LaslowNET Technical Rants, HOWTOs, and Writing

Tales from Support: The Bird Lady

In my previous post about some of the various rules for On-site visits, I touched on the idea of bringing extra clothes and gloves. There's a good reason for those rules, and the best example is the Bird Lady.

It wasn't even a proper call out - just a 'can you pickup this lady's computer on your way back to the shop because she doesn't have a car' deal. No big issue, we did it all the time. So I scribbled down the address, finished the call I was on, and drove over.

I pulled up to a row of townhouses, found the correct one, and knocked on the door. The scene that followed could have been right out of a Hitchcock movie.

The floor, and most of the furniture, was covered with newspaper and bird shit. Not just a light smattering, either, but a solid weeks-worth. As the Bird Lady lead me to the living room (using the term loosely), it got worse. When we arrived, a quick count showed at least seven bird cages, all of them open, and no fewer than twenty birds. There may have been more, but I was more focused on grabbing the computer than getting an accurate count.

Popping the cables off the back of the system, I wrote down the Bird Lady's contact information on a service tag and high-tailed it out the door, muttering something about having to get to another call. Only after putting the system, and myself, in the truck, did I stop to survey the situation.

My shirt, pants, and shoes were covered top-to-bottom with dust, bird feathers, and other material I didn't wish to think of. The floor of my truck, on the passenger side where I set the computer, was no better. Upon returning to the shop, I grabbed a screw driver and a few cans of compressed air, blasted the hell out of the inside of the case, and then did the same for my truck. Todd watched in amusement, and laughed when I said I was taking my lunch to go home and shower. He laughed harder when I requested dust masks and danger pay, but that call established rules #3 and #5 - always have a change of cloths, and bring protective gloves.

Unfortunately for me, after we had serviced the computer, I had to take it back and re-connect it. My comments about how bad the dust and other material inside the case fell on deaf ears. We worked on her system several more times over the following months until it finally died of heatsink asphyxiation (feathers clogged the CPU fan and heatsink, cooking it so badly the motherboard warped), but she still refused to do anything that might make her little pets uncomfortable.

To this day, houses with more than two birds still give me the uncontrollable need to take a shower.