PC Customers 101…..Know thine enemy!

[Vlad The Impaler]

PC Customers 101…..Know thine enemy!

Type 1: The monied customer.

You can charge them what you like. They have bought several machines from you before and would never dream of going anywhere else. You could sell them a plate of custard as a PC and they would buy it. Whenever they have a problem they have to be restrained from buying an upgrade and will offer to pay for anything you do. We like these customers the best.

Population density: Sparse (pity!)
How to deal with: Send them flowers on their birthday. Loan them your wife/daughter on a weekly basis.

Type 2 (i): The knowitall.

This customer has read all of the magazines and know their stuff on a basic level. The sort that buys from the high street because their consumer magazine said so. Dangerous in some ways because they buy by the seat of their pants. They never quite trust you and show it, they also attempt to screw you down on price but fail.

Population density: sparse to tedium, err, medium.
How to deal with: Make them think they have got something out of you to close the deal. Make sure that you gave nothing away on a point of principle.

Type 2 (ii) The Thinkstheyknowitallbutknowsnothing.

Very dangerous indeed. They are like a lion with piles or a bear that has caught its tackle in a thorn bush. They buy their computer and them blame you for every single problem they have. In addition, they always get very very irate at the slightest problem. They demand immediate onsite attention for their software/use fault, usually when they have decided to not pay for an onsite warranty. Some rare ones indeed even threaten to sue when their computers fail outside of warranty.

Population density: Sparse (thank heavens!)
How to deal with: Recognise the signs at the initial pre sales chat and price yourself out of a deal. If they do buy it at that price, it is worth all the hassle for the money.

Type 2 (iii) The Doesknowitall.

Takes great pleasure in trying to trip you up by asking you an obscure question about video ram overclocking potential on one type of model of Geforce4 made only by one company in China. Well done. Have a banana. I am sorry that I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the specs of every computer component ever made in my head ready to answer any questions from the floor. But hey! You obviously do. I don’t know the middle name of Mr Spock’s cousin's girlfriend who appears in episode 34 of Star Trek either. I guess that makes you a better person than me. Now buy the computer, numbnuts!

Populations density: Sparse (they find it hard to reproduce).
How to deal with: Let them get one over on you. Then will then always buy from you. Who is the sucker now them?

Type 3

The Customer who works for a company you deal with.

This type you have to be very careful with. They are on the alert for everything. Soup stains on your shirt? Untidy office? You can feel that big contract drifting away on a sea of gossip and moaning about nothing. Be careful what you say as well; don’t ever try to be funny in their presence as you may give away your opinion about someone somewhere. Even if you don’t you could be accused of it. Best off saying nothing intelligible at all. Just make frightened squeaking noises when addressed.

Population density: Medium.
How to deal with: Give them a good deal and pray to all the Gods you can think of that nothing goes wrong. If they are a type 3 with a mix of type 2(ii) just kill yourself ceremonially in front of them before you start to save embarrassment later on.

Type 4

The scary customer.

They will buy with the minimum amount of fuss so to not draw attention to themselves. They always have but one type of problem: Internet issues. “ My PC will not connect. I keep getting the box telling me something about xxxdialer or something”. Unless you are a fan of naughtiness with the small potential for personal moral dilemmas, do not under any circumstances look into the person’s internet cache!

Population Density: Rare.
How to deal with: Give machine back to this person with other employees sniggering whilst stood behind you. Both they and you know why everyone is there but they will never say anything about it. They will cheerfully pay every time as well.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Screw it! Should have put this in the B&G. Feel free to move it anyone??!!?

 

[Buck]

Type 5: The Budget (read tight-wad) Customer

They'll ask for your assistance on picking out different hardware or software - usually calling many times. This free service becomes annoying, but they are always kind and thankful for your help. Once they have their supposed answers, they go to the other guys shop and buy hardware over there because it was cheaper (Oh, it wasn't the same hardware that we talked about? It is inferior?). Once that cheap system begins to offer up sacrfices to the god of failures, and falls apart, they'll call you for more free assistance. Oh, they are only short conversations, but the happen several times a day. Finally, they bring the system in and are surprised that their new motherboard with a VIA PLE chipset can't uprgrade to an appropriate AGP video card because their is no AGP slot.

Population Density: Increasing, retired people are living longer
How to deal with: Be patient, in the end you'll make the profit, and end up with spare parts yourself.

 

[Tea]

That's funny Vlad. Where the hell did you get my customer database from?

 

[Mercutio]

You all forgot

Type 6 - The completely frickin' clueless

Type6s are the folks who'll come in, buy a top-of-the-line machine because they heard about this new-fangled "internet" thing, and mate it to a 12" VGA display. They expect everything to work exactly the same way, every time (and they'll only buy their $2500 monster-machine for one thing, either E-mail or to use a digital camera/scanner) despite any notion of hardware, software or operating system revision. With luck, they'll actually remember how to do that one thing with some regularity. At any rate, sell to one of these, and you just became their support for life. Six years and seven PCs later (CFCs get suckered by everybody with a computer to sell), they're still calling you.

Population Density: Frighteningly common
How to deal with: Disconnect phone, change email address (or hope that's the thing they bought the PC for, 'cause that's a sure sign they'll never do it right).

Type 7: The weirdo application guy

Type 7s are searching for the one true vendor (TM) who can assemble a machine to some REALLY bizarro specification imposed by the EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE PACKAGE (also TM) they bought. WAGs are the guys looking for modern machines with microchannel slots, SCSI printers or seven PCI slots to run their DSP-on-a-card collection. I dealt with a WAG a couple years ago who needed support for monochrome Hercules (MGA) support. On a Pentium3.

Population: Fortunately rare, but interesting to talk to.
How to deal with: If you can build it, you are their savior and your feet will be annointed with sweet oils.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Type 8: The technophobe

This is the sort of customer who really begrudges the existence of both computers and you, because you sell them. In fact, the only reason they are there is “cos me kids want it and that”. These people are in fact a subspecies of Type 2(ii) people in their temperament. The difference being is that they know nothing at all about anything not just computers. Trying to explain specifications or giving them a choice in what to buy merely makes their head hurt all the more. In fact, crossing the road is a trial for them, so you will have no chance. They will buy the cheapest one they can get away with and then reach a low earth orbit when they can’t understand it/use it. . Either that or they will ignore it and hope it goes away.

Popualtion: Common as muck
How to deal with: Smoke signals, grunts or flea picking is good for the sales room. After that, not too much is required. Clean out their cage once a day and keep them stocked up with bananas/raw meat depending on preference. Telephone support required: nil. They ate their last phone.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

WARNING: The above customer may without warning start to throw its own dung around the place and then start to furiously masturbate in the corner. Do not ever look at them or their missus for more than five seconds at a time or you risk being hit for “looking at them fuuny”.

 

[Tannin]

So. Vlad. You are having a nice day, are you? :wink:

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

He he.... Nope, my slipped disk is playing up and causing the muscle in my left thigh to cramp up, constantly and without let up. This constant pain for some reason causes me to lose my normally easy-going approach to other people.....

 

[time]

Wonderful thread, Vlad.

You forgot to mention that many executives fall into the type 2 (ii) category. As do all partners in accounting firms (something to remember if you read this, James).

I can't see my chief nemesis here, so I'd like to introduce:

Type 9: The Whiner

Whiners are either bored housewives or testicularly challenged males. When they call you, they have nothing better to do and will happily yap away until you faint from hunger. If you break the connection, they'll always call back immediately and continue the one-sided conversation unabated.

Of course, when they have a problem, it's always a matter of life or death, and they needed it fixed yesterday. But when you want them to bring the computer in, they seem to have twenty better things to do. Just to be perverse, they also delight in dropping in without warning, complete with computer, monitor, printer and pet dog under one arm, and a squad of kids with which to wreak havoc. Of course, if you really need their scanner or some other peripheral, it always seems to slip their mind.

Whiners never have any money, and expect you to wave a magic wand to effect repairs without cost to them. They have large soulful eyes which they use to get free lunches everywhere. You probably upgraded their computer at a loss (justifying it to yourself because those parts were just lying around anyway), but now the entire computer, hardware and software, has become your responsibility by association.

The most intriguing aspect of whiners is that there is never anything wrong with the hardware you sold them. All problems can be traced back to the brother-in-law who helpfully installed the latest scamware, winblows incarnation, or useless peripheral. But what are your chances of convincing the whiner?

Population density: High enough to threaten Darwin's theory.
How to deal with: Ignore as much as possible and hopefully they will buy elsewhere in future. Or you can spend hundreds of dollars of your time trying to salvage little Johnny's game that will no longer work. Little Johnny is the same alleged human offspring that just knocked your best client's new server over while it was formatting a drive. Isn't he cute?

 

[Tannin]

(No Tannin! No! Don't do it!)

(Do? It? What are you talking about, Tea?)

You were going to name names, weren't you! You were going to ... )

(You mean that I was going to cut out all this namby-pamby circumlocution bull and just say, oh, for example, that "Number 5 (the tight-wad) actually lives on the north side of Ballarat and his name is Richard?)

(Ahhhhhggg! I told you not to do that!)

(Or that Number 5 (Thinkstheyknowitallbutknowsnothing) is a middle aged lady living in the country town of Hor...)

(STOP! STOP! STOP! You will get sued!)

(... whereas there are Number 3s all over the place, such as Alan Hog...)

(I'll pull the modem out of the wall if you don't shup up, Tannin!)

(Who cares? I'm on cable now. Don't need a modem any - Tea! Get your hand away from that reset switch. Tea! I'll bloody make you deal with Mrs Jackson next time she calls if you hit the res........

 

[Mercutio]

Type 10 - The "Upgrade against all reason"

UaaRs are the folks who last bought a PC sometime before the introduction of the serial mouse, who feel that the best way to spend their money is to upgrade, rather than replace the boat-anchor they've developed some kind of deep spiritual relationship with. Despite the economic reality of "They don't make motherboards like that any more", they really do want you do find an LPX Pentium IV system board and a PCI card with a Matsushita drive interface... cause after all, there's nothing wrong with their case or their CD-ROM, right?

UaaRs usually settle for huge new hard drive (so that's 80 524MB partitions, right?) and as much RAM as their system board supports - RAM that costs as much as the GDP of a third world country since, after all, the one guy who HAS 8 30-pin parity EDO SIMMs isn't just gonna give them up.

Unusually lucky members of this species consider K6-II/IIIs to be upgrades worth the $400 they spent to better their Pentium 100.

The UaaR motto: "My money is as good as anyone else's!"

Frequency: Only slightly less common than type 9s.
How to deal with: Say "You could buy a whole new computer for all that money", but try not to make it your mantra. Also, remember not to whistle or dance when you run across the one guy who actually needs that 2MB COAST module you've been hanging on to since the mid-90s.

 

[Tannin]

11: The Caller.

He rings. The first time, he wants to make enquiries about motherboards and CPUs. He is closely related to #2, (Thinksheknowseverythingbutknowsnothing). and a cousin of # 10 (UaaR). He asks questions. Lots of questions. He is spending quite a lot of Mommy's money to upgrade his Pentium MMX, so he wants to get the best parts he can. Sometimes he wants a Socket 7 board that takes DDR (because he can't afford a new case just yet), otherwise he is more interested in getting an Athlon XP 1600 that you can absolutely guarantee will overcock to 2300. He can't decide if he would be better off getting an ASUS main board or an ECS one. He actually wants the ASUS board at the ECS price. He is a good listener, and asks a whole stack of questions. You figure he is probably worth educating, and anyway it's a quiet Tuesday afternoon, so you take out 40 minutes to bring him up to speed. Eventually, after you explain that you have nine people waiting, it's past your knock-off time, it's your wife's anniversary, and if you are not out of the building on time the security guard will come around and shoot you thinking you are a burglar, he says "that sounds pretty good, I think I'll go with it."

You don't hear from him till next Friday afternoon, which is the busiest time of the week. Sure enough, he rings five minutes before closing time, and asks a whole lot more questions. Seeing that you have already invested 40 minutes of your time in this guy, you figure you might as well get the sale, and you reluctantly go through all the optiions. Again. "That sound pretty good", he says, "I think I'll go with it".

He calls back on Wednesday. Now he has decided to delay his main board purchase and is going to get a video card first, and what do you mean, a Gforce 4 4600 won't fit into his Pentium MMX? Well, can't you get one in PCI?

On Friday, he is back. He calls ten minutes after closing, and wants to buy a motherboard again. Somehow, he seems to have magically forgotten every single matter you discussed the previous week. You try to brush him off, but somehow you just can't quite get rid of him. So you go through all the options. Again.

The next week, he is back. Kristi answers the phone. He doesn't care. He doesn't actually care who's time he wastes, just so long as he wastes plenty of it.

The week after that, you decide to get firm with him. But it doesn't work. Somehow, you seem to still be on the phone 30 minutes later. Again. You find yourself explaining the difference between the KT266A and the KT333 chipsets for the ninth time, because he seems unable to remember anything. Except pirces, of course, if you quote $5 more for the $400 part than you quoted on the 7th July, he is straight onto it. But he still can't quite understand that the Pentium 4 2200 he has decided on doesn't work all that well with a Soltek SL-75DRV5 KT-333. In desperation, you tell him that you have to go because it is your wedding anniverery - and he instantly remembers that you used that excuse on the 14th August. He knows you are lying to him now, and he doesn't seem to care in the slightest.

Face it. You might have 15 years experience selling computers, but you are outclassed. This guy has an entire lifetime's experience in not letting people put the phone down. You are completely out of your depth.Eventually, you just decide that the bad PR can't be helped, and you stage a little "accident" and hang up on him mid-sentence.

That seems to work quite well. At first. But after three weeks worth of "accidently" hanging up on him, he is still calling, and doesn't seem to be in the slightest upset about it. He knows you are hanging up on him, and he is completely unphased by it. Eventually you realise that this is because everybody hangs up on him, and he thinks that this is the normal way to terminate a conversation. Hell, he's probably had Jehova's Witnesses and telephone company sales reps hang up on him.

Next time, you put him on hold. After 75 minutes, you remember that The Caller is on hold and will have given up long since, so you hang up the phone and return to normal business. Five seconds later, it rings again. Guess who? "Oh, we must have got disconnected", he says. He has been sitting there happily waiting on hold for 75 minutes.

Finally, you say "Listen, you pox-ridden pile of genetic abnormalities, I am sick to death of you ringing up all the time! Fuck off! Don't ever call back!" He doesn't seem to notice. You are talking to him, after all, and that is all it takes to make him happy. He doesn't care what you say. When you have run through every swear word you know, most of them twice, and pause for a quiet sob on your desk, he asks if it's better to get a Gigabyte board with Dual BIOS or is it more important to have the individually settable voltages of a Soltek board.

There is no known cure for The Caller.

 

[Mercutio]

Type 12: the "Zero Understanding of the Concept of Progress"

More simian than the UaaR, and with less people-skills than the CFC, the ZUofCoP is the guy who can't understand why the copy of Windows XP you sold him won't go in his 5.25" disk drive. Or worse, thinks that because he OWNS Windows XP, it's automatically on his Computer. ZUotCoPs are the reason we have cupholder jokes, the reason AOL has customers, why spam sometimes works, and give every one else a reason to feel good about themselves. Unlike the CFC or the Technophobe, these guys think they can actually operate a computer on their own. These are the guys who want DirectX for Windows 3.1, who don't understand why Windows 2000 won't load on their 12MHz 286 (It'll just be a little slow, right?) and who think that you, personally, have something to do with the availability of hardware/software for their machine.

Frequency: Ask anyone who has ever worked a support desk
How to deal with: Paxil or EST. You or them. Take your pick.

 

[SteveC]

Type 13: The ParentsWhoDon'tKnowWhatTheirKidsAreDoing.

This is a whole family of trouble makers. The parents may be either Type 6 or 8, and if you're very unlucky also Type 9. The kids are Type 2(ii) The Thinkstheyknowisallbutknowsnothing. The son is a budding warez pup and/or script kiddie. The daughter has changed every default color to something ghastly, and there are annoying sounds for every single action. There's ten different P2P apps on the computer, along with all the associated spyware. There may be antivirus software, but it hasn't been updated in 3 years and is completely useless. The daughter changes a font to be the same as the background color rendering all text unreadable. The son spends his time in IRC trying to learn how to be a script kiddie, only to run into someone who knows what they're doing, and gets the son to run a trojan on the computer. The system is slowed horrible by all the spyware, and is so unstable it requires a reboot every half-hour. It is so infected the only solution is a complete reformat. In a week, the system will be back to exactly where it was. The parents will blame Windows because their children are "good kids and wouldn't do anything to mess up the computer."

Population density: Stealth. Only way to find out is if you actually see what the kids are doing.
How to deal with: Change professions.

Steve

 

[Mercutio]

I'd just like to point out that in the case above, it's likely that the PC is actually using multiple antivirus packages. None of which have been updated in three years, and all of which are incompatible.

I dealt with a member of that species a couple weeks ago. 256MB AthlonXP 1400+ running plain ol' Win98. Took Windows 11 minutes to start, 40 programs loading at startup, and every widget on the screen was black. Yup. That's the one.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

He he! I had a type 13 in not so long ago. In the end, after the third time the PC broke, i had to tell the mother that her son had been looking at porn, and that was why her computer kept failing. She went for him outside in the street in front of his mate!!! Oops, I think I may have just created a future Peter Sutcliffe or Ted Bundy.....

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Type 14: The double standards buyer.

Not so much a class of person but a state of mind, this common affliction can affect all sorts of otherwise perfectly rational people. They walk in and sit down. They are wearing expensive designer shoes/suits/clothes/watches/sunglasses/underpants(probably). “How much is a computer” they say? I tell them. “Have you got a cheaper one” they say. “I can get one from that shop in the indoor market for 30% less than what you are quoting me”. Grr…… Would you buy your trousers from there? Would you buy your car from ‘Honest John’s dodgy motor garage? No! So why will you spend £120 on a crappy jumper but are then happy to skimp and buy the cheapest, slowest, most unstable pile of PC Chips-based junk that you can find for your computer? What makes you think that the PC market is any different to any other market? “Well a computer is just like any other innit?” Yeah, just like a pair of £5 trainers are like your £120 pair of “Nike Air Sweatshop Special Edition” trainers, you know, the ones made by Vietnamese kiddies for a dollar a month or something. The funniest thing of all is that their expensive trainers ARE like the cheap ones. Suckers!!

Population Density: All too common.

How to deal with: Sell Sony Vaios only.

 

[Tea]

Psst! Kristi. Don't tell Tannin The Callar' name. He will post it if you do! And on no account are you to mention his address!

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Subtype (ii) of type 2 is indeed dangerous!!!
I also laughed on Mercutio's type 10...

Nice categorization Vlad and others!

 

[e_dawg]

You know, this has the makings of a good computer humour book. Combine the retail/consumer stuff in this thread with corporate/enterprise tech support, and you have a bestseller that will be purchased by all computer professionals!

(...that is, until the hacker/software/content trading university students scan it, put it on their dorm mp3/DivX server at college, and distribute it to the rest of the world for free)

 

[Dozer]

My business is not selling computers, but rather doors and windows. We obviously share the same types of customers, though, because my co-workers and I can completely relate to every one of these types. Here's my contribution:

Type 15: The Interrupter

Akin to the thinks they know everything but knows nothing, except that they make this fact painfully clear by finishing your sentences for you, which you then must correct. This is the same customer who stops you mid-sentence and asks you a question completely unrelated to what you are currently explaining, and therefore you forget what you were explaining. When you’re finished (three hours and one migraine later), the customer asks you to explain the same topic that they interrupted earlier (this takes another hour). Then they thank you for your time, never to be seen or heard from again (unless, of course, this is The Caller/Interrupter, in which case you will never rid yourself). You basically spend several hours of your time for no return on the investment.

Population Density: More common than I'd prefer

Remedy: AK-47

 

[Tannin]

Indeed, Dozer. I can assure you, that type is very common indeed in the computer world. Alas.

(Tannin manfully resists the temptation to name names, addreses and phone numbers.)

 

[Buck]

Right now I'm dealing with the 3-Alarm Customer (indirectly). The customer I dealt with bought two systems. The second system went to his friend about 60 miles away. She is having so many issues and is terribly upset, because she can't get her work done. So, she is complaining, complaining, and complaining to her friend that got her the computer from me. He is now contacting me for help. She has the same system that I use at home, so finding out her problem shouldn't be too difficult. Apparently, the only thing she uses that is different then me, is AOL (read virus) and a Logitech wireless mouse. I guessing that she has also installed other things and hasn't said anything about them. So, my original customer is going to visit her and see what he can do. (Fortunately, he is a computer technician himself, he just hasn't worked in that field for about 5 years, so the new technology may be a bit different. But I did tell him that troubleshooting always remains the same.)

Any comments on Logitech products and drivers?

 

[Mercutio]

Logitech's native drivers can be goofy sometimes. I've seen them cause problems with screen updates, for example.

 

[e_dawg]

I refuse to install any Logitech drivers/software now since the MouseWare that I installed for my wheelmouse made my CPU utilization shoot up incredibly. Who would have thought that a mouse could noticeably slow down one's computer? Now it's just the Microsoft PS/2 mouse driver that comes with W2k. Unfortunately, I lose scroll wheel capability in a couple programs (like Visual Studio, for example, where it would be the most useful).

 

[Buck]

Those are the exact same issues that my customer is having. High CPU utilization, and screen freezes. I've already told them to uninstall the drivers and go with a different mouse (good thing I don't sell Logitech).

 

[Mercutio]

Logitech is good kit if you don't mind losing some of the craptastic "features" their drivers provide, like the automatic "snap-to" messageboxes. You basically lose nothing (I can scroll in VB.NET with a logitech trackball), so I'm not sure what the point is.

 

[time]

Logitech has had a checkered history with mouse drivers. If you have one that is causing grief, just try a different version.

A highly useful advantage that their driver confers is the ability to wheel-scroll in a window or frame without it already having. Try this in Windows Explorer to see what I mean. I haven't loaded an MS 'extra' driver lately to see if they have this feature.

 

[time]

Buck, under Windows 98 first edition, those symptoms could be attributed to printer drivers, not the mouse.

We've sold a couple of the Logitech wireless opticals and have had no problems. I think you might be being a trifle hasty.

 

[IFMU]

Just thought I would let you all know that you guys have brought some sunshine into a few folks lives with this thread here.
I posted this over http://forum.oc-forums.com/cgi-bin/adcycle.cgi?gid=1&t=_blank&id=2345&type=iframe on overclockers forums.
Just thought Id let yea know this is some great stuff here guys!!! LoL

 

[time]

A highly useful advantage that their driver confers is the ability to wheel-scroll in a window or frame without it already having focus.

I'm not well today and I guess it shows.

 

[Tea]

Hi IFMU. Good to see you stopping by. I had a little trouble finding the link, but I tracked it down to this thread here - and it's great to see so many people getting a buz out of it. Cool!

PS: Vlad - that was one grrrrreat post you started this thread with.

 

[IFMU]

Thanks for the welcome!~!
Not to used to the format you use on this here so heh.. Sorry for the bad link on the first there.. Thanks for postin up the right one.

IFMU

 

[Mercutio]

I think this is our other really funny thread.

Feel free to continue spreading the joy, IMFU.

 

[Buck]

Buck, under Windows 98 first edition, those symptoms could be attributed to printer drivers, not the mouse.

They are using Windows XP Home. They removed the drivers and switched to a MS PS/2 mouse (the one that I sold them) and the problems went away. Something else that they failed to tell me was that they installed Anti-virus software for NT, not for XP. That was causing Illegal Operation messages.

 

[cquinn]

This probably goes without saying, but having owned two Logitech
wireless mice in the past... one important step should be to put fresh
batteries into the mouse. On more than one occasion that has helped
clear up symptoms that seemed to be coming from another area.


=====

Type 15: The "Needs to buy a clue"

Not to be mistaken for Type 6 "The completely frickin' clueless", this
type is more a subspecies of 2(i) and 2(iii) (knowitall).
They understand the nature of their problem, and seem quite capable of
fixing it themselves; but can't be bothered to (a) check the manual
(b) looking it up on a search engine, or (c) actually think about the
problem for longer than 10 seconds - because it is far more convenient
(more sociable?) to bounce the issue off of your head.
Besides, "You don't look like you're that busy right now..." they notice,
as you are juggling three minor crises, fielding five other customer calls,
and deflecting an asteroid from a collision course with the earth;
or worse, just trying to finish your morning coffee.


Population Density: (Rare) Consisting of otherwise intelligent
Cow-orkers, Friends, Relatives... folks who think you have
"just a bit more" knowledge and free time than they do.

How (you want) to Deal with: Beat them senseless with a ClueStick.

How to Deal with: Repeat the Mantra:
"Google is your friend, Google is your friend, Google is your friend"
over and over, while giving them your best Serial Killer stare...
If that doesn't work, then you get the ClueStick.

 

[cquinn]

My Bad...

That should have been, (recounting) Type 16.

* Whacks self with ClueStick *
:mrgrn:

 

[Sol]

I have a very rare subtype for type 16.

16(ii) Bought the clue, needs to use it.
This person describes thier problem in terms of another problem. For example "it's like when you don't shut your computer down properly..." Or whatever. After actually getting the PC and looking it over you find that the problem is not just like.... but is, in fact, exactly the problem they have described.

Population Density: Very rare, most are not repeat offenders.

How to deal with: Try to remember that even with normally inteligent people the most obvious answer is often the correct one.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Kick Ass! Thanks Tea for your kind comments. More on their way. I just have to work up a bit more vitreolic bile.......