off of the original price for merchandise that is returned unless the part is defective.”

“You told me no such thing!” Oh God… “He Said, She Said.” But wait… I have a witness.

“Ma’am, why don’t you hold on a second while I get the Store Manager.”

“You do that!” Stupid old bag, Jason hates customers even more than I could imagine. If customer-hating were a contest, I’d be a modern-day skinhead to Jason’s 1920s Klansman. I may talk a good game, but I wouldn’t put it past Jason to actually hurt a customer.

Jason walked up to the front of the store, apologized and repeated what I’d just said. Unlike me, however, he felt no need to gloss over the events of the day before and proceeded to recall for her that we had offered to test her computer and had, in fact, foretold this very scenario. The insulted look on the woman’s face told me that she, too, recalled this scenario but the glint in her eyes told me she’d be damned if she didn’t get her full $200 plus tax. I was right.

She ranted and raved for a while about the evils of my store and how we had best refund her money lest she lead a crusade against our uncouth establishment. When this failed, she even went so far as to threaten us with her husband coming to wreak havoc upon our persons. She left threatening a report to the Better Business Bureau. Whatever.

Weeks passed, idiots came, idiots went, and finally, the new fiscal year was at hand and we busied ourselves building new systems, preparing price estimates and the like. And then it came in the mail: a compliant from the BBB. Now, you have to understand that I’ve literally been threatened with a complaint to the Better Business Bureau hundreds of times. Just about every time someone gets angry, “I’ll call the BBB on you” comes out, but this was only the third complaint I’d ever actually gotten from the BBB, and the first in roughly a year.

Now, remember how I was saying that the BBB was my friend and not yours? Apparently nobody had ever taught this lady that tidbit, nor had they informed her that unless you have written documentation to hold a business’s feet to the fire with, the BBB will side with their friend… the Business. So if you ever find yourself addressing a response to a complaint filed with the BBB, have fun with it… because all you really have to do is respond with the facts. So I brought the facts, and then I added some flavoring: I insulted the lady’s intelligence, noted that her daughter appears to have a loose grasp on reality, etc, etc, etc. And do you know what, BBB is still my friend.

And my customer with the selective memory? She took her video card with her against the day that I would refund her the $200 in full, plus tax. She’s still waiting.

Why Aren’t You Listening to You?

The phone rings. I answer with the usual shtick.

“I need a restore disc. Will you sell me one?” For the uninitiated, a restore disc is that cd that comes with your computer that you can use to wipe everything and get the computer back to the original configuration… which fixes 95% of things that a customer does to his computer. They’re a pain in the ass to get ahold of if the customer loses it or if (as is increasingly common), the manufacturer tried to skimp the 20 lousy cents that it would have cost to issue one with the computer. On the up-side, either way, the manufacturer now gets to bilk the customer out of $10 or $20 for a new cd.

“Well sir, I could probably help you get one. Would you mind telling me what you need the cd for?” I didn’t ask this because I like listening to customers talk, but rather because the vast majority of people who ask for a restore cd either don’t need one or won’t be well-served by simply being provided with one. Half want the viruses removed from their computers and the other half actually do want the restoration, but they don’t want all of their porn files deleted like most restore discs do. Not to mention, simply placing a restore cd in the hands of a customer will temporarily solve the virus problem (until they download more attachments from Uncle Bob or let their antivirus subscription run out), but in the manner akin to saving the Titanic from an iceberg by detonating a thermonuclear bomb off the bow. Put simply, listening to the customer yammer for 5 minutes now will save me from hours of complaining later.

As it turned out, I was right. The confused hick on the phone wanted to install DVD playing software on his computer and needed the most recent set of updates… which is a problem that a restore disc won’t solve at all. Rather than wasting time explaining to him that his amateur friend was actually the equivalent of a mechanic who poured sugar in his gas tank to improve the mileage, I simply told him that what he probably was referring to was a Service Pack CD and that I could certainly sell him one, but it would be easier if he’d just bring his computer by and I could run all of the updates in under an hour, including installing that software. Up until now, this is pretty much par for the course for answering telephone support inquiries.

“Well, I guess I could do that. Normally I get my computer help from my friend, but his work is pretty sloppy and he usually gives me the run-around. From talkin’ to you, it sounds like y’all know lots more about computers, but let me talk to him first an’ then I’ll get back to you.”  Wait… wait, what?!

Let’s go down this one at a time:

1. Assuming that this friend gave him the misinformation that he came to me with (which seems likely given the extent of the information which this computer-illiterate man had), his friend his a moron.
2. This moronic friend of his does shoddy work.
3. This friend gives my customer the run-around.
4. This friend exudes such an aura of incompetence that this customer concluded me to be more skilled and proficient in the course of a 5-minute phone call.
5. This customer is going to talk to his friend for advice.

Stop!  Just shut up and listen to yourself talk!  Take your own advice… seriously.  Even if you want a second opinion, get a second opinion from someone whom you don’t feel to be a moron.

Public Slave

One of the most redeeming aspects of retail, as opposed to in-house IT work, is the generally regular 9-5 hours and the ability to leave my work at work. Further, since I don’t work directly for my clients, only my co-workers have my 24-hour access information. Thus, I control the level of access that my clients have to me.

The down-sides largely revolve around the fact that my clients are The Public. They feel a sense of entitlement owing to the fact that they’re paying money for the work that I’m doing, they can harass me extensively over the phone, and they know where my offices are. Oh… and they know what I look like.

This becomes a problem when I’m out in public on my own time.

The worst is when I’m out on my lunch hour and I run into The Public. Now, some of them are fine: they wave, they say “hi,” and they go about their way… perhaps with a couple of idle questions and maybe shooting the breeze. Some of my clients are a pleasure to see, and I’ve even gone so far as to eat lunch with some of them on my personal time… but that’s my call because some of my customers are the kind of people who I like being around. I mean, let’s face it, most of my personal friends need someone like me to fix their computers, too… why shouldn’t I have people who need me to fix their computers who are also my friends? Of course, these are the exceptions.

I was sitting by myself, as I often do when I go out for lunch mid-week, clearing my brain and quietly eating a piece of pizza when a brightly-colored object moved past my peripheral vision and into my field of view. “You!”

Not me, couldn’t be. Swallowing, I glanced up, “Yes?” Surveying the woman’s bright clothing and her garish makeup, flashbacks from untoward meetings with clowns began to flood into my mind. Once it became apparent that she wasn’t here to perform a trick or steal my puppy, I put down the knife and vaguely recalled that she had been a rather unpleasant customer some months earlier.

Before I could get another word in edgewise, she launched into a tirade. Ranting in a bizarre European accent at a volume entirely unsuitable even for this fast food establishment harangued me with accounts of injustices done, work shoddily performed and something about my establishment having shamed her in front of her husband. Caught off-guard, my bewildered countenance must have struck a chord with one of the employees… either that or the unsettling effect that shrill ranting has on the digestion, but in any event, several employees approached in order to quiet this unpleasant customer.

“Ma’am,” I edged in, unhappily pushing myself into Manager Mode, “if you feel that you have been unjustly dealt with, please feel free to come by my store sometime when I’m not at lunch and I’ll be more than happy to address whatever problems you might have. But I’m eating now and would appreciate doing so in peace.”

Nonplussed, the Clown resumed, my attempt at placating seeming to have had the opposite effect. “I’ll never set foot in your store again, you fucking crook!” Ah… profanity and threats, music to the ears of the management at this restaurant to be sure. And, yes, the screaming seemed to have doubled the pace of the employees, one of whom placed a hand on the Clown’s shoulder. Wrong move.

The wrinkled carnie wheeled on the employee and slapped the hand away, “Don’t you touch me!”

“Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to calm down or leave.”

And sadly, rather than satisfying me with having a meltdown and being tossed from the restaurant, the Clown at last came to her senses and stormed off to the far end of the store, muttering to herself the whole way about wrongs perpetuated against her. At least, that’s what I think she was blathering on about… I’m pretty sure she also changed languages to some manner of Made-Up Space Language… or something European.

Such a tease.

Well-Behaved Customers

As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, there are certain habits of customers which I (and others in the Computer Service Business) find annoying. Allow me to give a list of things that you shouldn’t do if you want to maintain a productive and positive relationship with a Service Professional.

1. Know the limits of your knowledge. I’m not a car mechanic, nor do I pretend to be one. Thus, when my car breaks down, rather than attempt to diagnose or fix problems that are beyond me, I do a simple once-over of my car. If the symptoms I see don’t lead to a diagnosis and a solution that I am capable of, I write down a list of symptoms and take the car to a mechanic… treat your computer likewise. You can do a whole lot of damage to your computer by getting in over your head, much as I can by trying to fix a car that I’m not capable of fixing. It’s a rare problem indeed that gets worse by being left alone for the 20 minutes it takes to contact a professional, rarer still in the realm of computers (or cars, for that matter.)
2. Ask questions if you don’t understand. While incredibly inane questions do annoy me slightly, it’s infinitely preferable to the customer who refuses to ask for help and then attempts to blame me for his own misconceptions. If you don’t know where that plug goes, ask.
3. Let me do my job in peace. If I told you I’d get back to you in 2-3 days and it’s been 4 with no word, give me a call. A repair shop is a very hectic place and it’s easy for a phone call to get lost in the chaos. But you’re not doing anyone any favors if you call more than once every day or two, and more than one call a day is just asking to foment malice. Remember, my technicians are usually 17-year-old, socially-awkward boys – if they were waiters, they’d be spitting in your soup with this kind of treatment, don’t leave them in charge of your $3000 computer and then treat them like crap. I can’t be watching all of them, all of the time.
4. Let’s pretend for a minute that I’m the expert. Now, there are going to be things that I don’t know and things that I’m going to have to look up and I might even occasionally be wrong, but quit arguing with me. Remember, I’m the one who has a 4-year degree in Computer Science, 10+ years of experience on the bench and the one who is managing this store. You came to me because I know what I’m doing, so quit trying to convince me that adding a male/female USB converter to this daisy chain of adapters will be just what you need to get your archaic printer to work on this new computer, because it won’t.
5. Seriously, stop arguing with me. I really could care less why you like AMD more than Intel or ATI over nVidia, Kingston over Corsair, and the list goes on. Odds are pretty good that I’ve heard your arguments before, and probably given an better presentation than the one you’re attempting. I really don’t get into these arguments and try to keep my professional opinions away from fanboys. If you want to have this one out, go find yourself a forum, go to Tom’s Hardware or go troll the Amazon.com reviews or something.

In the end, I don’t want to paint service technicians and managers as Hateful Trolls, because we’re not, but we are (usually) fairly busy people with little time or tolerance for inane nonsense. We love chatting it up with intelligent customers on any number of topics, but if you’re going to be an obnoxious boor I know that I, at least, have little time for you.

Condoms, On the House

Speaking of customers whose sheer idiocy and unseemly visages have left them seared in the Collective Memory of the staff of The Computer Store, allow me to tell you about “Bloody Gums.”

My Sales Manager, Eli and I were shooting the breeze at the front counter as I took a break from dealing with technicians when we saw a toddler come… well… toddling up to the door. Eli walked up and opened the front door, looking on bemusedly as the toddler stepped in and proceeded to charge down the center aisle while we awaited his parents and brother. Once they made it in the door, I took to talking to father (who was holding a computer) while the mother set about tracking down her children as Eli stood aside, surveying the situation.

As an aside, while I have few doubts as to the status of the mother, the man — actually, young guy — who walked into my store shouldn’t, by all means, have been the father. He looked about 17 at the oldest and acted with an immaturity and social awkwardness that belies the onset of adolescence in most boys… and yet it would appear that this was his family and he was the head of it. A closer examination of my customer only heightened my confusion as he exuded “fresh out of the trailer” between his unkempt hair, torn clothing, and a smile consisting of nasty, yellow teeth, caked in grime and housed in bleeding gums. He smelled of the most foul things in nature and his breath was even worse: he looked kind of like a young, blonde Una-Bomber. How had this woman allowed him to get her pregnant not once, but twice?

In any event, while I engaged in superficial conversation with the parents, it became quickly apparent with the mother’s frequent barking at her two young children and her simultaneous disregard for the fact that they kept getting more hyper and reckless that this woman had no control over her two sons, nor did she have any clue about this whole mothering thing… at all. As things became more apparently uncontrolled, Eli and I had a quick whisper-conference wherein it was agreed that he would try his best to prevent the children from destroying any inventory, as it was apparent that the mother didn’t really have the capacity and I doubted either had the ability to pay for anything that the children might break.

At this juncture, I walked to the front counter with the man who informed me that they were evacuees from Mississippi who would be staying locally for a while. Asking him what I could do, he grinned (more about that later) and produced a “Matrix Online” box and queried, “What do I need to get so’s I can play this?”

At this point, we hooked his computer up to the display at the front desk so that I could have a look. He smugly interjected that he was going to have to type in the password himself and wouldn’t give it to “nobody.” As I heard an increase in volume and an increasingly alarmed tone coming from Eli, I informed the man that we had utilities to deal with such problems and suggested (rather forcefully) that he go keep an eye on his sons for a moment while I looked into his computer issues. Unfortunately, this only served to pique his curiousity. Rather than going to deal with his children, he began pestering me for the application we used so that he could “play around with it” (otherwise translated, get into my wife’s account… go figure.)

At about this point, Bloody Gums’ Wife (I presume, here) wandered up, abandoning even the appearance of attempting to control her children. As I explained that the system would need memory and a new video card to be brought up to spec, I noted that the computer was a bogged-down mess that was loaded up to the gills with porn. I made a sideways suggestion regarding reloading Windows or at least cleaning up the computer and at this point, the couple decided to discuss what they could afford, so I wandered off to help Eli with the brats. Unfortunately, I didn’t get out of earshot before I got the distinct impression that a significant amount of the relief moneys being received were about to be set aside for computer upgrades with the wife arguing that she ought to get a computer to replace the one that she’d left behind before the husband got more upgrades. Mentioned as an afterthought was the prospect of their ailing vehicle.

I hurried further away, eager to assuage my guilt for selling these people things that they shouldn’t be buying, coming up to Eli and helping him watch the children for a moment. Even so, it dawned on me that I would feel better selling people things that they couldn’t afford to buy than I would continuing in this babysitting fiasco. I mean, if genetics made up even half of these children’s future personalities, I would probably be doing society a service… well, I tried to suppress that thought and waited for a lull in the conversation to return to my customers, leaving Eli shooting me dirty looks as he lorded over the two little walking advertisements for birth control.

As I stood there, double-checking the computer’s system configurations and discussing his purchasing choices, I began to play 20 questions. It came out that this couple typically kept their two brats in day care until 3 so they had plenty of time to do a bit of gaming, hence their presence in my store. They had opted to try to get less expensive equipment at this point so as to save money until after they had discovered how much it would cost to repair their car and perhaps buy the wife a new computer. Fortunately, Jason chose this moment to return from an off-site job and began chatting up the husband while I completed the sale and talked with the wife. Unfortunately, she chose this moment to grace me with the information that she was currently pregnant with twins. I didn’t know whether to congratulate her or look up some adoption agencies and pass her the numbers.

In any event, I finally finished the sale, gave the couple their new parts (plus a game that the husband had decided to snag) and sent them and their spawn on their merry way. It was at this point that I slipped through the back door and began shuddering at the thought of this couple continuing to breed and we discussed our varying observations regarding Bloody Gums and his family. All told, I was very glad the whole family was gone and hope that I never have to deal with any of them again. Of course, as with all of my least favorite customers, Bloody Gums seemed to sense that he wasn’t wanted and returned to me the following week. But I will wax eloquent on that another time.