86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,16
I scrubbed them as best as I could then covered the stains with a throw pillow.
After dressing myself and putting on a new white limo-driver shirt and tie for the day I discovered the only good news in the last twenty-four hours; my collar actually did cover the neck wound.
Downstairs in the kitchen it was almost six o’clock. Koffman and Francisco were not yet awake so I made a pot of strong coffee.
Back in my room, sitting at the beast’s blank screen, I tried again in vain to recover my work. Nothing. Zip.
I phoned my biker pal Eddy Dorobek, the guy who’d sold me his five-year-old laptop for a hundred bucks. Eddy was a house painter. He was always up early slapping color on the walls of his upscale West Side customers’ homes. He confirmed my computer’s death then made a last-ditch recommendation: that I call the technical support 800 number at Microsoft.
After punching my way through their phone tree and ten minutes on hold, and another three fingers of whiskey, I got plugged in to Ramesh, a “second-tier specialist.” “No problem, sir,” Ramesh reassured me in his Hindyass-half-English accent: “Our rate is $3.95 per minute for service. How would you prefer to pay for this assistance: debit card or credit card?”
That afternoon the kindness of David Koffman prevailed. After I explained the loss of my work and my computer’s death, he gave me a seven-hundred-dollar cash advance from the inch-thick bills on his money clip. An hour later I had a new PC.
The rage of losing my sixty pages of work, then being subjected to Microsoft’s absurd “customer support” at the hands of Ramesh, twelve thousand miles away, had made me insane. I decided to put my PC to work. My first order of business was a letter to an asshole named Bill Gates.
Mr. Bill Gates
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
Hiya Bill:
Just a note to say atta boy and keep up the good work.
I’m a believer in capitalism and I know you are too. As of today I’ve decided to sign up and join you in your struggle for the rights of the bankers, Dubai oil sheiks, and instant payday advance broker shops everywhere. We both know that there are plenty of bloodsuckers and sniveling lowlife losers out there. Like you I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion: They get what they deserve.
Bill, there are two slogans that just this morning I taped to my bathroom mirror. I wanted to pass them on to you—words that I will try to live by day in and day out using your example. I was hoping that you and your guys up there smoking cigars in the THINK TANK just might get a kick out of them. #1: WHEN IN DOUBT CHARGE MORE. And #2: NEVER GIVE A CHUMP AN EVEN BREAK.
That brings me to reason number two for me sending you this letter. I’ve got to hand it you, Bill. In my book when it comes to wham, bam, thank you ma’am, most American companies shiver like drowned puppies compared to an outfit like Microsoft. When, just recently, I had occasion to speak with one of your offshore customer support techs regarding my computer’s software collapse and death, I really learned a thing or two about the old now you see it, now you don’t. After over an hour with your guy on the horn, at the end of a conversation, when nothing on my machine had changed, I actually discovered myself becoming physically sick when your trained tech—in his giddy and nearly inscrutable Hindi accent—presented me and my ATM card with the charges for his services: seventy-one minutes @ $3.95 per minute: two hundred and seventy-one bucks. That phone call left me speechless and I found myself contemplating a big sip of drain cleaner.
There are some people who would say that you are to the computer industry what Idi Amin was to population growth in Uganda. Let’s not mince words here. To me any man who will whimsically crush a groveling call-in client or the tiniest software competitor at the drop of a hat is a man to be reckoned with. Personally, I’m hoping that someday your company will expand to the publishing industry and gobble up a firm like Random House. You and the guys could put out a pamphlet on corporate beheading or maybe a how-to chapbook on holding back a grin while encountering an amputee. I read quite a bit and I can pretty much guarantee you that