Like oil and water, I.T and retail do not mix. I.T provides the equipment and services that allow people to download 68Gb’s of porn onto one external hard-drive. Retail provides that friendly one to one experience that makes it easier to find equipment to download that porn faster. It should be an excellent combination except for one small problem.

People who know anything about computing, I.T or anything related to that field hate retail with a passion.

To illustrate my tedious and badly thought out point, let me set the scene a bit for you:

I’m writing this article while working in the appropriately named “I.T Shop” in the students union of Cardiff Uni. It’s like a ghost town since pretty much every student has gone home for the summer and it’s a perfect time for me to rant. The I.T Shop sells laptops, computer accessories and also offers repair, upgrade and rental services. We also sell stationery. In terms of quantity, the I.T shop sells more stationery than any other product.

Here is where the problem arises. Customers believe that repairing a laptop is a lot like buying a ring binder. You decide what you want,  pay for it and that’s it. What they don’t realise is that we are not wizards of technology.

If you give us the go ahead to replace your hard-drive and install Windows on to it at 3:10pm, it won’t be ready at 4:00pm when we close. Let me break down the process for you:  Windows takes at least 45 minutes to install, another 15 minutes to install drivers and up to 30 minutes to install the other crap you wanted. OH WAIT, you forgot the hour it takes to copy your shitty music back onto your shitty laptop from the backup server. That is at least two and a half hours, not the magical 50 minutes you think it takes. The thing is, we explained to the customer at the time that it would definitely not be ready by closing. Yet she calls us up dead on 4:00pm like some impatient sex line user. This is a true case and to highlight what kind of customer has these unrealistic expectations of us, this is a picture of the underside of her laptop:

She told us she put it on an iron. As you can see it’s melted right through to the motherboard. What’s more magical is that it still works. If a customer can melt a laptop, she cannot be expected to understand ANYTHING about ANYTHING.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I.T Technicians have social skills, they can talk to customers without any problems. What we all hate is the fact that virtually every customer thinks the following:

1. They are always right about everything (This will turn into another article).

2. Fixing a laptop never costs any money and takes little to no time at all.

Once customers realise both these points are fictitious, retail and I.T can get into that committed long term relationship. Until then, they will never be together.