Applied Philo

Two summers ago, I worked as a technician in the local computer store, Computer Service Center, in my old hometown. They paid me seven bucks an hour. I lightened their summer load, and let the regular technicians have more time off. I really had no problem with the arrangement. The technicians were friendly folk, and after the initial culture shock (a KID works here now?) we got to know one another fairly well.

During the summer, I had conversations with the owner, one Lonny Terry. Now, people's philosophies on life have always interested me. Lonny revealed a part of his, one day, when I had made a conversational faux pais with a customer. "Life is a sale," he told me, "you have to be the marketer of a product, an idea, of yourself."

He was talking about my failure to convince a customer to remain in the store by answering their question too, uh, bluntly. "When you want a job, what do you sell? Yourself. You've got to make it clear that it is in another person or institution's interests to have your help," he continued, "and there's truly no other human or polite way to treat a person." He was right. It would be quite depraved to, like a child, demand that another pay heed to my wishes without offering something in return. Children demand; adults trade. A trade not in the sense of a phony car salesman, but as an honest human being, treating another person as a human being, laying one's cards on the table and playing fair, shaking hands.

That summer, I learned the cool art of trade.

During the summer, I consulted the alpha tech for advice, one Brian Fleming. Now, people's philosophies on life have always intrigued me. Brian revealed a part of his, one day, when I asked for his help repairing a Packard Bell. Anyone who has worked on computers has thanked their respective deity for the implosion of the company. Packard Bells have always been notorious for their cheapness and the difficulty one must go through to repair them.

The particular model was shaped like a rhombus with the larger base sitting on the table, obscuring the motherboard. I had spent around fifteen minutes (a long time, in a computer store) trying to push a wire into the oblique end, failing. He walked over, took one look at the problem, ushered me aside, and set to work. Instead of daintily inserting his hand into the case, he gave it no such delicacy. Brian jammed his hand into the computer. He didn't worry about the grime on his hand or the pain from the casing. In under a minute, the wire was in place, and Brian turned to me, and said,

"Sometimes, you've just gotta do it."

I like that philosophy. So, one summer ago I worked as a research assistant for a Clemson University computer science professor. I just did the work, and I made it applicable to any computer science experiment. It was an experience in applied philosophy.

--Corey