Second Stab

I'm going to take a stab at this blogging thing once more. If people read it, cool, that's great. If nobody reads it, that's fine too. I just need a place to jot down thoughts, maybe remember them for later. Now that I'm in a cushy desk job that gives me quite a bit of free time, I suppose I could use some of this time to sharpen back up on my writing. I earnestly feel like I don't do enough of it.

To begin, I guess I'll write about some of my experiences working in a retail store.

I worked as a computer repair technician at a office supplies store. I got a lot of funny customers there, a lot of ornery customers there, and most of all, stupid customers. I'm sure that happens to everyone and will continue to happen for the rest of time. Stupid people are an unfortunate variable in this crazy system of life. While I can guarantee that a lot of things have happened, I did not take the time to write it down so I will proceed to jot down the things I can remember.

One of the things that will always stand out in my mind was a man who came in complaining about their virus problems. A good portion of the times when someone comes in because they have a 'virus', it's usually never the case. It's usually because they don't know how to use the computer and they messed something up, but I'll get to that later or possibly even a later post.

So this particular man, there is a reason why I will never forget this.

I open up his computer, and I can already tell from the billions of immediate, "j00 HAZ VIRUS! PAY 9999999.99 TO BUY THE SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME AMAZING ANTIVIRUS. tOTALLY TRU BRUH! Y WOULD I LIE TO U?!" just from the boot. His computer is slowed to a crawl and after clicking to a few too many things, it gave me a BSoD. Booting it back up into safe mode was the only thing that would allow it to run. While I assured him that there was most definitely something wrong with the computer, he was very persistent on wanting a virus scan run on his computer. I obliged and low and behold, all kinds of malware. Taking a look at the computers condition (very poor), the computers age (very old), and how much it was going to be to clean up the computer (very expensive) I talked him into buying a new computer. He had only two problems, one being the price and was going to have to get money from his dad. The second was his information on the computer. While the first factor was a toss up on whether or not his dad was going to do the service, I assured him it was to transfer the information. This man seemed very cautious and hesitant, but I understood, most people are. After all, it is their precious information, I'd hate it if I lost all my music and had to re-rip everything. After some coaxing, he decided he would go for it, granted he got the funds.

The next day, him and his father come in and they say they want the service taking exception to the data transfer. This prompted the man to whine to his father.

"But daaaaad. I have my resume on there and I have no copies of it!", pleading quite loudly.

His dad gave his son the darkest, dirtiest look I've seen at my job, looked back at me and asked, "Can you just find that dumb resume or do you have to do everything?"

"We have to do everything sir. It's just a straight shot."

The father sighed heavily, "Fine. Whatever. Do it."

"Yessss! Thanks dad!", the man, MAN, thanked his father which was again, met with a dark, sour look. Quite unusual, but I figured that was due to the cost (an extra 40 dollars for data transfer)

Then when it came time to work on the computer, everything made sense.

Upon scanning, there was 200 GB of stuff on the computer.  A bit heavier than most, but no problem. When the transfer started, it started with his 'Adult' folder. Then that was divided even further down into a folder listed only as, "A". Then, it got down even farther and started listing porn actresses, alphabetized by their last names. Everything started to make sense. Walking away and letting the file transfer do its thing, we would periodically check on things and the porn just did not quit. There was more and more and more. It eventually moved down into the "B" folder after about an hour and a half, and it was just baffling how much porn this man had. At his point, it seemed more like a lifestyle more than anything.

After everything was done, out of sheer curiosity, I checked to see how large that 'Adult' folder was. It was 160 GB in size. To put things in perspective, if you were to download all that information in one shot, it would take about a day and a half on most internet connection lines. An hour of video is about half a gig. It was mind boggling.

In another token, another man came in three times in one month talking about viruses with very similar symptoms as the man above. The first time he came in, he was happy with us. Two weeks later, he seemed a bit distressed, but he assumed it must've been bad luck. The third he came in about a week later, he was quite upset and pointed the finger at us, saying we didn't do our jobs correctly and demanded to know what was causing the virus. When we took a closer look, and did it the third time on the house because we 'had to have missed something', we saw some pretty disgusting porn. A lot of it was zoophilia. Then came the dilemma.

How do you tell a stranger that their zoophilia habits was the cause for the viruses their computer was getting? In the end, we opted not to tell him. Instead, we just showed him his browser and did a general, "Hey, so you see this site right here? Yeah, that's a dangerous site."

"....I have no idea how that got there. I don't have anyone else living with me but I didn't do it. It must've been hackers!", the man's face was a deep, bright red.

The only thing I could think was, 'yeah, sure, hackers somehow jumped onto your computer and decided to just search animal porn until you had a virus'. Unfortunately I had to have a job at that point so the only thing I said was, "who knows. Let's just hope it doesn't happen again."

"...it really wasn't me."

"I believe you", no I didn't, "really, I do", really, I didn't. I think in the end he knew that I knew cause he slipped me a tip and I never saw him again.