@Phantasm luckily my family stopped asking for tech support years ago, but my mother-in-law did ask me if I can help her friend a few years ago and I didn't want to turn her down. all the friend said on the phone was that "email wasn't working". oh boy

>arrive
>it's a 60-something male pensioner, a bit crass but vital and otherwise alright
>his laptop takes a couple of minutes to boot into Windows 10
>"so Outlook stopped working lately"
>notice Thunderbird on the desktop
>"my son installed it, it works but it's too different. I just can't get used to it"
>we try running Outlook
>after a while some retarded error pops up and Outlook does not launch
>start googling the error
>even the browser is so slow I have to whip up my own laptop just to get some info
>apparently there's an official diagnostic/repair tool that can fix Outlook errors
>download it and run the installer
>the install takes an eternity so we pretty much end up in smalltalk
>reboot the laptop as the tool requested, just in case
>two aeons later it reboots and I run the official tool
>it does something extremely slowly and then crashes (iirc)
>Outlook now seems even more broken
>I throw up my hands in frustration and declare that this is beyond me
>he agrees to take it to an actual professional and use Thunderbird in the meantime
>two hours wasted

the funniest part is when I looked at what his emails actually were. he was straight up harassing municipal employees with complaints and insults on a daily basis. there were also some emails from webhosting and when I looked up the domain later, it was a Wordpress site dedicated to more rants about municipal employees, including lots of profanities and their photos, photoshoped with insults and sometimes even penises. he must have been spending about half his retired time on this little crusade of his
pensioners smh