Of PDAs and Prancing
She wasn't there when things got bad."
First off, let me tell you that it is not your fault.
Second, let me tell you why.
Today I was at Fry's Electronics. Imagine Costco, except instead of muffins you have power supplies. Instead of the bread aisle, you have case mods. The frozen foods section? Lusciously replaced with aisle upon aisle of cords, wires, connectors, adaptors, and anything that goes from here to there.
As you can imagine, I was in heaven. You know that episode of the Simpsons where Homer starts imagining that he's in Candyland and starts prancing around eating everything in sight? That was me, testing every PDA for 802.11b capability.
The place is a ways away, so I can't go there quite as often as I go to Best Buy. Today was a special case because Jean had a gift certificate, of sorts, and just got a DVD player which was in desperate need of some movies to play on it. While she was looking for various DVDs, I went a-frollicking towards the computer section. Considering my laptop is in a state of mild disrepair, I decided to do some pricing on possible fixes.
Naturally, everything worth buying was more money than I was willing to spend. After toying with a few gadgets, I saw that the tech support line was empty. I decided to ask the guy at the counter about whether they could fix my laptop.
While he was politely explaining that they couldn't help me in any way, shape, or form, I noticed something. Customer service people, at least in other fields that I've seen, always make it a point to maintain eye contact, no matter if they're being helpful or if they're telling them that those shoes don't come in "Mauve".
This person did not.
Until later tonight, I didn't realize why. I was left feeling empty. Like somehow I was being handled, dealt with, taken care of, instead of conversing as would a normal human being. Like when you call tech support and end up pressing a combination of 1 and 4 until a sales representative might make it on the line.
Fast foward past driving home, watching Silence of the Lambs, eating yogurt, cooking biscuits, and taking a nap.
I'm at a relative's house, fixing their computer. Pretty standard fix: clean the spyware, run the virus scanner, lock down the firewall, clear the Internet cache, and load up Firefox. I wrote down everything I did in a nice, neat list. Or as neat as my handwriting gets.
Explaining to them all my work, and answering all of their computer questions, I came to a realization.
They didn't care. It didn't matter what explanation I gave. All that really mattered was that I was done, and fixed. That it worked, and they could carry on.
Every time I answered a question, I watched. As I began to explain, their eyes lost focus, set in an intent stare at something just beyond my abnormally large head. It didn't matter how it worked. Just that it did work.
This is a very difficult way to have a conversation. And what really irritates me is that this isn't the first time this has happened.
Save a few unique people, this is how most people I've come across "deal" with my type. Yeah, I'm a computer nerd. Yes, I'm quirky to the point of frustration. And sure, we all might very well be the same "computer specialists" you see in movies and TV.
You know, like the guy Will Smith asks for background information from in Bad Boys II. Or maybe I'm that video game addict that's actually a trained killer from all of the vicarious carnage I've been submitted to by the evil gaming industry that every prime time news programs love to cover. Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, I'm like that raging egocentric asshole at work that rules his tiny computing kingdom with an iron fist. All with the strange ability to press a single button and make it all better.
Or maybe I'm just a kid with the patience and the luxury of time to solve this stuff on my own. To keep it in perspective, I'm the dude at Costco driving the pallet of precious lawn dart sets to their desired location. Yeah, you could walk back and climb the racks to get them. But its my job to offer the simple solution. To say: "I can make that easier for you, if you like."
I know, that's a terrible analogy, but I can't think of any time I've actually seen a Costco employee on the floor other than the people giving out free samples on Saturday. It doesn't take anything to run a microwave, but driving a fork-lift certainly does.
My list of gripes with this runs pretty deep. Tonight as I headed back to the computer room, though I was supposedly "out of earshot", I heard as I left that "you can't even ask [me] a question without getting confused". People have told me that they avoided the computer for months just to avoid something that I would have happily solved for them. Not only does that tell me that they don't want to learn, but they don't want to learn from me.
I understand that computers are insanely complicated. Its taken me years to get to where I am now, and only now am I beginning to understand the full extent of their complexity. Systems upon systems upon systems, seemingly abstracted unto the infinite.
But since when did people get so convinced that if they don't already know it, it isn't worth knowing? This might have been so far about computers, but this applies to so much more. Cars? Taxes? Law? Politics?
I know that I'm guilty of the same thing with any number of those. Heck, I might even be guilty with some of the finer (and by fine I mean like microscopic) points of computer science. After school, I think that we get the impression that we don't need to learn anything else, that somehow in our short time on this spinning ball of dust that we've come to terms with the universe and all its intricacies.
That, I believe, is entirely untrue.
They say a mind is a terrible thing to waste. But what if you just use it on one thing? What if that one thing you know ends up becoming useless? Unneeded? Unwanted? In my field, that threat is ever so apparent as what I learned maybe a month ago will be obsolete and thrown to the wind after a year. So in a way, I'm lucky, as my profession forces me to keep up, or else I fail.
But most aren't that lucky I don't think. Granted, most stuff I learn is computer stuff, but it still manages to keep me on my toes.
I think I now understand why the guy at Fry's dealt with me the way he did. Every customer he sees doesn't care about what he does. And most don't care how the machines he tends actually work. All they care about is if their computer is safe from those nasty viruses they read about in the newspaper. That precious collection of Real American Hero/Real Men of Genius clips will still be there, though they never listen to it. That their massive collection of favorites won't be lost, though all they ever visit is eBay and Google. That they can check their email, though all they get is spam from their friends.
I tell you this because being in a position without knowledge is a very dangerous one. People have known this about cars for years. Mechanics, those mysterious dirty folk that try to force you to replace your air filter. We're always wary when we go into the shop. We don't know what's wrong. We seek help, hoping that its something easy. Something replaceable. Something cheap. But in such a position, what's to stop the mechanic from taking advantage of your state of cluelessness? How many times can you get your "motivator" replaced before you realize that cars don't have "motivators"?
Just a friendly warning from your friendly neighborhood computer nerd. And remember, its not your fault. You just didn't know.
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