My favorite bit, "Threats quickly lost their power when you realized nobody at any point had asked your name or any information about yourself. It's hard to threaten an anonymous person."
Exactly, they wouldn't complain themselves or even make the initial call themselves, they'd have a personal assistant do it, and whether or not they do is arbitrary because they won't check, not important.
> As smartphones became more of a thing, the number of "please spy on my teen" requests exploded. These varied from installing basically spyware on their kids laptops to attempting to install early MDM software on the kids iPhones. I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up".
> I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something and I would end up on the evening news. But I was also a little short that month for rent so what can you do.
I love this. It's written for the hell of it. Not to get likes, or people to subscribe, or buy a product or show off technical prowess. It's just writing to share - Oldschool Internet content.
[Not that there's anything wrong with the things I mentioned - I just mean it's refreshing to see something not written with an obvious motive. Gah. I still sound like a wanker.]
Great read. I was wondering why it felt so familiar to me and it dawned on me it’s like a cross between my past jobs of internal it support and ems. I miss going into houses and businesses around my area on a daily basis, and driving around all parts of the city. I remember back when I first transitioned into an office job how isolated it made me feel from community. If the pay was remotely equivalent I’d consider dropping my remote sysadmin gig for a job like the author’s.
Oh cool, I’ve been meaning to check this out ever since I saw her do a reading from a new book of hers. Her family runs a pretty well known restaurant in the city with a 900 item menu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsin%27s). Maybe she talks about in the book. Thanks for the reminder.
> When I got out and realized it was dark, I started to accept something bad was likely about to happen to me.
This was the only part that really got me. I have visited a few major US cities but never really lived there, but now I’m wondering how common it is for American city dwellers to be afraid of the dark.
Entirely place dependent, these days (30-50 years ago, crime was seriously pretty bad). I live in a huge American city, and I have virtually no fear of personal or property crime when I’m out at night. But in many cases, if I shifted my path a half mile in a different direction, it’d be a different story.
Like anywhere, I would suppose, being aware of your surroundings, keeping your wits and not making yourself into an easy target will go a very long way to keeping you safe.
Its very important to know the area. Because I grew up in Detroit I know where to go and where not to go. Downtown the billionaire Dan Gilbert owns a huge chunk of buildings. He has his own security force and cameras literally covering every square inch. It's worth it to know exactly where those cameras end because the criminals do and that is where you are most often to encounter them.
I cannot speak to other areas but in Detroit cameras have made a huge difference. In Gilbert's case he wants the area around his buildings safe. Detroit police are understaffed but Gilbert's cops augment the force and work closely with them. It matters to them if someone gets mugged or assaulted and they have the manpower to keep up. I've left bars at 2 am and walked to my car feeling very safe. I cannot say that about SF or Chicago anymore.
Detroit police have launched Operation Greenlight and placed cameras with cooperating merchants mostly gas stations where a high levels of crimes occur. Part of the agreement with the merchant is they promise a high level of response when there's a crime in progress. Detroit dropping down the national list on carjackings I believe is a direct result of Operation Greenlight.
It's also possible that Detroit's rankings on carjackings are an artifact of other cities being at the epicenter of the Kia phenomenon. Certainly that's been a major factor in Chicago carjackings.
I thought Kia's were stolen off driveways when the people were asleep? Detroit I believe invented modern day car jacking. Someone comes up to you as you're filling your car
at the pump, sticks a gun in your face, asks for your keys and drives off.
Or someone bumps into you at a light or stop sign. You get out to inspect the damage and exchange insurance cards and again they pull a gun and take your car while their accomplice speeds off in the attack car.
Last I checked St. Louis was the current king of car jacking although Detroit is still sadly is in the top ten.
The epicenter of the Kia thing is Milwaukee (I think that's where it started?). The thing about Kias is that they're burner cars. It's not that people are carjacking Kias, it's that they're using burner Kias to carjack other cars.
I think we're going to learn in the next couple years that the Kia thing was a much, much bigger problem than we appreciate even now. I think it's a very big deal.
I’m not sure this is true anywhere. I live in a moderately sized UK city, and have done most of my life. There’s nowhere in the city that I would intentionally avoid at night due to the risk of bad things happening to me, many decades ago a friend and I were mugged by a large group of teenagers, and that was in what’s widely considered a good part of the city. At the same time I’ve walked through what are considered rough areas late at night on the regular and never had anything more threatening happen than drunks stumbling about the place.
The only thing I can think of here is that I’m a fairly heavyset 6’1” male, who wears chunky jackets most of the time. Maybe trouble sees me coming and decides it’s not worth the hassle (which is for the record hilarious to me, I’ve been in two fights in my life, and got my ass kicked both times).
Even by day it can be harrowing. By far the sweatiest walk home I’ve ever had was the 20 minute walk carrying home my 5K iMac through the outskirts of a less than fancy neighborhood. They wrapped it in nondescript cardboard to conceal, but the shape unmistakably said “new iMac walking”. It didn’t help that it was a warm day and those 5Ks are deceptively big and heavy. Shouldn’t have cheaped out on calling a cab.
I once bought a new laptop and walked out of the shop realising I had walked into a riot of Millwall football fans facing down Greater Manchester Police’s finest (including dogs and horses).
I and the laptop got out unscathed thanks to me knowing shortcuts and back streets.
I'm quite unafraid to roam around my own neighborhood, even though it's quite rough, because it's densely populated, and so there are plenty of other locals passing by at any given time. The scary thing about nighttime in a big urban area, is when you're in a strange neighborhood and you're not known as a local, and you don't know the gang scene there, or ethnic culture is different or whatever. So yeah, carrying around a conspicuously expensive box of electronics will get you noticed in those situations.
I'm fairly standoffish and I'm wise to a lot of the soft street scams that individuals tend to use. So I'm not likely to attract someone who will bully or mug me or rough me up. I've literally never had it happen to me.
One time I did make a lot of friends on the bus ride home, when I'd been to Fry's Electronics to purchase a large and ostentatious Corsair computer enclosure. It was literally nothing else but the enclosure, so no appreciable electronics, but there was no bag large enough to conceal it, and so the other passengers sat up and took notice of that. Of course, that was in daytime, going through some relatively calm neighborhoods.
I'm usually found on the way to or from a train station around here; train stations are fairly well-regarded as patrolled and safer than the surrounding environs, so it's sort of like getting home free when I end up there.
mad perspectives. being a tech frontliner you saw so much. in fame, in lives of excess. amazing hearing from your perspective how the wealthy think and live. one of the best articles i've read on the web in a long time, thank you for writing it.
There’s a certain type of person who looks for enterprise type it contractors over Craigslist. A bizarre combination of money and insanity that usually makes for a fun time.
I just didn't get the part where he says teens are mean to him, but the only example is where a teen made his job easier...
> I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up".
> I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up.
Mean teens and the bribing teen are separate anecdotes. Most teens are unhappy with a stranger rifling through their phone, especially somebody installing spyware. Those are the mean teens.
Thought provoking article. I like to think I acknowledge the people I call for services, at least to the extent they want the conversation. I'm sure there are many more in daily life I don't notice but whose work makes my world go around.
The anecdotes about the rich in Chicago match the ones I hear about the rich in California. The divide is nearly complete.
Agreed. The divide might be real, but when I've done this sort of work I want to be viewed as the furniture by most people so I didn't have to spend effort on awkward conversations. And I never even dealt with rich people like this.
Building a list of good, reliable service people that one can go to in the future takes effort. Some want the minimum, some like a little give-and-take. Getting that balance is tricky. Becoming known as a good customer can help in some cases both for later work and referrals to other specialists.
This was eerily similar to my experience about 5 years prior. My experience was in Australia on the software side. Down to the same equipment, same style people, same style interaction with apple.
Yeah that was a great anecdote, I was going to post the same story! Parent pays you to install spyware , rich kid pays you not to install spyware, double payment for nothing.
Pretty sure a friend around 2014 had one of these callouts for their Mac Pro tower in NYC. This article just reminded me that even happened. thanks for writing!
>I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something
I'm not sure why he didn't take the $500 and set up the software on the little punk's phone.
How does a teenager have access to $500 they haven’t spent and can spend without their parents knowing (especially the kind of parents who’d want tracking on their kids phones)?
My relatives regularly gave me cash for holidays and birthdays. And if your parents ever gave you cash for anything it's easy enough to not spend all of it and save some.
I probably usually had >$300 in my bedroom as a teenager (and more saved in a bank account).
Also the kid can lie about what they spent it on. Or steal their parents'/siblings' money. Mistakes that lead to important life lessons.
Possibly dealing drugs (or prostitution), hence not wanting parents to access their messages? The highschools in my small UK city that are known for having drug problems are the ones with the richer kids.
It seems like poor kids have to get in to crime first to afford drugs, richer kids can just use their pocket money. YMMV.
What a great story.
This is the kind of writing I encourage many of my retired friends to try. Start by a few short anecdotes and stories of things or people you remember.
Even though we are not Cicero, our history has changed dramatically in our life times (maybe it was always like this?)
Many of them have lived thorough some interesting part of history and witnessed social and cultural, technical, change that will be very interesting in the future. Imagine the characters, the anecdotes, the humor, the disaster that retired: teachers, farmers, mechanics, doctors, and so on, can tell.
Hah! I did the same thing for a few years in the early 2000s, but I wasn't affiliated with Apple and just did upgrades, fixes, etc. I rode my bike all over town and charged by the hour. I had all my tools and wallet of CDs for all kinds of stuff with me. Good times!
> Often I'd show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever.
Why not suggest sending the drive off to a recovery service? They certainly existed back then, wealthy clients could afford it, and you could add a nice markup.
Yeah. Not photos at the time but I’ve lost inadequately backed up hard drives at a time when online backups and external drives weren’t really a thing. Annoying but not something I was going to spend thousands of dollars to try to get recovered.
Same, personally. But I also did on-site tech support in the same era and would always give customers the option if they had a drive I couldn't recover. Honestly seems negligent to me not to. On several occasions they opted to spend the ~$1,000 to recover their family photos, business documents, or other important files and were always extremely happy when it worked. These were not exceptionally wealthy people either.
This takes me back. Way back in like 2004-2006 or so I was working a computer repair desk at a big retailer and did a ton of side business. The side business honestly paid more than my job did.
I would travel around NYC fixing things for mostly clueless people. People attempting to screw me on payment was common. The frequent move was to offer drugs or sex in lieu of payment after the work was done. The only sane response to this though was to tell them to just pay what they could afford and then get out of there as fast as possible.
I had a few rich and famous clients. It was a fun time, but I got tired of taking long, extended train rides after a full day of work only to do more work and have a long train ride home.
Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something that will be a problem for you, then it's not going to be as appealing as it initially sounds. On the (maybe) plus side they won't make you wear a condom. On the negative side, they didn't make anybody else either...
Much better (IMHO) to put in the time and effort to cultivate a loving long-term relationship with a good partner.
Uhm if you're fixing PCs as I did you don't end up working for meth-toothed people :P
Maybe not the most attractive people no, but regular middle-class people at the very least. Especially when you were fixing macs which were even more premium priced here in Europe back then than they are now. I fixed all sorts of stuff but I would not have marginalised clients.
I guess it's also why I didn't get such offers :P I didn't charge a lot so people could pay my fees easily.
In fact I think sensitivity to paying money (or receiving financial incentives) is more of a US thing. Only last month I spoke to a fairly rich American guy because a friend asked me about a problem he was having with his WiFi. I gave him some advice and he offered me money to come to his place and sort it out myself. I said no, because I already have a day job (enterprise architect) and I just don't want the responsibility. Once I start taking money it comes with expectations to show up if something goes wrong. So I help friends for free but that's it (and he was only a friend of a friend). I don't mind giving some advice but actually going there and taking care of his stuff is a bridge too far. I have zero entrepreneurial spirit anyway, I'm a typical "salaried employee" and happy with that.
The guy was a bit offended, he said that in the US everyone would be eager to do some work for money on the side and here he's always having issues getting IT help. His way of finding such help is apparently talking to friends and offering them money then. It surprised me a bit. I don't think many people here would be too eager to do that.
> he said that in the US everyone would be eager to do some work for money on the side and here he's always having issues getting IT help
Well that’s just bollocks. Perhaps young teenagers are typically okay with earning a bit or forced by their parents to help but it certainly is not the cultural norm that grown ass salaried professionals jump at the chance to earn $50 sorting their neighbors WiFi out.
He just thought he’d found another sucker and was annoyed when you turned out to have a backbone, because you are absolutely right this guy would become what is often called in the trades a ‘sinsya’.
‘Sinsya’ fixed my printer my WiFi doesn’t work as well. Did you break it?
‘Sinsya’ fixed my WiFi my washing machine doesn’t do the hot cycle properly. You were messing with the ‘wires’ weren’t you?
Etc etc fucking etc.
If he called a professional company to help he’d have no issues ‘here’ but he’d also have to pay the going rate.
What he means is back home he has a network large enough to exploit and doesn’t have to worry about learning how to do it or pay a professional.
Comment OP here. Most of the people who were my clients were artist types who moved to the public transportation fringes of Brooklyn where rent was the cheapest (at that time). They were barely skating by and usually had pretty roachy apartments.
A large percentage of these folks were very into drug use... in a way that it hindered achieving the goals that they moved to NY to accomplish.
I took on these clients specifically because my store was going to fleece them and not fix their problems whereas I could and reasonably quickly. As broke creatives with broken computers their lives were likely to spiral into a dark place otherwise.
I dealt with way more desperate situations than middle-class people with regular computer problems. This was the "I pirated Adobe Creative Suite and have a deadline but the virus has taken over my computer" era.
Ahh I see. When I was young, Holland was in a very different place. Much less income equality so almost everyone was middle class and pretty respectable.
> he offered me money to come to his place and sort it out myself
This reminds me of a personal experience I had.
Many years ago I was a graduate student at a US university (I'm not from the US).
There's this study room that I used to study from. There was this much older (??) woman who sometimes studied from there. One day out of the blue she asked me if I was good with statistics. I was, and clarified a couple of quick questions that she had.
Then she started trying to set up an appointment with me for a specific day, for two hours, and asked me how much she would have to pay me to teach her statistics.
Wtf?! I was so taken aback I didn't even know what to say. I declined, and just left.
It was weird to me for several reasons: this was the first time somebody straight up offered me money to teach them something. The way she asked me was uncomfortably formal, and if my statistics tutoring doesn't satisfy her then who knows she might sue me. And I'm not even sure if it would have been legal for me to accept money in exchange for this ad hoc service, as I'm not a US citizen.
In my home country (relatively big country in south Asia), if a fellow student has difficulties with certain topics, people (well, friends or friend of a friend) who have a better idea with the subject try to help them out, for free. There is not even a question, or even a thought about monetary reward, from any of the parties involved.
Maybe that's why there's a lot of entrepreneurship in America? If so, then this particular exchange just felt so odd.
> A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment).
There was a thing that made the news maybe ten years ago in Washington, maybe a little more. Woman offering "a year of oral sex" for a truck. "No funny stuff, no relationship, nothing else. You give me the truck, we meet once a day, I give you oral. On day 365 I give you oral and you give me the title."
212 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] threadThat's the thing. Once they realise that they have to put effort in it, the threats stop.
> As smartphones became more of a thing, the number of "please spy on my teen" requests exploded. These varied from installing basically spyware on their kids laptops to attempting to install early MDM software on the kids iPhones. I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up".
> I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up. She nodded and told me she would check that it was working and "call me back if it wasn't". I knew she was never going to check, so that part didn't spook me. I just hoped the kid didn't get kidnapped or something and I would end up on the evening news. But I was also a little short that month for rent so what can you do.
[Not that there's anything wrong with the things I mentioned - I just mean it's refreshing to see something not written with an obvious motive. Gah. I still sound like a wanker.]
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602581/laserwriterii
This was the only part that really got me. I have visited a few major US cities but never really lived there, but now I’m wondering how common it is for American city dwellers to be afraid of the dark.
Like anywhere, I would suppose, being aware of your surroundings, keeping your wits and not making yourself into an easy target will go a very long way to keeping you safe.
Maybe cameras still have a chilling effect on law-abiding people but criminals have since wisened up to it.
Detroit police have launched Operation Greenlight and placed cameras with cooperating merchants mostly gas stations where a high levels of crimes occur. Part of the agreement with the merchant is they promise a high level of response when there's a crime in progress. Detroit dropping down the national list on carjackings I believe is a direct result of Operation Greenlight.
Or someone bumps into you at a light or stop sign. You get out to inspect the damage and exchange insurance cards and again they pull a gun and take your car while their accomplice speeds off in the attack car.
Last I checked St. Louis was the current king of car jacking although Detroit is still sadly is in the top ten.
I think we're going to learn in the next couple years that the Kia thing was a much, much bigger problem than we appreciate even now. I think it's a very big deal.
The only thing I can think of here is that I’m a fairly heavyset 6’1” male, who wears chunky jackets most of the time. Maybe trouble sees me coming and decides it’s not worth the hassle (which is for the record hilarious to me, I’ve been in two fights in my life, and got my ass kicked both times).
There’s plenty of cities worldwide with rough neighborhoods where I would absolutely not want to be lugging apple branded stuff through at night.
I and the laptop got out unscathed thanks to me knowing shortcuts and back streets.
Fun times.
I'm fairly standoffish and I'm wise to a lot of the soft street scams that individuals tend to use. So I'm not likely to attract someone who will bully or mug me or rough me up. I've literally never had it happen to me.
One time I did make a lot of friends on the bus ride home, when I'd been to Fry's Electronics to purchase a large and ostentatious Corsair computer enclosure. It was literally nothing else but the enclosure, so no appreciable electronics, but there was no bag large enough to conceal it, and so the other passengers sat up and took notice of that. Of course, that was in daytime, going through some relatively calm neighborhoods.
I'm usually found on the way to or from a train station around here; train stations are fairly well-regarded as patrolled and safer than the surrounding environs, so it's sort of like getting home free when I end up there.
I just didn't get the part where he says teens are mean to him, but the only example is where a teen made his job easier...
> I was always uncomfortable with these jobs, in large part because the teens were extremely mean to me. One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say "I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up".
> I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct. I took the $500 and told the mom the tracking software was all set up.
Awesome article
The anecdotes about the rich in Chicago match the ones I hear about the rich in California. The divide is nearly complete.
> Like all of my bosses early on, his primary quality was he was a bad judge of character.
Just an example about a parent requesting tracking be installed on her daughter's phone
"One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say 'I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up'."
I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part because she was correct."
Part of what made this such a fun read is knowing it's 100% all true.
I'm not sure why he didn't take the $500 and set up the software on the little punk's phone.
I probably usually had >$300 in my bedroom as a teenager (and more saved in a bank account).
Also the kid can lie about what they spent it on. Or steal their parents'/siblings' money. Mistakes that lead to important life lessons.
It seems like poor kids have to get in to crime first to afford drugs, richer kids can just use their pocket money. YMMV.
Because you shouldn't spy on people?
i felt as if i was teleported to the OPs job
> Often I'd show up only to tell them their hard drive was dead and everything was gone. This was just how things worked before iCloud Photos, nobody kept backups and everything was constantly lost forever.
Why not suggest sending the drive off to a recovery service? They certainly existed back then, wealthy clients could afford it, and you could add a nice markup.
I would travel around NYC fixing things for mostly clueless people. People attempting to screw me on payment was common. The frequent move was to offer drugs or sex in lieu of payment after the work was done. The only sane response to this though was to tell them to just pay what they could afford and then get out of there as fast as possible.
I had a few rich and famous clients. It was a fun time, but I got tired of taking long, extended train rides after a full day of work only to do more work and have a long train ride home.
Never got offered sex on lieu of payment unfortunately, I would have taken it :) Nor drugs but I don't do those.
And when I did this kind of work I was a shy horny teenager so I wouldn't have cared about looks :P
Much better (IMHO) to put in the time and effort to cultivate a loving long-term relationship with a good partner.
Maybe not the most attractive people no, but regular middle-class people at the very least. Especially when you were fixing macs which were even more premium priced here in Europe back then than they are now. I fixed all sorts of stuff but I would not have marginalised clients.
I guess it's also why I didn't get such offers :P I didn't charge a lot so people could pay my fees easily.
In fact I think sensitivity to paying money (or receiving financial incentives) is more of a US thing. Only last month I spoke to a fairly rich American guy because a friend asked me about a problem he was having with his WiFi. I gave him some advice and he offered me money to come to his place and sort it out myself. I said no, because I already have a day job (enterprise architect) and I just don't want the responsibility. Once I start taking money it comes with expectations to show up if something goes wrong. So I help friends for free but that's it (and he was only a friend of a friend). I don't mind giving some advice but actually going there and taking care of his stuff is a bridge too far. I have zero entrepreneurial spirit anyway, I'm a typical "salaried employee" and happy with that.
The guy was a bit offended, he said that in the US everyone would be eager to do some work for money on the side and here he's always having issues getting IT help. His way of finding such help is apparently talking to friends and offering them money then. It surprised me a bit. I don't think many people here would be too eager to do that.
Well that’s just bollocks. Perhaps young teenagers are typically okay with earning a bit or forced by their parents to help but it certainly is not the cultural norm that grown ass salaried professionals jump at the chance to earn $50 sorting their neighbors WiFi out.
He just thought he’d found another sucker and was annoyed when you turned out to have a backbone, because you are absolutely right this guy would become what is often called in the trades a ‘sinsya’.
‘Sinsya’ fixed my printer my WiFi doesn’t work as well. Did you break it?
‘Sinsya’ fixed my WiFi my washing machine doesn’t do the hot cycle properly. You were messing with the ‘wires’ weren’t you?
Etc etc fucking etc.
If he called a professional company to help he’d have no issues ‘here’ but he’d also have to pay the going rate.
What he means is back home he has a network large enough to exploit and doesn’t have to worry about learning how to do it or pay a professional.
And yes the "sinsya" thing was exactly what I'm worried about. With money come commitments.
Not sure why you're being downvoted because I really appreciate your insight.
A large percentage of these folks were very into drug use... in a way that it hindered achieving the goals that they moved to NY to accomplish.
I took on these clients specifically because my store was going to fleece them and not fix their problems whereas I could and reasonably quickly. As broke creatives with broken computers their lives were likely to spiral into a dark place otherwise.
I dealt with way more desperate situations than middle-class people with regular computer problems. This was the "I pirated Adobe Creative Suite and have a deadline but the virus has taken over my computer" era.
At least that was definitely my experience with gabber back then.
This reminds me of a personal experience I had.
Many years ago I was a graduate student at a US university (I'm not from the US).
There's this study room that I used to study from. There was this much older (??) woman who sometimes studied from there. One day out of the blue she asked me if I was good with statistics. I was, and clarified a couple of quick questions that she had.
Then she started trying to set up an appointment with me for a specific day, for two hours, and asked me how much she would have to pay me to teach her statistics.
Wtf?! I was so taken aback I didn't even know what to say. I declined, and just left.
It was weird to me for several reasons: this was the first time somebody straight up offered me money to teach them something. The way she asked me was uncomfortably formal, and if my statistics tutoring doesn't satisfy her then who knows she might sue me. And I'm not even sure if it would have been legal for me to accept money in exchange for this ad hoc service, as I'm not a US citizen.
In my home country (relatively big country in south Asia), if a fellow student has difficulties with certain topics, people (well, friends or friend of a friend) who have a better idea with the subject try to help them out, for free. There is not even a question, or even a thought about monetary reward, from any of the parties involved.
Maybe that's why there's a lot of entrepreneurship in America? If so, then this particular exchange just felt so odd.
I don't know what to conclude from all this.
There was a thing that made the news maybe ten years ago in Washington, maybe a little more. Woman offering "a year of oral sex" for a truck. "No funny stuff, no relationship, nothing else. You give me the truck, we meet once a day, I give you oral. On day 365 I give you oral and you give me the title."