I've been working with computers officially since 1997, but lately I've just lost the desire to deal with them at all.
Customers in general have become real assholes as of late, people arguing about every single item on an invoice, bitching about rates, and refusing to pay bills. I might be going to court with one right away, which royally sucks, but I might not get paid any other way.
Maybe it's just the economy going down the toilet, but lately people have begun to try and bargain just about everywhere! I heard a guy in the grocery store bitching about prices to the poor cashier! If you dont like the prices, dont buy the product. Dont put it in your cart, and then yell at the poor teenage girl running the till.
I had a guy in the store here today bitching about the shop rate of $75/hr to fix his cell phone. Yes, we took it apart and resoldered a speaker connector. Minimum charge = 1 hr. If you like, I can break it again, and you can go on your way. If you bring something in to get fixed, and it gets fixed, you should be prepared to pay, especially since you were told upfront that it's out of warranty and it's going to cost you.
In general, I've just been getting more and more frustrated with people in regards to tech work. I made an estimate for this client of $5500 for the project, not including materials. His invoice was under $4000, and he's still fighting with me about it! He mailed out a payment "that he thinks is fair".. you cant do that.
You dont go to a restaurant and order food, then eat it, and then refuse to pay full price because something wasnt what you expected. You see the price right next to the food when you order. If you get it, and it's not good, you send it back and get something else. You dont eat it all, and then refuse to pay.
So certainly when someone does you a service for a pre-agreed upon rate (with a contract and everything), and the invoice is less much less than the quote, why would you be such an asshole and refuse to pay?
I'm just sick to death of dealing with people like this, and I'm about ready to just give up on computers completely. Since I left my sysadmin job, I have hardly been able to find any tech work at all. I dont know if my reputation has been trashed or something, or what the problem is, but I know that I just dont care about it anymore.
I have no idea what else i can do for work, since all my training and experience has pretty much revolved around hardware and support, but the thought of walking into another tech job is just making me sick right now. I'm struggling with a website project right now, and I just feel like I'm wasting my time and the time of my employer. I'm going to recommend that he just hire an actual designer, and just get them to do it. I'll work with them to get the content and design that is wanted, but as far as the coding goes, I'm just lost and cant seem to get myself to care about learning it.
I have a chance to go drive heavy equipment (almost full time), or to start apprenticing in either construction, or electrical, and there's a posting for an apprentice baker that just came up.. all of those things are more appealing to me than what I'm doing now.
Does anyone have any words of advice?