No, but I work in IT. I’m surrounded by stupid every day. Either you learn to live with it or you find a different career
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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It's maddening.
Although, I started to theorize that since computers work with magnetic fields, and humans can affect those fields, perhaps some people just break shit being around it.
I started thinking this when, one day, a friend of mine who just had a shit time with computers came over and needed to do something on my computer. I told him exactly what to do, and he did it. Shit didn't work. Huh? I watch him do it again, exactly as I told him. Doesn't work. WTF? Lemme try. Do the same exact thing but this time it works.
Shit, man, I guess it just doesn't like you. 🤷🏻♂️
Not with friends, but co-workers? I work in IT so you bet I fucking do.
well I have been rendered speechless on several occasions. The most recent is when I told an employee at a high level in our organization who was setting a password not to use his name, old passwords, or anything sequential like abc123. I spent the next half hour trying to figure out why it wasn't accepting his password until I had him tell me one of the rejected ones. hisname123456789. He told me it's not abc123. This man has multiple degrees and uses a computer every day. How is he this tech illiterate and just plain illiterate
This man has multiple degrees
Maybe that's it. I've done hospital tech support and some of the doctors I've assisted have such unique combinations of high-level degrees that there may be only a few dozen people worldwide that can match them. Each and every one of them is hyper-focused on their specialty, sometimes to the point that they've missed picking up ordinary man-on-the-street knowledge.
Its a me problem but I get a little frustrated when helping team members (we're 100% remote so this is generally via a shared session) and they don't click right where I want them to. I don't lose my patience though.
I get annoyed when they want to do things but don't want to learn how. they want someone else to do it as opposed to show them how they can do it.
Only when they ignore or argue with the person theyve asked for help.
If you're going to do that, you can flail on your own.
I have a saying "I wasn't asking you to do that, I was telling you to do it". If they don't respect it, they don't get help.
That's an excellent point. Not technology, but people ask me for tips on playing golf. I tell them what I think they need to correct and how to do it. And they start arguing with me. And I'm like I don't care if you play like shit, you ASKED ME for help.
Yea mainly when I was trying to teach my friend how to get pirated games. It is crazy that people can just keep using computers with surface level understanding. I accidentally yelled him a few times now I try to be more patient because I ubderstand what's second nature to me is unfamillar to him
When using computers became more mainstream in the late 90s I thought “phew, finally people will learn to use them and not act like it’s some arcane and nerdy thing they couldn’t possibly understand! They’ll have to figure it out for work and the average person will finally understand the basics like file system hierarchies, right click menus, switching between windows and…” nope. We entered the period of “monthly_report.pdf.exe” instead and then, mobile phones which have enabled people to use computers without learning anything about how they work at all.
I suppose the bright side is that it means that IT work will always be available to those of us that know how to program a VCR and a Betamax
the only time I get annoyed or frustrated is when they don't read whatever pop up they get and immediately press "ok" or "continue" and it borks everything
Sometimes it's just a dialog with a single "Ok" button, and they stare at me and ask "now what?". Like, you literally have only one option, what do you think?
From my exp, it's asking for validation that what's happening is expected. Also, sometimes the next step is not to click OK as another process may need to happen first.
I'm all good with people asking questions like that. They don't have any intuition about what you're showing them, so they're hesitant to make assumptions and that's ok.
This reminds me! At work we often send emails to customers through our ticket system so they are recorded. A new guy got a pop-up asking if he wanted to send the email. He looks at me and says "What do I do?" I say "Well you have 2 options: Yes to send the email or Cancel." He clicks Cancel and is then confused the email never sent. He quit a few days later which honestly was better for all of us.
IT tech here, lack of knowledge/skill does not bother me, lack of will to learn does.
Some people have this incredibly annoying habit of seeing anything remotely tech related as magic and they switch off their brain, assuming that they could never understand it.
Them: "My computer is broken"
Me:"Whats the issue?"
Them: "i dont know, i tried to open my email and its got some error message and wont open"
Me:" what does the error message say?"
Them:"err, cannot open email during update, please wait until update is complete"
Me:"is your email app updating?"
Them:"yes.
Me:"wait for it to finish and try again..."
(Obviously tbats not a real scenario, but im not good at examples and just wanted to get the general gist across)
I had something so similar happen recently where a link on our external site was down. This person calls me and it literally went:
Them: "this link is broken. Can you tell them fix it?"
Me: "there's a banner at the top of the page that says they're trying to fix it. Here's an alternative link."
Them: "well that's from last week so they should've fixed it by now"
Me: "must be real broken then"
Them: "well can you find their email so we can email them to tell them to fix it"
Me: "no, they're fixing it"
Them: "well you're IT can you email them to ask them how long it will be and tell me when it's fixed"
No that's not my fuckin job bud. Here's their general contact page if you're dying for this very non urgent thing.
And they get mad at you when you are trying to help.
I'll say too often interfaces are written for devs and not users.
That was something I got tired of saying, about error messages, “what do the words on the screen say?”
Yep, but it does give me job security though...
My mother tried to print but got an error message. Instead of reading it, she called me. The printer told her it was out of paper 😐
helping people with their problems is quite fun when they are interested
There are so many other reasons to lose patience with some of my coworkers, tech illiteracy is nowhere near the top of the list. If anything, I like helping people with tech.
Ooh, can I share a sweet story instead, because this made it pop into my head and it's a memory of a wonderful person that I wish everyone could have known?
I used to work at this small business when I was younger, and one of the employees was an older guy in his 80s who had retired and worked a few hours a week just to keep busy. He loved us teens and twenty somethings and we adored and respected him.
As time went on, the assistant manager left and I ended up being promoted to assistant manager. And eventually daylight savings happened and the clock changed. This employee came in for his first shift after the time change and looked half dejected and half embarrassed and he quietly explained to me that he didn't know how to change the time on his watch, that the previous assistant manager had always done it for him, so now he was trying to deal with his watch being an hour off. I happily changed the time for him, and after that I changed it for him every time change. Even after he retired for good he would come in during my shift and give me his watch and I'd set it forward or back the hour so it could be right and he'd be thrilled every time.
That's very sweet. One of the things that got me interested in wanting to work in IT support was that I worked at a breakfast diner where mostly older folks would eat. My regulars would always ask for help to try to fix silly things on their phone and would always be so happy when I could help.
Things are different now, but once in a while you find someone overly grateful for doing something so simple and it's always a very nice feeling.
That's a great story
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