At a quarter past six, straight from the office, I was in the vendor’s shop. Michalis, the technician whom I had been dealing with, was waiting for me, clearly embarassed. I told him not to worry, but that I was now at the end of my patience. I offered 2 alternatives. Either they rang their supplier in Athens immediately and ordered them to put a disk with the correct specifications on the ferry tonight so that I would get it tomorrow morning, or they would have to give me my money back. The part about the ferry is not so unusual here, it is done all the time. Michalis said he would need to speak to his boss. We both went to see him. His boss, whose English had been so fluent and who had been so friendly and all over me before, now didn’t even bother to look up at me whilst I was standing next to his desk. He growled a rather long tirade in Greek to Michalis, who got even more embarassed. I think he kind of feared that I might have understood. I wasn’t paying attention though. All I was doing was running through my head the script I had prepared, in which I would stand firm and not leave until I had what I had come for. At that moment the guy sitting at the only other desk in the office took over. I guessed it was an associate. He clearly had more authority than an employee (who usually has no authority in any matter whatsoever in this kind of organization). He exchanged a few words with Michalis, also in Greek, and then invited me to sit down. At least some level of civility. Michalis left. I was a bit surprised to see the guy run a search in Google. I gave him the spec sheet that I had printed out from the website of Hitachi, which clearly demonstrated that the disk they had given me was a 4200RPM model, not the 5400RPM that I had paid for. He didn’t even give it a glance. In his pompous way he was going to decide which information he was going to use. After a few misses he got to the same site and page that I had printed out for him. Without a word he grabbed in a metal box on the shelf beside him, pulled out a note of €100 and one of €50 and put them in front of me. The exact amount that I had paid them for the disk. I took them, also without saying a word, stood up and left the room. In the hallway I looked into the room where Michalis was working, said loud and clearly goodbye to him and thanked him for all his help. Five seconds later I was on the street in the warm late September evening sun.

From there to Plaisio, which is the biggest electronics shop in Iraklio, it was only 10 minutes walking. They did not have any disk drives in stock when my computer broke down, exactly one month ago. Now I was willing to give them a chance. A friendly shop assistant asserted that they didn’t not have one with the right specifications in stock now. But “they could order one from their headquarters in Athens and I would have it in 4 days”. Since all the good and not so good seems to obligatorily come from Athens, I settled for that. When it came to order the device online, the shop assistant told me that also in Athens they had run out of 5400RPM models, but they still had 7200RPM’s in stock, at a higher price, of course. I wasn’t sure if my Powerbook would be able to handle the extra power consumption and heat dissipation, but what the heck, let’s live dangerously for once!

I now wonder what surprises Tuesday will have in stock for me…