Real Thing That Just Happened
Middle-aged dude dressed in business clothes walks through the door of a coffee shop and immediately approaches our heroine (me), the only patron, sitting at a table, typing on her laptop.
Dude: What do you know about the Internet? [English is not his first language, but he makes his point, sort of]
Me: Excuse me?
Dude: I have that car out there [points to a black SUV]. I want to have a website.
Me: Okay.
Dude: So I saw that you are on the computer, and thought you might know about that.
Me: About how to get a website?
Dude: Yeah, I know there are a lot of white people in this neighborhood that know about websites.
Me: Ha! [And then, to myself: Oh, that wasn't a joke.] Well I know about the Internet, yeah, but I’m not sure what you’re asking me.
Dude: How much?
Me: Hmm?
Dude: How much does a website cost?
Me: Oh, it depends!
Dude: Okay, I’m going to go. I’m very sorry to bother you. Bye.
Dude exits. Gets in his car, and drives away.
Does anyone have any idea what this is? Was he hitting on me? Was he a spy from the IRS? But I guess what I’m really wondering is: Did I just miss a chance to sell this guy a Blogger account for $1,000?
ah! hilarious but also borderline freaky.
Everything. It costs everything.
A similar thing happened to me once and I think it was an attempt to hit on me? The guy was wearing a backpack and looked like a college kid and he was sort of doing that sighing to catch attention and finally said, “Can I ask you a strange question? What would you do for $20,000 a month?” And I said, “Excuse me?” (Which is the perfect response to almost any stupid question) “I have a problem, I invented a webpage and now I make 20,000 a month. Miss, you look like you know what to do with money, what should I do?” I told him to get a stock portfolio. I should have mentioned ditching the jansport too.
My sense was it’s an imperfectly executed pick up line. And as soon as he was out of sight he opened “how to pick up women” and said, “aww man! I reversed the question order!”
@e I am not sure that question would have worked in the non-reversed order…
@e Mine would be “You can fund my [insert non-existant business here]!”
I think he wanted to sell the SUV? So you lost the chance to charge him $500 to post it on Craigslist.
@MuffyStJohn Ah. You make sense. He wanted to SELL the car. I could not understand what the car had to do with anything.
This story terrifies me.
as much as it would have been harder to write this story up for the internet, selling him a blogger to pay off your cc debt! Logan you are a stronger person than I, for it would have been tempting.
(granted, probably in retrospect as my brain wouldn’t work fast enough to come up with that scheme on the spot)
@redheaded&crazy ugh I’m an awful person
Did I just miss a chance to sell this guy a Blogger account for $1,000?
What…. you would sell that guy a blogger account for $1,000???
What’s wrong with you? What type of person would do such a thing?
Charge someone $1,000 for something they could get for nothing.
*chic noir looks over shoulders and leans in close to Logan and whispers*
Sell it to him for $500.00 dollars, we’re in a recession, have a little mercy.
Logan you need to get on your hustle.
I’ve been asked similar! I’ve been asked a few computer-related things while working on my laptop at Starbucks, actually. Mostly how to connect to the internet (answer: you have to turn your wireless on), but also if I know anything about websites, and if so, what do they cost/what’s the best way to build them/etc. I assumed it was because I was wearing my wrist braces, which usually make people assume I’m a techy person (…which I guess I kind of am?) but maybe this is just a more frequent occurrence than I thought.