The Jaded Tech

Buying online is nothing new. It’s been around for quite sometime and it’s allllllmost common place. There are still a great many who are freaked out by it yet these same people have no problems with handing their credit card to the teenager behind the counter who has a camera on his cell phone and is sooo damned slick that he is able to take a picture of the credit card and you’ll be none-the-wiser. True story.

I’ve purchased many things through ebay, found many online classified and met someone to buy something from them. This past weekend I did something that I’ve never done before…..haggle a price through texting. I’ve been on this HTC Dream Quest and found one for a decent price that is unlocked. It was posted on a classified message forum and I sent him an email with my cell number and told him to text me. He mentioned he had two of them (one BNIB…) and the other slightly used and unlocked. Being unlocked is more important to guarantee compatibility with my wireless carrier. So I worked out to meet up with him tonight.

He texted me that he got an offer that was $10 more than my offer but wasn’t going to bother unless he got an offer that was $20 more. So, this is my first clue that he’s trying to get the most for his item and that it’s his primary goal. Selling it to a guaranteed offer was second I was driving around (he’s in a different city than me) and was close to him and asked if he was around and I’ll drop off a deposit. He didn’t seem interested in that idea.

A few hours later he texted me again saying that he got an offer that was $30 more than mine and asked if I would match it. I tell him to sell it to the other guy as I’ve seen BNIB Dreams for $400. I was ok with $50 less for a used one unlocked but not $20 less. He said I’d still have to get the BNIB one unlocked (typically around $30 charge). I sent him “ BNIB trumps unlocked”.

By this point I was thinking he had no other buyer and was just trying to get more money from me. He didn’t seem to want to sell it to the other guy, even though I told him to do so. I wasn’t willing to pay more than the original amount. I suspected that if this was true then he’d text me later with some sort of ‘the other buyer backed out’ excuse. I told him (again) to sell it to the other guy. This is what I got:

“Nah, I wanna end this….schools startin n i gotta be in uni on Tuesday…ur only. One pickin oon Monday. K I’m removin my posts n just come on Monday…”

Besides texting completely bastardizing the English language (can you really bastardize an already bastardized language?), my hunch was right and I was the only offer he got.

So now I have my HTC Dream and loving every minute of it! The crap I can do is amazing. I set up a friend router for her from my phone all through wifi! Damn cool stuff!

It seems that vagueness abounds in the IT world. People are so narrow-minded and narcissistic that when they email their incredibly general requests (“It’s not working….” Or “I get an error message…why?”), they actually think that their words have the stupendous ability to convey everything that they did, including a mental screen shot of the error message, to a technician through email! And us ‘lowly techs’ are nothing but their serfs who can simply fix it with one single click of our roller-ball mouse (that is if the dirt accumulated by the ball let’s us move the freaking cursor up that 1/8th of an inch to click…..dammit…move!!!). So I’m thinking of following suit and conforming to society’s stupidity and being just as vague. I’m going to open up a ‘General Store’ where if anyone comes in and asks for bread, I’ll look confused. The moment they ask for ‘dough, long, baked, sliced’ I’ll know immediately what they want! None of this ‘specific information that actually helps’! Give it to me as vague as possible so we can converse on the same level of low-intelligence.

See, as users they think that when they contact a company, that the person they are speaking to has all the client’s information at his finger tips. Their products, their serial numbers, their address, their contract information, their registration date, their contract end date, and the reason why something is missing. Pfft. Everything listed there is on a different system where each tech has to bounce around 15 different screens to pull up that info. This is the most maddening part of the job, finding all the information needed. Oh if only things were so simple that we had the entire client’s info in one window…..life would be grand.

Next request that comes in and asks “Why don’t I see my products on my screen?” I’m going to reply “Because you need to be looking at the screen!” That’ll be just as helpful as their request.

There are many people in this world that really cannot function on their own. People in wheel chairs, people in comas, and people who work for McDonalds. I get it. Why is it that the local bum at the donut shop seems to have more articulation and personality than many ‘techs’ that I’ve met?

Somehow things have gotten screwed up in our world. You have people who can get into a car, turn the key and press a gas pedal. They have no clue about oil and barely understand why the car uses gas in the first place. These people scare me. I have to spend too much energy trying not to get killed by them on the road rather than simply enjoying a nice drive to get a coffee. Seriously, the old ‘license from a crackerjack box’ originated from Hamilton. I have developed a shout to wake people up when they slow down for no apparent reason “NO SIGHT SEEING IN HAMILTON!”. It usually gets them moving along and out of my way.

If only it were so easy in the IT world.

When I was working for someone else, there was this client that called in and was too cheap to pay for training. So he creates a support request under the guise of ‘technical issue’. Being the ever-so-wise techie, I recognize this cheap-ass ploy and fulfill my duty. I point him to a couple of articles on the company website that give him ‘step-by-step’ directions how to do exactly what he wants. He then replies ‘can you give me a short description of the process?’ Noooo! That’s what the articles are for dummy! My short description would only reiterate what is in the articles! And it wouldn’t be short! Until I see MY name on YOUR paycheck, I ain’t doing YOUR work. RTFM!