Tales from Walmart, Episode 1

An old lady and her husband walk into the store and, when I find them, they are looking at laptop computers. This is always a harrowing experience since, no offense meant to my older friends, the elderly (at least in this area) have proven resilient to being educated about the workings of computers. This is an unfortunate state of affairs for two reasons. Firstly, one should never be afraid or even apathetic about learning new things. Too often people hide behind the excuse of being "too old" to learn and even, to some degree, that it is acceptable to be ignorant about technology because they're "just no good with it." I find this unusual because no one ever boasts about being ignorant about anything else, but I hear this all too often in the electronics department. People wear their technological ignorance out in the open without shame. Not that they should be ashamed of it, of course, but it should certainly be something they should be excited to overcome. Knowledge is its own reward, after all. Secondly, when you're looking to purchase something, you should never be completely ignorant about it. This puts you at the mercy of the salesperson who, at best, knows nothing about your needs or what you want to help you make the right decision and, at worst, is looking to eke as much money out of you as possible.

So, this old lady is looking at laptops and I approach fully expecting to begin my usual Computers 101 class. However, when I approach and ask her if she needs anything, she surprises me by asking: "Is this the only quad-core processor you have?"

I am relatively blown away by the question. Usually my older customers don't even know what a processor is, let alone a "quad-core processor." At this point, I am cautiously optimistic and I inform her that it is not, but it is probably the cheapest one and she would be looking to spend another $100 to $200 more for the next option up. She seems thoughtful about this answer for a moment before saying:

"Oh, ok. I really need a quad-core processor. I play a lot of Farmville."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My immediate thought was, "I wasn't aware you needed a computer to play Farmville. Can't you run that on a graphing calculator?"