Genre: Humor/Memoir
Description:
“Working with the general public can be a nightmare, especially in the
world of computer repair. In The Customer is Always Wrong, StJohn
Lennox-Kerr exposes the true horrors of customer service with a collection of
painfully hilarious, and sometimes downright infuriating, stories from his time
at a small computer repair shop.
Just don't lose your faith in humanity!”
Author:
I was unable to find any information about the author other than what
the book says, that he is an IT professional who spent a few years about 20
years ago working in a computer repair shop.
Appraisal:
This book consists of short tales of
experiences the author had working at a computer repair shop. Each section is a
paragraph or two, roughly a hundred words or a bit less. Around the size of
this review. (Okay, maybe more like between half to a third the size of this
review.) It chronicles everything from people using the parking lot in front of
the strip mall the shop was located in as a bathroom to multiple unsuccessful
attempts to get something for nothing from the store to how clueless people
often are about their computer or life in general. While the author eventually
makes it clear that the vast majority of the customers he dealt with were
reasonably nice and no problem to take care of, by the time you reach that
point you can’t help but wonder how any town can have as many idiots as the one
he worked in apparently does.
Most of the stories managed to get a laugh
or chuckle out of me or in some cases a shake of the head, struggling to
believe how the customer thought anyone would believe them or go for what they
proposed. Sometimes I questioned the truth of the story as well. For example
one claimed that a woman came into the store carrying a fire hydrant, set it
down, said “it’s yours now,” and walked out. A fire hydrant? Really? Maybe it
really happened. I’m not sure how much a fire hydrant weighs, but suppose there
are people tough enough to carry one out there, assuming they came across one
that wasn’t connected to the water pipe. It just seems unlikely. Or maybe he
didn’t mean fire hydrant, but got the term wrong. Maybe fire extinguisher.
Still strange, but more believable. I’m not sure, but my alternative
possibility seems possible since this book had a ton of proofreading errors
(missing words, wrong words, words that should be two words made into compound
words like onetime). At times a fun read, but the proofreading issues and a ton
of short repetitive stories offset much of the fun.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
Some adult language.
Format/Typo
Issues:
Way, way, way too many issues with proofreading misses. It surpassed
what I would find acceptable in a book twice as long.
Rating: ***
Three Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count: 25-30,000 words
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