Welcome to my mansion. Watch your step.

Believe it or not, I was taking a whiz the other day when it struck me about something I've been meaning to blog about for a long time, and now enough time has passed since I left "my old job", I think it's safe. In the days where I did a lot of hand-holding computer work (downloading pictures from the camera, how to burn a CD, cleaning up spyware), I ran in to a lot of disgusting, weird or just wrong things. A lot of these people lived in very expensive multimillion homes, but money doesn't make you normal or smart, that's for sure. The following memories are from a half dozen people over the course of a few years:

1. In one home, the teenager's toilet was jammed very close to the tub & shower. The white shower curtain was pulled back towards the toilet, I couldn't help but notice it was yellowed at the bottom. You figure it out.
2. In the same mansion downstairs, one of their two retrievers (I assume) had taken a big dump in the middle of the oriental rug, it looked like it had been there for awhile.
3. Same house, different kid about 12 years old, had a porn DVD (and a rental to boot) in his non working PC. Don't ask me what I did with it, it's a secret.
4. You know those Folgers pre-measured coffee-in-a-filter packs they sell, for the people that have the money and are too lazy to measure their own coffee and put in their own filter? Convenient? Sure! So when I was asked if I wanted some coffee, she got out the filters, got out the pre-measured coffee packs, slowly tore one open and dumped the contents in to the new filter....
5. A week later on a follow up visit, the turd was still there.
6. Oh, and they put their old nice golden retriever down, why? "Well, we were going on vacation..." Nice.
7. Once at another mansion, I was called because the printer didn't work. It made no sense, that it would just stop working, but it seems like I was always being called to this house to fix weird problems. And not for the first time, the young bratty son who obviously had his dad's prick like attitude is saying to Mom as I'm standing right there: "Mom! We don't NEED him. We need to get a new computer! How much is he going to charge anyway?!". From what I could surmise, yeah, he wanted a new PC. One that downloads porn faster I bet! In this case I found the problem. The printer port had been disabled. Huh!? Wonder how THAT happened!?!?!?!
8. I once had a nightmare virus cleanup at a house with three PCs. They had twins, and their PCs were side by side, and the third was on another floor. They all got one of those damn pop up virus programs that make using your PC impossible. I was able to spend about 3-4 hours and cleaned it all up, and was even thanked with a bottle of expensive wine. I sent in my bill, and I did get paid, but with it was a note that said "Todd, here's your money. We paid a neighborhood kid about $25 to fix the email problem that you did not. He fixed everything and more in about 20 minutes".
9. I had this one lady who was well, just dumber than rocks. To make her feel important I guess, she scheduled "Lessons" with me. I'm not teacher, and I'm not always patient, especially with DUMBASS people, but I tried. These lessons involved me standing behind her for an hour or so while I instructed her where to click on the screen while the PC prompted her. Sometimes I even had to take her hand and move the mouse for her. We're talking copying pictures off her camera people, not complex Excel pivot tables! And not one lesson on this, MANY lessons. She didn't read the screen, and didn't seem to retain anything. I also set up her stereo while there once, and sometimes spent a lot of time cleaning up her Internet messes. The last call I spent there actually was challenging, seems like a driver update made her new HP printer stop working properly. She refused to pay $150 of the bill I sent. Why? I was told by her husband's secretary that she felt I didn't do the work, that I should have known better about the problem since I was a computer guy.
10. One job I had to do was simply to set up an online stock portfolio in Yahoo, and then teach the same secretary how to update it. Picture this now, I'm given his entire investment data, worth in excess of 5 million, and later his wife doesn't pay me $150. I always wanted to send him a thank you card.
    
11. I informed one lady (I mostly dealt with the wives ya know) that I had family over Thanksgiving and thus would be unavailable. Do you think that mattered? Cell phone rings, few minutes later home phone rings, then a few later cell phone rings (sigh!). So I answer. It would have been just a WEE bit nicer to get "Sorry to bother you" but the conversation from the adult son went something like this: "Todd. I forgot my password. I need to get online".... "Uh, OK, but you don't have a PC password?"... "No, no, to SPORTSGAMBLING.COM, I gotta put in a bet for the Denver game". Whatever dude, thanks for bothering me.
12. Not computer work, I was hired to set up a pinball machine is a restaurant owner's newly remodeled basement bar/gameroom. This area musta been 4000 square feet, and it was really cool. To be polite, I took off my shoes. While on my hands and knees under the pinball machine leveling it, the unmistakable smell of piss in the corner was overwhelming. This came to be known as "The Cat Piss House"
    
13. That seems to be a pattern too, pinball machines in the corner, new houses and piss or pooh. Setting up a pinball machine at another time, in another new house up at a new golf course, I asked for a coupla paper towels to clean up the mini-pooh Barky Von Schnauzer left in the corner. Little dogs are like cats dontcha know!
    

Ahh, the goood old days. I did have a coupla good customers that I was always happy to see, but I gotta admit, I'm glad I'm out of that business. It wasn't worth the hassle.