Heal thy laptop
I had a customer the other day who had lost all her work accounts because her computer was damaged in a flooded house and she couldn't be bothered to back anything up. Turns out, chatting while recovering data, that she was a therapist. Oh yes, says my cow-orker, what kind of therapy do you do? Reiki, homeopathy, hot stones, healing hands, accupunture... the list went on and on, pretty much everything you can imagine that doesn't work. She made her entire living selling this sort of stuff to people. The straw that broke it for me was her latest offering: teddy-bear reiki. She would take a customer's teddy bear and could perform energy healings on it with the paying customer absent.
I found myself treating her cordially, and as helpfully as possible but wanting to just get rid of her as quickly as possible. I wasn't prepared for how strongly I felt. I mean, I've always hated this sort of thing, but rarely had to deal with it in person with anyone I don't know well talking about their belief in one or other specific whimsy. I felt angry out of proportion. Or maybe I didn't - maybe suppressing my disagreement was only forced by my being in my work environment. I helped get some of her data back but was secretly pleased that she'd lost most of it. We told her what companies she could use if she wanted professional data recovery services and how much she could expect to pay, and I was glad that she wouldn't be keeping quite all of the money she'd weasled out of people over the years.
I found myself treating her cordially, and as helpfully as possible but wanting to just get rid of her as quickly as possible. I wasn't prepared for how strongly I felt. I mean, I've always hated this sort of thing, but rarely had to deal with it in person with anyone I don't know well talking about their belief in one or other specific whimsy. I felt angry out of proportion. Or maybe I didn't - maybe suppressing my disagreement was only forced by my being in my work environment. I helped get some of her data back but was secretly pleased that she'd lost most of it. We told her what companies she could use if she wanted professional data recovery services and how much she could expect to pay, and I was glad that she wouldn't be keeping quite all of the money she'd weasled out of people over the years.