Tuesday Morning in the Lab

Tuesday morning I was minding my own business, checking people in and out of the lab, helping them print, dealing with the fact that Mac OSX is down on the "Mac" side of the room and trying to let biatchy comments from whiny Comm Design majors roll off my back, when out of the blue someone did something that made me question humanity.

Let me put this into context. I like people. Alot. This is why I took the job at the computer lab. I like people and I like computers. Yay! Right? Not so much. As much as I used to biatch at Irish Sean for hating people while he worked at Exxon I'm starting to feel his pain. I had been out of the service industry for the past few years. I remember how asinine the people were at Target, and for some strange crackballed reason I thought that since I was dealing with college students that they would be able to do simple things on the computer. Not so much.

This guy comes in and when asked the usual question "Mac or Pc?" his reply was "Uh, a regular computer I guess. I don't even know what a Mac is. I just want to print something." I have learned in the past few weeks that "I want to use a relgular computer" is a good cue for me to realize that they don't know what the hell they're doing with computers or just life in general.

He comes back after about 30 seconds with a question. "Are the flash drive hole thingies not working on these computers? I peeled the black tape over the hole in the front to stick my memory stick into. Why won't it work?"
Assuming that he means "USB port" instead of "Durr, durr, durr! I'm retarded!" I say, "Yes, the USB drives in the back of the computer work."
"Yeah. I peeled that black tape off."

I'm starting to get really annoyed at this point because there is a very good reason we put black electrical tape on the USB drives on the front of those computers: they don't work. We also have a nice little slip of paper conveniently saying "Thumb Drives can be inserted into the BACK of the computer." This cute little piece of paper is lovingly taped RIGHT OVER THE USB DRIVE IN QUESTION. People often ignore it. This is one of the many reasons that I hate them.

I say, "Yes, there is a sign posted saying that the 'hole' won't work. You'll have to use the back of the computer."
"I peeled the tape off."
"The tape is there for a reason. Use the back of the computer."
Blank stare.

At this point my lab monitor cohort, Dave, tries to help. "Look on the back of the computer," he says, "you can plug your thumb drive into that."
"What?"
"The back of the computer," the remarkably patient Dave said while indicating with his hands the "front" of the computer and the "back of the computer.
"What's that?"
"The back of the computer," Dave says beginning to be irritated. At this point people are staring at us.
"I don't know what you mean. You'll have to show me."
"Okay, let's go," says Dave.

They walk over to the computer. Dave points at the back of the computer and only receives a blank stare in return. Dave shows him where to put his thumb drive.

Dave returns, supressing a giggle, he says, "I still don't think he knows what the hell just happened." Usually Dave is pretty short with the kids that get up to the dumbassery in the lab, but I think this level of stupidity just knocked him off-guard.Or maybe it was pity that allowed him to show such kindness. I have no idea.

All I know is that I was shaking with supressed laughter at this point. It hurt to hold it in and tight little squealing giggles were escaping.

I'm pretty sure I'll never recover.