Fired at Last

Well, my calendar just cleared up.

Today was my first experience being fired. All previous jobs I had quit, with varying responses. With one exception, all my previous bosses seemed reluctant to let me quit (with one even willing to bend their hiring rules to keep me employed longer).

But there was none of that at this job. Here I was just a replaceable cog in the giant money-making machine. And now that my employment is now over, I feel completely comfortable laying bare my feelings about the company.

I worked at Staples. My nametag said I was an Easy Tech, which means I was a non-commissioned salesman who was also a drastically underpaid computer technician. I was also their only certified* On-Site Technician. (In fact I'm pretty sure the only reason I lasted as long as I did was because they had no one to replace me for on-site work.)

*I was "certified" by taking an easy and outdated test that had actually very little to do with the kind of computer diagnostics I'd be doing on a daily basis, and also by watching way too many advertisements by various companies.

I knew before the interview was over that it was a sales position, and I knew before my "training" (watching videos and powerpoints on the "Staples Vibe" and pressuring customers into overspending) was over that I would hate every minute working there. And all my fears came true.

I had to regularly bend the truth when talking to customers ("New printers' ink cartridges last a lot longer than old ones") and ignore my own experience with technology ("Oh yeah, HP computers/printers are great"). I worded things as well as I could to avoid outright lying to people, but I still felt like a sleazy salesman, which of course I was.
And there was daily pressure to do better. If I sold $500 worth of tech, the next day I had to sell $600. If I sold $100 worth of computer services, tomorrow I had to sell $150. Of course I rarely if ever gave a single fuck about meeting my numbers because I was adamant I would not turn (further) into one of those pushy salespeople that never took no for an answer (We were actually flat-out told to never take the first no a customer gives. The more experience salespeople wouldn't give up until the customer said no at least 3 times.)

Even when I was actually being a computer technician things were no better. Since I was a salesman first and foremost, I had to drop what I was doing any time a customer needed the tiniest little thing, or to restock shelves or a variety of other menial tasks that a computer technician shouldn't be doing. I hate interruptions, as it makes it difficult for me to focus on the computer at hand and actually properly diagnose it.
I got better at juggling several computers at once, but only because half of the time most of the "diagnostics" we did were just running proprietary software and waiting for the scans to tell us what we already knew, and the other half of the time we couldn't do any more work on a computer without charging the customer even more. And yes, the prices on the "services" we offered were outrageous.

One of the few upsides to their stupid policies is that now I have a much better idea of how to run my own computer repair business. And now that I have another extended vacation, I have plenty of time to work on setting it up!

SecureBoot Knows Best

My day job as a salesperson-pretending-to-be-a-computer-technician has me dealing with quite a lot of customers' frustration, much of which spills over and becomes my frustration.

Today was a good example. A man had bought three new Dell laptops for his business, all of which came with Windows 8 preinstalled. For whatever reason, he was displeased with Windows 8 (no surprise there) and wanted Windows 7 installed on all three laptops. Not a big deal, Windows 7 is extremely easy to install and I've done it numerous times.

But wait! Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that Windows 8 is the only OS you'd ever want to have on a computer, so they've developed this thing called Secure Boot. Secure Boot is part of the BIOS and prevents any other OS from even being loaded on the computer. And Microsoft has bribed/threatened/blackmailed the major computer manufacturers from putting this "security feature" on all new PCs.

Can it be disabled? Yes, although it's a tricky process, one that your average consumer would not be able to do. Want to stick with an older version of Windows, or perhaps try out Ubuntu? Too bad.

When Vista came out, Microsoft tried to bribe the public into upgrading by making DirectX 10 be Vista-only. That failed, and XP remained the market leader until Windows 7 came out.
With Linux growing in popularity every year, and with mobile OSs getting more powerful, Microsoft has decided that instead of competing by improving their products and services (real capitalism), they are going to collude with PC manufacturers to prevent competition from competing ('Murica capitalism).

Now would be a perfect time for an underdog PC manufacturer to not give in to Microsoft and provide laptops without OSs, or with a nice friendly flavor of Linux installed.

Giving in to Human Nature gives you Computer Viruses!

At my day job, I'm a salesman masquerading as a computer technician, and I'm used to dealing with all sorts of computer-illiterate people, and I have a bunch of humorous stories about people who self-admit to being "stupid about this computer stuff."

But today's story isn't about a self-admitted stupid person. It's about a person who acted like a human being and is trying to hide it.

I get into work today and there's a laptop sitting on our workbench, running a virus scan. It was dropped off yesterday when I wasn't working so I don't know any details besides that there is a virus on there. When the virus scan finishes removing the viruses, I run the scan again, because it often misses things the first time around. The scan picks up a few more viruses (or the same viruses again), so I give the customer a call to inform them that the viruses were giving us more trouble than usual, and we would need a little more time to fully clean the computer. The customer doesn't pick up, so I leave a message. When I hang up, my manager gives me an "Oh no!" look, and tells me that the customer is a pastor, and when he dropped off the computer he admitted to "going to a website he shouldn't have", and that he didn't want his wife to find out.

So he was jerking off, and got a computer virus. Ok, no big deal happens all the time. Oh he's a pastor? Do pastors not have sexual urges? Are they not human?

Of course not! Pastors, being the paragon of religious morals, are not allowed to act like human beings. Sex is for procreation after all, not for pleasure. And self-stimulation is a terrible sin! All those little potential babies being wasted. What would God think! What would his wife think!

Well I don't know if his wife will listen to that message, or if she'll deduct that he got a computer virus by watching porn (by the way it's quite simple to watch porn without getting a computer virus, I do it all the time). To be honest I don't care either way, it's not my life so it's not my business. But if this happens to ruin their marriage, it won't have been my slip-up that ruined it, it will be their religious prudishness that tells them that their human nature is bad, and giving in to their human nature is a shameful sin of the highest magnitude.

Thank god I'm an atheist, so I can wank, guilt-free!

Hollywood Nights

I was driving home from my barely-above-minimum-wage job, and the sun was shining. Not enough to chase the clouds or the cold away, but just enough to be annoyingly bright and turn my caffeine withdrawal into a full-fledged headache. "Two Tickets to Paradise" was playing on the radio, taunting me with the knowledge that some people are actually able to pack their bags and leave tonight. Then Bob Seger's Hollywood Nights started playing, and one thought crossed my mind.

I have to get the hell out of Indiana.

I can't stand staying in one place for too long. As much as part of me loves routine and well-defined schedules, the other part of me itches to cut ties with everything and start over someplace new. This is one of the main reasons why I can't hold a steady job for more than a year, and why I dropped out of college.

I think it may be the weather, because every winter around this time, when the weather is stubbornly refusing to admit that it's time for spring, that I get an overwhelming itch to GTFO. Some (drastic) change would do me good.

But the world thinks otherwise. As much as I'd like to pack my bags and leave tonight, I've got too many things tying me in place. Cell phone contracts, lease agreements, credit card bills, student loans, and a powerful need to eat sometime this month all keep me from seeking out a new life.

So what's a "free spirit" like me to do? How do I pay the bills without feeling like I'm stuck in one place, working my life away? And how the hell am I supposed to live my life to the fullest when I can barely live my life to my next paycheck?