25 ms·

Fixing Macs door to door

1033 points by jnord 3y ago

JieJie 3y ago
My favorite bit, "Threats quickly lost their power when you realized nobody at any point had asked your name or any information about yourself. It's hard to threaten an anonymous person."
- rofrol 3y ago
  I don't get this part. Thet could just phone Apple and complain about some contractor and Apple could get his name from some records.
  - LeonM 3y ago
    > They could just phone Apple That's the thing. Once they realise that they have to put effort in it, the threats stop.
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      Exactly, they wouldn't complain themselves or even make the initial call themselves, they'd have a personal assistant do it, and whether or not they do is arbitrary because they won't check, not important.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Mine was > As smartphones became more of a thing, the number of "please spy on my teen" requests exploded. These varied from installing basically spyware on their kids laptops to attempting to install early MDM software on the kids iPhones. I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up". > I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something and I would end up on the evening news. But I was also a little short that month for rent so what can you do.
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    His boss was indeed a bad judge of character.
brian_herman 3y ago
Good story.
muppetman 3y ago
I love this. It's written for the hell of it. Not to get likes, or people to subscribe, or buy a product or show off technical prowess. It's just writing to share - Oldschool Internet content. [Not that there's anything wrong with the things I mentioned - I just mean it's refreshing to see something not written with an obvious motive. Gah. I still sound like a wanker.]
- doubleg72 3y ago
  I came here to say exactly this.. what a nice, refreshing read.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Real world person. Rare animal.
- op00to 3y ago
  The vignettes were the perfect length for casual consumption. Little bite sized snacks.
- davkan 3y ago
  Great read. I was wondering why it felt so familiar to me and it dawned on me it’s like a cross between my past jobs of internal it support and ems. I miss going into houses and businesses around my area on a daily basis, and driving around all parts of the city. I remember back when I first transitioned into an office job how isolated it made me feel from community. If the pay was remotely equivalent I’d consider dropping my remote sysadmin gig for a job like the author’s.
- fragmede 3y ago
  You could imagine a Patreon link at the bottom with "if you liked these stories" hook to get you to pay money if it would make you feel better.
dylanzhangdev 3y ago
interesting
AntiRush 3y ago
It reminds me of this book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602581/laserwriterii https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602581/laserwriterii
- rashkov 3y ago
  Oh cool, I’ve been meaning to check this out ever since I saw her do a reading from a new book of hers. Her family runs a pretty well known restaurant in the city with a 900 item menu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsin%27s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsin%27s). Maybe she talks about in the book. Thanks for the reminder.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Well written, but man it leaves me kind of depressed. Maybe that speaks to the power of the writing.
- adamomada 3y ago
  > When I got out and realized it was dark, I started to accept something bad was likely about to happen to me. This was the only part that really got me. I have visited a few major US cities but never really lived there, but now I’m wondering how common it is for American city dwellers to be afraid of the dark.
  - nocoiner 3y ago
    Entirely place dependent, these days (30-50 years ago, crime was seriously pretty bad). I live in a huge American city, and I have virtually no fear of personal or property crime when I’m out at night. But in many cases, if I shifted my path a half mile in a different direction, it’d be a different story. Like anywhere, I would suppose, being aware of your surroundings, keeping your wits and not making yourself into an easy target will go a very long way to keeping you safe.
    - rmason 3y ago
      Its very important to know the area. Because I grew up in Detroit I know where to go and where not to go. Downtown the billionaire Dan Gilbert owns a huge chunk of buildings. He has his own security force and cameras literally covering every square inch. It's worth it to know exactly where those cameras end because the criminals do and that is where you are most often to encounter them.
      - Nextgrid 3y ago
        Keep in mind that cameras don't mean anything in today's world because law enforcement doesn't care about any crime short of a murder. Maybe cameras still have a chilling effect on law-abiding people but criminals have since wisened up to it.
_fzslm 3y ago
mad perspectives. being a tech frontliner you saw so much. in fame, in lives of excess. amazing hearing from your perspective how the wealthy think and live. one of the best articles i've read on the web in a long time, thank you for writing it.
- op00to 3y ago
  There’s a certain type of person who looks for enterprise type it contractors over Craigslist. A bizarre combination of money and insanity that usually makes for a fun time.
luciapiton 3y ago
Interesting read. It reminded me of "Do Things That Don't Scale" https://paulgraham.com/ds.html https://paulgraham.com/ds.html I just didn't get the part where he says teens are mean to him, but the only example is where a teen made his job easier... > I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up". > I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
  A guess: The teen sized him up as needing money, intuited how much, and offered it in a show of power.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  Probably less about what was said, and more how I'd imagine an entitled teen might act and say things.
- Cacti 3y ago
  the kid called him cheap and/or poor in the straight-forward way you talk about someone’s hair color.
- raisedbyninjas 3y ago
  Mean teens and the bribing teen are separate anecdotes. Most teens are unhappy with a stranger rifling through their phone, especially somebody installing spyware. Those are the mean teens.
wutangisforever 3y ago
It was enlightening to learn about obscure parts of the Mac repair world and to ponder the lives of all the people you met. Awesome article
idlephysicist 3y ago
I love these well written, slyly comical in a dry way, articles.
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Thought provoking article. I like to think I acknowledge the people I call for services, at least to the extent they want the conversation. I'm sure there are many more in daily life I don't notice but whose work makes my world go around. The anecdotes about the rich in Chicago match the ones I hear about the rich in California. The divide is nearly complete.
- Neil44 3y ago
  It's just an awkward social situation, and most people just want to be left to get on with their work when they're on the clock.
  - jtbayly 3y ago
    Agreed. The divide might be real, but when I've done this sort of work I want to be viewed as the furniture by most people so I didn't have to spend effort on awkward conversations. And I never even dealt with rich people like this.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
    Building a list of good, reliable service people that one can go to in the future takes effort. Some want the minimum, some like a little give-and-take. Getting that balance is tricky. Becoming known as a good customer can help in some cases both for later work and referrals to other specialists.
ungamedplayer 3y ago
This was eerily similar to my experience about 5 years prior. My experience was in Australia on the software side. Down to the same equipment, same style people, same style interaction with apple.
- ace2358 3y ago
  As an Aussie, I’m curious to hear the stories! I don’t know much about Chicago!
gumby 3y ago
He writes well. This is the blog post I'd really like to read: > Like all of my bosses early on, his primary quality was he was a bad judge of character.
intrasight 3y ago
That was the most fun thing I've read all year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot. Just an example about a parent requesting tracking be installed on her daughter's phone "One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say 'I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up'." I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct." Part of what made this such a fun read is knowing it's 100% all true.
- rnk 3y ago
  Yeah that was a great anecdote, I was going to post the same story! Parent pays you to install spyware , rich kid pays you not to install spyware, double payment for nothing.
- Cyphase 3y ago
  s/year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot./week, and I read a lot./ FTFY ;)
  - intrasight 3y ago
    LOL
gregorvand 3y ago
Pretty sure a friend around 2014 had one of these callouts for their Mac Pro tower in NYC. This article just reminded me that even happened. thanks for writing!
rfrey 3y ago
>I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something I'm not sure why he didn't take the $500 and set up the software on the little punk's phone.
- woleium 3y ago
  If she will pay 500 she will pay 1000. Dude should have held out for more.
  - Infernal 3y ago
    My thought exactly.
- wwweston 3y ago
  How does a teenager have access to $500 they haven’t spent and can spend without their parents knowing (especially the kind of parents who’d want tracking on their kids phones)?
  - Brybry 3y ago
    My relatives regularly gave me cash for holidays and birthdays. And if your parents ever gave you cash for anything it's easy enough to not spend all of it and save some. I probably usually had >$300 in my bedroom as a teenager (and more saved in a bank account). Also the kid can lie about what they spent it on. Or steal their parents'/siblings' money. Mistakes that lead to important life lessons.
  - Cacti 3y ago
    Giving your kid $50 is hard. Giving your kid $500 after you just gave them $50 is easy.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
pomian 3y ago
What a great story. This is the kind of writing I encourage many of my retired friends to try. Start by a few short anecdotes and stories of things or people you remember. Even though we are not Cicero, our history has changed dramatically in our life times (maybe it was always like this?) Many of them have lived thorough some interesting part of history and witnessed social and cultural, technical, change that will be very interesting in the future. Imagine the characters, the anecdotes, the humor, the disaster that retired: teachers, farmers, mechanics, doctors, and so on, can tell.
aorth 3y ago
Hah! I did the same thing for a few years in the early 2000s, but I wasn't affiliated with Apple and just did upgrades, fixes, etc. I rode my bike all over town and charged by the hour. I had all my tools and wallet of CDs for all kinds of stuff with me. Good times!
moneywoes 3y ago
what an enjoyable read i felt as if i was teleported to the OPs job
tomcam 3y ago
Excellent title, better article. This described worlds I didn’t know existed.
wesleyhadnot 3y ago
they should fix windows systems door to door, they would make a lot more money.
- Cacti 3y ago
  they do. for like 30 years now.
jacamera 3y ago
Great story! This had me confused though: > Often I'd show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever. Why not suggest sending the drive off to a recovery service? They certainly existed back then, wealthy clients could afford it, and you could add a nice markup.
- Our_Benefactors 3y ago
  Expensive (even for the wealthy, a lot of the time), not guaranteed to work, inviting more ire if it doesn’t work.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
    Doesn't help you now, but often data recovery companies such as DriveSavers only charge a fee if they are successful.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Yeah. Not photos at the time but I’ve lost inadequately backed up hard drives at a time when online backups and external drives weren’t really a thing. Annoying but not something I was going to spend thousands of dollars to try to get recovered.
    - jacamera 3y ago
      Same, personally. But I also did on-site tech support in the same era and would always give customers the option if they had a drive I couldn't recover. Honestly seems negligent to me not to. On several occasions they opted to spend the ~$1,000 to recover their family photos, business documents, or other important files and were always extremely happy when it worked. These were not exceptionally wealthy people either.
sconescone 3y ago
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psyclobe 3y ago
Great read
busterarm 3y ago
This takes me back. Way back in like 2004-2006 or so I was working a computer repair desk at a big retailer and did a ton of side business. The side business honestly paid more than my job did. I would travel around NYC fixing things for mostly clueless people. People attempting to screw me on payment was common. The frequent move was to offer drugs or sex in lieu of payment after the work was done. The only sane response to this though was to tell them to just pay what they could afford and then get out of there as fast as possible. I had a few rich and famous clients. It was a fun time, but I got tired of taking long, extended train rides after a full day of work only to do more work and have a long train ride home.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I did that too, worked for a computer shop and often got hired by clients. Never got offered sex on lieu of payment unfortunately, I would have taken it :) Nor drugs but I don't do those.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    It's almost never the attractive, talented, or regularly-tested-for-STIs-and-STI-free ones that offer the sex...
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Understood but I always use protection anyway. And when I did this kind of work I was a shy horny teenager so I wouldn't have cared about looks :P
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something that will be a problem for you, then it's not going to be as appealing as it initially sounds. On the (maybe) plus side they won't make you wear a condom. On the negative side, they didn't make anybody else either... Much better (IMHO) to put in the time and effort to cultivate a loving long-term relationship with a good partner.
squokko 3y ago
Ironically enough, one of the rich people who did not have a large household staff was Steve Jobs himself. One thing that money often seems to buy you is a bunch of strangers in your fucking house and he hated that.
mproud 3y ago
Close. GSX, not ASX.
ErneX 3y ago
I used to fix computers for doctors when I was a teenager, this brought some memories, fun read.
kls0e 3y ago
fairly entertaining morning lecture :-) many thanks
qingcharles 3y ago
I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequency, and the inkjet released its entire content of magic smoke, which incidentally was enough to fill a very large penthouse apartment. I ran her out of the apartment, then I remembered it was still plugged in, so I had to stagger totally blind through the apartment to find the damned thing and unplug it lol That job put me in contact with a criminal gang who went on to supply with me dozens of GBs of stolen hard drives that I used to create what was probably the largest warez FTP in the world and a dump site for most of the top pirate groups like Razor 1911.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Wild read!
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Just a PSA (not trying to harp on parent commenter, just taking their comment as an opportunity to soapbox) but never, ever, every go into a room or building that is getting smokey from something burning. It's how you N+1 the casualty/death count in a fire. Unlike the heroes in films and movies, you don't have Plot Armor. It is incredibly common that people think they can just go back in holding their breath or stay low or cover their mouth with their clothing like in hollywood...but they take a bit of a breath, cough, and suck in lungfuls of the smoke, and are almost immediately incapacitated. A lot of things, like PVC for example, release chlorine gas when they burn, which immediately turns your lung mucus into hydrochloric acid. All the other things in the smoke is incredibly bad for you both short and long-term, too. The smoke is also flammable. Opening a door lets in oxygen, and oxygen + fuel + heat = a fuckton of heat, very suddenly. I really wish that writers would suffer legal liability for shit like showing people entering a building with their shirt over their mouth - it's where people get the idea that they can so that sort of stuff.
  - 3y ago
2143 3y ago
The experiences of people who meet a wide range of customers are always interesting. I had read a similar story of a man who worked at car showrooms of various brands (such as Honda, Toyota). > Look it's important that if you see Oprah, you act normally, please don't ask her for an autograph or a photo I never understood why people drool when they see celebrities. Movie actors, musicians, sportspersons etc — I like watching them when they're in a movie, or when have sung a song, or when they're on the field playing, but I never really had any inclination to actually meet them. Even if I did meet them, I wouldn't have anything useful to say.
- TylerE 3y ago
  The trick, and I say this as someone who's gotten to meet a fair number of musicians, including some semi-famous ones, is that they're people. Plus they're also huge music nerds. Just mention Cheap Trick and you're in... (Although at the same time, do know how to read the room - it's not that hard to tell when someone just wants to be left alone. Those genuine interactions are better than any autograph or selfie.
  - bookofjoe 3y ago
    Sort of related: I was friends with a world-famous surgeon at UCLA, chairman of the urology department (he married an ex-girlfriend whom I stayed on good terms with). His patient roster was a who's who of Hollywood: Groucho Marx, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, etc. He told me the secret of getting these famous people to follow his orders: he always included something in his post-op instructions that would force them to do something they'd much rather not do. Making them compliant created a kind of master-servant relationship with the surgeon as master; these megastars were so unused to following orders that the harsher the Rx, the more they regarded the doctor as a demi-god.
- blkhawk 3y ago
  I think its a para-social thing. We are not build to see somebody everyday in a certain context and only passively interact with them. This crosses a couple of wires I think. I have similar desires to not meet them but its mostly because I do not care that much and they probably have enough randos bothering them. I would probably dive under the table as well as in the article :)
PeterStuer 3y ago
Tools specially for Mac repair. Anyone else remember the "case cracker"? It was a very broad hinged wedge you had to use to open up the original all-in-one Macs (with the 9" B&W screens). There were some capacitors in those machines that blew out frequently. Fantastic computer for its time though, if you could afford it.
- gamache 3y ago
  Don’t forget its two friends — the long-handled Torx and the screwdriver with the 10M resistor and the alligator clip, to bleed the charge out of the CRT. Fun machines. I still have two SE/30s, including my upgraded SE from childhood!
aschla 3y ago
As someone who has lived here for going on 15 years, he really unintentionally nailed the whole spectrum of experience of living in Chicago. And “Live in a city for any amount of time and you'll start to develop a subconscious odds calculator.” was very relatable.
odysseus 3y ago
Great read, this guy is going on my daily RSS feed list.
hoc 3y ago
Finally a comprehensive guide on how to arrange ones home/life once that YC deal goes through. There's also the tip on bus station prey, should it not. Great read (seriously).
neilkk 3y ago
That isn't what "door to door" means though.
caseyf 3y ago
If you liked this, you might like the novella "Laserwriter II" by Tamara Shopsin. https://www.theverge.com/c/22713440/the-worst-thing-on-earth-laserwriter-ii-fiction-excerpt https://www.theverge.com/c/22713440/the-worst-thing-on-earth...
- jpm_sd 3y ago
  This was a delightful piece of writing, but it's hard to see how it turns into a novel. Kind of a documentary style? The author is a member of the semi famous Shopsin family https://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/shopsins/ https://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/shopsins/
tambourine_man 3y ago
> I was directed to park across the street and told even though the signs said "no parking" that they had a "deal with the city". He said he didn’t have a car a few paragraphs before. Has he earned enough by then?
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  He then proceeds to specify that it was a borrowed one
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    Yeah, just got to that part.
louwrentius 3y ago
- great anekdotes - excellent writing - small observations that imply a ton loved this writeup
comprev 3y ago
Great read and a trip down memory lane for me as I cut my teeth being a field engineer for a small IT support company in London for 2 years was back in 2005.
febeling 3y ago
Reminds me that what we really crave is authenticity. It’s the number one rule for writing. Also shows why AI content is so pointless.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Interesting remark to me. I was thinking the whole time what parts may be made up. I'm a really bad judge of sarcasm, let alone actually dishonest content. In the end I'm inclined to believe the whole thing, but it's not particularly authentic, just quite different from my life and therefore interesting. (Some parallels also, as I've done computer fixing for some friends of friends.)
  - infertainment 3y ago
    How does interesting and original work compare to AI-generated and most human-generated material? Maybe we could say rather than being merely plausible that it is surprising in plausible ways.
kuon 3y ago
I did that for about 10 years from 2000 to 2010. The part about "being part of the furniture" is really on point. It is incredible how little they think of you. This has a side effect, they thrust you. Ebanking logins, emails, personal conversation, photos... You get it all. I was always very discrete and never did anything "bad", but there were moments when I was treated like a nuisance where I really wanted to. There is also a few times when you find out that the husband or wife is cheating, that is always very difficult to handle especially when the other one is here with you saying how great their partner is.
yardie 3y ago
One of the things I miss by reading this post is how empowered CSRs were back in those days. Today, everything is scripted and highly metricized. Going through the customer service line today will get you the run around and lot of toothless solutions. No one can do anything and even "escalation" mostly means handing you off to another powerless CSR to continue the runaround. This post reminds me of my youth. I had a Mac and the motherboard died. AppleCare told me it was out of warranty. But I had the receipt of the extended warranty we bought from Sears. They wanted me to pay for the repair and send them the invoice. I told the Sears CSR "this is my schoolwork computer and we don't have money like that. Which is why we bought this warranty. Because you told us it would take care of any problem with our Mac." That CSR jumped on a 3-way call with me and AppleCare. I think they did a purchase order but all I remember was it was handled and the Apple repair tech was there the next day. Just the thought of someone even having that much autonomy nowadays is completely foreign.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  It's interesting how rapidly the beancounters quashed CSR autonomy and put everything behind inscrutable ticketing systems. Even at relatively small companies, with internal tools and support teams this happened pretty rapidly in the 2010s. I've worked at all sorts of small companies with as few as 500 employees where we initially just had a list of "guys" to call for different issues.. and eventually some Big Company MBA Type would come in and kill it. Next thing you know there's 5 different ticketing system queues obfuscating the fact that it's still the same 1-2 guys supporting each queue. Turnaround time got worse, users were unhappier, support team was unhappier, we had to pay SaaS companies for their ticketing system, and probably hire a Global Head Of __ to run the whole thing. BUT.. we now could measure all the misery! Incredible!
  - pseingatl 3y ago
    Thank McKinsey.
- sq_ 3y ago
  It does seem like Apple and a few other companies still manage to do a half-decent job today. It takes a lot of running around through the phone tree and putting up with people going through the long script of solutions you already tried, but if you can get a few rungs up the escalation ladder you get to people who can make things happen, still. Definitely not the same as it was, though :(
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
Nice writing. I like it. I'm actually thinking about getting a training of electronics technician because I want to learn the soldering/desoldering part of hardware hacking -- which I believe any serious hacking may need such skill. But then the job prospect and salary are not really convincing...
- arcfour 3y ago
  Why not do it as a hobby instead? It's quite popular these days.
tomcik 3y ago
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Artyrogers 3y ago
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LoryGilman 3y ago
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MorrhinKev 3y ago
Talk about tech gone wild! Those 90s Mac repair tales are straight out of a heist movie, complete with inkjet smoke bombs and an accidental dive into the piracy deep end. Makes today's IT work look like a walk in the park!
YumanLi 3y ago
Imagine being a Mac fixer turned pirate king - only in the 90s, right? From smoke-spewing printers to brushing shoulders with the digital underworld, those were the days of real tech adventures. Makes you miss the wild side of tech.
_fat_santa 3y ago
From the entire article, this paragraph stood out the most to me > The golden rule that every single one of these assistants warned me about was not to bother the husband when he gets home. Typically these CEO-types would come in, say a few words to their kids and then retreat to their own area of the house. These were often TV rooms or home theaters, elaborate set pieces with $100,000+ of AV equipment in there that was treated like it was a secret lair of the house. To be clear, none of these men ever cared at all that I was there. They didn't seem to care that anybody was there, often barely acknowledging their wives even though an immense amount of work had gone into preparing for his return. You often hear anecdotes of the rich family that's got it all yet the kids are all screwed up and the marriage is on the rocks. For me this paragraph offers a glimpse into why that's the case and why people say "money can't buy happiness". I don't know I may be way off base here but that's the impression I got.
- Stampson_Gerhig 3y ago
  I spent a year working for an A/V installation company - whole house integrated sound systems, media servers, security, etc - and their clientele was solely multi-millionaires of various nationalities. My job was primarily as a programmer for the control systems these installations used so I spent the majority of my working day in clients homes. They were without exception the most sterile, vapid, soulless environments I had ever been in. They had everything in them but nothing felt homely. Another thing was the lack of responsibility for cost. You know the line from Arrested Development “it’s one banana, Michael, how much could it cost, $10?” Well, this is their real lives. I was asked to visit a client to arrange a laptop for them to use for day trading. I turn up, start going through options for MacBooks, their pros/cons, costs of models vs features and the guy turns to me, exasperated, and goes “I don’t care about the cost, just give me what I need”. Ok, I say I’ll let my manager know what I picked. I find out a couple weeks later, he’s actually rented a Bloomberg terminal for thousands a week. He then gets me back in to set the thing up. I’m sat at this machine, on the phone to Bloomberg being asked by them for the clients usernames and password, me leaning over to them to ask for the details, being told, relaying that back to Bloomberg, about three times. Until, exasperated, he takes me notebook and writes down every username and every password for every account and service he used. Bloomberg, banking, email, everything. It was worth poor old me having that to not bother him any more than necessary. Plenty of experiences from that too brief 12 months but was a massive eye opener to a side of society that I’d never have got the chance to see. It’s a different world, but not entirely sure it’s one I’d want to live in.
Nserita 3y ago
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Jonmade 3y ago
Reading these stories about fixing Macs in the 90s is like unearthing a treasure trove of tech lore. Who would have thought that a day job could lead to encounters with high society, complete with inkjet printers turning into unexpected smoke machines, and a twist of fate leading to a starring role in the world of digital piracy? It's fascinating how these tales intertwine technology with the thrill of adventure, almost like living in a real-life spy novel
- SoKamil 3y ago
  Did you use LLM to write this comment? It felt a little bit unnatural to my eye so I put it into gptzero and it spit out a 91% of probability that this was generated.
  - AtiRadeon9700 3y ago
    Lol, I had the exact same thought. There's something.. Off about its writing style; reminds me of marketing copy or 'HR speak'.
  - hexagonwin 3y ago
    Had the exact same thought as well. It just.. kinda feels off.
  - someguydave 3y ago
    is he engagement farming?
MyreyDebi 3y ago
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Rubbieday 3y ago
These anecdotes from the front lines of 90s tech support are nothing short of astonishing. It's a vivid reminder of how the tech industry, often seen as mundane or straightforward, has its share of wild, almost unbelievable stories. From tech mishaps turning into hazardous situations to an inadvertent descent into the world of digital piracy, it's a stark contrast to the current, more sanitized world of tech support and IT.
Nserita 3y ago
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urbandw311er 3y ago
This was superb. Thanks to the author for sharing.
Sharitemo 3y ago
The tales from the 90s of fixing Macs are like pages from a tech thriller novel. Each story is a mix of high-end luxury, unexpected social encounters, and a descent into the murky waters of digital piracy, all wrapped up in the day-to-day life of a computer technician. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a past where the lines between technology, adventure, and moral ambiguity were constantly blurred.
ftio 3y ago
I was once an Apple Certified Technical Consultant, mostly doing managed services-type work for small businesses in NYC but would sometimes get the call to go to someone's house, usually an owner or other senior-level exec at one of these businesses. These were serious houses. Huge houses out in the Hamptons or four-story brownstones on the Upper East Side. One call, I was doing work to resolve an issue with a customer's network, which consisted of a number of AirPort Extremes. One of these was in their bedroom, under a bed. For fifteen minutes or so, I lay on my belly, working away at my laptop trying to reset the godforsaken thing, when I spotted a small chair a few feet away. Pulled it over, and began working in a much more comfortable seated position. As I grew comfortable, I'd lean back on the back two legs of the chair and kind of rock back and forth. As I'm doing this, the owner pops her head in, saying, "Hey, anything I can get--oh my god please get up." Turns out the chair was pre-federal (ie from the early 1700s) and was probably worth at least my annual salary. Fortunately no damage, but it scarred me. I was not invited back to do repair work at that house.
waltwalther 3y ago
This is a great read! I am fifty years old now, but for many years during my twenties I supported myself as a one-man Mac/PC repair shop...in a college town. I made house calls almost everyday, and every evening was spent in my home shop working on drop-offs. I got to meet a ton of different people. There were the computer-illiterate business owners with ridiculous expectations; the lonely middle-aged guys with esoteric hobbies who talked my ear off; the single moms on a tight budget raising three kids; the ultra rich people wanting to keep a ten-year-old PC alive; the author who had lost years of data and would pay "whatever it takes"; the religious father with gigs of porn; the helpless college students whose lack of basic computer knowledge actually impressed me....and more This was like a trip down memory lane. Great read. Thanks for sharing!
scho3000 3y ago
Surprised to see Wiha mentioned here. The founder lived with his family in my hometown and my mother worked in his household back in the 60s at the age of 14/15. Definitely different times back then! Edit: Did not follow Wiha and didn’t know that it became this big! When reading it, I only remembered stories of my mother how she took care of the children and was totally blown away to have such a personal connection from a seemingly unrelated story.
klevo 3y ago
Great read!
Perepiska 3y ago
Friend of mine got link to this thread and failed to figure out that there is a link under thread name :( Underline will be highly appreciated. Thank you.
joanne123 3y ago
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1033 points by jnord 3y ago

My favorite bit, "Threats quickly lost their power when you realized nobody at any point had asked your name or any information about yourself. It's hard to threaten an anonymous person."

rofrol 3y ago
I don't get this part. Thet could just phone Apple and complain about some contractor and Apple could get his name from some records.
- LeonM 3y ago
  > They could just phone Apple That's the thing. Once they realise that they have to put effort in it, the threats stop.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Exactly, they wouldn't complain themselves or even make the initial call themselves, they'd have a personal assistant do it, and whether or not they do is arbitrary because they won't check, not important.
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Mine was > As smartphones became more of a thing, the number of "please spy on my teen" requests exploded. These varied from installing basically spyware on their kids laptops to attempting to install early MDM software on the kids iPhones. I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up". > I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something and I would end up on the evening news. But I was also a little short that month for rent so what can you do.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  His boss was indeed a bad judge of character.

brian_herman 3y ago

Good story.

muppetman 3y ago

I love this. It's written for the hell of it. Not to get likes, or people to subscribe, or buy a product or show off technical prowess. It's just writing to share - Oldschool Internet content. [Not that there's anything wrong with the things I mentioned - I just mean it's refreshing to see something not written with an obvious motive. Gah. I still sound like a wanker.]

doubleg72 3y ago
I came here to say exactly this.. what a nice, refreshing read.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Real world person. Rare animal.
op00to 3y ago
The vignettes were the perfect length for casual consumption. Little bite sized snacks.
davkan 3y ago
Great read. I was wondering why it felt so familiar to me and it dawned on me it’s like a cross between my past jobs of internal it support and ems. I miss going into houses and businesses around my area on a daily basis, and driving around all parts of the city. I remember back when I first transitioned into an office job how isolated it made me feel from community. If the pay was remotely equivalent I’d consider dropping my remote sysadmin gig for a job like the author’s.
fragmede 3y ago
You could imagine a Patreon link at the bottom with "if you liked these stories" hook to get you to pay money if it would make you feel better.

dylanzhangdev 3y ago

interesting

AntiRush 3y ago

It reminds me of this book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602581/laserwriterii https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602581/laserwriterii

rashkov 3y ago
Oh cool, I’ve been meaning to check this out ever since I saw her do a reading from a new book of hers. Her family runs a pretty well known restaurant in the city with a 900 item menu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsin%27s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsin%27s). Maybe she talks about in the book. Thanks for the reminder.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Well written, but man it leaves me kind of depressed. Maybe that speaks to the power of the writing.

adamomada 3y ago
> When I got out and realized it was dark, I started to accept something bad was likely about to happen to me. This was the only part that really got me. I have visited a few major US cities but never really lived there, but now I’m wondering how common it is for American city dwellers to be afraid of the dark.
- nocoiner 3y ago
  Entirely place dependent, these days (30-50 years ago, crime was seriously pretty bad). I live in a huge American city, and I have virtually no fear of personal or property crime when I’m out at night. But in many cases, if I shifted my path a half mile in a different direction, it’d be a different story. Like anywhere, I would suppose, being aware of your surroundings, keeping your wits and not making yourself into an easy target will go a very long way to keeping you safe.
  - rmason 3y ago
    Its very important to know the area. Because I grew up in Detroit I know where to go and where not to go. Downtown the billionaire Dan Gilbert owns a huge chunk of buildings. He has his own security force and cameras literally covering every square inch. It's worth it to know exactly where those cameras end because the criminals do and that is where you are most often to encounter them.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      Keep in mind that cameras don't mean anything in today's world because law enforcement doesn't care about any crime short of a murder. Maybe cameras still have a chilling effect on law-abiding people but criminals have since wisened up to it.

_fzslm 3y ago

mad perspectives. being a tech frontliner you saw so much. in fame, in lives of excess. amazing hearing from your perspective how the wealthy think and live. one of the best articles i've read on the web in a long time, thank you for writing it.

op00to 3y ago
There’s a certain type of person who looks for enterprise type it contractors over Craigslist. A bizarre combination of money and insanity that usually makes for a fun time.

luciapiton 3y ago

Interesting read. It reminded me of "Do Things That Don't Scale" https://paulgraham.com/ds.html https://paulgraham.com/ds.html I just didn't get the part where he says teens are mean to him, but the only example is where a teen made his job easier... > I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up". > I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
A guess: The teen sized him up as needing money, intuited how much, and offered it in a show of power.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
Probably less about what was said, and more how I'd imagine an entitled teen might act and say things.
Cacti 3y ago
the kid called him cheap and/or poor in the straight-forward way you talk about someone’s hair color.
raisedbyninjas 3y ago
Mean teens and the bribing teen are separate anecdotes. Most teens are unhappy with a stranger rifling through their phone, especially somebody installing spyware. Those are the mean teens.

wutangisforever 3y ago

It was enlightening to learn about obscure parts of the Mac repair world and to ponder the lives of all the people you met. Awesome article

idlephysicist 3y ago

I love these well written, slyly comical in a dry way, articles.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

Thought provoking article. I like to think I acknowledge the people I call for services, at least to the extent they want the conversation. I'm sure there are many more in daily life I don't notice but whose work makes my world go around. The anecdotes about the rich in Chicago match the ones I hear about the rich in California. The divide is nearly complete.

Neil44 3y ago
It's just an awkward social situation, and most people just want to be left to get on with their work when they're on the clock.
- jtbayly 3y ago
  Agreed. The divide might be real, but when I've done this sort of work I want to be viewed as the furniture by most people so I didn't have to spend effort on awkward conversations. And I never even dealt with rich people like this.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
  Building a list of good, reliable service people that one can go to in the future takes effort. Some want the minimum, some like a little give-and-take. Getting that balance is tricky. Becoming known as a good customer can help in some cases both for later work and referrals to other specialists.

ungamedplayer 3y ago

This was eerily similar to my experience about 5 years prior. My experience was in Australia on the software side. Down to the same equipment, same style people, same style interaction with apple.

ace2358 3y ago
As an Aussie, I’m curious to hear the stories! I don’t know much about Chicago!

gumby 3y ago

He writes well. This is the blog post I'd really like to read: > Like all of my bosses early on, his primary quality was he was a bad judge of character.

intrasight 3y ago

That was the most fun thing I've read all year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot. Just an example about a parent requesting tracking be installed on her daughter's phone "One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say 'I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up'." I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct." Part of what made this such a fun read is knowing it's 100% all true.

rnk 3y ago
Yeah that was a great anecdote, I was going to post the same story! Parent pays you to install spyware , rich kid pays you not to install spyware, double payment for nothing.
Cyphase 3y ago
s/year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot./week, and I read a lot./ FTFY ;)
- intrasight 3y ago
  LOL

gregorvand 3y ago

Pretty sure a friend around 2014 had one of these callouts for their Mac Pro tower in NYC. This article just reminded me that even happened. thanks for writing!

rfrey 3y ago

>I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something I'm not sure why he didn't take the $500 and set up the software on the little punk's phone.

woleium 3y ago
If she will pay 500 she will pay 1000. Dude should have held out for more.
- Infernal 3y ago
  My thought exactly.
wwweston 3y ago
How does a teenager have access to $500 they haven’t spent and can spend without their parents knowing (especially the kind of parents who’d want tracking on their kids phones)?
- Brybry 3y ago
  My relatives regularly gave me cash for holidays and birthdays. And if your parents ever gave you cash for anything it's easy enough to not spend all of it and save some. I probably usually had >$300 in my bedroom as a teenager (and more saved in a bank account). Also the kid can lie about what they spent it on. Or steal their parents'/siblings' money. Mistakes that lead to important life lessons.
- Cacti 3y ago
  Giving your kid $50 is hard. Giving your kid $500 after you just gave them $50 is easy.
- selimthegrim 3y ago

pomian 3y ago

What a great story. This is the kind of writing I encourage many of my retired friends to try. Start by a few short anecdotes and stories of things or people you remember. Even though we are not Cicero, our history has changed dramatically in our life times (maybe it was always like this?) Many of them have lived thorough some interesting part of history and witnessed social and cultural, technical, change that will be very interesting in the future. Imagine the characters, the anecdotes, the humor, the disaster that retired: teachers, farmers, mechanics, doctors, and so on, can tell.

aorth 3y ago

Hah! I did the same thing for a few years in the early 2000s, but I wasn't affiliated with Apple and just did upgrades, fixes, etc. I rode my bike all over town and charged by the hour. I had all my tools and wallet of CDs for all kinds of stuff with me. Good times!

moneywoes 3y ago

what an enjoyable read i felt as if i was teleported to the OPs job

tomcam 3y ago

Excellent title, better article. This described worlds I didn’t know existed.

wesleyhadnot 3y ago

they should fix windows systems door to door, they would make a lot more money.

Cacti 3y ago
they do. for like 30 years now.

jacamera 3y ago

Great story! This had me confused though: > Often I'd show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever. Why not suggest sending the drive off to a recovery service? They certainly existed back then, wealthy clients could afford it, and you could add a nice markup.

Our_Benefactors 3y ago
Expensive (even for the wealthy, a lot of the time), not guaranteed to work, inviting more ire if it doesn’t work.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
  Doesn't help you now, but often data recovery companies such as DriveSavers only charge a fee if they are successful.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yeah. Not photos at the time but I’ve lost inadequately backed up hard drives at a time when online backups and external drives weren’t really a thing. Annoying but not something I was going to spend thousands of dollars to try to get recovered.
  - jacamera 3y ago
    Same, personally. But I also did on-site tech support in the same era and would always give customers the option if they had a drive I couldn't recover. Honestly seems negligent to me not to. On several occasions they opted to spend the ~$1,000 to recover their family photos, business documents, or other important files and were always extremely happy when it worked. These were not exceptionally wealthy people either.

sconescone 3y ago

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psyclobe 3y ago

Great read

busterarm 3y ago

This takes me back. Way back in like 2004-2006 or so I was working a computer repair desk at a big retailer and did a ton of side business. The side business honestly paid more than my job did. I would travel around NYC fixing things for mostly clueless people. People attempting to screw me on payment was common. The frequent move was to offer drugs or sex in lieu of payment after the work was done. The only sane response to this though was to tell them to just pay what they could afford and then get out of there as fast as possible. I had a few rich and famous clients. It was a fun time, but I got tired of taking long, extended train rides after a full day of work only to do more work and have a long train ride home.

wkat4242 3y ago
I did that too, worked for a computer shop and often got hired by clients. Never got offered sex on lieu of payment unfortunately, I would have taken it :) Nor drugs but I don't do those.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  It's almost never the attractive, talented, or regularly-tested-for-STIs-and-STI-free ones that offer the sex...
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Understood but I always use protection anyway. And when I did this kind of work I was a shy horny teenager so I wouldn't have cared about looks :P
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something that will be a problem for you, then it's not going to be as appealing as it initially sounds. On the (maybe) plus side they won't make you wear a condom. On the negative side, they didn't make anybody else either... Much better (IMHO) to put in the time and effort to cultivate a loving long-term relationship with a good partner.

squokko 3y ago

Ironically enough, one of the rich people who did not have a large household staff was Steve Jobs himself. One thing that money often seems to buy you is a bunch of strangers in your fucking house and he hated that.

mproud 3y ago

Close. GSX, not ASX.

ErneX 3y ago

I used to fix computers for doctors when I was a teenager, this brought some memories, fun read.

kls0e 3y ago

fairly entertaining morning lecture :-) many thanks

qingcharles 3y ago

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequency, and the inkjet released its entire content of magic smoke, which incidentally was enough to fill a very large penthouse apartment. I ran her out of the apartment, then I remembered it was still plugged in, so I had to stagger totally blind through the apartment to find the damned thing and unplug it lol That job put me in contact with a criminal gang who went on to supply with me dozens of GBs of stolen hard drives that I used to create what was probably the largest warez FTP in the world and a dump site for most of the top pirate groups like Razor 1911.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Wild read!
KennyBlanken 3y ago
Just a PSA (not trying to harp on parent commenter, just taking their comment as an opportunity to soapbox) but never, ever, every go into a room or building that is getting smokey from something burning. It's how you N+1 the casualty/death count in a fire. Unlike the heroes in films and movies, you don't have Plot Armor. It is incredibly common that people think they can just go back in holding their breath or stay low or cover their mouth with their clothing like in hollywood...but they take a bit of a breath, cough, and suck in lungfuls of the smoke, and are almost immediately incapacitated. A lot of things, like PVC for example, release chlorine gas when they burn, which immediately turns your lung mucus into hydrochloric acid. All the other things in the smoke is incredibly bad for you both short and long-term, too. The smoke is also flammable. Opening a door lets in oxygen, and oxygen + fuel + heat = a fuckton of heat, very suddenly. I really wish that writers would suffer legal liability for shit like showing people entering a building with their shirt over their mouth - it's where people get the idea that they can so that sort of stuff.
- 3y ago

2143 3y ago

The experiences of people who meet a wide range of customers are always interesting. I had read a similar story of a man who worked at car showrooms of various brands (such as Honda, Toyota). > Look it's important that if you see Oprah, you act normally, please don't ask her for an autograph or a photo I never understood why people drool when they see celebrities. Movie actors, musicians, sportspersons etc — I like watching them when they're in a movie, or when have sung a song, or when they're on the field playing, but I never really had any inclination to actually meet them. Even if I did meet them, I wouldn't have anything useful to say.

TylerE 3y ago
The trick, and I say this as someone who's gotten to meet a fair number of musicians, including some semi-famous ones, is that they're people. Plus they're also huge music nerds. Just mention Cheap Trick and you're in... (Although at the same time, do know how to read the room - it's not that hard to tell when someone just wants to be left alone. Those genuine interactions are better than any autograph or selfie.
- bookofjoe 3y ago
  Sort of related: I was friends with a world-famous surgeon at UCLA, chairman of the urology department (he married an ex-girlfriend whom I stayed on good terms with). His patient roster was a who's who of Hollywood: Groucho Marx, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, etc. He told me the secret of getting these famous people to follow his orders: he always included something in his post-op instructions that would force them to do something they'd much rather not do. Making them compliant created a kind of master-servant relationship with the surgeon as master; these megastars were so unused to following orders that the harsher the Rx, the more they regarded the doctor as a demi-god.
blkhawk 3y ago
I think its a para-social thing. We are not build to see somebody everyday in a certain context and only passively interact with them. This crosses a couple of wires I think. I have similar desires to not meet them but its mostly because I do not care that much and they probably have enough randos bothering them. I would probably dive under the table as well as in the article :)

PeterStuer 3y ago

Tools specially for Mac repair. Anyone else remember the "case cracker"? It was a very broad hinged wedge you had to use to open up the original all-in-one Macs (with the 9" B&W screens). There were some capacitors in those machines that blew out frequently. Fantastic computer for its time though, if you could afford it.

gamache 3y ago
Don’t forget its two friends — the long-handled Torx and the screwdriver with the 10M resistor and the alligator clip, to bleed the charge out of the CRT. Fun machines. I still have two SE/30s, including my upgraded SE from childhood!

aschla 3y ago

As someone who has lived here for going on 15 years, he really unintentionally nailed the whole spectrum of experience of living in Chicago. And “Live in a city for any amount of time and you'll start to develop a subconscious odds calculator.” was very relatable.

odysseus 3y ago

Great read, this guy is going on my daily RSS feed list.

hoc 3y ago

Finally a comprehensive guide on how to arrange ones home/life once that YC deal goes through. There's also the tip on bus station prey, should it not. Great read (seriously).

neilkk 3y ago

That isn't what "door to door" means though.

caseyf 3y ago

If you liked this, you might like the novella "Laserwriter II" by Tamara Shopsin. https://www.theverge.com/c/22713440/the-worst-thing-on-earth-laserwriter-ii-fiction-excerpt https://www.theverge.com/c/22713440/the-worst-thing-on-earth...

jpm_sd 3y ago
This was a delightful piece of writing, but it's hard to see how it turns into a novel. Kind of a documentary style? The author is a member of the semi famous Shopsin family https://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/shopsins/ https://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/shopsins/

tambourine_man 3y ago

> I was directed to park across the street and told even though the signs said "no parking" that they had a "deal with the city". He said he didn’t have a car a few paragraphs before. Has he earned enough by then?

4gotunameagain 3y ago
He then proceeds to specify that it was a borrowed one
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  Yeah, just got to that part.

louwrentius 3y ago

- great anekdotes - excellent writing - small observations that imply a ton loved this writeup

comprev 3y ago

Great read and a trip down memory lane for me as I cut my teeth being a field engineer for a small IT support company in London for 2 years was back in 2005.

febeling 3y ago

Reminds me that what we really crave is authenticity. It’s the number one rule for writing. Also shows why AI content is so pointless.

Aachen 3y ago
Interesting remark to me. I was thinking the whole time what parts may be made up. I'm a really bad judge of sarcasm, let alone actually dishonest content. In the end I'm inclined to believe the whole thing, but it's not particularly authentic, just quite different from my life and therefore interesting. (Some parallels also, as I've done computer fixing for some friends of friends.)
- infertainment 3y ago
  How does interesting and original work compare to AI-generated and most human-generated material? Maybe we could say rather than being merely plausible that it is surprising in plausible ways.

kuon 3y ago

I did that for about 10 years from 2000 to 2010. The part about "being part of the furniture" is really on point. It is incredible how little they think of you. This has a side effect, they thrust you. Ebanking logins, emails, personal conversation, photos... You get it all. I was always very discrete and never did anything "bad", but there were moments when I was treated like a nuisance where I really wanted to. There is also a few times when you find out that the husband or wife is cheating, that is always very difficult to handle especially when the other one is here with you saying how great their partner is.

yardie 3y ago

One of the things I miss by reading this post is how empowered CSRs were back in those days. Today, everything is scripted and highly metricized. Going through the customer service line today will get you the run around and lot of toothless solutions. No one can do anything and even "escalation" mostly means handing you off to another powerless CSR to continue the runaround. This post reminds me of my youth. I had a Mac and the motherboard died. AppleCare told me it was out of warranty. But I had the receipt of the extended warranty we bought from Sears. They wanted me to pay for the repair and send them the invoice. I told the Sears CSR "this is my schoolwork computer and we don't have money like that. Which is why we bought this warranty. Because you told us it would take care of any problem with our Mac." That CSR jumped on a 3-way call with me and AppleCare. I think they did a purchase order but all I remember was it was handled and the Apple repair tech was there the next day. Just the thought of someone even having that much autonomy nowadays is completely foreign.

steveBK123 3y ago
It's interesting how rapidly the beancounters quashed CSR autonomy and put everything behind inscrutable ticketing systems. Even at relatively small companies, with internal tools and support teams this happened pretty rapidly in the 2010s. I've worked at all sorts of small companies with as few as 500 employees where we initially just had a list of "guys" to call for different issues.. and eventually some Big Company MBA Type would come in and kill it. Next thing you know there's 5 different ticketing system queues obfuscating the fact that it's still the same 1-2 guys supporting each queue. Turnaround time got worse, users were unhappier, support team was unhappier, we had to pay SaaS companies for their ticketing system, and probably hire a Global Head Of __ to run the whole thing. BUT.. we now could measure all the misery! Incredible!
- pseingatl 3y ago
  Thank McKinsey.
sq_ 3y ago
It does seem like Apple and a few other companies still manage to do a half-decent job today. It takes a lot of running around through the phone tree and putting up with people going through the long script of solutions you already tried, but if you can get a few rungs up the escalation ladder you get to people who can make things happen, still. Definitely not the same as it was, though :(

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

Nice writing. I like it. I'm actually thinking about getting a training of electronics technician because I want to learn the soldering/desoldering part of hardware hacking -- which I believe any serious hacking may need such skill. But then the job prospect and salary are not really convincing...

arcfour 3y ago
Why not do it as a hobby instead? It's quite popular these days.

tomcik 3y ago

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Artyrogers 3y ago

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LoryGilman 3y ago

[flagged]

MorrhinKev 3y ago

Talk about tech gone wild! Those 90s Mac repair tales are straight out of a heist movie, complete with inkjet smoke bombs and an accidental dive into the piracy deep end. Makes today's IT work look like a walk in the park!

YumanLi 3y ago

Imagine being a Mac fixer turned pirate king - only in the 90s, right? From smoke-spewing printers to brushing shoulders with the digital underworld, those were the days of real tech adventures. Makes you miss the wild side of tech.

_fat_santa 3y ago

From the entire article, this paragraph stood out the most to me > The golden rule that every single one of these assistants warned me about was not to bother the husband when he gets home. Typically these CEO-types would come in, say a few words to their kids and then retreat to their own area of the house. These were often TV rooms or home theaters, elaborate set pieces with $100,000+ of AV equipment in there that was treated like it was a secret lair of the house. To be clear, none of these men ever cared at all that I was there. They didn't seem to care that anybody was there, often barely acknowledging their wives even though an immense amount of work had gone into preparing for his return. You often hear anecdotes of the rich family that's got it all yet the kids are all screwed up and the marriage is on the rocks. For me this paragraph offers a glimpse into why that's the case and why people say "money can't buy happiness". I don't know I may be way off base here but that's the impression I got.

Stampson_Gerhig 3y ago
I spent a year working for an A/V installation company - whole house integrated sound systems, media servers, security, etc - and their clientele was solely multi-millionaires of various nationalities. My job was primarily as a programmer for the control systems these installations used so I spent the majority of my working day in clients homes. They were without exception the most sterile, vapid, soulless environments I had ever been in. They had everything in them but nothing felt homely. Another thing was the lack of responsibility for cost. You know the line from Arrested Development “it’s one banana, Michael, how much could it cost, $10?” Well, this is their real lives. I was asked to visit a client to arrange a laptop for them to use for day trading. I turn up, start going through options for MacBooks, their pros/cons, costs of models vs features and the guy turns to me, exasperated, and goes “I don’t care about the cost, just give me what I need”. Ok, I say I’ll let my manager know what I picked. I find out a couple weeks later, he’s actually rented a Bloomberg terminal for thousands a week. He then gets me back in to set the thing up. I’m sat at this machine, on the phone to Bloomberg being asked by them for the clients usernames and password, me leaning over to them to ask for the details, being told, relaying that back to Bloomberg, about three times. Until, exasperated, he takes me notebook and writes down every username and every password for every account and service he used. Bloomberg, banking, email, everything. It was worth poor old me having that to not bother him any more than necessary. Plenty of experiences from that too brief 12 months but was a massive eye opener to a side of society that I’d never have got the chance to see. It’s a different world, but not entirely sure it’s one I’d want to live in.

Nserita 3y ago

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Jonmade 3y ago

Reading these stories about fixing Macs in the 90s is like unearthing a treasure trove of tech lore. Who would have thought that a day job could lead to encounters with high society, complete with inkjet printers turning into unexpected smoke machines, and a twist of fate leading to a starring role in the world of digital piracy? It's fascinating how these tales intertwine technology with the thrill of adventure, almost like living in a real-life spy novel

SoKamil 3y ago
Did you use LLM to write this comment? It felt a little bit unnatural to my eye so I put it into gptzero and it spit out a 91% of probability that this was generated.
- AtiRadeon9700 3y ago
  Lol, I had the exact same thought. There's something.. Off about its writing style; reminds me of marketing copy or 'HR speak'.
- hexagonwin 3y ago
  Had the exact same thought as well. It just.. kinda feels off.
- someguydave 3y ago
  is he engagement farming?

MyreyDebi 3y ago

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Rubbieday 3y ago

These anecdotes from the front lines of 90s tech support are nothing short of astonishing. It's a vivid reminder of how the tech industry, often seen as mundane or straightforward, has its share of wild, almost unbelievable stories. From tech mishaps turning into hazardous situations to an inadvertent descent into the world of digital piracy, it's a stark contrast to the current, more sanitized world of tech support and IT.

Nserita 3y ago

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urbandw311er 3y ago

This was superb. Thanks to the author for sharing.

Sharitemo 3y ago

The tales from the 90s of fixing Macs are like pages from a tech thriller novel. Each story is a mix of high-end luxury, unexpected social encounters, and a descent into the murky waters of digital piracy, all wrapped up in the day-to-day life of a computer technician. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a past where the lines between technology, adventure, and moral ambiguity were constantly blurred.

ftio 3y ago

I was once an Apple Certified Technical Consultant, mostly doing managed services-type work for small businesses in NYC but would sometimes get the call to go to someone's house, usually an owner or other senior-level exec at one of these businesses. These were serious houses. Huge houses out in the Hamptons or four-story brownstones on the Upper East Side. One call, I was doing work to resolve an issue with a customer's network, which consisted of a number of AirPort Extremes. One of these was in their bedroom, under a bed. For fifteen minutes or so, I lay on my belly, working away at my laptop trying to reset the godforsaken thing, when I spotted a small chair a few feet away. Pulled it over, and began working in a much more comfortable seated position. As I grew comfortable, I'd lean back on the back two legs of the chair and kind of rock back and forth. As I'm doing this, the owner pops her head in, saying, "Hey, anything I can get--oh my god please get up." Turns out the chair was pre-federal (ie from the early 1700s) and was probably worth at least my annual salary. Fortunately no damage, but it scarred me. I was not invited back to do repair work at that house.

waltwalther 3y ago

This is a great read! I am fifty years old now, but for many years during my twenties I supported myself as a one-man Mac/PC repair shop...in a college town. I made house calls almost everyday, and every evening was spent in my home shop working on drop-offs. I got to meet a ton of different people. There were the computer-illiterate business owners with ridiculous expectations; the lonely middle-aged guys with esoteric hobbies who talked my ear off; the single moms on a tight budget raising three kids; the ultra rich people wanting to keep a ten-year-old PC alive; the author who had lost years of data and would pay "whatever it takes"; the religious father with gigs of porn; the helpless college students whose lack of basic computer knowledge actually impressed me....and more This was like a trip down memory lane. Great read. Thanks for sharing!

scho3000 3y ago

Surprised to see Wiha mentioned here. The founder lived with his family in my hometown and my mother worked in his household back in the 60s at the age of 14/15. Definitely different times back then! Edit: Did not follow Wiha and didn’t know that it became this big! When reading it, I only remembered stories of my mother how she took care of the children and was totally blown away to have such a personal connection from a seemingly unrelated story.

klevo 3y ago

Great read!

Perepiska 3y ago

Friend of mine got link to this thread and failed to figure out that there is a link under thread name :( Underline will be highly appreciated. Thank you.

joanne123 3y ago

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