On working with boys

A few weeks ago, a woman brought us a laptop for repair. In addition to a smattering of viruses, it seemed to have a heat issue, so my technician flipped it over, opened it up and found...no fan. The whole cpu/heatsink assembly was missing. Gone.

Of course the customer had no idea where the fan went. She said the thing had nevah evah been taken apart since she bought it from a store down on the South Shore last Christmas.

I had my doubts as to whether the thing could actually go that long without a fan, but I hestitated over telling her that either a) she was wrong or b) someone in the house is lying or c) both.

(Aside: The thing is pink. It's been spray-painted pink, and the guy who sold it to her is the one who painted it. Professional, hunh?)

So Angry Customer now called the original vendor to complain about lack of fan, and he offered - right then, sight unseen - to go ahead and install the $130 fan for her. (Ok, buddy, it's your money.)

So this guy called me on the phone today. Right away, he had The Tone. The "I'm about to make you look stupid" tone. He was probably aggravated by the fact that he was out a sizeable chunk of green, and looking - and feeling - kinda dumb himself.

"It says here on your invoice that you charged her for an hour's labour, which was supposed to include virus scanning and removing 8 viruses from her data?"

"Yes, that's right." wait for it.....

"Well, I'm just curious, how could you POSSIBLY scan this thing in the two minutes it takes for it to overheat and shut down?" TaDAAA!

"Well, we took the drive out of the laptop and scanned it in our shop machine. We do that to prevent the viruses loading into memory so we can clean them properly." How the heck do YOU do a virus scan?

"Oh."

This sort of pissing contest happens, because this is an industry mainly operated by boys. I can't help but feel a little smug when one of them slips in his own piddle. I know it's wrong. It's just so....fun.