After I quit school, I worked briefly as a computer repair tech. Going to people’s houses or businesses, fixing their various bugs, etc. While I would rapidly decide that field was not for me because of the one businessman who needed multiple “cup holder” replacements (you know, you push that button and that plastic holder thing with the hole comes out … I think it is technically call the “Cup Depository Tray”? CD, right?), he is not the most memorable encounter. No, that goes to one of the nicest ladies I ever encountered on this job.
She called us out because her computer had stopped turning on, and wouldn’t even make a noise when she tried to push the button. One day it had just shut off while she was using it and stubbornly refused to come back on, and could we please see what we could do to fix it?
So I go out there expecting some wire had gotten loose and there was no power getting to the machine or something. It happens sometimes if a machine gets banged around enough, or if someone fiddles with it wrong or is careless putting it together, computers are finicky like that. But as soon as I get to the box itself, I know it isn’t that simple, because of the smell. I have smelled computers with dust all up in them, that isn’t uncommon, but this is just vile and, more importantly, entirely new.
I am now more curious than afraid, so I open it up and there is a mass of goopy off-white mush spilling all over everything, parts of it are burnt to circuits, there is almost nothing untouched by the mass. But by far the worst off is the A drive. That is the obvious source of the problem, and the thing has … not “exploded”, but more burst from the pressure of whatever this stuff was.
So I ask the woman if she had used the floppy drive recently and noticed any problems, and she says no, not until the whole machine stopped working. But I come to find out what she used it for.
Turns out this woman was a devout Shinto practitioner and believed that her computer (among other things) had a soul that needed to be respected an honored. Which, fair enough. But she chose to honor it by feeding it a grain of rice every time she had to wake it up and disturb its rest. For years this kindhearted woman had been putting a grain of rice into the A drive every time she turned it on or woke the thing up from sleep mode. And eventually that was enough pressure to break the drive and start spilling out onto the internal bits, where the heat melted it all and caused no end of problems.
After that it was a simple enough thing to explain that there are better ways to honor and take care of your computer’s needs, what with virus scans or defrags and the like, but that poor device was entirely lost.
I guess the moral of the story here is that you can try your best to be good and still wind up hurting people? Maybe? Or else it’s that even the most horrible out of context problem isn’t nearly as frustrating as one middle aged jerk who won’t freaking listen when you tell him that CD trays are not for your dang coffee cups!
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