The One Who Ruins It For Everyone Else

Many of my clients are very cool, some of them have even become friends. A lot of them I am friendly with. You know who you are.

Some of my clients are just alright, and that’s alright too.

Occasionally, I’ll have a client who I disagree with, and this is alright too, not everyone is going to agree with me. Factor in the level of frustration some people have with technology and sometimes no one can win.

Finally, once in a blue moon, I get a real asshole. Guess what I got this week?

I originally wrote the core of this just to have a record of what happened, but now a couple of days out and a little removed, I figure I can have some fun with it. It’s not like I’m going to get paid. Here’s how it happened…

On 11/29 this guy called called me to schedule some work for 2pm the following day. I asked him a few questions to get an idea of what was going on. I told him it sounded like he may very well have to backup his data and start from scratch with the machine. He pretty much blew my opinion off and told me we could talk about it tomorrow.

On 11/30 around 1pm he called to move the job to 3:30pm.

I showed up at 3:40, client was not there, but showed up two minutes later. I gave client my standard job sheet which he did not fill out upon request. He never did.

I again asked the client what had been going on and after hearing it and taking a brief look at the computer concluded that the best thing to do would be to backup his data and wipe the computer clean to reinstall Windows. This was a solid course of action seeing as he had no current virus program, he had previously removed spyware, he had not run windows updates, computer would not operate in safe mode, and explorer.exe would not operate in normal mode making it impossible to accomplish much in any case.

The client did not want to do this and verbally explored a variety of options with me including but not limited to transferring the data to another computer that day or some other day, and getting a new computer. He then asked me to see what I could do despite my belief that anything other than data backup was a waste of time. I proceeded to see if I could run the MS Antispyware tool, which never finished installing. I also hooked up a USB hard drive to see if I could transfer data using that to one of the other machines he mentioned.

The drive did function and I offered the option of data transfer to him at which point he more or less started getting hostile, asking me if I was copying data (I wasn’t) asking me questions about whether my blackberry could copy data from his machine (nope) and continuing along those lines. He mentioned a prior case of identity theft. As he spoke his tone grew more agitated and his words grew more accusatory until the client accused me outright, and threatened to ruin my business. He also swore in that statement, though I can’t say word for word what he said. This was the point that I decided to leave.

I said I was out of there and packed my things, leaving a disc behind and my job sheet. I did not ask for reimbursement, though I would like it now. As I got ready to go, the client, an older guy, but considerably bigger than me, moved to block the door and when I faced him I told him he could get out of my way, or I would call the cops. I also advised him that I had training in Krav Maga and had no qualms about hurting him if he laid a hand on me. By this point, I was shaking with the surge of adrenaline and ready for anything. The phone rang and the client took the call, moving out of my way. Honestly, I was surprised, but I took the exit. He then followed me to the stoop and out the door, but I ignored him. I was gone.

Of course a minute later the phone rang the first of about half a dozen calls from him. I took only one of those calls and after going back and forth with him, told him he was a paranoid idiot and to have a lawyer contact me and hung up. He left no messages otherwise.

Later, telling the story to Pit Bull on the phone (while I swilled a beer to calm down), Pit Bull reasoned that he more than likely had something to hide, a sensible assumption based on his level of paranoia. It was probably kiddy porn, wasn’t it you sick fuck?