I'm not in tech support, but...

[none-more-dead.livejournal.com]

I am not in tech support, but I study IT. This leads many people to think that I can fix any computer problem. While I may be a little more computer-savvy than the average luser, I am not too experienced at fixing things. Often, a friend or a friend-of-a-friend will ask me to fix some problem with their computer. In this case, it was a random guy I was talking to in a movie queue.

Him: "So what do you do?"
Me: "I'm studying IT at (name of uni)"
Him: "Oh, that's great, I'm having a computer problem, maybe you could help me with it."
Me: (thinking 'Oh god, please kill me now') "Uh sure, what's the problem?"
Him: (in one breath) "Okay when I turn my computer on sometimes it takes a really long time to start up and then if I leave it on a really long time it takes a long time to shut down but if i leave it on a short time then it only takes a short time to shut down but sometimes it won't shut down at all and then other times it just turns off or on by itself."
Me: "Sir, I have no idea what could be wrong with your computer, it could be anything from a hardware fault to a virus."
Him: "But you have to know what's wrong with it, you do IT!"
Me: "Sir, I've only been doing the course for two months, I'm not too great at fixing computers yet."

He insists for several minutes that I'm just lying, and that I know exactly what's wrong and demands to know how to fix it. If this was anybody else, I would have made some rather colourful comments, but unfortunately this guy was over 6' tall, had rather large muscles, and was in the army. Being just over 5' myself, and female, I opted for the old "I suggest you run a virus scan and check all the cables are connected properly. If that doesn't fix it, try calling the company who made your computer, I'm sure they will be able to help you more than I can."

What I wanted to say was: "Stop looking up porn."