Singled out for your computer skills, you suddenly find that spare time that could be used for more productive tasks like reorganizing your underwear drawer or manually defragmenting a hard disk is now being chewed up fixing a computer with enough raw processing power to give a cardboard cutout a run for it's money and reliability rivaling that of a nuclear reactor held together by scotch tape. All this because when everyone else was out trying to get a life, you ended up sitting in front of the computer.
Yep, somewhere up on the list pretty dang close to death and taxes is the fact that at some point, you're going to end up fixing someone's computer just because you happened to make eye contact with the owner back in kindergarten. And having to spend eight hours on the phone every day (well, six-and-a-half on a normal 8-hour shift where I work, but with the new 4-10 shift I start this week, it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hours) with people who can't tell Windows from MacOS (if only to lump Rabid Mac extremists and luddites in the same category where they belong,) is bad enough, then after this form of cruel and unusual employment, having everyone who you know consider you the ultimate solution to their computer problem ("to start, press any key... Where's the any key*? (apologies to Homer Simpson) Oh well, I guess I'll go call so-and-so. He'll know.) About the only thing going for us techie types is that a good portion of the time this ends up being either being a trivial or just another case of user error:
Luser: Uh, I was working on writing something on my computer and I went to the kitchen for some Golden Grahams when I accidentally stepped into an alternate dimension, and soon I was abducted by some aliens from space who kinda' looked like Jamie Farr... (remainder of a verse blatantly stolen from a Weird Al song deleted) and when I got back to my computer the thing I was working on was gone, and now my screen looks like there are a bunch of stars flying by... How do I get my file back?
Unwitting technical support guy: Have you tried moving the mouse?
Luser: Oh, that took care of it. And all this time, I've been rebooting the system when it does that.
There are those times, however, that there is actually something wrong with their computer. In this situation, it is always best to try and look at the computer (or occasionally reasonable facsimile thereof) for yourself. Most of the time, it would theoretically be possible to talk the other guy through this (this is what some of us do all day, for some reason that could probably be figured out by a shrink who was paid enough money) but if it is possible to take a look at the computer for yourself, this is the way to go. First of all, it's a lot easier to fix this way, but most importantly, trying to talk in a way that even the typical end user can understand is a real challenge, even for an experienced technical support rep. One of the fundamental laws of nature is that when one tries to make something idiot proof, nature will immediately upgrade (or downgrade, whichever term is more appropriate) the idiots, and will even go as far as to perform a "stealth upgrade" on the existing idiots. This in itself should be a convincing enough argument in this regard.
Another thing common to the class of systems commonly owned by these users is the fact that a lot of them tend to use a lot of parts made by companies with names that would put you in the emergency room if you ever tried to pronounce them. This is why these systems have a tendency to be cheaper than anything a sane computer user would buy. Not knowing the first thing about computers (except for what was explained to them by the salesman who is wallowing in commissions obtained by selling systems to gullible users) they snap these systems up like popcorn, which kinda' explains what tends to happen to a lot of the components contained therein. If possible, you can replace these things with something that will actually last more than a couple of months if the user doesn't bathe the sucker in hydrochloric acid to clean it when the screen saver keeps coming on when they walk away from their computer for a couple of minutes (what would often be helpful in this situation is an armed guard to ensure that they do not return to the computer, but the cost for this tends to be prohibitive.) The problem even with this is that all these cheap parts normally behave like a bunch of two-bit dictators locked in a room with several UZIs on the floor. Even to the geekier portion of our society, it is unknown just how some of these companies get this hardware to get along (one popular hypothesis is that instead of technicians, these computer manufacturers employ exorcists to get these components working with each other.) Trying to add anything new will probably cause everything else in the machine to flip out, and before you know it, everything will be shot. Usually at this point, faith healing has proven remarkably effective.
Of course, even with the few users who have managed to by something other than a disposable computer, there are some situations in which the best way to handle things is to hurl the sucker through the window of the store where it was purchased and hope that the salesman is too busy wallowing in commissions to notice the computer flying toward his head at a high rate of speed. The hard part in this case is convincing the user that their computer would serve a more useful purpose in holding a door open than it would as a computer. Possibly the best way of doing this that I have ever heard came from, of all places, a user I was talking to at work. Working in a computer store, one user's computer proved to be quite thoroughly hosed. Here is the conversation as it was explained by the caller (whose name is now lost in the customer database somewhere or else I could give him credit;)
Technician: I have looked over your computer thoroughly and I have determined what the problem is. It appears that you need a longer cord for this machine.
User:Why is that?
technician: Because at this point, this thing's a boat anchor!
Simple, yet effective. If the person you've been rooked into providing tech support for is on good speaking terms with you at the time, it is entirely possible that someone out there can probably get away with using this one too. If you do, let me know.
"Water that's not watered down"
-Advertising slogan for bottled water
*apparently this situation has become so bad that Compaq has given serious thought to changing this to "press return key" to try to ward off some tech support calls. I am unsure if they are actually doing this, so if anyone knows, e-mail me and let me know.