Ok, I had a tech support client in Hagerstown, MD this weekend. He’d hired me before, and from what he described, it was as if everything I did for him had somehow been un-done (he wanted a P2P network set up with file sharing). So, as he was attempting to insult my intelligence, I told him that I’d need to bring a second technician with me, and that I’d be charging him $40/hour (a rate which I’ve been told is dirt cheap compared to other similar companies in that area). So, a friend of mine and I drove two hours up to this guy’s house. We took a look at his computers, worked for a couple hours on his flaky network, and informed him that one of his computers needed to have Windows XP reinstalled. He decided to haggle our prices, and refused to pay more than $90 for the whole job (We’d already been there two hours, plus mileage equals $100). Had I not been so dead broke, I probably would have told him to shove it and left, but I agreed to stay and do it for that price. I was ticked, since it was obvious this guy wasn’t hurting for money, but we rebuilt his computer and it seemed to work ok after that. We’d been there six hours at this point (his total bill should have been $260, the cheapskate), and we finished, so we wrote up his bill, collected payment, and left.
As we got in my car (the Integra, back to its old self, except no stereo), I noticed a note under my windshield wiper, which read (and I quote):
Hey Mr. Virginia,
I shoveled this parking place out. Go back to Virginia because you have no respect for being nice to your neighbor. We in Maryland do. I’am watching you, don’t hit my car.
Respectfully,
A-Homeowner
Now, to understand this, you have to know Hagerstown. Basically, my client lives on a corner, and people park on the street. The major street (where is address is) had two parking spaces nearby, one that has more snow than my car has ground clearance, and one that was covered in two inches of slush (where I parked). The other street was marked as “No Parking”. There was a good bit of space behind me, so I parked within six inches of the van in front of me. Whoever wrote this must have been driving the red Lumina behind me, because she parked within ONE inch of my rear bumper, leaving me pretty much blocked in. So, I had my other technician spot me while I wedged my way out of the space, miraculously not hitting either vehicle, and we left. I didn’t think about it much after that, until an hour down the road, when I noticed that what I thought were ice crystals weren’t melting. I stopped at a truck stop, and noticed that the entire front end of my car was covered in some sort of oily liquid, like WD-40. All of the squeegy buckets at the truck stop were frozen solid, so I had to go inside and buy a bottle of Windex, which got the windshield clean enough to get home. Seems like “A-Homeowner” needs a lesson in being a good neighbour. Once I got back to Harribonsurg, I drove around for a half-hour trying to find an open automatic car wash, which is no easy task at 4:00 AM in single-digit temperatures. I finally found one, which happened to dry the car off after washing, so I didn’t have to worry about water droplets freezing to the car. I dropped off my other technician, came home, and added a notation to that client’s file stating that he will no longer be receiving our tech support services. Screw him.
