[beakersloco]

This is mostly a rant just to get it off my chest ...

I work on pcs for people (by word of mouth) recently a good customer of mine refered a woman to me and before the woman called me the good customer warned me that the person could be a little hard to get along with etc and not to let the person talk me talk me into discounting the work I would do for them because they were tight with thier money. Plus that I should not feel bad saying no to thier requests.

I talked to the woman on the phone and because she stays about 40 mins away I met her in a store parking lot that was halfway between our homes. When I met the woman she did seem a little surprized that I was the one she was supposed to meet.

well I ended up looking at 2 of their computers.I stuck out with the first one and could not fix it but gave her some options on what could be done with the parts.On to the second pc .the could fix themselves by running their recovery disks but their was data they needed backing up and part of the problem was the system was no longer recognizied thier cd burner afer they had gotten a virus and

They didnt give me the recover disks for the computer so I have to meet them. Well I decided to go on an back up thier data. some pictures and some music, I normally try not to be nosey but while I was copying the music off thier drive I noticed the title to a song ..

This song whose title i wont repeat here uses a particular racist slur. I listened to a 30 sec of the song and was a little mad about.

At this point what would you have done if you in the course of doing some work for a person, to find something racist or demeaning to your race or religon in thier house or computer etc.

Before I found the "racist material " I was not going to charge for all the work I had done because it had not fixed the problem, but afterwards I am going to charge her my normal rate because I did do the work as promised but it just didnt fix the problem. On the 2nd computer I backed up her data and all it needs is a simple reloading of the operating system because some drivers have gotten screwed up but she know how to use her restore disks but didnt want to lose her data. I could charge her and do it for her... she will pay me to do it I just told her I didnt like to take peoples money for simple things that they could do for themselves. So in a day or 2 I will be meeting her to return her 2 computers and get paid for the work I did do.

Im just curious to what others would have done .....

 

[unggio]

i would act according to the ethics used by lawyers and doctors.

doctors swear an oath to treat all patients regadless of race, color, gender, religion and etc...

same for lawyers

if you promised to charge her ONLY if you could fix the problem.
then you should do what you promised, charge only for what you could fix even if she happens to be a racist. for all you could know, maybe her teenage son downloaded that song.

if it is your normal business policy to charge for your services and time, regardless of whether or not your fixing was successful, then do just that.

basically pretend you never knew about the song, and if you ever knew WITHOUT A DOUBT that she is a racist, then simply tell her you don't do business with bigots.

 

[Captain Ray]

I am not really getting what the problem is.

A racist song? People may or not be racist because of a song on their computer. It's none of your business really, you performed your job... backing up the data files... your interest in their lives seems a bit nosy to me.

If you look deeply enough into my hard-drive you may or may not find pictures of transvestites. Personally, I don't prefer transvestites.. I have no idea how those pictures of a woman with a penis got on my computer.. but there they were!! LOL.. Sent to the recycle bin, then deleted.. but I am sure a pro could find them on here somewhere...

I think you are making a big deal out of nothing. You don't have to work for them again if there money is no good to you. Somebody who is less judgmental certainly will.

Raymond

 

[Mark S.]

When I run into folks who don't like me because I'm not a WASP, I don't get angry but sometimes I do get even....

Here's an example from an uncle of mine who happened to have been an officer on a destroyer, and had more than a few Navy jokes to tell.

An American cruiser was on a port stop in Barcelona. A wealthy Spanish lady sent a note to the American consulate that she would like to invite two officers from the cruiser to dinner. She also mentioned in her note that the officers shouldn't be Jewish. She didn't like Jews.

The next evening two black junior officers from the cruiser showed up at her door in full dress uniform.

The woman sputtered: There must be some mistake!

One of the officers responded, "no ma'am, Captain Cohen doesn't make mistakes."

 

[bd]

I AGREE WITH RAY!
How or why that data is on their computer is really none of your business when you get down to it.

If you are going to be offended by certain things that you may run across you need to tell them up front that you won't work on computers with material on them you consider offensive.

Now if you run across something illegal or dangerous...like kiddie porn, that's another story.

Give the money to a charity.

bd

 

[einheit 13]

Depends on how bad you need the money I guess. I have turned down many jobs because of my own beliefs, but have gone against them also because beliefs can't pay the bills. But what ever you decide, always be fair and never try to justify shoddy work.I would not confront this person as a bigot, it could start an issue that you may not want. I don't see anything wrong by listening to the song, but if it didn't help fix the problem with the computer, you violated thier privacy. That could come back to get you or morph into something bigger. Besides that would also be discrimination, kinda, if you are not a small business, you can't justify a complaint on that issue by "the right to refuse service to anyone". Just meet with the clients first, then make your decision based on "feel".

 

[beakersloco]

To be honest with you guys/gals I have never looked at a computer that I could not fix. My policy is to look at the PC I charge $10 for this. Which I dont charge if I end up fixing the PC. This covers my time to look over the pc (it also stops people from getting me to diagnose their issue for free then fixing it themselves) and then I recommend whether or not I can fix it and what the cost will be .. This will be the first time what I recommeded a fix that did not work. Basically my fix this time was to reload windows but the pc still has the same issue after the reload and then I find out that its still under warrenty at some place out of state and that they were simply too cheap to ship it back to the company. I make it clear to all that I am not perfect and 90% of the pcs that come to me leave fixed and that I expect to be paid for the work performed even if it is not that fix(Normally I will charge half price but in this instance I went above and beyond trying every trick I know and put in the extra time trying to solve the problem because I hate to feel like a issue has me beat but this one beat me)

I ultimately agree with you ray because i know I have also found stuff I didnt "want" on my pc because either I did a bulk download from someone at a lan party or online and I many times didnt look at every single file at the time of download because I normally am pressed for time and just get what ever I can or a buddy sends me a song or file of interest that I never deleted.

Once I had a good nights sleep to think about it I also came the the conclusion that maybe the womans grandchild might have downloaded the song or some one sent it to her as a joke ...... Plus I agreed to do the work . She seems nice enough .. like I said in the first post this was mostly just to rant .

Also I was not nosey I was burning the data to cd and since thier was 1.2 gigs of data I had to separate it so I could fit it to 2 cds and at the end of the list I noticed the title to this 1 song. I did not search for it the title of the song stood out. (then again i might have been nosey because the song title made me curious to what the song was about so i listened to it)And even after finding the song i did not search for any other songs I simply finished making the 2 backup cds and then shut down my pc after verifying that the disks were good burns.

 

[one-eyed-fatman]

When I run into folks who don't like me because I'm not a WASP, I don't get angry but sometimes I do get even....

Here's an example from an uncle of mine who happened to have been an officer on a destroyer, and had more than a few Navy jokes to tell.

An American cruiser was on a port stop in Barcelona. A wealthy Spanish lady sent a note to the American consulate that she would like to invite two officers from the cruiser to dinner. She also mentioned in her note that the officers shouldn't be Jewish. She didn't like Jews.

The next evening two black junior officers from the cruiser showed up at her door in full dress uniform.

The woman sputtered: There must be some mistake!

One of the officers responded, "no ma'am, Captain Cohen doesn't make mistakes."

When I heard that story it was six black junior officers. Mark S did you lose some of your black junior officers?

 

[Mark S.]

Well modern U.S. Navy cruisers don't have that large a complement of officers. I think it's 24 for most of the guided missile cruisers, so I doubt that you would find one with six black junior officers.

 

[Captain Ray]

BD agreeing with me is either a sign that I am losing my mind, or that he is coming to his senses, or there really is some common ground.

Racism seems to be a popular topic around her lately. It is hard to talk about.. because emotions start running wild.. but it needs talking about.

If these people really are racist, then it is only sensible that you would want to stay away from them. But just based on one file you found on their computer, that could have been downloaded from lime-wire after searching for "naughty white girls" is hardly proof positive.

Maybe they really are racists... so what?! It doesn't really affect you. Let society ban them from normal discourse.. You and I need not be bothered by these trivialities.

Raymond

 

[Lumberjack98]

I am not really getting what the problem is.

A racist song? People may or not be racist because of a song on their computer. It's none of your business really, you performed your job... backing up the data files... your interest in their lives seems a bit nosy to me.

If you look deeply enough into my hard-drive you may or may not find pictures of transvestites. Personally, I don't prefer transvestites.. I have no idea how those pictures of a woman with a penis got on my computer.. but there they were!! LOL.. Sent to the recycle bin, then deleted.. but I am sure a pro could find them on here somewhere...

I think you are making a big deal out of nothing. You don't have to work for them again if there money is no good to you. Somebody who is less judgmental certainly will.

+1 - It's too hard to judge a person just on one thing (or even several for that matter).

You're thinking about this too hard.

 

[einheit 13]

+1 - It's too hard to judge a person just on one thing (or even several for that matter).

One can’t judge a man’s character
by how many tales he has sung
When the truth lies in his actions
and not the work of his tongue

 

[JimLongley]

I already do.

 

[Meta4]

I work in the IT industry as a network security engineer, but used to do "small time PC repair" as a side job back in high school. I've seen more than my fair share of beat up, messed up, screwed up machines in my life.

Working on a customer PC as a technician is somewhat like working on a customer's financial statement as an accountant. If it isn't blaringly illegal, it is in your best interest to pretend you didn't see it. If it isn't worth telling the police about, it isn't worth thinking about.

Let's continue with this analogy. Imagine you're a private CPA (accountant) and you're doing tax work for a local pastor. What would you do if you saw that he spent $3,000 at a sex store over the past financial year? The correct answer: Absolutely nothing. It's none of your business what your customer does, so long as it isn't super-illegal (like the kiddy porn mentioned earlier). Just do your job and move on to the next customer.

I'm not trying to be offensive, but I would be extremely offended if I were your customer and found out you were going through my files. Seeing "RacistName.mp3" is one thing, but playing it is quite another. It'd be tantamount to me hiring a moving company to help me move to a new house, just to find out an employee of that company had been rifling through my sealed boxes "just out of curiosity."

Being that I work in Network Security, I might have a more stringent view of "morality" when it comes to data privacy. However, if one of my employees was caught looking through one of our users' private data (outside of their regular job duties), they'd be fired on the spot.

-James

 

[Shnozzer-xd-9]

Man screw all that "just ignore it" crap. Lets assume that this lady was 100% racist. I'd either a.) tell her to piss off and not call me again or b.) really hose her comp up (discreetly of course) and tell her to send it in to the manufacturer.

This is the beauty of running your own business/side job, you have no one higher than you so you can tell someone to kiss your ass anytime you want. I don't recommend doing it too often but in certain cases it must be done.

I don't know how many of you on this forum have seen Clerks but I highly recommend it. This whole thread reminds me of a discussion the two main characters have about contractors working on the Death Star in Star Wars. I'm not gonna explain it here but I recommend you rent it sometime. It shows how annoying customers can be at times and ties in really well with this thread.

 

[willbond]

One racist song? Assuming to know the owner's attitudes based on the mere presence of an offensive song is kind of a stretch IMHO. Even if they are aware of its presence, they might be laughing at it instead of with it.