Unit6 Get Me The Geeks!
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麦天It's hard to say exactly when it happened, but sometime during the past ten years, most of us involuntarily surrendered a big chunk of our lives to computers, and to other networking devices that contain computer chips. We're talking laptops, desk tops, cell phones, BlackBerrys, PDAs, and remote controls -- anything that needs to be programmed, requires technical support, and can crash, die, or merely freeze.
As Steve Kroft reports, that always has a way of happening at the worst possible moment, and for most of us there is only one solution: get me the geeks!
We are becoming slaves to our own technology - addicted to and dependent upon all sorts of beeping, flashing gadgetry that is suppod to make our lives easier.
But it has become so complicated to t up, program and fix, that most of us don't know how to do it, giving ri to a multi-billion dollar rvice industry populated by the very people who ud to be shunned in the high school cafeteria: geeks, like Robert Stephens.
"It takes time to read the manuals. I'm gonna save you that time cau I stay home on Saturday nights and read them for you," Stephens says, laughing.
传统花灯"You and the rest of the geeks," Kroft remarks.
"There's millions of us out there across the country," Stephens says.
And 12,000 of them work for Stephens, the founder and chief inspector of "Geek Squad," the tech support company he founded 12 years ago while he was still in college and sold in 2002 to Best Buy.
Whether his geeks are making rvice calls in their Volkswagen Beetles or toiling over the 4,000 frozen, infected computers that pass through a facility near Louisville every day, they all wear the same uniform - white shirts, white sox and black clip on ties. It's a look Stephens borrowed from NASA engineers.
"It looks a little weird walking down the street, 'cuz people think we're gonna hand out bibles. But when you e like 20 of us walk into a bar and start you know ordering beers,
it looks like an FBI raid," Stephens tells Kroft.
He says the biggest complaint about tech support people is rude, egotistical behavior and the uniform is designed to impart a do of humility as they work their wizardry.
"I mean, there's usually some frantic civilian at the door pointing at some device in the corner that will not obey," he explains. "And we've gotta make n of it. And, you know, hygiene provides bonus points if I don't smell bad. I mean, literally, that was my business plan. Just be nice and fix it."
Asked if people are grateful, Stephens says, "Oh, of cour. If you look at like the focus groups or whatever, people will say, 'Savior,' and, 'They saved me,' and, 'They saved my data.'"
"This stuff's irreplaceable. Your master's thesis that you've been working on for six years that you, that you promid yourlf you'll back up next week, we have saved more MBA degrees in this country than anybody," he adds.
Stephens says the company has become indispensable. "Becau I don't think that the pace of innovation is going to slow. I don't think people realize the Internet revolution hasn't even really started yet," he explains.
A dozen years ago, when Stephens started the Geek Squad, most people ud IBM computers, and primitive Microsoft software; the Internet was still a novelty. Today, thousands of products and providers allow you to watch TV shows, make phone calls, download music, print color photos, and dictate letters without leaving your desktop, if you have the time, the patience, the aptitude, and the available brain cells to master yet another software protocol.
David Pogue, who has authored computer books and writes a weekly technology column for The New York Times, says the revolution is still a work in progress.
"Part of the problem, when it comes to computers at least, is that there are so many cooks for what you are using. Microsoft made the operating system, some company in Taiwan made the equipment, you're running software from a company in California, and n
ow you're installing the driver for a digital camera from a fourth company. You know, what are the odds that all of the are going to work flawlessly together for all 400 million people who have PCs? Zip," Pogue says.
"So, what do you do?" Kroft asks.
"You get unhappy. You develop software rage," Pogue says.去除青春痘>菇类
厌倦是什么意思>形容母亲的词
Anyone who has ever called a toll free help line knows what David Pogue is talking about, and it doesn't em to make any difference whether you are talking to someone in Delhi or Dallas.
刘一山Software companies will try and convince you it's a hardware problem and hardware companies will do the rever. According to one survey, 29 percent of all callers swear at their customer rvice reprentative, 21 percent just scream. The rest presumably are too exhausted to do either.
