....and her mouse never broke again.
We had a contract to supply 3 techs plus a supervisor onsite at the HQ of a large international corporation. I was one of the techs. It wasn't a bad gig, except for that one attorney who insisted we fix an HP LaserJet (this was before personal laser printers; pretty sure it was an LJ III) that had been dropped and had a bent everything. I turned him over to the supervisor, and that's pretty much that story, except for the part that no, we didn't fix that printer.
I should also mention this supervisor was hired for this position, and as part of the deal to hire him he was being given formal CNE training. Ain't gonna lie: This rubbed us three techs, who were doing the training on our own, pretty bad, but he really wasn't a bad guy. It did take us a bit to warm up to him, and the story I'm about to tell helped.
This story involves a user who needed a new mouse about every five or six weeks. It would just stop working and of course she had no idea what was happening to it. 107
This was back in the mid-nineties, folks, and mice (mice with a ball and other moving parts and stuff) weren't as cheap as they are now.
One day I was helping a user near her, and every so often I'd hear a bang or thud or smash coming from Mouse Lady's desk. This was an open-floor plan department and I saw what was happening: Every so often she'd pick up the mouse and pound it on her pad. The look on my face must have said something because the person I was helping said, "She does that all day."
I went back to our little corner of HQ and was telling the guys about it, when the supervisor told us to let us know the next time she needs a new mouse--he'll take care of it.
And he did. He took her a new mouse one day and returned with a disassembled mouse, saying something like we shouldn't be hearing from her in awhile. Of course, we asked what he did and he showed us.
He pointed at the logic board for the mouse and pointed at some random component, grinning. "See the value on that impact capacitor?" he told us. "You only see something that high on something that had a couple of bricks dropped on it."
I've been dying to try that on someone since, but alas. No one else is in the habit of slamming their mouse on their desk anymore.
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