Memo to Guy in Coffee Shop or Why I Hate My Uniform

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

1) Look, I'm trying to sit here, enjoy my tea and bread, and do a little bit of catching up on the world before I have to go to work. Trying to strike up lame conversations about my workplace and asking me tech questions every time you come in is getting tedious. I sit in the backroom to avoid people this early in the morning. Particularly people like you who keep trying to talk to me and play with their cell phone's ring tones. Go away.

2) I know you're either married or dating someone. These repeated attempts at conversation are beginning to get creepy. Yes, I'm a female tech. Take your freaky fantasies elsewhere.

3) Politely responding to you before going back to what I was doing has moved to pretending not to hear you. I shall very quickly proceed to something far nastier, like telling my much-larger-than-you firefighter husband that you are bugging me. I really do recommend you leave me alone.


Any other techs out there who have to wear work shirts that proclaim their place of business and then get pestered with questions when they are off work? I hate that so much!

Comments

[fragbert.livejournal.com]

Luckily, we have no dress code to speak of, so when we take our badges off, we look like everyone else. As a matter of fact, our badges are so "non-identifying" (on purpose; this is D.C., after all) that no one would know what we do just by looking at them.

A friend of mine, who's a retired cop, often told stories of how he wouldn't discuss what he did in social situations because everyone would want to rant about cops in general or ask him to fix a ticket or whatnot. My ex-wife used to practice law, and she ran into the "gimme legal advice for free because we're acquaintances" syndrome. It's the same with doctors, too, according to two M.D.s I'm friends with.

I've stopped telling people I am a computer technician for precisely the same reason. And I *really* like sketchydave's idea of handing them a business card and quoting the hourly rate.

[sketchydave.livejournal.com]

Thanks man, I have to admit it isn't wholey my idea. I'm a webmaster/tech at a hospital and my boss does a lot of multimedia stuff. She's an M.D. and a techie, I have no idea how she does that.

Anyway, different departments would bug her to help out with presentations and stuff. Nothing too complicated but the average admin assistant can't handle it.

She was sick of it, it was time consuming and not...her...job. So she started charging $125 an hour for her services. That cut those requests WAY down. The fun thing is they still come in, and we DO charge $125 an hour :-)