don’t you have one?

Here’s a common conversation at work:

• Customer: Hi, my laptop has a problem, can you look at it?
• Me: Sure… oh, it’s a blue screen of death? That could be hardware. We’ll need to book it in and look closely at it… did you bring the power adapter for it?
• Customer: The what?
• Me: …the power adapter. The big power cable that charges the battery.
• Customer: Oh. don’t you have one?
• Me: Not for every single make and model of laptop, we don’t. And definitely not (glances at laptop) for Vaios.

Fair enough, we’re a computer store. We do occasionally order in and sell laptop power adapters, and we have one or two universal adapters for our own use, but it’s easiest for everyone if customers bring their own in.

It’s common enough that it’s no longer annoying and I’ve grown my own natural response to it already. Today, though, we had an entirely new take:

• Customer: Hi, I’m having trouble with my printer. I’ve brought my computer, can you plug it in and take a look?
• Co-worker: Sure, have you got the printer with you as well?
• Customer: No… don’t you have one?

I can completely understand people being ignorant about how their electronic possessions work. I’m a great example myself – I fix computers, but I couldn’t tell you what volts and electrons and transistors are for. I still think the microwave oven is some kind of voodoo trick aliens gave us to make nachos at 3AM.

But come on, would you book in your car for a service and deliver them the parcel shelf and the seat covers to examine? Are people really so afraid and ignorant of their computers they don’t even have the basic knowledge to identify what components need to be present to figure out why they can’t print?

Not that I’m calling her ignorant. I’m sure she’s just too busy to sit down and spend time learning about the device she places so much trust in.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 18:26 and is filed under rant, techsup, work, wtf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.