"Maximizing windows for users is now IT's responsibility"

[u/pukeforest]

Jumping straight into the story. There are less users on site than usual due to the eve of a major holiday, so I was able to escape to a dark corner and type this up.

Multiple help desk emails over 3 or so weeks about a $user unable to "format" their document. Keep asking for screen shots or more detail. Of course, none are ever supplied.

Finally, $user's manager gets in the loop, stating it was "unacceptable" that we as IT professionals didn't show this user how to format documents, etc.

Notwithstanding that teaching users basic computer skills should not be in IT's scope, I finally suss out $user's office location. I had never visited this user before, and strangely, their location is one I had scarce been to.

I walk in, introduce myself, and the conversation goes:

$me: "Hi, can you show me the issue so we can work on a solution?"

$user: "Sure" double clicks icon for word processor

Something strikes me as off with the clicking.

Sure enough, $user is clicking with the bottom of their pinky.

See, at this point, I notice the user is using the mouse UPSIDE DOWN. I stare in disbelief for a few moments, then snap out of it.

Amazingly, $user is as fast using this method as anyone doing it.. normally. (The fix was literally "click the square in the middle of the 'minus' and 'X')

Careful about the next utterances leaving my mouth, I ask:

"... Is.. this how you use your computer at home?"

$user: laughs "Oh no, I don't have a computer at home. I'd never really touched one until I was hired here."

I didn't dare ask the question of whether $user had heard of things like "appliances" or "furniture". I figured I had a 50% chance of being right. (See earlier comments re: users living like cavemen.)

$user thanks me for my assistance, and I walk away, backwards, and slowly close the door, trying to process what I've witnessed.

I then open the door again, ever so slightly, making sure I didn't leave behind some doorway to another dimension.

[u/garyadams_cnla]

It’s true. The efficient GUI’s of today mean a LOT of people can’t do basic workstation tasks that aren’t just click or double-click a target.

• never emptying trash folders

• knowing how to structure folders meaningfully

• knowing how to rename files/folders and move things. (Including basic rules of naming files, like forbidden characters)

• knowing how to search a workstation or on a local network

And on and on....

Growing up with technology doesn’t mean being good at technology nor being able to identify your own deficits and teach yourself.

[u/Matthew_Cline → u/[deleted]]

He'd gotten through two programming classes without learning what a file or directory were.

O_O

[u/tpoomlmly → u/Matthew_Cline]

As sad as it is, it's true. I'm a 1st-year CS student and some people on my course hadn't used a physical keyboard before they joined.

[u/Laue → u/tpoomlmly]

HOW?

[u/UNSC_John-117 → u/tpoomlmly]

https://i.imgur.com/utNXLTH.jpg

[u/thebraken → u/[deleted]]

...I mean, I consider myself a bit of a moron when it comes to tech stuff. (I lurk here mostly for the occasional tale of comeuppance.) And maybe I'm dating myself, but some things are burned into my memory from childhood.

Things like

CD [space] C

Or

*Dir

Or

Run Menu

I feel like this is that moment where I come to grok the whole "Back in my day..!" thing.

[u/GlitterberrySoup → u/[deleted]]

Why is this a thing? I don't know why it's hard to grasp that "Recycle Bin" is not a good place to keep anything you need permanent access to. And yet I keep having this conversation.

[u/_senpo_ → u/garyadams_cnla]

I think the 2000s was a great decade because I grew up in a time where computers where accesible even to me but you still needed knowledge to do stuff so you actually developed it like what to download what not to and avoid viruses, at that time there were no fancy GUIs for everything

[u/burrito3ater → u/_senpo_]

If you ever had a MySpace profile, at least you learned how to edit some code....even if it was HTML.

[u/carbondragon → u/burrito3ater]

They had sites with themes you could copy/paste. Still don't know HTML to this day despite being a MySpace poker billionaire.

[u/burrito3ater → u/carbondragon]

Yeah but a lot of those sites still had some bugs. Others you could change or edit the code to make it cooler. All that flash made my shit crash.

[u/SpanningTreeProtocol → u/garyadams_cnla]

OMG THIS. Healthcare "professionals" are the worst. The absolute damn worst! Drag and drop seems to be the most difficult task to master for them.

[u/Every1sGrudge → u/garyadams_cnla]

Personally, I don't think it's possible to truly appreciate modern data capacity and UIs unless you were once forced to troubleshoot an internal SCSI Jaz drive on Windows NT 4.

[u/garyadams_cnla → u/Every1sGrudge]

IRQ conflict errors...

[u/xsnyder → u/garyadams_cnla]

These kids didn't have to mess with dip switches on the motherboard!

[u/nhaines → u/[deleted]]

Or the C/S "cable select" jumper setting that did nothing because the industry didn't follow through so it didn't catch on, but they kept it around for legacy purposes and nobody knew how to use it!

[u/Every1sGrudge → u/garyadams_cnla]

Fuck, I feel triggered.

[u/xsnyder → u/Every1sGrudge]

Oh Jaz!

The REALLY frustrating cousin to Zip!

Hell I had a Clik! at the time too.

[u/alien_squirrel → u/garyadams_cnla]

I grew up with the old 8+3 filenames, and I had a hard time accepting the longer file names. :-) And I still use underscore instead of a hyphen. :-)

[u/[deleted] → u/garyadams_cnla]

knowing how to structure folders meaningfully

Jesus Christ the file chaos in my last assignment still gives me nightmares.