Lady Geek

 

I’ve just spent the last hour chatting to a Geek Squad ‘agent’- Lee.    The company has grown in the US for the past 13 years and has now done a tie up deal with Carephone Warehouse and will be rolled out to over 100 of their UK stores, which quite frankly are not the most inviting and female friendly and you get pounced on as soon as you walk in the door.  As one woman told me, “I feel like bait when i walk into a Carephone Warehouse.” 

The Geek Squad is a great concept.  They will help you for a small fee with your IT issues in store or remotely.  They also offer a home service for £70 a visit.  They will sort out all your IT problems.  They describe themselves as a ‘Dr Doolittle, surgeon and witchdoctor’ all in one.  They are geek chic, they have to wear white socks (!), short sleeve shirts, have police style ID badges, clip on ties and call themselves agents.   Out of 40 agents, sadly only 3 are women but even so, they seem very friendly and don’t elevate themselves to a superior status.  We chatted to Lee who was obviously brilliant at his job and made us feel at ease asking what we considered very dumb questions (its funny how women begin their questions about IT with the prefice ‘I know this is a stupid question but…’   Men don’t seem to ever seem to do this).

Lee told us one example where he was trying to help a women who was getting so frustrated that she shouted at him when he told her he would have to charge her a nominal fee for setting up her Blackberry ‘IS THAT A WOMAN TAX YOU ADD ON?’  Women do get frustrated by technology.  It’s so much easier to default to a man/friend/partner and not feel stupid but in this way we will never feel comfortable with technology.   Women have to embrace technology.  Its up to women to take the lead and sort out their technology needs…and if they get frustrated…there’s always the Geek Squad.