Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
I lost my temper with a customer today. First time in ... oh .. I don't know, maybe five years, maybe 10. I have no excuse.
It was a perfectly pleasant morning, I was well rested, had enough work to keep me occupied, not so much that I was having trouble coping with it. No problems at home, in a pleasant, relaxed mood, the weather outside has just a hint of clear blue spring about it: life is pretty all-round good right now.
Guy comes in about half-past eleven, a regular, one that Kristi and I used to take turns dealing with cause he's such a time waster. I mean he's OK, just not very bright, and he tends to ask the same stupid question three times in a row. I don't have a problem with him, except when I'm busy and can't spare the time. But I wasn't especially busy this morning, just medium-calm. Quiet, happy, productive.
He bought a video card the other week. Came in and paid $20 each fortnight until he had paid enough to buy the card. (Yeah: this means you have to have 10 conversations with him just to sell one lousy $55 video card - ten because he takes about three visits to decide what he wants, then a couple more because he's changed his mind and needs to be talked back into whatever it was that you and he figured was best in the first place.
Still, he's always happy to wait around until you are finished with more important customers (i.e., all of them) and he's always pleasant enough. Doesn't smile much, but he's OK.
Originally, he was going to have a 128MB Gforce 4MX. (Yeah, I know, not exactly the last word, but still a lot better than his old card, and given the ancient old Athlon Classic 700 he has - coddled up from an ill-assorted collection of old and ugly parts- and the Win98 he runs, not to mention his restricted budget, a sensible choice.) Then we stumbled across a box of Albatron Gforce 4000s with 64MB going cheap. Perfectly decent little cards, passive cooling, just the thing. So we told him he could have one for $30 less than he was originally going to pay for the 128MB version of the same card and he was happy. Put it in, end of story. But that was a couple of weeks ago. This was today.
"Hi Mr K" I said, "what can we do for you?"
"I'm not happy with that video card."
OK, what's the problem?
Oh well ... yeah ... you know ... it's not good enough.
Not good enough for what? What are you playing that you are having trouble with?
(Thinks: What can you play on that elderly old machine? I mean, you could put a Gforce 7 in it (well, you could if it had more than a 2X AGP slot) and you still couldn't play anything much released in the last year or three. But I didn't say that.)
This went on for about three questions, each one getting a vague-as-dishwater answer that didn't tell me anything. That's normal for him. But then he came to the point, rather more rapidly than he usually does.
It doesn't ... wait for it .... it doesn't look good enough.
Huh? I got him to repeat it.
It doesn't look much like a real video card.
Yeah. This perfectly innocuous little $55 video card has been tried and found guilty because it doesn't have a big enough heat sink, or it's the wrong shape, or it doesn't have twin fans .... or something, anyway.
I mean, we are takling to a father of four here, not some amphetamine-crazed kid with the Monster from Kluthu V4 making his eyes go buggy. The guy is maybe 40 or 50, tall and kind of gawky, talks quite slowly, has never showed the slightest sign of being a games freak or wanting a shiny new case to put his ancient Athlon in. Hell, I'll take four to one he's still got a 15 inch monitor.
No huhu, it's just Mr K being obtuse, same as usual. I must have misunderstood something, so I ask again, "what things do you want to go faster than they do now?"
Nope, I heard right: he wants a video card that looks more like the real thing.
"Like this, you mean?" (I hold up an FX 5700 with a round bit of flywire covering the fan. Even second-hand it's worth vastly more than he will be willing to spend, of course.)
He nods.
"Or like this?" (I hold up an old 256MB Gforce 4 Ti with twin fans and GT stripes painted on the heatsink. Even something this old will take him an extra month to pay off - I mean he probably earns more than I do, he just likes to spend it $20 at a time, possibly because it feels like it goes further that way.)
"Yeah" he says, harking back to his perfectly functional new Gforce 4000, "Well, you know ... It just doesn't seem like it's good enough."
The whole conversation had been conducted in a perfectly pleasant manner. Well, boring as hell, but when you are taking to Mr K that's normal. It's not as if I haven't known him for maybe five or seven years and long since become used to it. Just part of the job.
At this point it finally dawned on me that, no, I was not mistaken, his sole, entire, and complete objection to his new two week old video card was that it didn't have enough chrome on it.
It was at this point that I lost my temper.
I don't give a fuck what it looks like! I don't care if it's green or bloody purple. It's functional. It's working. It does everything you wanted it to do. It cost you less money than you originally expected to pay. There is nothing you are running that remotely needs anything bigger, and even if there was you couldn't afford it. You don't even take the lid off your case so you can't even see the bloody thing!
I didn't raise my voice or anything (well, maybe it went up an octave and I spoke faster than usual, but I didn't get any louder). I didn't wave my arms around or go red in the face. I don't think my heart rate even went up more than 5 or 10 percent. I was perfectly calm and normal, then I said something (details above), then I was perfectly calm and normal again.
Like a switch: Jeckel, Hyde, Jeckel. Flick, flick. (Where the f* did that come from? Did I really just say that to a customer?)
Either Mr K didn't actually notice that I'd just completely lost it, or else he was so stunned that he went into shock and carried on rambling away as normal out of force of habit. I don't know which. Or care, come to think of it.
Then the phone rang so I went out the back to answer it and left Cyril to deal with him. Cyril only started here last week so he probably thinks I'm a maniac.
It was a perfectly pleasant morning, I was well rested, had enough work to keep me occupied, not so much that I was having trouble coping with it. No problems at home, in a pleasant, relaxed mood, the weather outside has just a hint of clear blue spring about it: life is pretty all-round good right now.
Guy comes in about half-past eleven, a regular, one that Kristi and I used to take turns dealing with cause he's such a time waster. I mean he's OK, just not very bright, and he tends to ask the same stupid question three times in a row. I don't have a problem with him, except when I'm busy and can't spare the time. But I wasn't especially busy this morning, just medium-calm. Quiet, happy, productive.
He bought a video card the other week. Came in and paid $20 each fortnight until he had paid enough to buy the card. (Yeah: this means you have to have 10 conversations with him just to sell one lousy $55 video card - ten because he takes about three visits to decide what he wants, then a couple more because he's changed his mind and needs to be talked back into whatever it was that you and he figured was best in the first place.
Still, he's always happy to wait around until you are finished with more important customers (i.e., all of them) and he's always pleasant enough. Doesn't smile much, but he's OK.
Originally, he was going to have a 128MB Gforce 4MX. (Yeah, I know, not exactly the last word, but still a lot better than his old card, and given the ancient old Athlon Classic 700 he has - coddled up from an ill-assorted collection of old and ugly parts- and the Win98 he runs, not to mention his restricted budget, a sensible choice.) Then we stumbled across a box of Albatron Gforce 4000s with 64MB going cheap. Perfectly decent little cards, passive cooling, just the thing. So we told him he could have one for $30 less than he was originally going to pay for the 128MB version of the same card and he was happy. Put it in, end of story. But that was a couple of weeks ago. This was today.
"Hi Mr K" I said, "what can we do for you?"
"I'm not happy with that video card."
OK, what's the problem?
Oh well ... yeah ... you know ... it's not good enough.
Not good enough for what? What are you playing that you are having trouble with?
(Thinks: What can you play on that elderly old machine? I mean, you could put a Gforce 7 in it (well, you could if it had more than a 2X AGP slot) and you still couldn't play anything much released in the last year or three. But I didn't say that.)
This went on for about three questions, each one getting a vague-as-dishwater answer that didn't tell me anything. That's normal for him. But then he came to the point, rather more rapidly than he usually does.
It doesn't ... wait for it .... it doesn't look good enough.
Huh? I got him to repeat it.
It doesn't look much like a real video card.
Yeah. This perfectly innocuous little $55 video card has been tried and found guilty because it doesn't have a big enough heat sink, or it's the wrong shape, or it doesn't have twin fans .... or something, anyway.
I mean, we are takling to a father of four here, not some amphetamine-crazed kid with the Monster from Kluthu V4 making his eyes go buggy. The guy is maybe 40 or 50, tall and kind of gawky, talks quite slowly, has never showed the slightest sign of being a games freak or wanting a shiny new case to put his ancient Athlon in. Hell, I'll take four to one he's still got a 15 inch monitor.
No huhu, it's just Mr K being obtuse, same as usual. I must have misunderstood something, so I ask again, "what things do you want to go faster than they do now?"
Nope, I heard right: he wants a video card that looks more like the real thing.
"Like this, you mean?" (I hold up an FX 5700 with a round bit of flywire covering the fan. Even second-hand it's worth vastly more than he will be willing to spend, of course.)
He nods.
"Or like this?" (I hold up an old 256MB Gforce 4 Ti with twin fans and GT stripes painted on the heatsink. Even something this old will take him an extra month to pay off - I mean he probably earns more than I do, he just likes to spend it $20 at a time, possibly because it feels like it goes further that way.)
"Yeah" he says, harking back to his perfectly functional new Gforce 4000, "Well, you know ... It just doesn't seem like it's good enough."
The whole conversation had been conducted in a perfectly pleasant manner. Well, boring as hell, but when you are taking to Mr K that's normal. It's not as if I haven't known him for maybe five or seven years and long since become used to it. Just part of the job.
At this point it finally dawned on me that, no, I was not mistaken, his sole, entire, and complete objection to his new two week old video card was that it didn't have enough chrome on it.
It was at this point that I lost my temper.
I don't give a fuck what it looks like! I don't care if it's green or bloody purple. It's functional. It's working. It does everything you wanted it to do. It cost you less money than you originally expected to pay. There is nothing you are running that remotely needs anything bigger, and even if there was you couldn't afford it. You don't even take the lid off your case so you can't even see the bloody thing!
I didn't raise my voice or anything (well, maybe it went up an octave and I spoke faster than usual, but I didn't get any louder). I didn't wave my arms around or go red in the face. I don't think my heart rate even went up more than 5 or 10 percent. I was perfectly calm and normal, then I said something (details above), then I was perfectly calm and normal again.
Like a switch: Jeckel, Hyde, Jeckel. Flick, flick. (Where the f* did that come from? Did I really just say that to a customer?)
Either Mr K didn't actually notice that I'd just completely lost it, or else he was so stunned that he went into shock and carried on rambling away as normal out of force of habit. I don't know which. Or care, come to think of it.
Then the phone rang so I went out the back to answer it and left Cyril to deal with him. Cyril only started here last week so he probably thinks I'm a maniac.
