techrecovery | Jan. 3rd, 2007

So last night I was doing callbacks, floorwalking, a couple of supervisor escalations (they were shortstaffed and I have the next 4 days off, so I figured some overtime wouldn't hurt). I was in the middle of running line tests when one of the fairly new (here about 3 months) guys came thundering over to me in a high state of almost tearful frustration.

Now because New Guy is Pakistani, I immediately assumed that the customer he had on the line was giving him hell because of his accent, and my back went up straight away. I do not like that shit. At all. Apart from the fact that New Guy speaks better English than I do, he has a lovely accent. Very clear and strong. So I high-tailed it over to his desk, ready to kick some ass, when he told me the story.

He had an 83 year old gentleman on the phone who was told by his friends that if he got broadband he could watch movies on the Internet. That's fantastic. New Guy had directed him towards some of the pay per view/trailer/preview sites we had. But the gentleman was insisting there was another way, and after 25 minutes of trying to explain, New Guy handed me the headset. And it went something like this:

"Hallo Mr. Man, my name is bornofchaos, I'm a colleague of New Guy. I hear you want to watch some movies?"

"Oh hello dear, yes, I'd like to watch a Clint Eastwood movie, I'm a big fan of his you know."

*smile*

"No worries Sir, if you could just grab a pen and paper for me, I'll give you the address of one of our movie sites. You can download or watch these movies for a small fee."

"But dear, my friends told me if I got broadband and a new computer, I could download movies for free...he said I could use"...*reads off a piece of paper slowly and carefully*..."Asss-ur-ee-us."

Oh good Jesus Christ. I looked up at New Guy, who's now smirking. Because this? Is now *my* problem. Little shit, I'll get him later.

"Sir, I know what you're referring to, but only because I've had some minor experience with it myself" *thinks of her own version of Azureus at home, happily Downloading Teh Intarweb*

"Oh....well I really want to watch some Clint Eastwood movies on my computer dear, and someone also said I could copy my favorite radio shows too...can you help me?"

"Mr. Man, these things are certainly possibly, but *drops voice dramatically* it's on the QT. Nobody here can tell you because it's technically illegal."

*whispers conspiratorially* "Oh I do understand, I'll keep it hush-hush".

"Sir, can you write down these 2 words for me? Okay. B-I-T-T-O-R-R-E-N-T. And, W-W-W-DOT-W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A-DOT-O-R-G. Just go to that website and search for that word and give yourself a couple of days to thoroughly read up about it."

"Certainly dear, now how do I open the website? I've never used a computer before you see."

.................

"I'll send you an email about Sir, but please give one of your friends a call about this too. If you ask anybody else here about the movies, they could get into trouble."

After I got off the phone, New Guy was in stitches laughing, I was ready to cry, and I was torn between admiration for this old man who was 83 years old and about to dive head-first into bittorrent without having turned on a computer in his life, and terror for what he was about to go through. And wanting to kick his "friends" arse for allowing him loose on the Internet without a chaperone. Or at least a guide dog.