There is a small proportion of the general population that most of us consider to be a teensy bit weird—they just don’t fit in. It might be the way they talk, the odd things they like to collect, or that they admit to liking American Idol. When it comes to computer users, however, the weird segment seems to make up a more substantial chunk of the overall group.
One of the driving forces of this behaviour is, undoubtedly, a complete lack of understanding of how computers work. How else could a person come up with a theft protection scheme that involves drilling holes right through the box and securing it to the desk with 24 inch bolts? Naturally he destroyed the hard drive, motherboard, and other sundry important components, but, in true weirdo fashion, he wasn’t afraid to ask whether the damage would be covered by warranty.
Drills seem to be a favoured tool of these people. Another home handyman decided that the best way to cool his laptop PC would be to take the bit between the teeth and drill sixteen air holes in the base of the machine. We’ll never know whether the holes produced a cooler machine, because, unfortunately, it never again booted up. (Speaking of booting, if there is one thing a technician should never say to a member of the computer illiterati, it’s “I need you to boot your machine.”)
It seems a lot of people revel in this pioneering, never-say-die approach to computer maintenance. There are numerous stories of people returning parts because they don’t work, only for the salesmen to discover that the delicate piece of equipment has been filed, sawed, or bent to fit in the nearest-sized available slot.
The strange part is not that they have butchered a perfectly good component, but that they blame the store for the problem and demand their money back. An irate man who returned a Nintendo 64 game opened the conversation like this:
“You idiot! This game doesn't work in my system! I couldn't make it fit at all! And I just bought the system brand new, so it's a bad game, and I WANT MY MONEY BACK BECAUSE YOU'RE SELLING BAD PRODUCTS!!!”
On examination, he appeared to have cut the disk down to a smaller size to fit in a PC’s floppy drive. When asked what he had done, he replied:
“Nothing! I just cut it to fit in my Compaq! It should work—I just bought it!”
People seem to think that the venerable floppy drive is a multi-purpose device that can perform all sorts of nifty functions. Some have assumed it is a credit card reader and one resourceful woman needed to have her PC taken apart after she used the drive to temporarily store her bracelet.
But the prize goes to this gentleman:
“I bought some memory from you people, and ever since I installed it into my computer, it's been doing nothing but making grinding noises, and nothing works anymore!”
“Grinding noises?? It shouldn't be doing that!”
“I know that! That's why you people owe me a new computer, and I'm going to charge you for lost downtime and my inconvenience.”
“Sir, did you install those chips yourself or did someone do it for you?”
“I'm not an idiot! I did it myself. I put them right in that slot in the front of the computer, smart aleck.”
For most of us, a smoothly running computer is something to leave well alone, but some are inexorably drawn towards their doom by the siren-song of a sweetly humming PC.
One entranced idiot discovered that under the hood was a whole bunch of loose wires and cables that were just begging to be plugged into some unused sockets. The only thing in his favour is that his call for assistance indicated that he took responsibility for blowing up his machine:
“Oohh.” (pause) “I think I did a bad thing.”
Some people deserve to be rewarded for their weird behaviour because they are just so creative in their chosen field. There’s a very fine line between Thomas Edison and a man who ruins a printer by trying to print his business logo on a tortilla. What about the lateral thinking of a woman who wanted some digital enhancement of a photo of her deceased father? All she wanted them to do was flip the original, which was shot from the back, so that she could see his face. When they poo-poohed her idea she replied angrily:
“If you can take the pimples off those glamour girls why can't you put a face on my father!”
Other worthy contenders for most creative use of a computer include: the person who accidentally snapped off the CD-loading tray that he had mistaken for a cup holder; the woman who assumed the mouse was intended to be used as a foot pedal; the man who thought that changing his Word documents to a smaller font would free up disk space; and the socially responsible woman who was found to be loading her diskettes while still in their plastic dust sleeves because she didn’t want her computer to catch a virus.
Finally, we come to those rare few who have had the guts to carry out that threat that, at some point, we have all made to a computer that just wouldn’t do the right thing: A support technician was called out to attend to the computer of a sixty-year-old woman. On entry, he smelled gunpowder, then he saw a 12-gauge shotgun on the couch, and when he got to the PC there was no doubt what had happened:
“Yes, I got a little mad at it. They told me I couldn't hurt it, but I think they were wrong. Can you salvage anything?”
Another support technician was trying to solve the problem of a particularly irate and frustrated user over the phone. He advised him to reload Windows:
“You mean I paid $2,000 dollars, and I have to reload this myself?” (rants for fifteen minutes and makes death threats) “*&@$ing reload! I'll give you a reload!”
Bang! Bang!
“Sir, is everything all right?”
“Sure is. I just blew the $#%&ing thing to bits with my shotgun you *$@%ing &*%$er.”
Which just goes to prove that, as long as weirdos continue to have access to guns, computers will never take over the human race.
Please note:
I take no responsibility for the consequences of traumatic flashbacks. 
Things People Have Done With A Computer 
Linear Mode
