It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the phone rings. A desperate caller needs her computer fixed; she is losing a thousand dollars a day. I calmly ask her name—I know that names are important, and quickly ease the tension that seems to be present in a stranger to stranger relationship. ‘Shelley’, I say, ‘Those machines can be very frustrating’. She begins to tell me her problem. “I get these pop ups from nowhere. I cancel them and more reappear. I cannot do my work. The machine moves at a crawl’s pace. Even the mouse is jittery and seems to need to catch up to my movements. The Internet works for awhile, then out of the blue, the computer stalls. Can you come over?” I let her know I would be happy to. I ask her some questions: “What operating system are you using?” But she doesn’t understand that term, so I rephrase it to include one: “Are you using WIN98 or WINXP.” She quickly interjects, “WINDOWS 98!” “And how long has the problem been occurring?” She tells me about a couple of months and that it is getting progressively worse. I ask her if she has done anything to try to correct the problem, but she tells me she has not. “Do you have anti-virus protection?” “Well,” she pauses, “it came with McAfee when I bought the computer three years ago, but I think I was supposed to update it or something. Someone told me about Norton 2004, so I bought it and tried it, but it made things much worse; I don’t know what to do.”
I pull up to her house and before the car door closes, I see the front door of the house open. She and her husband are anxiously waiting. I walk up the steps and am greeted by a warm handshake and a stressful smile. “Please come in.” I am quick to notice that things are very tidy and clean, and as they walk me through the house and into another room, I observe that every manual and piece of software that came with the computer is neatly arranged on the top of a nearby desk, just in case. “So, this is the culprit.” Inside my head, I know it really isn’t the culprit, because nothing could ever go wrong with a computer until a user uses it. I know that they are the culprits, but I refrain from suggesting it. In fact, I am empathetic since I know first hand what it is to struggle with my own mistakes. They again reiterated what they believed took place, as I politely listened. They invite me to take the ‘driver’s seat. I sit down near the problem area.
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