Computer Technician Stories - Technibble
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Computer Technician Stories

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No matter what your job is, there is a pretty good chance you have a story to tell. It might be a dumb customer or the time when something very weird happened. Most repair jobs for a Computer Technician are fairly standard but occasionally we run into something interesting. Unlike the seemingly dangerous job of the Pizza delivery person, Computer Technicians have to go inside of people homes and potentially stay there for hours which can often be frightening or funny. Here are some of our stories:

Robogeek writes:
Went to a house in the bad part of Bloomington.. pulled up and it was obviously a crack house. The call was for ‘couldn’t connect to the internet’ and they sent me out with a modem. I get in there and the place is full of clothes with tags on them, lawnmowers, chainsaws, baby clothes – you name it. All this in a tiny 2 room apartment.
I replaced the modem but that wasn’t the problem – there was a no dial tone error. I start to tell them I need other parts, and they say I’m not leaving till its fixed (with a hand in the waistband). I say I need another part I have to go get. They finally let me go out to my car and I got the heck out of there and called the cops. They went there and sure enough everything was stolen, they had lots of guns, and they were selling things on eBay.

Best part was the contractor that hired me to go there refused to pay because I didn’t resolve the problem. That was one of my very first national contractor WO’s

Bryce (me) writes:
One time I had an onsite job in a really rich area on a saturday morning. I arrived at 10am and was shown to the computer which was in a girls bedroom. The father tells me what I needed to do and left me to it. Fifteen minutes later I was working away and a attractive girl (the typical rich-girl blonde honey) walks in wearing nothing but her underwear. I was just as surprised to see her as she was to see me. She ran out of the room and that was the last I ever saw of her.
It turns out that she went and had a shower a few minutes before I arrived, I was let into her room by her father and a 15 minutes later she did the nudie run back to her bedroom to get some clothes. Seeing a almost naked rich girl put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

dunndw writes:
I had one sweet little old couple with a HUGE German Shepard. The poor lady almost fainted when he came RUNNING into the room right at me…only to spin around and promptly sit on my lap. Of course it took me MUCH longer to setup their router typing around him. He would not move. Not aggressive at all, just he’d been outside all day long with no one home and he demanded attention from anyone and everyone. He actually tried to get into my truck when I left….made me wonder if he was being mistreated.
Would have taken him home too…if my dog was socialized in the least little bit.

Focuz writes:
I went to a job for motherboard replacement. After replacing the motherboard I went to turn on the machine and seen that the wallpaper is gay porn. Now being a professional I didn’t say anything, I just called the end user over to let them know its working. The owner a middle aged male blushes and asks me if I can change that before his wife comes home and sees it. Supposably he downloaded a virus that spread it throughout his computer and he poured water over the whole thing, thinking it would be better to pay for a new machine then to have to explain it to his wife.

Sincraft writes:
Walked into a house where the people piled their trash in their kitchen where they had a path to the microwave and the fridge.
The bedrooms had pictures of japanese animation on all of the walls.
There were needle laying on the ground in 3 different areas THAT I COULD SEE
And I wont disgust you with the rest by telling you what type of smells and stains I had seen in various pieces and parts of the room and decor.
I was to troubleshoot a motherboard for issue on their internet connectivity. I recycled the cable modem, then the router just by pulling the power cables and not having to set anything down etc.
Everything worked fine after that, in which they stated they recently moved their equipment around.
I had him sign with a pen, then dropped out walking out…walked across the street to the rite aid and bought some disinfecting wipes…and scrubbed down completely.
I called it my initiation.

Robogeek writes:
I had a really gross one out in Cali. A USNET case door replacement on a gateway I believe it was. It was in Palm Springs right off of Palm Canyon, so not a bad area. Get in the house and it REEKED! Food everywhere, clothes laying all over the place and a large stinky woman waddling through it to show me the PC. Opened the bedroom door and there are sex toys all over the place! Not a few.. and not just the common ones. S&M stuff, things the size of baseball bats, paddles.. you think of it, she had it.

So she proceeds to tell me she is a sex therapist and shows me her license. Then she start talking about how she helps people out by working through their fantasies. I think she is hinting at something else. I didn’t say a word the whole time and she wouldn’t shut up.

Now this is a probably 300lb woman, mid 40’s or so wearing a blue robe with food stains all down the front, greasy hair that hasn’t been washed in ages, A mole on her cheek with literally a 6 inch hair growing out of it, and emitting some of the worst smelling odors I’ve eve encountered – and I’ve hung out with bikers!

I dunno what kind of people have fantasies about that, but if you do – you can have her!
I should have given her my bosses phone number – revenge for sending me there!

Most painful one was a PC under a desk – I was opening the case to check the fan and a cricket jumped out and landed on my shirt. I jumped, slammed my head on the bottom of the metal desks braces and got 6 stitches for all my trouble.

If you have your own computer technician story, submit it to news [at] technibble [dot] com and I will post it in our next round of stories.

  • youngwun0 says:

    lol wonderful article bro, i was actually looking foward to this article alot haha some laughs and some scares what more can i say, interesting stuff makes me wonder as i am at the starting point to becoming a techinican although i dont think any of the stories will effect my liking of the field :D

  • swany971 says:

    Great stuff, Couldn’t help but laugh.

  • System48 says:

    This is why I only provide computer support for friends and family.

  • Steve says:

    But what of “normal” households – where the client goes bonkers? You’ve spent hours reinstalling the O/S, putting back all their personal trash, and something is MISSING (be it sound, the desktop picture, the font width, or their 15 year old customized software program they “forgot” to tell you about and is now wiped off the known face of the universe? From “my computer does not boot up” to “where is my porn” …. is that grounds for not being paid for the rest of our hard work?

  • Bryce W says:

    Steve, the Computer Business Kit has a Backup Checklist that you can go though with your client (helps you remember what to backup too). Down the bottom it has a signoff part that says you dont take any liability if they forgot to tell you about something. This way, they know if they forgot something its their fault.

  • Flextech says:

    Hilarious articles, being a techie myself I haven’t had any situations that have been as wild as the ones mentioned in this article.

  • Virgil says:

    Here”s one:
    When I first opened my shop, I would warranty a system for 1 year. (The Entire System, Including SOFTWARE). Needless to say, I was very ignorent of the fact that people are unknowledgeable when it comes to computers. This lady would call me up every other week or so to come fix a (software) problem she had. Short of it, lesson learned, I have never warrantied anything except hardware from that time on….

  • Shawn says:

    All of these stories (except the naked chick) are precisely why I don’t work on home PC’s.

  • PC ZONE says:

    Had a client ring up one day and heres some of the conversation shortened as it was a 15 minutes long and we were polite throughout

    Client) Hi i got my computer repaired at your shop recently and you never gave me my disc back

    Us)Ok give us your name and tell us what type of disc it was

    Client) Mrs Jones and i don’t know what disc it was but you’ve got it

    Us) ok can you describe the disc at all was it round or square

    Client)I don’t know but you have it and i need it back

    Us) ok what do you need the disc for

    Client)oh hang on and i’ll find out, ok i need it to reload my computer

    Us) Your computer is an HP and has no CD to reload the computer but has a partition on the hard drive which allows you to reload

    Client)oh ok but i’ll still need my disc

    Us) No you don’t need a disc and if your considering reloading then it’s probably not something you should do yourself

    Client)hang on, Nope i’ll still need my disc

    Us) Look please bring in the computer so that we can show you what we mean

    eventually the clients friend who was in the background and telling the client what was what and how it should be the whole time came in for the explanation which i finished with if you cannot understand the concept of a recovery partition then perhaps he should give up assisting people with wrong advise and told the client not to let him anywhere near the computer in future

  • Steve says:

    Fixed a lady’s computer, and sure enough, 2 weeks later, she calls me back because of more porn.

    The virus is xpantivirus.com and takes a lot of time to remove because of all the viruses it brings along….

    Anyhow, she was drinking beer at noon, celebrating winning a divorce settlement against her previous husband.

    I ignored the drinking, and most of the comments. But then I said ‘see this’ and pointed to her computer. She tried to sit on my lap! (That should have told me something, but, I didn’t understand it at the time).

    Anyhow, I finish removing all the viruses, present her with a bill and she said “get out”. I said, but you haven’t paid me yet.

    She repeated ‘get out’, and I said, ‘well I best remove the programs I left on your computer’. I then removed the anti-virus program (she didn’t pay for it anyway). I was tempted to put back the viruses, but stupidly, I have some pride.

    She did call the next day to apologize and promise the cheque is in the mail. It still is in the mail, right? Too bad we are not allowed to post her email address? s_stefnjack@yahoo.com

  • steve says:

    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dead_beat_customers/?yguid=166457763

    Is having a yahoo group for deadbeat customers a good idea?

    Or is this web site sufficient?

  • Boris Said says:

    Oh wow these are some great stories for sure! Oh… and Bryce was one lucky guy! hehe

  • Ian says:

    I don’t have any specific stories to tell, but certain patterns are starting to emerge and after six months of working for myself I want a real job where I can build solutions rather than fix junk.
    One example is when they get annoyed you didn’t reinstall their illegal copy of MS Office after doing a full reinstall. Another common pattern is when they have a hosed system and they don’t have a restore partition, or a single CD that came with the machine and sometimes not even something with a license sticker on it. While I’m ranting, lol, is it just me or are Symantec products almost as bad as the viruses they are supposed to keep off the system?
    I could go on…

  • Jimmy James says:

    For people who refuse to pay I give them 3 chances. If all 3 times are refused I tell them that according to the terms and conditions, I am now the legal owner of said computer. Then I start unplugging the pc, at which point 99% of people cough up.

    Some people are right ***** though… like for a motherboard replacement on say a laptop, you present the with a rather sizable bill and they think you’re ripping them off. Yet what they don’t realise if the new board itself is likely to be 2/3’s of the price, and fitting a new laptop motherboard isn’t exactly my idea of fun.

  • I did a really remote service call for a “Computer won’t start” … it was about and hour and a half drive … and the quickest service call ever … The computer was plugged into a wall outlet controlled by a wall switch .. which was turned off.

  • Tombo says:

    I have two stories.

    Went to a clients home office. He met me there, let me in and showed me to the PC. the home office happened to be in the familyroom of the house. I started to diagnose the “slow computer” issue when his wife walks out from the shower in her robe! It wasn’t tied shut all the way! I quickly turned away and she scurried to the back of the house! My client, the husband, was laughing and yelled out “Aw, c’mon, I’m sure he’s seen better!” I had to laugh at his statement. He has turned out to be a great client.

    Second, I was out on an arcade game service call at a laundry mat in a really seedy part of town. When I arrived in the parking lot, there was a man jumping up and down screaming at everyone walking and driving around. I managed to park near the back where he didn’t see me get out of my car. I had my tool kit, a soldering station and a host of security parts (steel lock bars and a coin door cage). I was in the laundry mat for about an hour performing the repair. When I was finished, I managed to make it to my car with the first load of tools. As I was coming out of the laundry mat the second time, the crazy guy looks at me and blurts out “You wanna fight? Huh? You wanna fight?” I looked at him and said “No, not really” and continued to walk back to the car. He was following me still blurting out that he wanted to fight. I proceeded to ignore him, hopped in the car and started to drive away. He was going postal, kicking the car and screaming like a mad man. Halfway down the driveway, I stopped the car. I sized up the area and situation and determined I had an easy way out of the lot so I decided to mess with the guy :D. When he saw me stop, his face lit up and he started coming towards the car. When he got close, i moved forward just far enough to really piss him off. I put it in reverse and made my way back to him. He appeared to be excited again. I then put it back in drive and drove away. All of the deadbeat bystanders hanging out in the parking lot and on the street were all laughing and pointing at the guy. I gather he does this quite often. Needless to say, I will NEVER go back to that laundry mat!!

  • Peter computer Support Guy says:

    Who in their right mind would work in Computer Support…..I ask myself every day!

  • Kirby says:

    Is it just me or does everyone else get calls for “not computers” too? People call or bring in all kinds of crap they want me to look at. Often, since it’s not computer related, they expect it to be free. Today a man brought in a watch he just bought from “not me” and wanted me to set it for him. He about choked when I informed him of my very modest minimum fee of just $22.50, the lowest in my area by more than half. I’m supposed to just drop the work I’m doing on 4 computers on my bench for paying customers and read his watch manual for half an hour because he is too lazy to sit down and figure it out. I started out doing a lot of free services. Slowly dropping them one by one as people abuse them. It’s just a hand full of people who’ve never spent a dime with me who do ALL the abusing, too.

  • Dane says:

    The techies in neighbouring towns charge around $120 an hour. So i halved it and charged $60. Still i’m surprised at how many people i need to say “Sorry, the tax office doesn’t allow me to accept drugs/drink/food as payment” to. Being in my early 20’s gives many of my clients the inspiration to advertise the quality and acheivements of their daughters, but they never cough up a phone number and never introduce me. I’m tempted to fix that under the label ‘problem management’. Good ol’ ITIL.

  • Katalog says:

    Looking at this I thought it was highly enlightening. I value you spending some time and effort to place this article together. Again I find myself shelling out way too enough time both reading through and writing comments. But so what, ?t had been nonetheless of great benefit!

  • ethan hendy says:

    hi once i was collecting a machine form a house and i got to the bottum of the steps and the hole lot fellout of my hands tower screen the lot i had to give money back to the women worth what i droppted .taulght me a good lesson never carry to much lol

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