So it was with a strange pleasure that I found myself this past week, waiting in line at my local superstore service desk with a hard disk that declined my offer to install it.

At first I was chagrined to be at the back of a slow line five of other people with problems. But it was interesting hearing them describe their predicaments when they got to the front of the line.

The first man in line, like me holding a Maxtor hard disk box, wore a look of utter defeat on his face. He had lost many hours trying to get his network to address his server data, and was in an advanced state of moral fatigue -- refund my money or kill me. The clerk, hip to the fragility of the moment, was gentle with him.

The rest of us watched as the clerk reassured him. We all identified with the customer's pain, but we were also appreciative of the clerk's sensitivity. Somehow, the whole group bonded in that moment. Different machines, but one destiny.

As the customer turned to go, we wished him well, and someone even gave him an encouraging pat on the back. Imagine: computer people, making physical contact.

I decided to risk conversing with the man in front of me, cradling a dead Epson printer in his arms. "Say, will you hold my space in line while I fetch my PC from my car?"

The man did not hesitate. "Take your time," he assured me.

When I dragged the tower unit back into the line, the man now at the front was misbehaving. "OK," he said. "I'm entitled to two rebates, advertised in the Sunday flyer. Each company wants me to send the original receipt to get the rebate. Both purchases are on the same receipt. So I'm just a little buffaloed here."

"Kind of a contradiction, eh?" said the clerk.

"Well, it's your fault. What were you people thinking? How could you do such a thing?"

The clerk's eyebrow arched ominously. "Sir, I did not personally do this."

The rest of us in line frowned, Greek chorus style. This customer was going to screw up the whole line's karma. We signaled to the clerk with subliminal twitches glances that we were on his side. But when the customer looked back, we stared into space.

The clerk took charge. "Tell you what. I'll credit one rebate to your charge account, and you can mail in the receipt for the other."

The man with the dead Epson and I almost cheered at this Solomonic decision. The clerk let the man know there were no hard feelings: "Sometimes these rebates overlap. You're not the only customer who's complained."

When the rebate man left, the dead Epson guy whispered to me, "He jumped the gun." I absolutely agreed. "Always wait till they aggravate you, then get abusive," I said.

The clerk answered the phone and looked up. "Is there a Lyle here?" he asked. We all shook our heads. "Sorry, there's no Lyle here yet, but as soon as one gets here, I'll have him call you, OK?"

The man with the Epson was next. The clerk sighed at his story, and said that was a bad model, but Epson has come out with a better unit, and he could have it for the same price. The customer brightened. A printer that would print, for free, sort of. I wished him well, and set my hard drive on the counter.

"How can I help you?" the clerk asked.

"The install wizard tells me I have to load the operating system before partitioning the drive, and the operating system says it needs the drive partitioned first," I said. "It's like Laurel and Hardy trying to get through a doorway."

"No problem," the clerk said, "but it will take until Wednesday. Can you wait that long?"

"As long as it really is Wednesday," I said.

"Wednesday for sure," he said, "with a slight possibility of Tuesday. Could you read me the serial number on the back?"

I squinted. "I left my reading glasses at home," I said. Just then the young man behind me in line stepped up, stood a reasonable distance from my computer, and read off the number as if it were plainly visible.

I was touched, and I told the young man I hoped that some day, when he too was myopic, some good citizen would read his serial number for him, too.

And so it went. We cheered for one another when a problem was solved, and we cheered for the clerk with each resolved difficulty. A kind of fellowship developed among us as we stood there with our components in our hands.

And while this may seem like small potatoes in the global scheme of things, and while I'm glad I live five and not seventy-five miles from the nearest superstore, I plan to go back.

Especially if my hard drive is ready Wednesday.

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