I have too many stories. My experiences as a technician have taught me to hate senior citizens, have no patients for normies, and have a low view of the retards that don't stop being technicians after learning what's is like to be one.
Story one.
Client old man age 79.
Needs help. Basically I work the computer for him because his wife divorced him and now lives in New Mexico with her simp while old man struggles to pay sales tax. I get to the house and let old man talk because he's lonely. I let him spend about 1 hour of chinwagging before we actually get to the computer. The computer thing is easy. All you do is read websites and fill in the balk. (like knowing how to hit next on installers) After the computer stuff It's time to pay and old man wants met to take a bunch of broken electronics with me that don't work and are all a mess in a box. I agree to take the box of junk. I did a number of things on the computer for old man and I'm always really flexible about the time he wants to spend talking. I say it's 150 for the session. Old man doesn't like this. Says he gave me good stuff so the price should be lower. I revise the price to 100. Old man accepts reluctantly.
I really hate old people. I'm not going to try to shift or really do anything with the box of junk that you think is so valuable that you are going to give it away or put it in the trash. I can get better garbage tracing streets in the spring for people cleaned out junk, if interested, I don't need your crap. If in this case old man has hired GeekSquad or some other outfit they would have him on the clock for 3 hours and add fees for driving out to his house. It would be an easy 250 or so and there would be a nice shiny bill to go with that amount. You probably think I'm pretending to be nicer then I am, but 150 is a steal when I'll even take your garbage out to the curb without a second thought.
Story two.
Old women age 74.
Religious Nut who hands out terrorist propaganda and openly bad mouths the people she doesn't like in her building right to their faces. Then she has the audacity to say, "I can't believe [the gays I keep saying are going to burn in hell] didn't invite me to their christmas party". Old woman has a gmail account and is afraid of being spied on by the government. My thoughts are you can't have your email spied on if you don't have en email account. Of course, I don't tell her this. The last time I ever agreed to do work for this women was when she was having problem sending a video to her friend with gmail on the ipad. The video won't send because it's too big a file to attach to the email. (yes I know about google drive but that's not in this story) I explain that it is nothing wrong with her gmail and that it's just the file is too big to send. For five minutes strait she starts sulking in this not-crying but same sounding voice as crying about how she'd done this before and that she can't believe this is happening to her and that she prays all the time and that she always used to be able to do just this... (all manner of hysterics) To the question of why this is happening, taking her at her word that she has done this before (I wasn't there how should I know), that it must have been google who lower the size limit for file uploads in email. Still in hysterics, eventually she starts to be calm enough to ask me to fix it for her. I cut the video so isn't shorter and it uploads fine and sends. While I'm cutting he video her building's fire alarm miss fires and a loud siren echos though her whole building. Why did you have me com to you building, we could be at a coffeehouse or something, if you knew your building was malfunctioning. I mentioned the siren. Hardly phased, she explains that's it's been a chronic problem for the past month. I don't remember how much I charged her, but she couldn't afford service even if it were free.
This woman I had been doing work for a few times by then and I had gotten to know more then I wanted to know about her. Her kids and grand kinds never visited because she would be cranky and judgemental when they would come which scared them away. She was hyper religious. She even wanted to have her birthday money her son sent her tithed. (I know it's usually the other way around, right?) Her son had sent her 2 computers and an ipad. The first computer was wrong because windows didn't look exactly like on her last computer which was form 1995. I don't know what was wrong with ipad, she probably didn't like it because it didn't have real keyboard. From the moment I had met her she would insist that she was writer, while never writing anything and only ranting about trade publications that ruled her choice is hardware and software. She said she didn't like the ribbon gui in ms word, so I installed libreoffice as an alternative option. She never tired it. Instead, listing a bunch of things she and her forums (forums that she didn't comment on or belong to) said made libreoffice unacceptable. Once she showed me an excerpt she had gotten published in the local news paper, but to her she was a journalist with a hot career. I can always understand the technical ignorance people have with computers. That was not this woman's problem, she was just an awful person. It quickly became apparent it was a waste of time helping her. I have no problem believing that this women had gone though 3 marriages. All divorces. At one point the question of weather or not I tell lies came up, probably because of her religious obsession. Of course I tell lies. Who doesn't? It would be dishonest of me not to say I sometimes lie. She got really worked out of shape about this like a small child being obstinate and withholding when they get caught up with needing to get their own way. It's like she was the grandmother strait out of A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor: ignorant and obsessed with adherence to superficial orthodoxy.
I think the worst part, like with most of these stories, is the fact that they have no money or don't want to part with any of what they don't have. Computers are not food or water. Yes they make things easier, but the are not as essential as food and housing. Much of what you can do over a computer you can do slower by phone, so if you can't use computers you're not entirely disabled either. Back when I was a technician, I would charge different rates to clients on fixed government subsidize incomes. This women couldn't even pay 10 dollars so that she could have someone to berate.
Story three.
Man age 66. Partial disability.
The village pot head.
This guy had gotten kicked out of his wife's house and was living at his office because of pot addiction. Pot head was very nice, but useless and poor. He couldn't pay his debts and his line of work didn't support him. He had me prepare documents on the computer for him a number of times. If he were high he wouldn't pay. Not "I'll get you next time", he just wouldn't pay. He'd forget while he was high and it would be impossible to get him to focused enough to pay me. He never wanted to pay either, so maybe the pot let his subconscious desire to not pay fully manifest, or something. You're probably thinking he sounds like a laugh and a half. I never thought so. He really didn't live well, he was homeless for years living out of his office that didn't have a shower or really any enmities. He was difficult to work for because he would be too high to give feedback on the work. Completely ignorant of computers. Never cared what I did anyway. Really slap dash and unprofessional. I eventually stopped answering his calls. Real nice guy when you did need anything from him, but I think most people felt like he was just in the way. His office was dusty from all the cigarettes and pot he would smoke. It was messy and gross. He was on my lower rates because he was poor, even on food stamps, but he still wouldn't pay me for anything that I would do for him. It wasn't just simple typing either. He would have me do graphic design work which would normally take hours and could cost 100s of dollars all for chicken shit he would pay. Nice guy, but you can't pay me in food stamps.
Seniors in America
It's no surprise to me that the USA is a fucking trash heap given my experiences with it's greatest resource. (I know I'm being hyperbolic.) No wonder we're all facing troon-agedden when old people don't have their shit together after a life time of chances to do so. The problems I see in the US have existed for 3 generations. The generation of my grandparents, my parents, and my peers are all this way. There really is no recovery from this state of affairs at least none that I can see. If you want to waste your life trying to find one, be my guest, but I've got a life to live.
A lot of these people I used to do work for were old and poor. In the USA Social Security is one of the biggest draws on the non-discretionary budget. In my estimation what everone of these retards needed was a social worker not a computer technician. Some one to slap them upside the head and make clear that what they had been playing at their entire life had put them here and nothing else; it's their own damn fault. There is not a enough sympathy and kindness in the world to help adult babies who act like teenagers, and there never will be.
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