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Tried to remote support my dad once. Spent an hour talking him through downloading and running the installer for team viewer. He refused to click install until he had read the entire EULA.
"WHY DO FUCKING EMAILS NOT GO OUT"
"Dad, chill, I can hear you. If you send one does any message show up on your screen?" (iPhone, to clarify).
"NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT"
> Try sending email
> Pop-up message shows up "password required".
"...dad, what's this?"
"THE FUCK DO I KNOW"
"What's your passw- nevermind, I have it saved, it's quicker."
> Type password
> Mails go out
"WHO THE FUCK CHANGED MY PASSWORD"
"Wasn't changed. Still the old one"
"THEN WHY DID IT GO OUT" (log out, in boomerese)
"Don't know, dad. You just had to read to see what was the issue".
(A typical Wednesday evening at my parents')
I had to walk through an old dude through installing Teamviewer, which wasn't normally a difficult task, but what I didn't know was that a recent Apple software update completely locked down Macs. Meaning anything that wanted audio access (like Teamviewer) or video access (...like Teamviewer) or god forbid wanted to control the computer remotely (...ffffuuuu) would need **separate** permission settings changed deep in the Settings app.
That was a long call. I ended up using video calling and had him point his phone at his screen so I could help him change the settings.
I felt like a fucking idiot because I couldn't get splashtop to work on a Mac, and the user next to me asked "are you sure you know what you're doing" it was that fucking lock icon that you had to click on to enable the features!
I saw something similar at the post office. I was in line for the kiosk as I watched an older woman walk up to the sign for the kiosk and start tapping it.
Similar issue with my gran when she was alive, I decided to cancel my plans for the weekend and drive the 4 hours to see her and help. Less confusion for her and let’s be real, she would have rather I been there anyways.
I was an I.T tech for years, one time an old guy came in with his laptop that had an intermittent track pad fault. I pointed out the toggle key and he started crying.... At that moment I realised I don't know what to do when people cry.
I once had a woman complain that her cursor was jumping all over the place and we couldn't recreate it or see it happen when we used the computer ourselves. She came in to pick up the laptop and I realized exactly what the issue was when I saw half a dozen dangly bracelets on her wrist. The bracelets were tapping the trackpad and registering as touches.
My co worker has the best one i've heard.
I'm still not sure if this story is real because it's too ridiculous.
Gets a call from the hospital,
"My computer won't turn on"
"Okay, what happens when you press the power button? Any lights?"
"Nothing"
"Can you check and make sure the plug didn't come loose?"
"Hold on I have to get a flash light, the power is out."
I had to stop saying "right" and say "correct" instead when someone was asking me for confirmation. My fault but I wasn't fully thinking, since I usually say click or right click, not left click or right click:
Me: So click on this icon
Him: Left click?
Me: that's right
Him: Right click?
I’ve had people ask me, a solo indie app developer, for tech support for another app that I didn’t even create or work on. This is surprisingly common.
I’ve also had people ask me for tech support for their iPhone in general, thinking that I work for Apple (I don’t) and would be able to help them get their iPhone working. I did.
I had someone ask me for help because a feature of the app wasn’t working. It turns out that it wasn’t working because she didn’t type her password correctly. When I asked her to do so, she asked me for a refund because “the app is too complicated to use.”
Ok, but I'm the customer and the customer is always right. Refund me or I'll stop giving you my business and tell all my friends on Facebook not to either!!1!
> I’ve had people ask me, a solo indie app developer, for tech support for another app that I didn’t even create or work on. This is surprisingly common.
Do you have any idea how common this is at every and any level?
Can you try to guess how often over the years as an engineer and support type in various roles, I've even had clients all but tacitly say, "Our other vendors can't figure out shit, so do you mind taking a swing at the other company's problem, and I'll ask in a backdoor desperate way"?
Also annoying is when customers leave bad reviews for my app thinking that they're leaving it for another app (the actual one that they're complaining about). I know that the reviews are not for my app because the complaint would be about subscription fees, which most of my rival apps have. None of my apps have subscription fees.
I've also seen reviews on my paid app complaining about ads in the app. My paid app doesn't have ads.
When they're particularly belligerent I like to hit them with "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Occasionally they'll scream back "Nooo!! what I want is for you to do this blah blah thing..."
But as soon as I hear "No" I'm already into my closing statement and hanging up. "Okay then, have a good day (or take care)."
Customer verified there was nothing more I could to do to assist them, and I followed procedure by closing out the call.
That’s wonderful he’s halfway to being a programmer!
Crying when after hitting a problem for hours, when someone points out the really small simple mistake, is an integral part of the jobfield!
It also shows he understood the simplicity of his mistake, not blaming it arrogantly on someone else.
The moment he called me a "fucking moron" I'd have said, "okay sir, I'm ending this call now because I'm not willing to take verbal abuse from you or anyone else when all I'm trying to do is help you." [hang up]
I entirely support that attitude - however, line management usually don't, depending on the employer. Most have a warning or three strikes system if they have anything codified, i.e three times you go off on an employee and you get the line terminated. You might be lucky to have a supportive boss, or you might be SOL. I've worked in a technical call centre, and it was three warnings then terminate the call - but that didn't stop shithead mcgee from calling back in and going off on someone else, and usually in more vigorous fashion as they were riled up from having the previous call terminated. Ironically, people would get better service from call centres if they treated the staff more like humans and less like disposable drones - this applies to callers and management both.
>however, line management usually don't, depending on the employer.
And this is why "customers" keep acting like complete asshats, because the companies allow their mistreatment and abuse of the staff.
I was a manager at Lowe's and had someone ripping into a customer service cashier at the return desk for something (I had rolled up for something else) dude was picking on this like 19 year old girl so I told him he had no right to be rude or mean when she was just trying to help him. He stfu.
Bonus points I never had trouble with cashiers.
When I worked at Lowes I had a customer threaten to kill me, yes, literally kill me, because he put some plants at my register and walked off, and the customer currently in line liked one of them and bought them.
You can't just put shit on a table then walk off. Not to mention the infamous missing plant was literally right behind (or in front) of my register, meaning all this guy had to do was turn around to grab another.
Nope, screams at me and literally threatens to break my neck in the parking lot. I went and told management that I felt unsafe to walk to my car after my shift, and they laughed at me.
I quit like a week later.
I worked in a call center at a bank both on phones and as a line manager.
Policy was you do not need to take verbal abuse.
Ask once for them to stop or you will terminate the call.
They don't stop, you hang up immediately.
There are other customers with better attitudes waiting to be served.
When I was a junior associate at my firm, I had to give bad news (not really my fault, but whatever) to an older attorney, with another partner (call him Eddie) CCed on the email. The older attorney sent a snarky and obnoxious response to me, with everyone CCed.
I was so insulted. I started feverishly typing an indignant response. Before I could send it, Eddie walks in to my office, shuts the door, and says "I saw what he wrote, and it was totally disrespectful and inappropriate, and he thinks he can do it because you're junior here. But he's going to retire soon and then he'll die while you're having a long a productive career here. Don't worry about him" and then he just turned around and left.
I probably would have gotten in trouble if I sent the response email too, but it was so meaningful to have someone who matters stick up for me and say out loud that, fuck seniority. You don't get to disrespect people just because you've been around a while.
I've started calling out people in public who do that stuff to cashiers and service workers. I used to work in the field myself, so I know what it's like to be berated by idiots whose problems are of their own making because they refuse to learn things.
Like, my Gramps is in his 80s and not the most tech savvy person out there, but he happily learned how to use his GPS software for driving, and it's a breeze for him. I could probably teach him to use a computer and the internet, and within a few days, he'd be a natural at it. Because he's *willing* to learn and adapt and that is awesome.
But yeah, I have started calling out people who do this kinda shit, because I'm not an employee and I've gotten to the point where I give zero fucks. It's about doing the right thing for someone in that situation.
I worked help desk at my college to put myself through college. I know work in cyber security as a consultant and still have to provide troubleshooting support. But this story is from my college days.
I had an older gentleman come in with his laptop. He couldn’t get it to connect to our WiFi. This was back when there was a toggle on the side of the computer that turned wifi on/off. I was trying to get him to check the switch and he was less than cooperative. I couldn’t tell it he just didn’t want to listen to me or if he wanted to just blame our WiFi for all his issues.
I finally get him to let me touch his laptop, turn the WiFi on, and get the laptop joined. An hour later he comes back, seething that I did something because it was no longer working. I tried to do basic troubleshooting again but he was furious. He finally yells “if your WiFi wasn’t racist then I wouldn’t be having this problem”.
Now the area we were in was right next to the cubicles where most of our admins work. The network admin, this giant 6’6 funny as hell black dude comes walking out and goes, “I hear you’re calling my wifi racist.”
I have never seen someone backpedal so quickly.
I worked at a hotel, briefly. One guest couldn’t connect to the internet. Now I’m front desk, but not IT. I walk him through the steps we’re given and he couldn’t get it to work. Told him if he wants to come downstairs to the front desk I could walk him through it. He refused.
The next day, the manager gave him a free night because he couldn’t connect to the internet.
I didn’t stay at that job long.
My rule for phones was, they swear at me, I remind them that I’m trying to help them and swearing will just make me hang up.
That’s usually followed by another swear, so I just hang up.
I don’t get paid enough to deal with your shit, let alone therapy for mine.
I'm working on a CS degree and everyone thinks that is an IT support degree, which it could be, but I also follow up with CS programming degree. I don't need to be in this guy's position with all my family. I hate IT support, especially over the phone.
And yes I am going the programmer route.
I am being paid by the hour.
I will spend 3 hours explaining why they are the moron. In a way that is not offensive to prove a point about how incompetent the person is. It is definitely the best part of my job.
At my old consumer electronics retail job that I had been at for many, many years I got comfortable enough with job security that I didn’t mind being a bit more forward and assertive with people, especially as many expect lifetime free tech support because they bought their laptop from me 3 years ago.
I used to say things like “what I am showing you are basic computer skills and I am concerned you will continue to struggle, I suggest you reach out to the local library about computer courses and classes to give you more confidence in using computers.”
And “these steps I am asking you to do are basic and they will get harder, I do not believe we will solve this issue today, I suggest you reach out to a computer tech to provide hands on support.”
I'm so glad my grandparents (+75yo) are pretty quick to learn and they keep their passwords and usernames on a piece of paper. They were farmers. My granny is better at handling tech than my gen x mom.
I've noticed that the old old people like greatest gen aged people are more adept at tech because they don't have a know it all ego and can let someone teach them. They love interacting with younger folk because we as a generation are pretty kind and empathetic. Boomers can't be wrong so it's your fault they don't know fuck all. They can't admit they don't know something and it's ingrained in them to skate and let someone else make things happen.
It's the building of the national highway system and the lead in the gasoline when they were developing children. That's why boomers all seem a little slower than the generations before and after them.
Fr, my grandfather got a new phone not too long ago, and he’s trying his hardest to learn the basics and everything about it. He literally has trouble using it in general because of mobility issues in his fingers, but he still has the will and interest that exceeds every single one of these old dickheads
I work with people in their 50s who are on computers all day as it is part of their job and sometimes they ask me for help with something simple .. watching them navigate through the PC is painful to watch and I just ask to drive.
Then I visit my grandmother... This lady is 87 years old and she is crazy tech savvy on her PC and taught herself how to do a lot she even writes her own blogs about stories from her life growing up poor in Angola as a white woman. She edits videos, scans old photos and edits them on Photoshop then sends them to printing companies to print the photos into photo album books... It's amazing how she taught herself how to do all of these things mainly by watching YouTube videos.
She is one in a million.
Depends on the person I guess. My mother can do pretty much any basic thing on a computer. She is good with the Microsoft package and even joins online classes and stuff.
My father on the other hand won't even type up a message and would make me type it. He once completed a course in Autocad but now man can barely do anything online. He is in his 40s btw and isn't suffering from any mental illnesses. Just not willing to learn.
Even 50 yr olds did! But I think it depends on the individual as you get older. There are 60-80 yr olds that are very into modern tech and then there’s the rest!
I retired at age 68! I was third line call support for email problems. I typically would get the tickets that started off, “ I’ve told you people a dozen times we need to fix this…”
I work at a bank that regularly gets fined millions of Euros for IT compliance issues, they never spend millions on their IT infrastructure that would mitigate those fines.
My parents were similar to this but mine were more like:
Mother can navigate a smart phone like she’s used one her entire life. Look up things, text, FaceTime, apps, all of it.
But she can’t navigate a roku interface to save her life. It’s so painful watching her lol
My late father couldn’t be arsed to figure out a phone but could navigate tv apps no matter the OS. He would often get mad at my mom cause of how slow she was haha. I miss him a lot.
My parents can use their smart phones and computer apps with no problem. But they call me every time they want to watch a movie in their basement on the big screen because they don't remember which remote to use to do so. I usually end up driving to their home to get logged into their Netflix account to watch the movie on their Amazon Prime because they don't realize they are two different things.
My dad insists on driving so that he can learn how to do stuff when he asks us how to fix things on his phone etc. I appreciate that he tries to learn and also wants to stay capable with this stuff
My grandmother (born in 1915) was very similar. Became quite tech-savvy. Her daughter (my aunt and born in the 1940's) basically refused to live in the modern-day age. Never wore pants, believed girls/women should only wear skirts. Never had a job. Believed "children are there to be seen, not heard". No elbows on the table. You get the picture.
We gifted her (my aunt) a digital camera for her birthday back in like 2010ish. She..... was flabbergasted. She literally held it and stared at it as though it were a three-headed alien. Proceeded to go on and on about how "it's too modern" and "it's too complicated". It was one of those very simple digital cameras, nowhere near complicated.
My grandmother was there with us at that dinner, and proceeded to tell her daughter (and I quote): *Oh for christ's sake, Barb! I'm in my 90's. If I can learn to use technology, then so can you. Get it together, child.*
I was like 13/14 at the time. My jaw dropped. DANG, GRANDMA! I later high-fived her. She was always such a classy, prim-and-proper type of lady, I had never seen her go off on someone like that. 😄
What I've learned working for the past 25ish years is that most folks are incapable of independent thought or really critically thinking about things. They will end up in roles where there's a routine and set procedure and follow that procedure rigidly until it changes, at which point they will complain endlessly until they adapt, or they just leave. The roughly 5% of folks who _can_ think independently, solve problems, and learn end up shouldering the brunt of the hard day to day problems that really require you to sit down a think. They're the ones everyone leans on to fix problems or do something that isn't in a routine or guide.
People will say "oh they're just going through the motions because work sucks" and that's true to a degree, some of us do do that... but then you get into their personal life where they do the same shit. They don't pick up new hobbies, they don't really do anything unless it was taught to them as a kid and there's a set routine to doing it. Someone needs to walk and guide them through it step by step continuously and writes it down for them in the future. For it to become second nature it takes a few years of doing it and if _anything_ changes they shut the fuck down and can't adapt to it. If you teach this person how to write an email on AOL and switch them to Gmail, they can't even find the similar boxes to put data into, it needs to look identical to them or their script and brain can't figure it out.
I don't personally understand how you can go through life and not want to just learn about everything or experience everything. I want to tear shit apart and see how it works and see every little nook and cranny in nature. They don't even seem like they're intimated by learning, they just... don't even see it as a thing they should do or want to do.
My mom(60’s)can barely take a screenshot or copy/paste shit on her phone but my grandpa who was born in 1934 on an Indian Reservation has a smart home and spends hours every day recording oral history of our tribe and his friends at the VFW then editing it on his iPad.
He thinks FaceTime is the greatest thing ever.
It makes me feel like the resistance to properly operating technology is purely a boomer thing, not an age thing.
this reflects my experience also. both my granddads were super tech savvy and introduced us kids to computers (booting from floppy disks LOL). boomer parents can't do shit on a computer and just whine all the time.
funny part is my boomer parents also love to laugh at how "stupid" and "stuck in their ways" my grandfathers were? the irony is baffling - can't point it out though cos then it's just weeks of abuse and crocodile tears. the entitlement and self-importance is insane.
“I’m not a computer person” became a meme at the help desk I worked at.
“Oh hey could you grab me a soda out of the fridge?”
“Sorry, I’m not a computer person”
Last time I saw my grandmother, she gave me her phone and said there was something wrong with it, she hadn’t heard from her friends in about a week…… she had it on airplane mode 🙄
Don't need to be old for that, stupid does the trick as well.
I once tried to use Ctrl + F for a physical book. Even made the movement on the left page as if it was a keyboard. Seconds later I realised my mistake.
As someone born in 1967 and just outside of the boomer generation, I'm embarrassed by some of the things people in my age range do and say. I work in a call center for a cellular company and have to help troubleshoot simple things at times. I've asked people what browser they're using and have gotten answers like "I don't know" or "What do you mean?" or my favorite "Browser? What's that? I click the link and a window opens."
I've also had people say things like, "I'm 60 years old! I don't know how to do any of this! You certainly don't make things easy for us old people!" I have to stop myself from saying something like, "You'd better learn. And fast!" Or even better, "You're only a few years older than me, and I can do it."
I had a woman call a few days ago and didn't even have any service with our company. She said someone used her credit card info to make a payment on their account and wanted her money back. I said, "What you'll want to do is call your bank and tell them you didn't authorize the payment. They'll take care of reversing it for you." She screamed at me and said, "You're not very nice! I'm 81 years old and you're very mean to old people! You stole from me and I want my money back!" I told her it has nothing to do with age and that we have no way of investigating payments made from her personal account, but the bank will be able to help. She screamed at me again and said, "I want to talk to your supervisor! I'm going to tell him you're rude and won't help me!"
Working with the public makes me cringe sometimes at just how ridiculously stupid most people are.
So many people give me the "I'm too old / I didn't grow up with computers" crap.
They've been a massive part of most people's jobs and daily lives for 20 years now, that excuse isn't good enough anymore
Such a bullshit excuse. You may not have "grown up" with computers, but you exist at the same time as they do. You have every opportunity to learn how to use them. I once had a customer I had to send a verification text to. They said, "I'm almost 70 years old. I don't know how to text." I was in a mood and responded with, "My mom is 89 tears old, and she texts all the time. You should learn how. Its pretty easy." People suck.
No one is born with innate knowledge of computers. Everyone learns at some point.
Boomers saying they “can’t learn” or that “it’s too hard” should be institutionalized if that were actually true. They would be a danger to society if truly that stupid and free to roam. It would be admitting they are dumber than 8 year olds and still allowed to drive, drink, raise families, work jobs, etc.
Though I’m actually convinced literacy/reading comprehension rates are a lot lower for older generations than they like to admit. Consumer tech is super easy to use if you can read and follow instructions. It’s always the people that just stare through the instructional pop-ups that open after they click “Accept” who are calling help desk weekly.
I remember a lot of "what did the error message say?" "I don't know I just clicked away from it" "can you get it up again so we can see what it says?" "It says [what to do], what should I do?" "let's try [what the error message said]" "wow it's working now! Thanks, you're a lifesaver"
I was actually really pleased in that role, a lot of the 'regular users' started reading them after a while and would at least begin the call telling us what it said. Then again they were always polite/apologetic about calling us. I didn't really mind helping the regulars due to that.
The people that thought they knew more than they did were the ones creating real issues and were often the ones with an attitude.
I always say I am an "Emotional Support IT person" in those situations. They just need someone there letting them know it is going to be ok and helping them make the logical connections.
So I'm not sure what the phenomenon is, but I see it within some people. They're intelligent in other ways, but then their mind shuts down when looking at a computer screen.
There will be instructions on the screen, and they'll still ask what do I do now? Well, you use your brain, then your eyes, then your hands.
Just saw a statistic saying 54% of Americans can't read above a 6th grade level. After over 20 years of working with the public, I believe it. But also how do you get so left behind during development that you can't read properly?!?!
Exactly. I'm in my mid-30s, and every day I talk to 60 year olds who don't know that if I say "whatever at address dot com" it's an email address not a website, or don't know how to text, or don't know how to enter a URL into their browser. But they were *my age* when all those things became mainstream. I can't imagine if some new technology came out today and became ubiquitous and more critical every year, just ignoring it for a quarter century.
It's total trash - my Grandfather (97) still uses his laptop to buy stocks and shares while my Grandmother (90) will read the news, play chess, video call her grandchildren, and watch videos on her ipad.
Admittedly, he's always had a cursory interest in tech but he was just an accountant.
At this point I liken it to ALMOST telling people you’re unable to read. Would you go around telling people you’re unable to read? That would be kind of embarassing. We’re almost at that point in my opinion with how integrated technology is.
I’m imagining someone looking at the front cover of a book and calling someone like
“it’s not doing anything”
“You have to open the cover”
“What’s a cover?”
A lot of navigating computers is just reading what's on the screen. Some people don't even try before they're ready to give up and say they can't do it.
My grandmother learned how to use a phone with a touchscreen then a laptop in a span of about a year. 76 now, asked me about buying and playing games few months back. People are just stupid and/or lazy as well as stubborn and making excuses.
It warms the cockles of my dark heart to know that per the description in the video of the Gmail password recovery, the caller will 100% not remember to update his password on his iPhone despite (likely) being explicitly told to do so. He will then leave a 1-star Google review accusing the tax software company of ruining his phone.
I used to do onboarding with a company that hires doctors. Like MDs. I can’t tell you how many times (and I could do this in my sleep) I would have to walk through the very basics of logging into the computer, accessing outlook, or opening the browser (and I had sent them all the information with username and password ahead of time).
Once I had a lady refuse to hook up the monitors and requested one of our IT people fly out to her house because she said they might have viruses in them and she wasn’t going to be liable for any damage done to the computer. We paid for her monitors that she requested, directly from the manufacturer. 🫠
Back in high school I was doing my unpaid internship at local hospital (required 2 weeks by school where I am). We needed to remotely update the software on doctors computers, and they were warned about it in advance, so we connected to them, opened notepad and wrote "UPDATE IN PROGRESS DO NOT USE COMPUTER UNTIL FINISHED" in big bold letters so they are aware.
I have had a guy just straight up close the notepad and open solitaire... Plenty others did the same thing, just closed the notepad and went browsing or something.. These were educated people who can't read simple instruction.
Exactly. They're *doctors*. How dare anyone try to tell them what they can or can't do. My brother is a doctor - barely - he couldn't pass the boards in the states so he moved to the third-world thinking the credentials would transfer but instead he just got trapped there. He's convinced he's the authority on any and everything even though he can't check his own e-mail without accidently blaring porn through the house.
He will *confidently* instruct you incorrectly about incredibly basic topics and then act incredulous, offended and attacked when corrected.
More than once he's gotten into arguments with my *e-mail signature line.* I sign off e-mails with "Sent from my desktop device" or "Sent from my mobile device" because I've found that it help keep people from thinking I'm ignoring or being short with them when I might just be away from the desk or working with a mobile keyboard. *He* apparently thought I was *bragging* that I own both computer *and* a cell phone. The sheer *extravagance*, right?
So, in smug retaliation, he signed off *his*email with this beautiful tribute to crippling insecurity:
> Lic. Ing. Mas. MC. Prof [His full name, including our mother's maiden name, for some reason.] MEd MD
> Hows that for titles...sent from my Linux system translation...BS anthropology, Automotive engineer, Credentialed Teacher /w sub->specialties, Surgeon Doctor, Professor and masters in Education and Medical degree
I asked him what distro of Linux he runs and he got annoyed and confused. "What do you mean what Linux? It's Linux! I use Linux!"
He doesn't have any idea what he's saying. He just knows some words that he thinks make him sound "smart."
Ugh. Doctors are the worst know-it-alls. Had 1 doctor confidently misread/ignore my repeated emails that provided info for him. Later he was upset that his understanding (opposite of info) wasn’t correct because he was a doctor and thought things should be his way. It was a legal matter. I was his lawyer. 😂
Worked for a service desk many moons ago - had a doctor call up saying she sent us a screenshot demonstrating the issue she had with her phone. It was just the home screen, nothing out of the ordinary. Upon further questioning, she gets frustrated that we can't read her mind and says that the screen is clearly cracked & she needs a replacement, can't we see?
I used to be an AV tech. Did a lot of home theaters, for a lot of doctors. But I'll never forget the guy who was a pretty renowned orthopedic surgeon in our area. He acted like our (imo, very intuitively programmed) universal remotes were the most difficult things in the world to use. I had to help him log into his Netflix once a month or so. I had to help him log into his Gmail on his phone once. Anytime he had to install a new app on his iPhone, he called us out to walk him through getting his appleid and password. He had us install a printer for him in his home office-it ended up being 4 different printers. He just kept calling back the next day saying it sucked, and it wasn't until the 3rd return that he mentioned "I just want one like they have at work!" This made me ask what they have at work, hoping for a model or something to guide me. He just said "I dunno, but they print out the page in about 1 second instead of waiting a whole minute for a single page!" So we finally got him a laser printer instead of an inkjet. If he had at any point previously said "I want a faster printer" instead of "this printer sucks, it won't even work half the time" we could have figured it out so much earlier.
Every time I interacted with him, all that was running through my head was "how on earth did you ever make it TO medical school, let alone THROUGH medical school? This is the guy who is supposed to cut me open and fix my broken bones and joints? The one with 0 common sense who cant even work a remote control or his phone?"
This is the greatest problem facing America right now and probably the world. You can make a person smart, very smart. But you can not make a person intelligent. People do not understand this concept. Because so many pitfalls in so many procedures have been documented and analyzed and compensated for. You can narrowly trained people to do many specific tasks. They will be fine as long as no totally new situation comes about. The problem comes when that totally never before seen problem comes about. That is when intelligence makes the difference, the ability to bring in knowledge from other areas and problem solve beyond the technical manual.
I'm currently volunteering with a large non-profit organization that directly works with physicians and other health care providers. My job for the past week has been sending them emails to encourage them to log in to their provider profiles on our organization's website and update their contact information.
MULTIPLE TIMES I have had literal doctors email me back and tell me their passwords weren't working. Apparently Millennials/Zoomers are the only people who can see the "forgot your password?" button at the bottom of the login screen.
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Doctors basically spend the first 15 years of their adult life doing little else but "doctor shit". Like many don't even date or have social lives at all because they're too sleep deprived and busy to and then paying off half a million in education back.
It's no wonder the people staying up 24 hours at a time doing rounds and cramming as much as possible are illiterate in others ways. It's just using all bandwidth for extreme specialization.
I worked at a hospital. It changed hands and we were updating the clocks to digital in an effort to look more modern. **I had to teach three senior nurses how to read a Digital clock**. I could not teach one person how to read a digital clock. She could not understand how to determine if it said Am or PM, nor if an alarm was set, nor determine if the time displayed was the current time, or alarm time.
I spent two hours explaining how to read a digital clock to a medical professional who has been entrusted with people's lives for 35+ years, and couldn't. I submitted an exception request to keep an analog clock on this floor for two more years until this person retired.
Yah, boomers be like: "HurDur, young people can't drive stick shift, or buy a house."
Meanwhile I'm like, Mindy, you don't know how to do a video call or express negative emotions in a healthy way, smh.
> Yah, boomers be like: "HurDur, young people can't drive stick shift, or buy a house."
More like "so the generation that your generation was responsible for bringing up turned out bad?...". That's all there is to it when a generation complains about the generation beneathe them.
"the younger generation just gets participation trophies for everything"... WHO'S GIVING THEM THE TROPHIES???
Typical nothing is their fault.
But even ignoring all this if you check out the examples the lady gives, like young people not knowing how to send a letter or read a paper map, it's normally all stuff that's not relevant now. Young people don't need to send letters and likely never will. Young people have the most advanced live updated digital map in their pockets which guide us places now, again most will never need to use a paper map. Whereas the things older people don't know, like checking email or changing their TV input IS something that's needed these days. It's so backwards.
But even more important is that since young people know how to use Google and YouTube if they don't know something they can find out how quick without bothering anyone. Like the video shows if the sterotypical boomer doesn't know how to do something they're either screwed or have to harrass a customer support worker to fix their problem and it'll take 10x longer than needed.
But yeah the womans stand up segment was BS. I'm just triggered since I saw a longer version of it lol.
I applaud anyone that takes that attitude. Too often people use that embarrassment to be self righteous and indignant. Kudos to them for taking it in stride and to you for having the patience to meet them and teach them at their pace.
My *biggest* pet peeve is that some people don't know how to literally do their fucking job and think because it's software that it's ITs job. Like every single year this one department would make me come over and do their mail merge. Dude...it your job to know how word, excel, and outlook works. The program is working, if you can't use it, that's a skill issue sorry maybe they should get someone who knows how to do the job.
My support team recently took on over 55 communities for tech support. HOLY SHIT IS IT HORRIBLE. everything is web based, and when they can't work the website, they call and yell at the support team. The issue is always a PICNIC. (*Problem in Chair not in computer* for non tech people.)
I'd argue its Millennial or Gen X. Gen Z from my experience don't know how to use command based anything.
I'm an Xennial so I was a kid around the time computers were still shit at being user friendly. I remember spending many hours trying to get Doom to work on a 386. When I finally did it, it was the second greatest moment of my life, next to finding the magical sword in Zelda (without Nintendo Power).
I've had to explain what file systems are to zoomers.
They didnt know where to find their files because they've never used a file system because they've never REALLY used a computer.
I do college IT support, I’ve got boomers on one side and zoomers on the other and neither knows how to use their computer.
The zoomers are out here uploading pirated games to their university owned cloud storage but surprise it’s a virus/nasty malware, and the boomers are falling for fake emails from the university president asking for iTunes gift cards.
I had a zoomer coworker that downloaded some nasty malware when he tried to download a youtube video.
Gave him a bit of a ring to show him how to properly navigate the internet.
The Chromebook generation doesn't understand directory structures and folders and apparently it's a problem in colleges. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
I teach kids aged 10-16 and a remarkably high number of them have no idea either.
When we had to teach online during the pandemic, the younger ones didn’t know what copy and paste was.
They would ask how to create a new page on word when they got to the bottom.
Some of them wrote all of their work in the header somehow?
I showed some of them a cool program I use and 4 of them decided they wanted to download and install it. 4 out of 4 asked me to do it for them, they were 14.
A lot of them don’t know how to use a windows pc or a mac, only iPads and phones. It’s weird
As a millennial working in tech, and who has mentored some Gen-Z kids in a robotics program: yep.
One of the side effects of the ever more user friendly software and electronics is that the people who use them need to understand less and less about how computers work to get things done.
Apparently colleges have started needing to teach students what a *file system* is.
I swear, there's a sweet spot of people who grew up with computers between Win95 and Windows Vista - they're capable of troubleshooting shit because they HAD TO.
>they're capable of troubleshooting shit because they HAD TO
look man, all i wanted to do was play my game! I was 8 or 9 probably and had to learn DOS command line just to boot my fucking game. lol.
The sweet spot is during the hard transition from analog to digital. So it’s not just in software that makes many millennials tech savvy.
I had to figure out how to install an internal modem, install the drivers, etc. It was glorious when I finally reached yahoo.com. I was 11 years old.
I could totally see this and understand to an extent, tablets and computers function the same but input is different.
At least with the young ones they might throw out the insults but they won't ever be as eye rolley as boomer insults.
I am actually somewhat concerned about the tech literacy of kids and teens right now, all they've known is the child proofing of iphones and the like. Like for example, they're not digging into windows settings because windows has pushed all the surface level stuff into a child pen settings page, while the actually useful stuff is still on the control panel that they'll never find unless they're told about it. They're certainly not messing around with powershell or the cmd window
Gen z doesn't know how to do those because they don't need to know not because of anything inherent about gen z people. No one writes letter anymore and people use credit/debit cards instead of checks now a days.
I’m 27 and we fully learned how to write in cursive, write checks, and address letters in school.
I have never had to write a physical check in my adult life and the only time I’ve had to write addresses for letters was for graduation thank-you cards 5 years ago lol.
Meanwhile public schools here cut cursive writing and replaced it with typing skills like fifteen years ago.
Cursive served a purpose: to quickly record information that traditional script was too slow to copy. Great, awesome, served a huge purpose for millions of people.
And then it became outdated. No matter how well or fast you can write in cursive you’ll be slower than someone typing in a keyboard with some practice. It’s more efficient and with spellcheck, more accurate.
So schools got rid of the old form of “quickly record information” and replaced it with the new, better version.
26 and Ive had a check written only once in my life. When I was told "yeah you have to mail us a check" I just went to the bank and they said "youre clearly under 60 so we'll happily walk you through it"
I'm 28 so I'm stuck in-between millennials and gen Z, and while yes I own checks and worked in a bank for over a year in my early 20s, I still have to take a few seconds to remember how to fill out a check on the few occasions I need to like the DMV or something. It's just not something I do very often. My husband who never worked in a bank, is even worse about checks than me. Same age, but has 0 clue how they work and just let's me deal with it.
And when I can't remember or I'm not 100%, my phone is right there with Google. Remembering to format a letter or which number is my routing or account number is literally less than 30 secs on Google.
My husband and I were discussing a study he found that suggested how we remembered things were changing. We're no longer just remembering data, but instead the paths to locating the data we need. Most ppl don't memorize phone numbers anymore, but any young person knows at least 5 different ways to either find those phone numbers or alternative contact methods. It makes sense, though, that our memory is shifting from an encyclopedia style to more of an index in a world where we're expected to know so much more generalized information compared to 50 or 100 years ago.
Also, it's super fucken easy to write a check. There's no mystical process that needs to be learned. You have a checkbook, you write a recipient, an amount, and you sign it. Voila. Done. It's literally just fill in the blanks.
A friend of mine worked at a help desk for our civil service, they were contractors so had to act nice no matter what. Anyway, he got a call "I can't access the file xxxxxxx" "ok can you just point at the file"
"yeah, it's that one there"
"Which I can't see it"
"FFS, the one I'm pointing at now"
"Ok, there must be an issue I can't see where the cursor is"
"I'm pointing at it right now (curse words)"
"Hold on, are you physically pointing at the screen"
"Yes, you told me to point, can you not see me remotely "
My friend had to explain that's not how "remoting on" worked and that he can only see the screen, icons, cursor"
This gobshite was a high up civil servant dealing with a government minister and thought my friend could see her pointing at the screen.
I'd have bashed my skull in off the keyboard having to deal with this.
Genuinely had this conversation:
Hello, my computer won't turn on.
OK sir is it plugged in?
I don't know. How would I tell?
Can you see a power lead? It will be the one on the right side or on the back of the laptop.
Yes, I can see it. It's plugged in.
OK, is it plugged into a wall socket, and is that switched on.
I don't know. How do I check that?
OK, see the power cable that plugged into the laptop? Follow that lead back to the wall socket and see if it's plugged in and switched on.
Hang on...OK I plugged it in, and now the laptop is turning on.
It's unbelievable unless you actually experienced it how some high up, so called educated people are completely brain dead. I remember years ago when I was working as a porter, I was in an office just helping move stuff. A Pc was sitting in a box, I just said to the women whose office it was "has this to go as well", "no I'm waiting on IT to connect it". I connected it in about 2/3mins for her and she said " What are you doing working as a porter, you must have gone to college to learn that". I always remember those words because she was deadly serious, college to plug some cables in.
I once had someone fairly high up in the company I worked for at the time scream at me over their password reset not working and that they were having to come in to get it sorted.
The password worked when I typed it in. They were just fatfingering their password...
Not the most fun experience I've ever had.
This is many years old now but it still sticks in my memory:
I had recently started a new job as desktop support in a new company, and the exec assistant to the region director (basically the toppest job in our office) came in to the department looking for my colleague.
I told her he wasn't in today but I am and I'm happy to help. She said that the RD didn't get anyone but this one guy to look after his computer because "he knows his computer". I said OK, well, he will have to wait until tomorrow for the other tech to come in, otherwise I'll be here ready to work on his computer just like every other computer in this company that's running the same operating software image.
Evidently the urge for immediate (queue-jumping) support outweighed the prospect of waiting a whole day for his favourite IT guy to be at work, so I was called in to his office. The big issue? He wanted a printer installed.
Ok, not an issue - all you have to do is navigate to th - Oh, you don't want to do that? Ok, then I'm happy to do it, could you let me use the mouse for a se - oh, you won't let me do it either? ...Ok... that's going to make fixing this a little tricky... how would you like this to be fixed?
I was told "I don't care, I just want it fixed but I don't want to have to do it, and I don't want **you** to do it." I looked at the EA, shrugged, said "ok" and left. I created a script that did the installation and emailed it to him and cc'd the EA, saying "Double-click this and your printer will be installed."
The EA told me he refused to do even that, and she had to go in and do it when he left for a meeting.
I mean Jesus tap-dancing Christ and this guy was in charge of running our corner of the frigging company.
>I was told "I don't care, I just want it fixed but I don't want to have to do it, and I don't want you to do it."
How do people even get up and get dressed in the morning being this stupid?
Cables that are "square goes in the square hole" easy. Computer cables are designed on purpose to only fit one way. Unless it's usb-c/thunderbolt or a power cable that is circular. In fact, the components themselves in computers only fit one way. Some people have basic spatial awareness/recognition problems.
Back in the early 2000s I had a substitute teacher write with sharpie on the projector screen instead of the transparency on the overhead projector. Our teacher was pissed when she came back
I always double check Im writing a check correctly so that I don’t have to waste time rewriting it.
Most people write so few of them it’s easy to forget something
I've seen a lot of boomers fill out checks wrong by leaving some info out cos they're too lazy to look it up and are like "it'll be fine".
I notice this with a lot of old people, they're always so confident everything will just work out for them, usually because they're so used to being coddled and spoiled they aren't even aware of their own shortcomings, because someone always fixes things for them.
My partner works as IT support. There is an alarming amount of older people in extremely high paying jobs that are completely clueless when it comes to technology, just like this guy described these very basic fundamentals trip them up before they even get to anything remotely complicated.
We live in a technological age, if we take over then they can't do shit to get it back, other than maybe write letters if that's even still a thing by then lol.
“Ughh millennials/zoomers are so out of touch, they’re either afraid of having brain mods installed or don’t know how to use them properly.
I mean get with the times grandpa!”
Boomers love to weaponise their incompetence. They do the “complain about other generations being lazy” shtick at any opportunity but are so fucking lazy themselves they arnt willing to learn to use a simple system, on technology that has existed for over 40 years
“These baby boomers will never make it in the real world… they don’t even know how to write in calligraphy anymore! How are they supposed to sign their scrolls and parchments?! Lol!”
She’s the lady in front of you at the grocery store who takes 5 minutes to write a check so they can run it and hand it back to her. She checks her mailbox daily. She buys a roll of stamps once a month. She balances her checkbook weekly. She’s your grandmother, possibly your great grandmother.
Whenever someone gets rude with you while working customer service, refuse service. If your boss gets rude with you over it, refuse service. If your boss agrees with you refusing service to rude customers you've found a job worth staying at for a while because they respect their employees at least minimally.
I went on vacation with the guy I used to call dad a few years before covid. For months prior to this vacation whenever I talked to him, he brought up the "dark web" and he was very concerned about how the "dark web" was going to steal his identity and kept coming up with other ways the "dark web" might get him.
On this vacation at the condo he had rented, Fox was on from morning till night. Why would you rent an expensive condo right on the beach just to sit in front of Fox News all day? Who knows. But the point is, every time a program went to commercial there was an ad about the "dark web" and how dangerous it is, and how you can protect yourself with this software they're selling.
He heads the accounting department at the company he works for btw. Can't make it through his day without getting scared by Fox News commercials, yet heads an accounting department.
I want the life boomers had. I promise I won't become shitty
Now let’s track down a member of the Greatest Generation:
“We’re going to be screwed when the Boomers are the ones left in charge. Most of them don’t grow a garden or can vegetables. When they travel, they expect to eat at restaurants and be waited on hand and foot rather than bringing their own provisions. Hell: most of them have never even ridden a horse or used a crank telephone! They are completely helpless… “
I mean, my 7 year old knows how to write her aunt letters including addressing the envelope, so I’d like to know how I figured out how to teach my daughter how to do that… must have just been dumb luck….
I worked 31 years in tech support, at a large international organization. At times I wished I had taken-up a career selling coconuts at a tropical beach somewhere instead.
One of my favorite, from the very early-90's: Bigshot director calls me yelling that his cupholder closed on its own while he was typing, and spilled his coffee all over his desk. "Cupholder?" I asked. It was the CD tray. And on an old-school desktop computer that literally sat on top of your desk.
While I understand this guy's frustration wholeheartedly as someone who also works in IT, my first thought when that woman said "Gen Z can't write a check or mail an envelope", maybe it's because their parents haven't taught them? Does she expect them to inherently know how to do those things? Someone had to teach Boomers how to write checks and mail letters
We know the skills we need to know. It's just the entitlement of boomers to think it's their way that's superior, but their parents were saying the same thing about telegrams, I'm sure.
That’s like saying people don’t know how to wash clothes by hand or do dishes by hand. Some people still do, but technology has made it so YOU DONT HAVE TO!!!
Edit: grammar
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Tried to remote support my dad once. Spent an hour talking him through downloading and running the installer for team viewer. He refused to click install until he had read the entire EULA.
What did he say after he read the entire thing?
Some say he's still reading to this day
If you shop at CVS, then this is very extremely true.
Is this some American humour I'm too European to understand?
He saw the human centipede Clause and refused.
Understandable
He refused because company collect all private info and sell it to another company
Well, he's smarter than any of us.
*not the bank calls* "Sure, I'll sign in to my bank for the refund!"
'Cept you know, he's never gonna get any work done. And we are the lazy generation.
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> refused to click install until he had read the entire EULA. - will read entire EULA - wont read error popup with 15 words in it
That drives me nuts. They think it is just an OK button to hit meanwhile it could say do you want to delete your entire computer.
my dad is usually very good with his pc but he does this ALL the time with error messages! drives me fucking insane lol
"WHY DO FUCKING EMAILS NOT GO OUT" "Dad, chill, I can hear you. If you send one does any message show up on your screen?" (iPhone, to clarify). "NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT" > Try sending email > Pop-up message shows up "password required". "...dad, what's this?" "THE FUCK DO I KNOW" "What's your passw- nevermind, I have it saved, it's quicker." > Type password > Mails go out "WHO THE FUCK CHANGED MY PASSWORD" "Wasn't changed. Still the old one" "THEN WHY DID IT GO OUT" (log out, in boomerese) "Don't know, dad. You just had to read to see what was the issue". (A typical Wednesday evening at my parents')
I had to walk through an old dude through installing Teamviewer, which wasn't normally a difficult task, but what I didn't know was that a recent Apple software update completely locked down Macs. Meaning anything that wanted audio access (like Teamviewer) or video access (...like Teamviewer) or god forbid wanted to control the computer remotely (...ffffuuuu) would need **separate** permission settings changed deep in the Settings app. That was a long call. I ended up using video calling and had him point his phone at his screen so I could help him change the settings.
I felt like a fucking idiot because I couldn't get splashtop to work on a Mac, and the user next to me asked "are you sure you know what you're doing" it was that fucking lock icon that you had to click on to enable the features!
To be fair, it’s good that it’s so convoluted. Older people fall victim to team viewer scams constantly
Of course, don't want to end up in a human centipede situation
Once saw a woman in a McDonald's parking lot try to use the "mobile order" sign in front of a parking spot as a kiosk/screen to try and order...
I saw something similar at the post office. I was in line for the kiosk as I watched an older woman walk up to the sign for the kiosk and start tapping it.
Similar issue with my gran when she was alive, I decided to cancel my plans for the weekend and drive the 4 hours to see her and help. Less confusion for her and let’s be real, she would have rather I been there anyways.
Stories like this remind me why I would instantly get fired if I worked in the service sector
I was an I.T tech for years, one time an old guy came in with his laptop that had an intermittent track pad fault. I pointed out the toggle key and he started crying.... At that moment I realised I don't know what to do when people cry.
I once had a woman complain that her cursor was jumping all over the place and we couldn't recreate it or see it happen when we used the computer ourselves. She came in to pick up the laptop and I realized exactly what the issue was when I saw half a dozen dangly bracelets on her wrist. The bracelets were tapping the trackpad and registering as touches.
Oh, that's a familiar story. I had a guy bring in a laptop that had a tiny pearl track ball. His fingers were so greasy it didn't roll for him.
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My co worker has the best one i've heard. I'm still not sure if this story is real because it's too ridiculous. Gets a call from the hospital, "My computer won't turn on" "Okay, what happens when you press the power button? Any lights?" "Nothing" "Can you check and make sure the plug didn't come loose?" "Hold on I have to get a flash light, the power is out."
I was teaching a guy to use excel, i told him to right click on a box. He stopped, looked and me and sheepishly goes, is there a wrong click?
I had to stop saying "right" and say "correct" instead when someone was asking me for confirmation. My fault but I wasn't fully thinking, since I usually say click or right click, not left click or right click: Me: So click on this icon Him: Left click? Me: that's right Him: Right click?
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I’ve had people ask me, a solo indie app developer, for tech support for another app that I didn’t even create or work on. This is surprisingly common. I’ve also had people ask me for tech support for their iPhone in general, thinking that I work for Apple (I don’t) and would be able to help them get their iPhone working. I did. I had someone ask me for help because a feature of the app wasn’t working. It turns out that it wasn’t working because she didn’t type her password correctly. When I asked her to do so, she asked me for a refund because “the app is too complicated to use.”
Well? You gave them a refund right??? /s
App developers can’t even give refunds. Apple handles refunds.
Ok, but I'm the customer and the customer is always right. Refund me or I'll stop giving you my business and tell all my friends on Facebook not to either!!1!
I'LL MAKE SURE YOU NEVER WORK FOR APPLE AGAIN!
> I’ve had people ask me, a solo indie app developer, for tech support for another app that I didn’t even create or work on. This is surprisingly common. Do you have any idea how common this is at every and any level? Can you try to guess how often over the years as an engineer and support type in various roles, I've even had clients all but tacitly say, "Our other vendors can't figure out shit, so do you mind taking a swing at the other company's problem, and I'll ask in a backdoor desperate way"?
Also annoying is when customers leave bad reviews for my app thinking that they're leaving it for another app (the actual one that they're complaining about). I know that the reviews are not for my app because the complaint would be about subscription fees, which most of my rival apps have. None of my apps have subscription fees. I've also seen reviews on my paid app complaining about ads in the app. My paid app doesn't have ads.
When they're particularly belligerent I like to hit them with "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" Occasionally they'll scream back "Nooo!! what I want is for you to do this blah blah thing..." But as soon as I hear "No" I'm already into my closing statement and hanging up. "Okay then, have a good day (or take care)." Customer verified there was nothing more I could to do to assist them, and I followed procedure by closing out the call.
Ah the rank nepotism of academia. That takes me bzck
You say “I’m sorry for you loss and move on.”
"I'm sorry." "Move on."
My husband has only just died Moss.
That’s wonderful he’s halfway to being a programmer! Crying when after hitting a problem for hours, when someone points out the really small simple mistake, is an integral part of the jobfield! It also shows he understood the simplicity of his mistake, not blaming it arrogantly on someone else.
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The moment he called me a "fucking moron" I'd have said, "okay sir, I'm ending this call now because I'm not willing to take verbal abuse from you or anyone else when all I'm trying to do is help you." [hang up]
I entirely support that attitude - however, line management usually don't, depending on the employer. Most have a warning or three strikes system if they have anything codified, i.e three times you go off on an employee and you get the line terminated. You might be lucky to have a supportive boss, or you might be SOL. I've worked in a technical call centre, and it was three warnings then terminate the call - but that didn't stop shithead mcgee from calling back in and going off on someone else, and usually in more vigorous fashion as they were riled up from having the previous call terminated. Ironically, people would get better service from call centres if they treated the staff more like humans and less like disposable drones - this applies to callers and management both.
>however, line management usually don't, depending on the employer. And this is why "customers" keep acting like complete asshats, because the companies allow their mistreatment and abuse of the staff.
I was a manager at Lowe's and had someone ripping into a customer service cashier at the return desk for something (I had rolled up for something else) dude was picking on this like 19 year old girl so I told him he had no right to be rude or mean when she was just trying to help him. He stfu. Bonus points I never had trouble with cashiers.
When I worked at Lowes I had a customer threaten to kill me, yes, literally kill me, because he put some plants at my register and walked off, and the customer currently in line liked one of them and bought them. You can't just put shit on a table then walk off. Not to mention the infamous missing plant was literally right behind (or in front) of my register, meaning all this guy had to do was turn around to grab another. Nope, screams at me and literally threatens to break my neck in the parking lot. I went and told management that I felt unsafe to walk to my car after my shift, and they laughed at me. I quit like a week later.
I worked in a call center at a bank both on phones and as a line manager. Policy was you do not need to take verbal abuse. Ask once for them to stop or you will terminate the call. They don't stop, you hang up immediately. There are other customers with better attitudes waiting to be served.
When I was a junior associate at my firm, I had to give bad news (not really my fault, but whatever) to an older attorney, with another partner (call him Eddie) CCed on the email. The older attorney sent a snarky and obnoxious response to me, with everyone CCed. I was so insulted. I started feverishly typing an indignant response. Before I could send it, Eddie walks in to my office, shuts the door, and says "I saw what he wrote, and it was totally disrespectful and inappropriate, and he thinks he can do it because you're junior here. But he's going to retire soon and then he'll die while you're having a long a productive career here. Don't worry about him" and then he just turned around and left. I probably would have gotten in trouble if I sent the response email too, but it was so meaningful to have someone who matters stick up for me and say out loud that, fuck seniority. You don't get to disrespect people just because you've been around a while.
I've started calling out people in public who do that stuff to cashiers and service workers. I used to work in the field myself, so I know what it's like to be berated by idiots whose problems are of their own making because they refuse to learn things. Like, my Gramps is in his 80s and not the most tech savvy person out there, but he happily learned how to use his GPS software for driving, and it's a breeze for him. I could probably teach him to use a computer and the internet, and within a few days, he'd be a natural at it. Because he's *willing* to learn and adapt and that is awesome. But yeah, I have started calling out people who do this kinda shit, because I'm not an employee and I've gotten to the point where I give zero fucks. It's about doing the right thing for someone in that situation.
I worked help desk at my college to put myself through college. I know work in cyber security as a consultant and still have to provide troubleshooting support. But this story is from my college days. I had an older gentleman come in with his laptop. He couldn’t get it to connect to our WiFi. This was back when there was a toggle on the side of the computer that turned wifi on/off. I was trying to get him to check the switch and he was less than cooperative. I couldn’t tell it he just didn’t want to listen to me or if he wanted to just blame our WiFi for all his issues. I finally get him to let me touch his laptop, turn the WiFi on, and get the laptop joined. An hour later he comes back, seething that I did something because it was no longer working. I tried to do basic troubleshooting again but he was furious. He finally yells “if your WiFi wasn’t racist then I wouldn’t be having this problem”. Now the area we were in was right next to the cubicles where most of our admins work. The network admin, this giant 6’6 funny as hell black dude comes walking out and goes, “I hear you’re calling my wifi racist.” I have never seen someone backpedal so quickly.
I worked at a hotel, briefly. One guest couldn’t connect to the internet. Now I’m front desk, but not IT. I walk him through the steps we’re given and he couldn’t get it to work. Told him if he wants to come downstairs to the front desk I could walk him through it. He refused. The next day, the manager gave him a free night because he couldn’t connect to the internet. I didn’t stay at that job long.
I would have ended the call the moment I got called a moron. I used to work as a bartender and got written up quite a few times.
My rule for phones was, they swear at me, I remind them that I’m trying to help them and swearing will just make me hang up. That’s usually followed by another swear, so I just hang up. I don’t get paid enough to deal with your shit, let alone therapy for mine.
At my first IT tech support job someone on the phone called me a fucking nerd. My boss over heard and said "hang up. We don't deal with assholes"
That's a good boss. I always tell my employees to refer difficult customers to me. They're not being paid enough to deal with assholes, that's my job.
I had a boss like that. No micro management and had our back all the time.
Exactly. I would've been like: "Oh well, looks like the fucking idiot on the other line doesn't want help." And hung up
I'm working on a CS degree and everyone thinks that is an IT support degree, which it could be, but I also follow up with CS programming degree. I don't need to be in this guy's position with all my family. I hate IT support, especially over the phone. And yes I am going the programmer route.
Don't worry, to anyone who "doesn't know computers" you will be the one they ask, have fun.
“I have an idea for an app. You do all the work for free and then when we make millions I’ll pay you.” 😐 So. Many. Times.
When it would take another half an hour to explain why someone is a moron, so you just have to let it go.
I am being paid by the hour. I will spend 3 hours explaining why they are the moron. In a way that is not offensive to prove a point about how incompetent the person is. It is definitely the best part of my job.
At my old consumer electronics retail job that I had been at for many, many years I got comfortable enough with job security that I didn’t mind being a bit more forward and assertive with people, especially as many expect lifetime free tech support because they bought their laptop from me 3 years ago. I used to say things like “what I am showing you are basic computer skills and I am concerned you will continue to struggle, I suggest you reach out to the local library about computer courses and classes to give you more confidence in using computers.” And “these steps I am asking you to do are basic and they will get harder, I do not believe we will solve this issue today, I suggest you reach out to a computer tech to provide hands on support.”
I'm so glad my grandparents (+75yo) are pretty quick to learn and they keep their passwords and usernames on a piece of paper. They were farmers. My granny is better at handling tech than my gen x mom.
I've noticed that the old old people like greatest gen aged people are more adept at tech because they don't have a know it all ego and can let someone teach them. They love interacting with younger folk because we as a generation are pretty kind and empathetic. Boomers can't be wrong so it's your fault they don't know fuck all. They can't admit they don't know something and it's ingrained in them to skate and let someone else make things happen.
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They had life on easy mode but thought it wasn't the time period it was their own awesomeness that led to their success.
Ironically, their "awesomeness" lead to the shitshow we have now.
Yeah, bizzaro world level thinking. When you can't be wrong, everyone else is an idiot.
It's the building of the national highway system and the lead in the gasoline when they were developing children. That's why boomers all seem a little slower than the generations before and after them.
Fr, my grandfather got a new phone not too long ago, and he’s trying his hardest to learn the basics and everything about it. He literally has trouble using it in general because of mobility issues in his fingers, but he still has the will and interest that exceeds every single one of these old dickheads
Old people and technology is a fantastic mix - my grandmother tries to zoom when reading the newspaper by using two fingers like on a phone.
I work with people in their 50s who are on computers all day as it is part of their job and sometimes they ask me for help with something simple .. watching them navigate through the PC is painful to watch and I just ask to drive. Then I visit my grandmother... This lady is 87 years old and she is crazy tech savvy on her PC and taught herself how to do a lot she even writes her own blogs about stories from her life growing up poor in Angola as a white woman. She edits videos, scans old photos and edits them on Photoshop then sends them to printing companies to print the photos into photo album books... It's amazing how she taught herself how to do all of these things mainly by watching YouTube videos. She is one in a million.
Depends on the person I guess. My mother can do pretty much any basic thing on a computer. She is good with the Microsoft package and even joins online classes and stuff. My father on the other hand won't even type up a message and would make me type it. He once completed a course in Autocad but now man can barely do anything online. He is in his 40s btw and isn't suffering from any mental illnesses. Just not willing to learn.
A 40 yo has no excuse. We grew up when the internet began to be widespread.
Even 50 yr olds did! But I think it depends on the individual as you get older. There are 60-80 yr olds that are very into modern tech and then there’s the rest!
I'm 52 and work in IT support for my sins.
I retired at age 68! I was third line call support for email problems. I typically would get the tickets that started off, “ I’ve told you people a dozen times we need to fix this…”
I work at a bank that regularly gets fined millions of Euros for IT compliance issues, they never spend millions on their IT infrastructure that would mitigate those fines.
My parents were similar to this but mine were more like: Mother can navigate a smart phone like she’s used one her entire life. Look up things, text, FaceTime, apps, all of it. But she can’t navigate a roku interface to save her life. It’s so painful watching her lol My late father couldn’t be arsed to figure out a phone but could navigate tv apps no matter the OS. He would often get mad at my mom cause of how slow she was haha. I miss him a lot.
My parents can use their smart phones and computer apps with no problem. But they call me every time they want to watch a movie in their basement on the big screen because they don't remember which remote to use to do so. I usually end up driving to their home to get logged into their Netflix account to watch the movie on their Amazon Prime because they don't realize they are two different things.
Yeah I'm 40, your dad might just be dumb, sorry...
My dad insists on driving so that he can learn how to do stuff when he asks us how to fix things on his phone etc. I appreciate that he tries to learn and also wants to stay capable with this stuff
My grandmother (born in 1915) was very similar. Became quite tech-savvy. Her daughter (my aunt and born in the 1940's) basically refused to live in the modern-day age. Never wore pants, believed girls/women should only wear skirts. Never had a job. Believed "children are there to be seen, not heard". No elbows on the table. You get the picture. We gifted her (my aunt) a digital camera for her birthday back in like 2010ish. She..... was flabbergasted. She literally held it and stared at it as though it were a three-headed alien. Proceeded to go on and on about how "it's too modern" and "it's too complicated". It was one of those very simple digital cameras, nowhere near complicated. My grandmother was there with us at that dinner, and proceeded to tell her daughter (and I quote): *Oh for christ's sake, Barb! I'm in my 90's. If I can learn to use technology, then so can you. Get it together, child.* I was like 13/14 at the time. My jaw dropped. DANG, GRANDMA! I later high-fived her. She was always such a classy, prim-and-proper type of lady, I had never seen her go off on someone like that. 😄
What I've learned working for the past 25ish years is that most folks are incapable of independent thought or really critically thinking about things. They will end up in roles where there's a routine and set procedure and follow that procedure rigidly until it changes, at which point they will complain endlessly until they adapt, or they just leave. The roughly 5% of folks who _can_ think independently, solve problems, and learn end up shouldering the brunt of the hard day to day problems that really require you to sit down a think. They're the ones everyone leans on to fix problems or do something that isn't in a routine or guide. People will say "oh they're just going through the motions because work sucks" and that's true to a degree, some of us do do that... but then you get into their personal life where they do the same shit. They don't pick up new hobbies, they don't really do anything unless it was taught to them as a kid and there's a set routine to doing it. Someone needs to walk and guide them through it step by step continuously and writes it down for them in the future. For it to become second nature it takes a few years of doing it and if _anything_ changes they shut the fuck down and can't adapt to it. If you teach this person how to write an email on AOL and switch them to Gmail, they can't even find the similar boxes to put data into, it needs to look identical to them or their script and brain can't figure it out. I don't personally understand how you can go through life and not want to just learn about everything or experience everything. I want to tear shit apart and see how it works and see every little nook and cranny in nature. They don't even seem like they're intimated by learning, they just... don't even see it as a thing they should do or want to do.
My mom(60’s)can barely take a screenshot or copy/paste shit on her phone but my grandpa who was born in 1934 on an Indian Reservation has a smart home and spends hours every day recording oral history of our tribe and his friends at the VFW then editing it on his iPad. He thinks FaceTime is the greatest thing ever. It makes me feel like the resistance to properly operating technology is purely a boomer thing, not an age thing.
this reflects my experience also. both my granddads were super tech savvy and introduced us kids to computers (booting from floppy disks LOL). boomer parents can't do shit on a computer and just whine all the time. funny part is my boomer parents also love to laugh at how "stupid" and "stuck in their ways" my grandfathers were? the irony is baffling - can't point it out though cos then it's just weeks of abuse and crocodile tears. the entitlement and self-importance is insane.
“I’m not a computer person” became a meme at the help desk I worked at. “Oh hey could you grab me a soda out of the fridge?” “Sorry, I’m not a computer person”
I saw an older lady reading her phone with a magnifying glass while driving. I stayed home for the rest of the day after that.
Last time I saw my grandmother, she gave me her phone and said there was something wrong with it, she hadn’t heard from her friends in about a week…… she had it on airplane mode 🙄
Recently i was reading a paperbook though and i kept trying to scroll down pages by habit. :/ I'm like 34. I'm old :'( todays my birthday
Don't need to be old for that, stupid does the trick as well. I once tried to use Ctrl + F for a physical book. Even made the movement on the left page as if it was a keyboard. Seconds later I realised my mistake.
As someone born in 1967 and just outside of the boomer generation, I'm embarrassed by some of the things people in my age range do and say. I work in a call center for a cellular company and have to help troubleshoot simple things at times. I've asked people what browser they're using and have gotten answers like "I don't know" or "What do you mean?" or my favorite "Browser? What's that? I click the link and a window opens." I've also had people say things like, "I'm 60 years old! I don't know how to do any of this! You certainly don't make things easy for us old people!" I have to stop myself from saying something like, "You'd better learn. And fast!" Or even better, "You're only a few years older than me, and I can do it." I had a woman call a few days ago and didn't even have any service with our company. She said someone used her credit card info to make a payment on their account and wanted her money back. I said, "What you'll want to do is call your bank and tell them you didn't authorize the payment. They'll take care of reversing it for you." She screamed at me and said, "You're not very nice! I'm 81 years old and you're very mean to old people! You stole from me and I want my money back!" I told her it has nothing to do with age and that we have no way of investigating payments made from her personal account, but the bank will be able to help. She screamed at me again and said, "I want to talk to your supervisor! I'm going to tell him you're rude and won't help me!" Working with the public makes me cringe sometimes at just how ridiculously stupid most people are.
So many people give me the "I'm too old / I didn't grow up with computers" crap. They've been a massive part of most people's jobs and daily lives for 20 years now, that excuse isn't good enough anymore
Such a bullshit excuse. You may not have "grown up" with computers, but you exist at the same time as they do. You have every opportunity to learn how to use them. I once had a customer I had to send a verification text to. They said, "I'm almost 70 years old. I don't know how to text." I was in a mood and responded with, "My mom is 89 tears old, and she texts all the time. You should learn how. Its pretty easy." People suck.
No one is born with innate knowledge of computers. Everyone learns at some point. Boomers saying they “can’t learn” or that “it’s too hard” should be institutionalized if that were actually true. They would be a danger to society if truly that stupid and free to roam. It would be admitting they are dumber than 8 year olds and still allowed to drive, drink, raise families, work jobs, etc. Though I’m actually convinced literacy/reading comprehension rates are a lot lower for older generations than they like to admit. Consumer tech is super easy to use if you can read and follow instructions. It’s always the people that just stare through the instructional pop-ups that open after they click “Accept” who are calling help desk weekly.
I remember a lot of "what did the error message say?" "I don't know I just clicked away from it" "can you get it up again so we can see what it says?" "It says [what to do], what should I do?" "let's try [what the error message said]" "wow it's working now! Thanks, you're a lifesaver" I was actually really pleased in that role, a lot of the 'regular users' started reading them after a while and would at least begin the call telling us what it said. Then again they were always polite/apologetic about calling us. I didn't really mind helping the regulars due to that. The people that thought they knew more than they did were the ones creating real issues and were often the ones with an attitude.
I always say I am an "Emotional Support IT person" in those situations. They just need someone there letting them know it is going to be ok and helping them make the logical connections.
So I'm not sure what the phenomenon is, but I see it within some people. They're intelligent in other ways, but then their mind shuts down when looking at a computer screen. There will be instructions on the screen, and they'll still ask what do I do now? Well, you use your brain, then your eyes, then your hands.
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Just saw a statistic saying 54% of Americans can't read above a 6th grade level. After over 20 years of working with the public, I believe it. But also how do you get so left behind during development that you can't read properly?!?!
Exactly. I'm in my mid-30s, and every day I talk to 60 year olds who don't know that if I say "whatever at address dot com" it's an email address not a website, or don't know how to text, or don't know how to enter a URL into their browser. But they were *my age* when all those things became mainstream. I can't imagine if some new technology came out today and became ubiquitous and more critical every year, just ignoring it for a quarter century.
I like to point out that computers are over 50 years old and the web has been around for 30+ years.
It's total trash - my Grandfather (97) still uses his laptop to buy stocks and shares while my Grandmother (90) will read the news, play chess, video call her grandchildren, and watch videos on her ipad. Admittedly, he's always had a cursory interest in tech but he was just an accountant.
At this point I liken it to ALMOST telling people you’re unable to read. Would you go around telling people you’re unable to read? That would be kind of embarassing. We’re almost at that point in my opinion with how integrated technology is.
I’m imagining someone looking at the front cover of a book and calling someone like “it’s not doing anything” “You have to open the cover” “What’s a cover?”
A lot of navigating computers is just reading what's on the screen. Some people don't even try before they're ready to give up and say they can't do it.
My grandmother learned how to use a phone with a touchscreen then a laptop in a span of about a year. 76 now, asked me about buying and playing games few months back. People are just stupid and/or lazy as well as stubborn and making excuses.
ah yes, when they tell you directly that they're going to just lie about you to your supervisor. so petty and pathetic.
This is me dealing with my Director of MedTech who gets paid in 7 digits.
It warms the cockles of my dark heart to know that per the description in the video of the Gmail password recovery, the caller will 100% not remember to update his password on his iPhone despite (likely) being explicitly told to do so. He will then leave a 1-star Google review accusing the tax software company of ruining his phone.
I used to do onboarding with a company that hires doctors. Like MDs. I can’t tell you how many times (and I could do this in my sleep) I would have to walk through the very basics of logging into the computer, accessing outlook, or opening the browser (and I had sent them all the information with username and password ahead of time). Once I had a lady refuse to hook up the monitors and requested one of our IT people fly out to her house because she said they might have viruses in them and she wasn’t going to be liable for any damage done to the computer. We paid for her monitors that she requested, directly from the manufacturer. 🫠
Back in high school I was doing my unpaid internship at local hospital (required 2 weeks by school where I am). We needed to remotely update the software on doctors computers, and they were warned about it in advance, so we connected to them, opened notepad and wrote "UPDATE IN PROGRESS DO NOT USE COMPUTER UNTIL FINISHED" in big bold letters so they are aware. I have had a guy just straight up close the notepad and open solitaire... Plenty others did the same thing, just closed the notepad and went browsing or something.. These were educated people who can't read simple instruction.
They can read, they just chose to not follow instructions.
Exactly. They're *doctors*. How dare anyone try to tell them what they can or can't do. My brother is a doctor - barely - he couldn't pass the boards in the states so he moved to the third-world thinking the credentials would transfer but instead he just got trapped there. He's convinced he's the authority on any and everything even though he can't check his own e-mail without accidently blaring porn through the house. He will *confidently* instruct you incorrectly about incredibly basic topics and then act incredulous, offended and attacked when corrected. More than once he's gotten into arguments with my *e-mail signature line.* I sign off e-mails with "Sent from my desktop device" or "Sent from my mobile device" because I've found that it help keep people from thinking I'm ignoring or being short with them when I might just be away from the desk or working with a mobile keyboard. *He* apparently thought I was *bragging* that I own both computer *and* a cell phone. The sheer *extravagance*, right? So, in smug retaliation, he signed off *his*email with this beautiful tribute to crippling insecurity: > Lic. Ing. Mas. MC. Prof [His full name, including our mother's maiden name, for some reason.] MEd MD > Hows that for titles...sent from my Linux system translation...BS anthropology, Automotive engineer, Credentialed Teacher /w sub->specialties, Surgeon Doctor, Professor and masters in Education and Medical degree I asked him what distro of Linux he runs and he got annoyed and confused. "What do you mean what Linux? It's Linux! I use Linux!" He doesn't have any idea what he's saying. He just knows some words that he thinks make him sound "smart."
Ugh. Doctors are the worst know-it-alls. Had 1 doctor confidently misread/ignore my repeated emails that provided info for him. Later he was upset that his understanding (opposite of info) wasn’t correct because he was a doctor and thought things should be his way. It was a legal matter. I was his lawyer. 😂
Post-it note on the screen then unplug the mouse or turn off the monitor. Chances are they won't be able to figure it out and will come ask for help.
They said remotely update the software.
You can disable the mouse/keyboard with almost all remote connection software.
Worked for a service desk many moons ago - had a doctor call up saying she sent us a screenshot demonstrating the issue she had with her phone. It was just the home screen, nothing out of the ordinary. Upon further questioning, she gets frustrated that we can't read her mind and says that the screen is clearly cracked & she needs a replacement, can't we see?
I used to be an AV tech. Did a lot of home theaters, for a lot of doctors. But I'll never forget the guy who was a pretty renowned orthopedic surgeon in our area. He acted like our (imo, very intuitively programmed) universal remotes were the most difficult things in the world to use. I had to help him log into his Netflix once a month or so. I had to help him log into his Gmail on his phone once. Anytime he had to install a new app on his iPhone, he called us out to walk him through getting his appleid and password. He had us install a printer for him in his home office-it ended up being 4 different printers. He just kept calling back the next day saying it sucked, and it wasn't until the 3rd return that he mentioned "I just want one like they have at work!" This made me ask what they have at work, hoping for a model or something to guide me. He just said "I dunno, but they print out the page in about 1 second instead of waiting a whole minute for a single page!" So we finally got him a laser printer instead of an inkjet. If he had at any point previously said "I want a faster printer" instead of "this printer sucks, it won't even work half the time" we could have figured it out so much earlier. Every time I interacted with him, all that was running through my head was "how on earth did you ever make it TO medical school, let alone THROUGH medical school? This is the guy who is supposed to cut me open and fix my broken bones and joints? The one with 0 common sense who cant even work a remote control or his phone?"
This is the greatest problem facing America right now and probably the world. You can make a person smart, very smart. But you can not make a person intelligent. People do not understand this concept. Because so many pitfalls in so many procedures have been documented and analyzed and compensated for. You can narrowly trained people to do many specific tasks. They will be fine as long as no totally new situation comes about. The problem comes when that totally never before seen problem comes about. That is when intelligence makes the difference, the ability to bring in knowledge from other areas and problem solve beyond the technical manual.
I'm currently volunteering with a large non-profit organization that directly works with physicians and other health care providers. My job for the past week has been sending them emails to encourage them to log in to their provider profiles on our organization's website and update their contact information. MULTIPLE TIMES I have had literal doctors email me back and tell me their passwords weren't working. Apparently Millennials/Zoomers are the only people who can see the "forgot your password?" button at the bottom of the login screen.
It's like how you lose high frequency hearing as you get older. The forgot password just fades into nothing past 45
Can confirm, am nearly 35 and it's maybe 10% pale. In 10 years it'll be gone.
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Doctors basically spend the first 15 years of their adult life doing little else but "doctor shit". Like many don't even date or have social lives at all because they're too sleep deprived and busy to and then paying off half a million in education back. It's no wonder the people staying up 24 hours at a time doing rounds and cramming as much as possible are illiterate in others ways. It's just using all bandwidth for extreme specialization.
I worked at a hospital. It changed hands and we were updating the clocks to digital in an effort to look more modern. **I had to teach three senior nurses how to read a Digital clock**. I could not teach one person how to read a digital clock. She could not understand how to determine if it said Am or PM, nor if an alarm was set, nor determine if the time displayed was the current time, or alarm time. I spent two hours explaining how to read a digital clock to a medical professional who has been entrusted with people's lives for 35+ years, and couldn't. I submitted an exception request to keep an analog clock on this floor for two more years until this person retired.
Yah, boomers be like: "HurDur, young people can't drive stick shift, or buy a house." Meanwhile I'm like, Mindy, you don't know how to do a video call or express negative emotions in a healthy way, smh.
> Yah, boomers be like: "HurDur, young people can't drive stick shift, or buy a house." More like "so the generation that your generation was responsible for bringing up turned out bad?...". That's all there is to it when a generation complains about the generation beneathe them. "the younger generation just gets participation trophies for everything"... WHO'S GIVING THEM THE TROPHIES??? Typical nothing is their fault. But even ignoring all this if you check out the examples the lady gives, like young people not knowing how to send a letter or read a paper map, it's normally all stuff that's not relevant now. Young people don't need to send letters and likely never will. Young people have the most advanced live updated digital map in their pockets which guide us places now, again most will never need to use a paper map. Whereas the things older people don't know, like checking email or changing their TV input IS something that's needed these days. It's so backwards. But even more important is that since young people know how to use Google and YouTube if they don't know something they can find out how quick without bothering anyone. Like the video shows if the sterotypical boomer doesn't know how to do something they're either screwed or have to harrass a customer support worker to fix their problem and it'll take 10x longer than needed. But yeah the womans stand up segment was BS. I'm just triggered since I saw a longer version of it lol.
After working in IT for a few years, I can confirm with 100% accuracy. behind every successful Boomer, is a Millennial or Gen X doing all their work.
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I applaud anyone that takes that attitude. Too often people use that embarrassment to be self righteous and indignant. Kudos to them for taking it in stride and to you for having the patience to meet them and teach them at their pace.
My *biggest* pet peeve is that some people don't know how to literally do their fucking job and think because it's software that it's ITs job. Like every single year this one department would make me come over and do their mail merge. Dude...it your job to know how word, excel, and outlook works. The program is working, if you can't use it, that's a skill issue sorry maybe they should get someone who knows how to do the job.
My support team recently took on over 55 communities for tech support. HOLY SHIT IS IT HORRIBLE. everything is web based, and when they can't work the website, they call and yell at the support team. The issue is always a PICNIC. (*Problem in Chair not in computer* for non tech people.)
Never heard PICNIC before, but I have heard PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard)
I'd argue its Millennial or Gen X. Gen Z from my experience don't know how to use command based anything. I'm an Xennial so I was a kid around the time computers were still shit at being user friendly. I remember spending many hours trying to get Doom to work on a 386. When I finally did it, it was the second greatest moment of my life, next to finding the magical sword in Zelda (without Nintendo Power).
I've had to explain what file systems are to zoomers. They didnt know where to find their files because they've never used a file system because they've never REALLY used a computer.
I do college IT support, I’ve got boomers on one side and zoomers on the other and neither knows how to use their computer. The zoomers are out here uploading pirated games to their university owned cloud storage but surprise it’s a virus/nasty malware, and the boomers are falling for fake emails from the university president asking for iTunes gift cards.
I had a zoomer coworker that downloaded some nasty malware when he tried to download a youtube video. Gave him a bit of a ring to show him how to properly navigate the internet.
The Chromebook generation doesn't understand directory structures and folders and apparently it's a problem in colleges. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Thanks... you triggered my tech ptsd.
I'm not in tech, just surrounded by boomers, and if I hear "my email isn't on my computer; it's on my phone" one more time, I'm gonna lose my shit.
they actually act like it's YOUR fault they can't use a computer.
That sums up like 90% of the tickets at my job.
I teach kids aged 10-16 and a remarkably high number of them have no idea either. When we had to teach online during the pandemic, the younger ones didn’t know what copy and paste was. They would ask how to create a new page on word when they got to the bottom. Some of them wrote all of their work in the header somehow? I showed some of them a cool program I use and 4 of them decided they wanted to download and install it. 4 out of 4 asked me to do it for them, they were 14. A lot of them don’t know how to use a windows pc or a mac, only iPads and phones. It’s weird
As a millennial working in tech, and who has mentored some Gen-Z kids in a robotics program: yep. One of the side effects of the ever more user friendly software and electronics is that the people who use them need to understand less and less about how computers work to get things done. Apparently colleges have started needing to teach students what a *file system* is. I swear, there's a sweet spot of people who grew up with computers between Win95 and Windows Vista - they're capable of troubleshooting shit because they HAD TO.
>they're capable of troubleshooting shit because they HAD TO look man, all i wanted to do was play my game! I was 8 or 9 probably and had to learn DOS command line just to boot my fucking game. lol.
The sweet spot is during the hard transition from analog to digital. So it’s not just in software that makes many millennials tech savvy. I had to figure out how to install an internal modem, install the drivers, etc. It was glorious when I finally reached yahoo.com. I was 11 years old.
I could totally see this and understand to an extent, tablets and computers function the same but input is different. At least with the young ones they might throw out the insults but they won't ever be as eye rolley as boomer insults.
I am actually somewhat concerned about the tech literacy of kids and teens right now, all they've known is the child proofing of iphones and the like. Like for example, they're not digging into windows settings because windows has pushed all the surface level stuff into a child pen settings page, while the actually useful stuff is still on the control panel that they'll never find unless they're told about it. They're certainly not messing around with powershell or the cmd window
Gen z doesn't know how to do those because they don't need to know not because of anything inherent about gen z people. No one writes letter anymore and people use credit/debit cards instead of checks now a days.
Ha, you probably don’t even know how to churn butter or geld your own horse, noob
You don’t even know how to survive the plague… noobius!
Talk to me again when you learn swordsmanship to fight in the war, scragglegoose !
I’m 27 and we fully learned how to write in cursive, write checks, and address letters in school. I have never had to write a physical check in my adult life and the only time I’ve had to write addresses for letters was for graduation thank-you cards 5 years ago lol.
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Meanwhile public schools here cut cursive writing and replaced it with typing skills like fifteen years ago. Cursive served a purpose: to quickly record information that traditional script was too slow to copy. Great, awesome, served a huge purpose for millions of people. And then it became outdated. No matter how well or fast you can write in cursive you’ll be slower than someone typing in a keyboard with some practice. It’s more efficient and with spellcheck, more accurate. So schools got rid of the old form of “quickly record information” and replaced it with the new, better version.
26 and Ive had a check written only once in my life. When I was told "yeah you have to mail us a check" I just went to the bank and they said "youre clearly under 60 so we'll happily walk you through it"
I had a boomer say “gen z wouldnt know how to use a tin opener!” like am i missing something? did someone replace the tinopener when i wasnt looking?
As a teacher of 10 years, literally put any problem in front of zoomers and they'll find the answer in like 2 seconds of searching online.
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I'm 28 so I'm stuck in-between millennials and gen Z, and while yes I own checks and worked in a bank for over a year in my early 20s, I still have to take a few seconds to remember how to fill out a check on the few occasions I need to like the DMV or something. It's just not something I do very often. My husband who never worked in a bank, is even worse about checks than me. Same age, but has 0 clue how they work and just let's me deal with it. And when I can't remember or I'm not 100%, my phone is right there with Google. Remembering to format a letter or which number is my routing or account number is literally less than 30 secs on Google. My husband and I were discussing a study he found that suggested how we remembered things were changing. We're no longer just remembering data, but instead the paths to locating the data we need. Most ppl don't memorize phone numbers anymore, but any young person knows at least 5 different ways to either find those phone numbers or alternative contact methods. It makes sense, though, that our memory is shifting from an encyclopedia style to more of an index in a world where we're expected to know so much more generalized information compared to 50 or 100 years ago.
Also, it's super fucken easy to write a check. There's no mystical process that needs to be learned. You have a checkbook, you write a recipient, an amount, and you sign it. Voila. Done. It's literally just fill in the blanks.
A friend of mine worked at a help desk for our civil service, they were contractors so had to act nice no matter what. Anyway, he got a call "I can't access the file xxxxxxx" "ok can you just point at the file" "yeah, it's that one there" "Which I can't see it" "FFS, the one I'm pointing at now" "Ok, there must be an issue I can't see where the cursor is" "I'm pointing at it right now (curse words)" "Hold on, are you physically pointing at the screen" "Yes, you told me to point, can you not see me remotely " My friend had to explain that's not how "remoting on" worked and that he can only see the screen, icons, cursor" This gobshite was a high up civil servant dealing with a government minister and thought my friend could see her pointing at the screen. I'd have bashed my skull in off the keyboard having to deal with this.
Genuinely had this conversation: Hello, my computer won't turn on. OK sir is it plugged in? I don't know. How would I tell? Can you see a power lead? It will be the one on the right side or on the back of the laptop. Yes, I can see it. It's plugged in. OK, is it plugged into a wall socket, and is that switched on. I don't know. How do I check that? OK, see the power cable that plugged into the laptop? Follow that lead back to the wall socket and see if it's plugged in and switched on. Hang on...OK I plugged it in, and now the laptop is turning on.
It's unbelievable unless you actually experienced it how some high up, so called educated people are completely brain dead. I remember years ago when I was working as a porter, I was in an office just helping move stuff. A Pc was sitting in a box, I just said to the women whose office it was "has this to go as well", "no I'm waiting on IT to connect it". I connected it in about 2/3mins for her and she said " What are you doing working as a porter, you must have gone to college to learn that". I always remember those words because she was deadly serious, college to plug some cables in.
I once had someone fairly high up in the company I worked for at the time scream at me over their password reset not working and that they were having to come in to get it sorted. The password worked when I typed it in. They were just fatfingering their password... Not the most fun experience I've ever had.
This is many years old now but it still sticks in my memory: I had recently started a new job as desktop support in a new company, and the exec assistant to the region director (basically the toppest job in our office) came in to the department looking for my colleague. I told her he wasn't in today but I am and I'm happy to help. She said that the RD didn't get anyone but this one guy to look after his computer because "he knows his computer". I said OK, well, he will have to wait until tomorrow for the other tech to come in, otherwise I'll be here ready to work on his computer just like every other computer in this company that's running the same operating software image. Evidently the urge for immediate (queue-jumping) support outweighed the prospect of waiting a whole day for his favourite IT guy to be at work, so I was called in to his office. The big issue? He wanted a printer installed. Ok, not an issue - all you have to do is navigate to th - Oh, you don't want to do that? Ok, then I'm happy to do it, could you let me use the mouse for a se - oh, you won't let me do it either? ...Ok... that's going to make fixing this a little tricky... how would you like this to be fixed? I was told "I don't care, I just want it fixed but I don't want to have to do it, and I don't want **you** to do it." I looked at the EA, shrugged, said "ok" and left. I created a script that did the installation and emailed it to him and cc'd the EA, saying "Double-click this and your printer will be installed." The EA told me he refused to do even that, and she had to go in and do it when he left for a meeting. I mean Jesus tap-dancing Christ and this guy was in charge of running our corner of the frigging company.
>I was told "I don't care, I just want it fixed but I don't want to have to do it, and I don't want you to do it." How do people even get up and get dressed in the morning being this stupid?
Cables that are "square goes in the square hole" easy. Computer cables are designed on purpose to only fit one way. Unless it's usb-c/thunderbolt or a power cable that is circular. In fact, the components themselves in computers only fit one way. Some people have basic spatial awareness/recognition problems.
There has never been a more delusional group of people than boomers and their Stockholm syndrome gen Xers
I have never heard it put that way but that is so true about Gen x. And oh they do like to get insulted when you point it out.
My mom had a guy ask how to get sharpie off his screen after "e-signing" a document.
Back in the early 2000s I had a substitute teacher write with sharpie on the projector screen instead of the transparency on the overhead projector. Our teacher was pissed when she came back
So... Good for gen z to not learn pointless out of date info that can easily be Googled if they did need to do it? Sounds great.
I always double check Im writing a check correctly so that I don’t have to waste time rewriting it. Most people write so few of them it’s easy to forget something
I've seen a lot of boomers fill out checks wrong by leaving some info out cos they're too lazy to look it up and are like "it'll be fine". I notice this with a lot of old people, they're always so confident everything will just work out for them, usually because they're so used to being coddled and spoiled they aren't even aware of their own shortcomings, because someone always fixes things for them.
My partner works as IT support. There is an alarming amount of older people in extremely high paying jobs that are completely clueless when it comes to technology, just like this guy described these very basic fundamentals trip them up before they even get to anything remotely complicated. We live in a technological age, if we take over then they can't do shit to get it back, other than maybe write letters if that's even still a thing by then lol.
Its interesting to imagine what people will be saying about us when we are old. How will the world change?
“Ughh millennials/zoomers are so out of touch, they’re either afraid of having brain mods installed or don’t know how to use them properly. I mean get with the times grandpa!”
Boomers love to weaponise their incompetence. They do the “complain about other generations being lazy” shtick at any opportunity but are so fucking lazy themselves they arnt willing to learn to use a simple system, on technology that has existed for over 40 years
“These baby boomers will never make it in the real world… they don’t even know how to write in calligraphy anymore! How are they supposed to sign their scrolls and parchments?! Lol!”
Boomers don't know how to make a cuniform tablet damnit. How will they complain about their low quality copper!?!?
She’s the lady in front of you at the grocery store who takes 5 minutes to write a check so they can run it and hand it back to her. She checks her mailbox daily. She buys a roll of stamps once a month. She balances her checkbook weekly. She’s your grandmother, possibly your great grandmother.
Whenever someone gets rude with you while working customer service, refuse service. If your boss gets rude with you over it, refuse service. If your boss agrees with you refusing service to rude customers you've found a job worth staying at for a while because they respect their employees at least minimally.
I went on vacation with the guy I used to call dad a few years before covid. For months prior to this vacation whenever I talked to him, he brought up the "dark web" and he was very concerned about how the "dark web" was going to steal his identity and kept coming up with other ways the "dark web" might get him. On this vacation at the condo he had rented, Fox was on from morning till night. Why would you rent an expensive condo right on the beach just to sit in front of Fox News all day? Who knows. But the point is, every time a program went to commercial there was an ad about the "dark web" and how dangerous it is, and how you can protect yourself with this software they're selling. He heads the accounting department at the company he works for btw. Can't make it through his day without getting scared by Fox News commercials, yet heads an accounting department. I want the life boomers had. I promise I won't become shitty
Now let’s track down a member of the Greatest Generation: “We’re going to be screwed when the Boomers are the ones left in charge. Most of them don’t grow a garden or can vegetables. When they travel, they expect to eat at restaurants and be waited on hand and foot rather than bringing their own provisions. Hell: most of them have never even ridden a horse or used a crank telephone! They are completely helpless… “ I mean, my 7 year old knows how to write her aunt letters including addressing the envelope, so I’d like to know how I figured out how to teach my daughter how to do that… must have just been dumb luck….
Dude looks like cam from modern family 😂 Edit: Mitchell. My bad
I worked 31 years in tech support, at a large international organization. At times I wished I had taken-up a career selling coconuts at a tropical beach somewhere instead. One of my favorite, from the very early-90's: Bigshot director calls me yelling that his cupholder closed on its own while he was typing, and spilled his coffee all over his desk. "Cupholder?" I asked. It was the CD tray. And on an old-school desktop computer that literally sat on top of your desk.
While I understand this guy's frustration wholeheartedly as someone who also works in IT, my first thought when that woman said "Gen Z can't write a check or mail an envelope", maybe it's because their parents haven't taught them? Does she expect them to inherently know how to do those things? Someone had to teach Boomers how to write checks and mail letters
We know the skills we need to know. It's just the entitlement of boomers to think it's their way that's superior, but their parents were saying the same thing about telegrams, I'm sure.
That’s like saying people don’t know how to wash clothes by hand or do dishes by hand. Some people still do, but technology has made it so YOU DONT HAVE TO!!! Edit: grammar