Excuse us while we leave our morals at the door
1 Claiming Ignorance
Okay, it’s going to be a bit difficult to persuade your friends and family that you don’t know anything at all about PCs, because chances are you’ve already fixed theirs for them more than once. (And we all know what that means: you’re their tech monkey for life.) But rather than pretending you don’t know anything, wait until they describe their problem, then suck some air in between your teeth, shrug, and say something along the lines of “Sorry, that’s a bit too advanced for me.” If you’re talking to them face to face, try to avoid looking at the inevitable disappointment in their eyes, otherwise there’s a danger your conscience will make you backtrack, and you’ll be up to your eyeballs in SATA cables and BIOS settings before you know it.
2 Fake Amnesia
Of course, there’s one way to get away with claiming complete ignorance: you could suffer sudden and dramatic memory loss. “Your PC won’t post? Post what? Sorry, who is this?” Yes, it’s a somewhat drastic measure to take just to avoid a bit of computer maintenance, but not only will it give you back your free time, you’ll also win plenty of sympathy for your plight. Just don’t use the phrase ‘fugue state’ because then everyone will know you’ve been watching Breaking Bad and they won’t believe you. And you’ll still have to back up and reinstall Windows for them anyway.
3 Feign Injury
Although repairing PCs and software isn’t a particularly strenuous activity, physically speaking, try doing it with a broken finger or a sprained wrist. It won’t be easy. That makes it the perfect excuse for you to be unable to provide 24/seven technical support for your loved ones. All you need are a few bandages and maybe a couple of lolly sticks to make a convincing splint for your injured appendages. Be sure, though, that you always keep the fake dressing on the same side, other someone might noticed it swapping over, and it won’t be long before your day starts to resemble the plot of a bad sitcom.
4 ‘Accidentally’ Mess It Up
Just like telling people you can’t fix something might persuade them to leave you alone for a bit, so too can telling them you can, but with complete and apparent overconfidence. They want you to change out their graphics card? Sure, you can do that. But while you’re there, you might as well take out the motherboard and RAM, disconnect all the wires and drives, and generally make everything way better than it ever was. When you put it back together, don’t reconnect the hard drive, but pretend to you be stumped when it won’t boot. Congratulations! You’ve now convinced your ‘customer’ that you have no idea what you’re doing and that you’ve actually made things worse. They won’t be back in a hurry.
5 Persuade Them To Buy A Tablet
Yes, it’s still likely that you’ll get a few calls about how to set up email on an iPad or Android, or questions about getting past the next level of Candy Crush, but they should find things easier. That means fewer things will go wrong, and you won’t be called on quite so much to provide instant solutions. And if something does go wrong, then you can just remind them they’ll be buying a replacement soon enough anyway.