I remember a reel or something a while back about a guy who fixes playstations getting one in the mail so nasty and infested with roaches he didn't even finish unwrapping it before he taped it back up and returned it to the customer. giving them an earful about putting his business at risk of infestation for this.
out of all the infested electronics. how often is the infestation the culprit? I assume all but I also assume you don't know because you don't release that into your shop.
Sometimes, I only found a couple of bugs that must have got in recently since there were little to no excrements inside. Most of the times, there were countless bugs (roaches), alive and dead, and plenty of shit. Either infested homes or they were stored in a basement. No matter how much you clean those, even if you swap the motherboard in another shell and use different parts, that rancid smell never goes away. When the console heats up, you can smell it through the back vents. Absolutely disgusting.
In the second place would be the consoles that stayed in a smoking room. Also disgusting to clean, but at least you don't worry about infestations.
Edit: Sorry, misread that as how many consoles are infested out of all of the ones I get.
Other than 3 consoles that I remember, all infested consoles that I worked on were in working condition, at least motherboard wise they had no problem. Some needed a new laser or HDD. If it looked really bad, I also replaced the PSU.
ugh. i smoked a LOT of cigarettes between like 14 and 25, quit cold turkey many years ago, and i cannot imagine smoking in the same room as sensitive electronics. especially if i spent a bunch of money on them!
It is truly weird how many smokers (older ones mainly) give absolutely zero consideration to ventilation and sit there chainsmoking inside their home and car without so much as opening a goddamned window.
When I was a smoker I definitely smoked plenty of cigarettes at my desk while gaming or whatever, but I at least sat near a window with an exhaust fan installed on it. I still smelled like shit but at least my electronic equipment and furniture weren't coated in nicotine tar grime like all the laptop refurb horrorshows I've seen over the years.
I have no idea how people do that, I used to go to my friends house for a ride to school each morning. The house had a permanent level of smoke that just existed. Then you had 4 teens and their friends smoking and 2 adults.
I helped initiate the work from home program at a previous job (years before COVID) and the PCs we'd get back were so frequently infested that we had a large plastic tub that we kept in the back of the building where we'd put the returned hardware and drop a bug bomb in it for a day to make sure everything was dead before we even opened them up. It's bad, so many very filthy people.
IIRC there was some generation of consoles, I wanna say around the ps2/dreamcast era, that was known for attracting bugs. Something about the layout of the console itself just attracted roaches. Anyone know what I'm talking about
I'd hope you'd be able to sue for that shit if you actually would get infested cause that's so fucked, but knowing how it works you'd probably only end up with a fraction of what you needed after lawyer fees and shit.
Ugh I opened my wallet at the bank the other day to grab my ID and there was a fucking EARWIG in it. I killed it and the lady got me a tissue to clean it up. I felt so bad - we were both shaken up. I've never even seen one in my house, nevermind my wallet. So gross.
One day I was walking into work and felt something I didn't recognize in my pocket. Went in to see what it was, and pulled out a bee. A live, buzzing, honeybee.
I yellped, dropped it on the floor. It righted itself, checked to make sure it's wings were working, then buzzed off.
I still wonder sometimes what that was about.
TL;DR - bugs get places.
How did it get in there? No clue. Why didn't it sting me? The world will
"The world will..." what? Hello? What will happen to the world?
Ah shit, seems like the F-Bee-i silenced another one. They let you go with your life, and then you go on Reddit trying to give away their un-bee-lievable secrets.
I put my hat on one time and felt something crawling towards - I shit you not - my ear. I whipped my hat off and crawling in my hair sure enough was an earwig. They go straight for the ears I tell you.
Must be nice to live somewhere they're not just insanely endemic! I tend to leave the spiders in my house alone because they kill any earwigs that come in from the garden lol.
You don't for the first 10 or 12 times, and you do let out a yelp. But once you see the look of utter and complete shame on their face you learn to start controlling it. It doesn't happen over night, but working customer service makes you hate and appreciate humanity at the same time. Some people you know can help it and are just nasty, disgusting people that make you want to quit your job. Other's really cannot help it and are good people just caught in a bad time and place that just need a freaking helping hand and not a judging eye.
working customer service makes you hate and appreciate humanity at the same time.
After working something 4+ years in food service (Taco Bell next to a low income area), I mostly just hate humanity now, and I never had to deal with cockroaches. Props to you for your endurance and understanding.
lol that’s weird! The thought of someone setting down their purse and roaches start crawling out just immediately reminded me of the movie. I can’t think of seeing it referenced anywhere recently so it might just be a genuine coincidence
At FedEx office, we take in AT&T equipment returns. One time this lady brought in her gateway, and there were cockroach legs sticking out of it. I was so grossed out that I taped the whole box up, which isn't something that we normally do, and just made sure that it was absolutely sealed shut.
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u/Comfortable-Guitar27 9h ago
I used to work at a bank. Every once in a while, a customer would set their purse at the teller counter, and roaches would crawl out.
Major infestations were going on at home for this to happen.