It Won't Boot

Over 30 years ago, before the big box stores like Best Buy were common and USB was just a gleam in some inventor's eye, I worked for Egghead Software for a bit. Egghead sold mostly software with a little hardware. They did not sell computers or monitors. Us retail software sales people tended to get a lot of tech support questions. Here is a short story from those days:

I see a customer struggling to carry in a large CRT monitor. I hold the door for her and she manages to plop the monitor down on the main counter.

Customer: "It won't boot."

Me: "It won't boot?"

Customer: "Yeah, it won't boot."

Me: "Do you have a computer because this is just a monitor?"

Customer: "What's that?"

Me: "It is like that box over there. It runs the system. What you have is a monitor. It just shows the images the computer creates."

Customer: "Well how much does that cost because I already paid $50 for this at a garage sale?"

Me: "It will probably cost you around $500."

Customer: "Well I'm not going to pay that!"

She then picked up her monitor and left.