Most of you have heard of Best Buy’s so-called “Geek Squad.” You know, the guys who drive around in stupid looking black and white VW Beatles, wearing outfits no honest geek would be caught dead wearing. They need a change. I worked in front-line tech support for a year. Know what the single biggest problem from clients I ran across was? Sheer moronacy and lack of the ability to do things for one’s self. My computer has been running without a virus scanner for a few months. I also am being silly and trusting my router’s firewall to protect me and only that firewall. I visit some awfully dark corners of the web now and then. I installed a virus scanner the other day, and voila! No viruses! How many times do people have to hear “don’t open email attachments that you don’t know about from people you’ve never heard of before” before they finally do as told? I’ve heard too many people just go and get a new computer every so often rather than just run Ad-Aware once or twice. I’ve personally helped a girl several times who has computer issues because she falls for AIM viruses every single time, clicks on silly banner adds, etc. Every time I’ve ran a virus scan on her system, it’s returned over 400 results.

So, here’s how Best Buy is going to solve the problem. They’re going to start issuing LARTs to their Geek Squad members. If a customer should call for something that cannot be honestly answered by RTFM, or their something is honestly broken and they’re persuing a sensible troubleshooting process, then that’s alright. Otherwise, they get LARTed. They will be first LARTed with a foam clue-bat so they get the concept. After then lusers will be LARTed with what the tech support rep. thinks it fitting, ranging from the clue-whip, to the clue-by-four, the Iron Clue Maiden, to my favorite, the Mighty Cluehammer +5. I can see the following scene happen sometime next week:

Tech support: “So, what don’t we do?”
Luser: “Errrr…. I…. I forgot.”
*Tech Support gives Luser 40 lashes with the clue-whip*
Tech support: “So, what don’t we do?”
Luser: “DON’T OPEN UP STRANGE EMAIL ATTACHMENTS!!!! AIEEEEEEEEE!!!!”

I think this may work out just right.

Categories: Geeky Peawee