On Friday I booted up my computer at work just like I do every day. Click-click-click-click. Pause. Whirrrrr. Pause. More clicking.
Yep, the hard drive is quite obviously going bad, though it hasn’t given up the ghost just yet. Everything seems to function fine, except for the intermittent clicking and whirring. Having had a hard drive failure at work about 4 years ago (and losing half my data because we didn’t have backups — long annoying story), I immediately called the help desk.
Six hours later, a tech showed up. He took off the case, listened, and said “it’s your hard drive.” Which I already knew, seeing as how I am not completely computer ignorant. He then asked if I had backed up my data. I responded that I had backed up some of it, but that it’s not all covered because we (STILL) don’t have a great backup solution. He helpfully pointed out that I could go buy a memory stick for about $30. “Yeah, I’d need about 5 of those,” I said, because I have 25 GB of data on my computer at the moment.
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Yes I do,” I responded, ignoring for the moment the fact that the dude was outright questioning my intelligence about my own freaking computer.
“Show me,” he said.
It took a lot of restraint to not say something very rude. Instead, I simply went for the properties and watched as it counted, and counted, and counted, and settled just below 25GB of data.
I couldn’t believe the attitude of this guy. He never apologized. After that he simply smirked and said I’d get a new computer on Tuesday.
So now it’s Tuesday, and a new computer is sitting on the floor of my office. Sitting, sitting, and doing nothing while my current computer with the failing hard drive continues to click and whir and click and whir. Why, you might ask? Because the person who delivers the computer is not the same person who installs the computer. I could probably install it myself, but then I’d get yelled at and would probably have to fill out all sorts of paperwork that would cause me to forego getting any service should something else go wrong with the new computer.
Ah, your government at work.
(hey, I see letters to type in below! yay!)
That is crazy. I have to admit the first thing I thought of was “hello…USB drive….$255 will get you a whopping TERAbyte”.
As in lots ‘o space and less than a new desktop or notebook.
You know they started doing a backup service earlier this year. Did you sign up for it?
Stupid rude tech, though. You should slam them on their survey.
Darn work computer techies! Don’t worry, it happens in non-government offices too!