About time. One of my first tech jobs was with Office Depot, where I was hired on as the technology lead, thinking that I was going to be sharing my 2008 era knowledge. I still remember feeling excited and sharing with the store my first laptop sale, explaining how I was able to sell a Windows Vista Basic machine with a copy of Windows XP and a stick of memory. My boss was quick to tell me that they don't make any money on that stuff and selling high end items with the amount of time that I spent doing that sale was actually hurting the store. So I could either lose my job or sell extended warranties and services, and earn 5-10 dollars a sale. I was 20 years old, wanted a new iPhone, and was living with my parents, so my path was pretty clear.

At Office Depot, we had two kinds of warranties, either a "Kit" or a stand alone warranties. With services, we had the "make your computer faster" and "so you just bought this pos, lets make it faster". With warranties, I went straight for the scare tactics, such as your printer ink cartridges could leak all over over or the new chair you bought could have a castor leak grease, both of these were not covered under the normal warranty, but for 25-100 dollars, you could be protected from the unpredictable. With services, we just put your new computer on a cabinet where we ran a flash program that showed "vulnerabilities", and for 100 dollars, we could patch up this machine that would have been hacked to shreds by the Chinese if it were not for us brave souls.

I made two grand that month and was given an award by the Office Depot district manager. I felt like shit too. I was able to get my conscience back after helping people under the table when they bought one of our bullshit comfort blankets and wouldn't anything other than the shredder kit - which included a bottle of literal synthetic snake oil.