One of my pain-in-the-ass customers came in today to give me a cake that his wife made for me. It was to thank me for helping him with his antivirus program. He had called me yesterday for help on reinstalling the software, so I typed up 10 easy steps and emailed them to him, hoping to save the time of actually walking him through it. Well, of course that didn’t work. He got stuck on step 3 because I didn’t mention in the instructions the screen in Winzip that asks if you want to by Winzip. *sigh* Anyway, I was on the phone with him for about an hour leading him through reading my instructions. A sample from our conversation:

Him: Ok. What do I do now?”
Me: Well, we’re on step 5, which says “Click OK” so you have to click OK.
Him: I just click OK?
Me: Yes.
Him: With the left or right mouse button?
Me: Left mouse button.
Him: Ok. So click OK?
Me: Yes.
Him: *click* It didn’t do anything.
Me: You clicked on OK with the left mouse button and it didn’t do anything?
Him: Oh wait… I clicked with the right mouse button.
Me: *sigh*

It might have been faster if I’d crawled to his house on my hands and knees and did the installation myself, blindfolded. So, the cake was a thank you gift. It was nice too… some kind of vanilla layer cake with strawberry stuff in it. It had “Thank you!” written in green icing on top. I hope that some day I marry someone who knows what a pain in the ass I am and to whom, so she can make apology gifts for them. 😛