This is a guide for classifying technicians. The higher the number, the less desirable the technician is:

7   Bill, the village idiot.
   Bill is totally incompetent. The only reason he is working is because he is 1) married to the boss's ugliest daughter, 2) the boss's son or 3) the son of the boss's boss. You might as well kiss your computer goodbye once it gets into Bill's hands.

6   Mr. Rent-a-tech.
   Mr. Rent-a-tech is the guy who gets contracted out by a company to fix computers. Mr. Rent-a-tech is called in when you live outside of the Manufacturer's rep's service area. Mr. Rent-a-tech is really Captain Hammer or Pop in disguise. He's likely never seen a computer like yours before and doesn't even know how to take it apart. He'll usually spend a few days making your computer unrepairable. With your luck, the warranty will run out just before he is done with your machine.

5   Captain Hammer
   Captain Hammer used to be a mechanic. Captain Hammer never goes anywhere without his claw hammer. He uses his trusty hammer to seat expansion cards so they will never come out and to pound in those pesky chips which are trying to unseat themselves. While clawing out an expansion card or memory chip, he can sometimes remove the slot or chip socket from the motherboard at no extra cost. He usually finishes off your computer by yanking it off your desk because he snagged his coat on one of the new nails protruding from your case.

4   Pop from Mom and Pop's 'puters
   Good old Pop really tries but he really doesn't know a thing about computers. He jiggles boards around just to see if they are loose while the computer is still powered up. He'll even pull boards out and reseat them while the machine is running. Some of the expansion boards in your computer will end up in the wrong slots - 8 bit cards in 32 or 16 bit slots and 16 and 32 bit cards placed in 8 bit slots.

3   Try everything Fred.
   Try everything Fred tries everything the can think of which is not related to the problem just in case. Unfortunately, Fred does not know how to properly re-connect things. So expect your hard drive to be connected to your floppy controller and your floppy drive connected to your ESDI controller. He'll even plug things in backwards just because its easier to plug them in this way.

2   The guy from XT's R Us
   This guy knows only a little bit about computers. He'll low level format your hard drive at an 4:1 interleave factor that will make it slower than a CD-ROM drive. Basically, he got his training from a institution which advertises on the backs of matchbooks and in Popular Mechanics. Any replacement ram chips he stuffs into your machine are likely from some old XT.

1   Dr. Fixit.
   Dr. Fixit really knows how to fix computers. Too bad for you he is never around when you need him. Dr. Fixit, never stays long with the outfit he works at, this is because he usually finds someone who will pay him better for his talents than his current employer.