Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Farewell, cruel self-respect

I was a good two minutes into my tirade before I noticed something was off.

“How is it that my computer came in with one problem and left with five?”

“It’s hardly five” the technician muttered, somewhat distractedly.

“You have the list! The DVD drive, the battery, the webcam, the monitor and the random Front Row startups – that’s five.”

“Okay” – he still hadn’t made eye contact with me – “I still don’t see what’s wrong with the monitor”.

“Ignore the monitor for a second! Do you think there is a customer in the world who could be satisfied with the problems that have arisen after a simple parts replacement?”

I was quite irate, but he was in his own world, entirely unperturbed by my fury and happy to continue doling out stock responses:

“I don’t see how we caused any problems” he told my shoes.

“They started the day after I got the computer back from you!”

“Just a coincidence”, he shot back without any seeming thought.

“A coincidence? You’re happy that the computer was put back as good as new before it left with me.”

“Yup.”

“The screws weren’t even flush with the body of the machine!”

“That’s only because he didn’t know which screw went where”, he posited somewhat absent-mindedly, apparently following my laces with his eyes.

“Are you kidding me? You’ve had a week to put this right, but you still haven’t amended what you screwed up!”

He looked up at me, for the first time since the bollicking had started, and failed to suppress a smile.

“You’re right – I’m sorry – it won’t be much longer.”

I was utterly puzzled. What was so damn funny? Why wasn’t this asshole taking me seriously?

As soon as I got my computer back I realised why:

This is actually a very clever metaphor.The Adventures of Phil and Bill - never coming soon to a YouTube near youThis took weeks to grow - I had to take a picture for posterityI never could bring myself to make contact, lest the world implode.

For the duration of my impassioned spiel, he was trying not to think of the retarded videos from my pubescent years, the equally immature self-shots from my recent past, and fighting the mental image that he was in fact, being chewed out by the Hulk.

I was actually just envious of my friend's camera phoneRawr

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He knew about the gamma radiation and he STILL risked angering you?

I'd go so far as to say you were in fact dealing with some kind of over-confident archetypal villain who WANTED you to lose your temper so he could harness the boundless rage and strength of your alter ego and apply it to some malevolent end.

Sully said...

I think you're giving this guy far too much credit, although I am quite impressed by his ability to keep himself from dropping some blatant allusion to what he saw into the conversation, like some not-particularly-vague 'I don't want to make you angry' type statement.