By Falice Chin
All middle-aged women working at customer services are bound to the most disastrous marriages I have ever witnessed. In this particular relationship, their partner is some kind of twisted god–all powerful, authoritarian, oppressive and intolerant. His name happens to be “the computer”–not just a computer, but the computer!
The University of Calgary’s library contains a ton of these abused wives. Ever tried to work around the insanely cumbersome system of debt and payment surrounding the so-called “overdue list”? What I get from these ladies are “no, the computer says [insert whatever bullshit]”, “I can’t do anything for you, the computer won’t let me” and “well, if you’re right, then the computer would say so.” Oh yeah! I forgot! Your computer, a.k.a. hubby, is god of all librarian activity! Nevermind the fact that a librarian once forgot to scan a book I returned so I ended up being fined over $100 until they found the stupid book sitting on level eight three months later! What really matters is that “the computer says you haven’t returned it!”
Maybe because I grew up with computers, I know of all their shortcomings and ignorance. Furthermore, I’ve always got the upper hand because, after all, computers only do what you tell them to do in the most literal way possible. I’m not so inclined to believe in this computer god figure that so many older women seem to bind themselves to. For a whole year, I worked with middle-aged women at a certain large establishment governed by a ridiculous Microsoft Access database! If computers are gods, these computers must have gone through lobotomies. In any case, the women I worked with acted like Access knew everything, and if they dared challenge the buttons on the interface, the computer god may become so enraged that it would deliberately screw up all the programs. I left the job. Good riddance, because I never wanted to marry a computer anyway.
The problem with these women is that they don’t seem to understand the fundamental purposes of a computer. And as long as they empower their computers that way, computers will continue to abuse their love and devotion; they will get away with the most heinous crime while other machines at home such as microwaves and washing machines get thrown out over the littlest of mistakes. This is the evil nature of many middle-aged women’s marriage to “the computer”.
If you can’t change these women, though, you can certainly take advantage of the situation. I, for instance, sold a really crappy computer to a lady I knew from work. Not that I ripped her off at all, I was just glad someone would finally take the computer away from my house voluntarily and gleefully at the same time. Oh, isn’t it nice when you enslave them to a new husband?