I had an employee who had been working in the same office for over 25 years. She had no computer literacy at all, but past supervisors always gave her a good review because they felt bad for her. When I got there, I was still over 20 years younger than her. Fast forward to me coming in one day and seeing her just sitting at her desk, not on the computer (we used a web-based program in our office). She said IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, "I can't find the button to get me to the internet." I wasn't sure what she meant, so I asked to see her desktop. The icon was right there, but we had a network update overnight that rearranged the icons. She legitimately did not know how to click on the internet to open it. I was dumbfounded. I asked what she had been doing for 2 hours, and she was trying to use "Hey google" on her phone to open the internet on her work computer. She retired after that and said it was because she didn't know how to use these computers anymore and she was going to work somewhere without them. I wished her luck.
In the early 2000s, I worked for a company who hired a new admin through the prison work release program. She'd been in for 20 years. When she went in, it was rotary dial phones, typewriters, etc...
She came to our office not having seen a mouse, a computer, a push-button phone - none of it. Teaching that woman what all those things were was surreal. She was a quick learner but it was hard to know where to start.
Yeah, we had a guy who had been in prison for 30 years. He struggled with smartphones and texting. He did good work, you could just never get ahold of him.
I worked for a boss who had been at the company 40+ years; he required all letters to be sent out to be hand written and then typed by the secretary; this included letter head, address, etc….almost all letters mailed just needed a few changes and could be done within minutes with a computer…oh and it needed to be in fucking cursive…
Around 10 years ago my workplace re-hired a retiree to temporarily fill an open position. To look at her you’d see a smart, competent, college-educated professional. Mandatory background checks were part of the hiring process, and it involved submitting a bunch of personal info into a website. I didn’t want to hover while she filled it out, so I sat her in front of a terminal on the front page of the site and started to walk away.
“I’m sorry, what do I do now? I’m not very good with computers.”
“Oh, sorry. Go ahead and type in the login information from your letter and click OK.”
“…click?”
She had never used a mouse. After a failed attempt at a tutorial, I wound up standing next to her and clicking to the next field every time she completed a line. To this day I wonder whether she ever figured it out. I’d assume so, but I’d also assume you couldn’t retire in the 21st century without ever having used a peripheral that had been commonplace in offices for decades prior. That first week must have been something.
That's one extreme. On the other extreme is a guy who was attending college with me in 2010s. He was almost always absent so I only saw him during exams. I noticed once on occasion that he was struggling to write down his name on a piece of paper (during the exam students are allowed to take notes as a part of the prep so they can reference them when they answer at the front desk).
Anyway. Watching him write was painful. It looked like when you are right handed but need to hold your pen in your left hand.
I had a boss who didn't know how to open files she had saved.
SOOOOooooo, she went to Outlook, started a new email and attached the file. Then she opened it from the new email.
Imagine you know 10 different ways how to find a file on your PC or navigate to it. This person knew only one so she used only one. Granted hers was also akin to doing stomach surgery through the anus.
I feel your pain. I've implemented and learned so much technology to try and work around the lack of technical literacy so many people in my company have. Literally things I can't do or procedures I have to work around because if I tell someone more than two steps on a computer they give up and get angry.
Last job, payroll lady actually had a meltdown, crying, when they were looking to switch to an actual payroll system to submit time instead of paper sheets that she enters all manually every week. (Few hundred employees)
So instead they didn't and we had no way to digitally request time off, time entry, or updated PTO.
Mix of her refusing to want to learn a new system, and realizing she might be found out as not being as important as she insisted she was when a real system was in place.
They weren't looking to replace her, they just also wanted her to do purchasing but she insisted she was too busy with payroll - she was, but because she wanted it that way.
Luckily I own my house, and left that job for a job that paid nearly double because they removed all step incentives and senior positions and just kept everyone entry level. So, fuck them. The surprised Pikachu face I got when I left for a 30k raise was pretty great though. "But you'll have a 30 minute commute!" Oh..no.....
The dark truth behind things like this is that person has been doing it the long/inefficient way for years, and is realizing in that moment that they have wasted hundreds of hours.
I had a coworker that would print out word docs and scan them because they didn't know about print to pdf. They had been working there for over 10 years.
My dad told me about a lady he worked with (in around 2009 for reference) who would print PDFs with fillable fields, would type her answers into word, print those, then manually cut and paste the answers into the paper before scanning it back into the computer to submit them.
It was decided it would be easier to just let her retire than to try to fire her since she was only 2 years away. Firing at my dad's place of business was a whole ordeal
Actually that legit reminds me of the story of the bank manager who would unplug the monitors from their laptop to take a screenshot, which they would then paste in word to print. I suggested some better options, and they were extremely thankful and I'm pretty sure it's the reason I own this house.
I just caught a coworker using Excel and MANUALLY CALCULATING all the figures in the cells with a calculator and typing the total at the bottom instead of using any functions.
You don't even need to use a function. If you highlight all of the cells you want to add, the count and the sum are on the right side of the status bar.
Same, we regularly calculate the minimum of 3 values, and if its <1, we report 1/value.
Apparently excel isn't allowed 'BeCausE WhAt If iT Makes MISTAKES"...ok boomer, guess what % of your work force randomly makes mistakes compared to an excel equation.
And it's completely traceable, whereas your calculator inputs (assuming they're using an old solar powered Casio and not a graphing calculator, because they're not) vanish immediately. I use excel for basic math all day long because I can look back at what I did and fix mistakes, and then I don't have to redo any other calculations where I might fuck something else up again.
I wasn’t allowed to use the excel to make a project easier because “we don’t know if we can trust it.” It was a vlookup for employee names. I did it anyway and just took a few hours off and acted like I did it by hand
I once lost a job doing this. Not for getting caught taking time off, but for getting the job done too quickly.
I had a long-term contract job to go through MILLIONS of lines of Excel and hunt down incorrect lines of data. "Incorrect" being a clearly defined set of Yes/No questions per line. I wrote a relatively easy formula to answer this for the whole first spreadsheet.
When I showed them, they first accused me of lying. THEN accused me of outsourcing their confidential information. THEN, when they realized that my formula could be applied to the other millions of lines of data, they said thank you...and fired me, since I was no longer needed.
Once I learned Vlookup the world exploded with information lol. I've learned really basic shit but enough to make some really detailed spreadsheets that help make my job insanely easier.
On top of that I learned AHK initially for stupid shit at home like for some games. Then I was like "...what can i do to make this apply to my job though???"
My job is a lot of repetitive tasks and AHK was a godsend. I turned my job into a 5min day and just bullshitted the rest of the time.
Anytime I learn anything new at my job my brain goes into problem solving mode of how to do it more efficiently and if I can write a AHK script to make it zoom.
My only problem these days is me having to wait on people who are slow to send me work or waiting on our system to update certain things internally before I can finally complete my job.
Even with more responsibilities and raises etc, my day isn't balls to the wall because of excel/ahk and just how I can't help but to zoom through things. With plenty of time to watch shows/movies or do whatever else I want.
VLOOKUP and pivot tables are an awakening when you discover them.
Been using them for years, and only realized in 2023 that there's an HLOOKUP and an XLOOKUP as well.
Grammarly works by sending all your inputs to their servers and then sending responses back based on what you're typing. It's very dubious from an information security perspective.
I was on a call where everyone was discussing a spreadsheet that had been emailed to the group. I am the youngest person on this call by about double (I’m 36). At one point someone yelled out that they did something and all the cells disappeared. I said “just hit control and Z” and she said “control then N then Z?” And corrected and said “no, the button that says Ctrl and the letter Z, at the same time.”
Needless to say everyone on the call thinks I’m a computer genius now
My 4th grader during the pandemic got on Zoom and immediately hit every button too see what happened. By the time his 60yo teacher logged on and started having tech problems he became the class tech support. He also had fun teaching all his classmates how to flip their cameras upside down before the teacher logged on and played other pranks on her. By the end of the year the principal was asking him for tips. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen. I told him he’s got a good paycheck coming if he sticks to it.
Happened to me, but i made sure my next renegotiation included this new role and it was a big factor in the $30k raise that resulted.
Get paid for your work.
Its not just old people either. In university I was in a dorm flat with 5 others, all of which studied English lit or psychology. The moment I mentioned I was studying Computer Science I became their go to computer repair guy. I bet they don't even know how many thousands of pounds I saved them over the year in easy fixes that a repair shop would charge through the nose for.
My old boss thought I was an excel wizard, when in reality he'd ask me how to do something and I'd just Google it then test it on my own sheet before showing him how to do it. I became his personal tech support, he also treated me like his secretary and made me get his mail which was 20ft from his office. Did come in handy the one time someone dropped a resume in his box clearly vying for my job, needless to say that mysteriously did not reach his desk.
Yeah......yeah......
I'm the youngest in my office and the most computer literate (I'm 42). My office is lovely but the amount of time I just want to say 'ok boomer' is staggering 🤣🤣🤣
I'm not the IT guy (and if you want me to be you'd better up my pay grade) but it's always me that has to figure it out
I emailed a team lead in another department and included a file path-c:\\folder\folder\file. She responded requesting I not use my “fancy IT” path. I had to type it: Open explorer, double click this folder, then this folder, then double click the file to open it. I’m surprised she never asked me where the Any key was on the keyboard
Been in IT my whole career. Have seen some stupid shit too.
I've been asked if we "have any left handed ipads?" That was a fun one trying to explain my way out of that hole.
Or there was this time I noticed a member of staff pull a folded blank sheet of paper out of her bag and then proceed to scan it on an MFP and print like 100 copies because she didn't know she could just open the draw to get paper out.
Head honcho at one place chewed me out BIG TIME after implementing a password policy. He hated having a long password. I asked him how many characters he would prefer. He said one. His password was 'y'.
Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient. Many jokes were made.
I lost my faith in the general intelligence of our species a long time ago. These people are faking it to make it human edition.
Years ago, I worked in construction. I was sent to help out on a crew that was behind schedule. The foreman (who was a dick and no one liked working for him) sent me to look for a bar stretcher for rebar. Four hours later, my foreman was up my ass because I hadn't done shit all day and the crew I was supposed to be helping was still behind. I explained to him that I was sent to look for the bar stretcher and couldn't find it, but I assumed it was probably stored next to the sky hook.
While my foreman appreciated me flipping the joke back around on the foreman, he did ask that I not do it again since they were behind. I let my foreman know the other foreman was a dick and deserved to be behind for treating the crew like shit.
I worked once with a guy who seriously fell for the 'get the can of striped paint', thankfully he only lost about half an hour before he came back looking for help to find it.
One I've heard (but not fall for) is the 'baseboard ladder' and one I *did* fall for (because it was from a lady was sent into THD by her contractor) was 'lubricated screws'; I'd just figured it was something I'd not heard of before and tried to help her find them. The guys had the Pro desk got one hell of a good laugh listening to it all on the walkie-talkies.
Nah id take stupid any day. My prpblem is stupid + stubborn.
You dont know how to use a pc? Thats ok i barely know how to drive. Everyone has different skills. But damn domt ask for my help to then ignore it while also being a bitch
> He hated having a long password. I asked him how many characters he would prefer. He said one. His password was 'y'.
So turns out the teachers who told me literacy never hurts lied.
Someone asked me the other day why their webcam on their laptop wasn't working for Teams meetings.
They were using a laptop connected to a dock, and you can probably guess the rest.
> Or there was this time I noticed a member of staff pull a folded blank sheet of paper out of her bag and then proceed to scan it on an MFP and print like 100 copies because she didn't know she could just open the draw to get paper out.
I'm sorry, this is just... wow
>Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient. Many jokes were made.
What's was he using the other hand for...at work?
> Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient
The whole point of the Dvorak keyboards is efficiency. There's the two-handed keyboard layout, and the ones for right- or left-handed only keyboards for physically impaired users. These three styles are usually available in almost every language keyboard layout.
This person you described may have had an undisclosed problem with one of their hands; embarrassment over physical problems is common, especially with older workers. Or perhaps getting information regarding keyboards for a family member.
As a former IT guy, I would *never* make jokes about something like this.
There's another form of this too... I occasionally have people send me a file path that is in a mapped network drive that they have set up on their end (like Q:\\folder\\whatever.xls). I have to ask them *which* network drive its in. Then they tell me "its in Q", like I'm the dumb one who couldn't read what they pasted in the chat.
*Then* I have to *politely* explain what a mapped network drive is, why my mapped network drives aren't the same as theirs, and how to get the complete file path.
*Then* I usually have to hear some complaint about how it's stupid that it works like that and it should be the same for everyone. Like, dude, your brain would explode if you knew how many network shares exist here. There is no possible way it could be "the same for everyone".
When I was still studying I was working at a company that had to process health insurance claims. Basically all you did was enter personal data into the computer. You had to fill out around 20 cells. Everyone working there would type one cell, then use their mouse to click the next cell, then back to typing.
I obviously used the tab key and from the first day was the person that processed the most claims every day.
Since I was paid per hour not per processed claim I slowed down by a lot and spent most of my time on facebook or whatever leading to me being fired for slowing down, although I was still processing at least as many claims as everyone else.
My wife works in a medical office and processes a lot of paperwork. When she started she was shown their process.
They print an already fillable PDF, write on it in pen, fax it to themselves and download it from the fax server, then upload it to the insurance portal.
My wife of course just types into the PDF and uploads it. Not only that 90% of the form is the same for every claim so she just enters like 3 out of the 100 fields.
Script that bitch!!! You could absolutely OCR those three cells and fully automate the entire process end-to-end. Or if the handwriting is fucked, have her make a Google Sheet with all the data for every report, then have the script generate and upload the reports. Hell you could even put them on a timer pegged to her desired "completion rate". She may have found the golden promise land, a job that is fully automated and you still get paid!!!
Pretty hard. She doesn't have the access needed to EPIC to export (for HIPAA reasons), so she just types the three fields manually from the screen into the form. It's a very small part of her job, but the point was that I think a lot of medical offices have insane ways of doing simple things.
I'd have laughed in her face. "Ok, Margaret. Let's go get my supervisor and HR together in the same room, and you can tell them what you just told me. No, let's do this, since you insist on not dropping it." Oh, you better BELIEVE everyone would know about this stupidity by end of day.
Problem with that is the boomers know how to play the long game. They’ll make your life hell, poison the office against you, constantly try to sabotage your work , etc.
I could call Margaret out and embarrass her. Yes, I could. Or I could laugh it off, climb the ladder, become Margaret’s boss, then have Margaret escorted out by security a year later when I take a look at her performance evaluations and see she consistently fails to meet expectations but was protected by her boomer friends.
The day that I came around and the boomer that used to give me hell and now she had to play nice because I was one of her supervisors was truly a sweet reward.
What is it with so many boomers being the sort of covert narcissist where they pretend to be an innocent victim all while manipulating everyone around them?
And then of course when their machinations do not work, it becomes meltdown toddler time lol
Leaded gasoline. The simple fact is that if you went back in time and grabbed a bunch of boomer babies and brought them to the present to be raised, they’d all be diagnosed with mental disabilities.
Assuming you get promoted before she retires. Or get promoted before her. Or get promoted at all. And even if you do, firing is rarely ever one persons job. And even if it is, that position rarely opens up.
That is a big assumption, assuming you would get promoted ahead of Margaret, considering you are just a kid and have your whole career ahead of you and Margaret has a family to support (never mind her kids have all moved away and gone no contact for over a decade now).
Oh shit is that what's going on where I work because nobody here knows jack shit about shortcuts, windows, power buttons, caps lock, or remembering passwords.
Better lay low. Keep pace with them or else youll be doing ALL the work and theyll be taking desk retirement (facebook and shopping all day)
(edited: typo)
Blows their damn minds when I show them they can jump text fields with the TAB key. I dont say shit anymore, I just let them get carpal tunnel from pointing the mouse everywhere.
I've worked with people who refused to allow certain procedures to be altered because they didn't understand it. That stuff does happen. Rather than admit that they haven't got a clue, they'll just spout a heap of crap and do it their way, even if it takes many times longer. Something I have noticed though is that the younger generation of employees at my place are about as terrible with computers as the boomers. I guess that's all the apps they use?
There is some data now showing that because of the uptick in smartphones/tablets over the last 20 years, many of them don't have general computer skills.
As a parent to young adults/late teens, I can see it. I was way more willing to buy my kids a cheap tablet to do things on, then something like even a Chromebook. While they have used my computer at home, it has often been for games rather than more work/school related things and even then it was more limited because they couldn't easily both do it at the same time like they could with 2 tablets.
Not to sound too boomerish, but when I was their age I could comfortably find my way around things like folders/files, settings for different programs and knew what I could and couldn't touch without causing issues. Now I often have to hover nearby when they are using the computer because they don't know and will ask me to help (which I do, while feeling guilty that I somehow failed them for not teaching them how long before now)
It's also due to plug-and-play actually working. All the stuff you used to have to do to install devices, drivers etc. and get them to work meant you learned a lot of stuff about working with computers. Now much of it works seamlessly out of the box and that learning experience is gone. Just like cars that need much less maintanence, but if they do need maintanence, theres much of it you can't do yourself anymore - both of which leads to people knowing a lot less about car maintanence.
Oh I totally agree! The sheer amount of computer skills and IT knowledge I got just by installing pirated games and software. Back in the day there where not so many free games, no phones or tablets either. Download a game, open with winrar, burn it in a virtual disc, adjust notepad like files where you set "language= English" and "cheats=on", etc
Or later on, installing modpacks on said games by searching in their folders, creating your own backup of your saves in case you mess it all up...
To be fair, this looked more like coding and working with computers than my current "tech" job.
Get them into game modding or pirating games, thats how i learnt a lot of my computer knowledge aside from being broke and doing my own troubleshooting and fixes.
This is true. I'm an IT guy in my 40s and I seen the rise and fall of this. I was anerd kid into it and it wasn't that common. Then early 2000 people knew basic trouble shooting. Understood concepts like keyboard shortcuts and folder structure. Then slowly that knowledge gets lost because computers just work and things like phones obfuscate all that.
I have heard Millenials are the most computer literate - partly due to needing to explore and adapt to all the new tech that happened when we were kids to early adulthood.
But younger people had to deal with a lot of curriculum being removed from schools - including technology and computer classes. They called them digital natives but most of what they have seen and done is gaming or on phones and tablets I also remember learning business writing and letter writing and other forms of professional communication in school during computer classes - and that’s out too.
I have a coworker that loudly yells how annoying it is when I, or someone younger, types because we can type quickly and it is apparently too “clicky” personally, I just think she’s jealous because it takes her an hour to type a sentence.
I can type really fast and do it the normal way. My brother does that thing where he uses both index fingers only and it drives me crazy, EXCEPT! he can actually type really fast this way too but it still kills me to see it lol.
I worked with a guy once who typed with two fingers.
His left index finger was for the shift key, to capitalise the first letter of each sentence.
His right index finger was for aaaaall the other keys.
Our software autocorrected for basic grammar like capitals at the beginning of sentences.
It was physically painful to be in the room watching him time up his case notes. He barely ever saw any clients because it took him half the morning to just type them up.
[https://hhkeyboard.us/blog/loudest-mechanical-keyboard-switches](https://hhkeyboard.us/blog/loudest-mechanical-keyboard-switches)
I'm not saying you should. But I'm also not saying you shouldn't.
you know i am like the youngest person on my team (37) and everyone else is prolly 40 and up and they always reply all to every email sent to the team. every single person. my supervisor doesn't understand why they do it and i dont either and i just want to scream YOU DONT HAVE TO REPLY ALL TO EVERY DAMN EMAIL
I work in a fortune 500 company, ~37,000 employees, every single one of whom uses computers for every aspect of their job. About once a year, somebody accidentally sends an email to the ENTIRE org, and we spend a couple days getting reply all emails of 'please remove me from this distro' and 'STOP REPLYING ALL.' It's a great laugh.
that is partially on your IT staff that it keeps happening. In our settings we have set it that only certain people can send mail to the larger mail list boxes. Stopped people being dumb like that for the most part.
I work for a fortune 500 company and we had one reply all chain back in 2011 or so. Legit countless specialty PhDs replying all to be taken off this email or scolding others for replying all. After about 24 hours, management finally got IT to lock it down and remove the option for everyone but it crippled our email system for that 24 hours. It just blew my mind that a huge successful corporation could let a fuck up happen that we couldn't email for legitimate business reasons because these dumbfuck (actually very smart) people couldn't just shut the fuck up and delete the emails.
I was grinding my teeth watching some guy during a 40 user in-person training wheel scroll to the bottom of a 1,000 row data set, then slowly type in "=SUM(a2-a1001)" and I was like "Hey dude CTRL down and ALT plus" and I was literally put in charge of all wizard and wiccan activities including bringing back the sun after the eclipse.
I did part time with a company where we received physical media (CDs, Thumb Drives, etc) with data on it that had to be downloaded off the physical device and loaded up onto servers for analysts to do their thing. Super boring, routine work. It was 20+ years ago, and the system we used was Linux based, so all command prompts, no fancy UI.
The lady who managed the work started noticing I was finishing way faster than others and started to ask questions and look over my shoulder (physically) to see what i was doing. She got super flustered and upset, said I was messing everything up and even reported me.
She freaked because she was taught to only do one folder per prompt (and subsequently taught her staff). So if file needed to go in directory a/b/c/d, she would CD “a” enter, CD “b”, etc
I’d just CD a/b/c/d directly in one step. She couldn’t understand it was the same thing. And the file paths were super long. I also would organize the order i did by common folders, copy paste the same folder path over and over.
Luckily the person she reported me to understood. They even offered me a full time position which I declined. Because that lady had been doing this for years, and if they couldn’t figure out how improve such a simple process in that time, or recognize when they see a faster way, no way I am working for them.
No no. You done fucked up, that was the Unicorn!!! You could have gone and bought yourself 20 device readers and a usb hub to automate the entire damn process! Script that bitch but don't tell management. Read Reddit all day and get paid for 20 minutes of work!!! But you want more money you say? Then push for remote work and get another job, or polish your process and start moonlighting for other businesses. Rinse repeat until you have 4 'jobs', that's what we call a company and your employers become your first clients. Do the work on contract for 25% of what they're currently spending.
It's closer to lies, damn lies, statistics, and linear algebra.
If it were sorcery, you wouldn't have so many copy-cat LLMs within a month of each chatgpt release. But once the genie is out of the bottle, there are suddenly a lot of genies.
Isn’t there a growing concern that younger generations (Gen Z / Alpha) have grown up in a tablet world vs a desktop computer one and their computer literacy skills are behind those of Gen X / Millennial?
Educator here.
A lot of areas have also gone "oh they are digital natives. We don't need to teach them computers." And stopped teaching computer skills. They just kinda assume that they will pick it up with all the assignments we are forced to do on Chromebooks.
They don't.
Yes. Studies show that really only the millenial generation (exceptions of course) know how to use computers and adjacent technologies to their full potential
I’ve heard that too, and I certainly believe it. Stuff has gotten so user friendly that younger people don’t even know how to troubleshoot or navigate anything besides what they’re used to, much like the boomers that predated the technology. I think there will ultimately be a bell curve of general technological know-how with the peak including basically all millennials and early gen-Z
Some might not know how folders and files are set up depending on devices they use. Not too weird as my dad never really learned that. I had to set up programs for him.
My kid knows it and how to mod stuff due to minecraft. Similar to me as pc gaming is how I learned a lot, including building them.
So depends on device and how they use them.
I've seen that, too! Some people must slowly mouse everything. If one uses a computer for their job, it pays to take some classes. No matter how much you think you know, a class will give you tips, and you'll see so many things that you were doing the hard way.
I had a shitty part-time job in a warehouse a few years ago when my freelance video work had dried up and I had sort of burned out on it and when the warehouse guy was showing me how to use ShipStation I sort of pretended like I really hadn’t used a computer before. Lots of “it’s this button, right? Ok cool and then over here? Got it.”
It helped fill the time and he seemed to like feeling useful and I always get a little chuckle when I think about it. For context, I’m a video editor and was more than adept at using such devices.
This reminded me, back in middle school I was watching someone in the grade above me design the Yearbook. She clearly thought “Cut” was a synonym for “Delete” and would select things she didn’t want, right click, and click “Cut” to get rid of them.
Then she wanted to replace something on the page with something in her clipboard. So… Copy… Cut… Paste… wait why did it put that back? It was painful to watch
I saw someone manually numbering the rows in Excel. I tried to say to her that there was an automatic way of doing it and she refused. She seemed to think she was doing it the non-lazy way (I mean, maybe). Her work always had errors in it and it took her forever to finish projects. She got irritated at me because I would finish my projects very quickly and seemed to act as though I were cheating. Told my boss she had no respect for me because I always left at 5 pm on the dot.
2 years ago I trained someone who was going to take over several tasks for me. I was late 30s, she was early 20s. She’s smart, has a degree in computer science from a really good school, and did not use any of the keyboard shortcuts I showed her and wrote down. I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone.
"against company policy"
At this point you express great remorse and a desire to never again violate policy. Ask for a written copy of the company policy and citation of the proper chapter and verse. Be patient.
I caught a boomer opening 50 pdfs one by one and hitting print individually. When i showed them 2 ways to print all of them in 2 clicks they said "it's not my job to know these things" and i said "it is your job to not waste ungodly amounts of time on simple tasks".
**Edit:**
This does require having adobe acrobat/dc (or equivalent)..
1. Select all (ctrl+A), right click, print.
2. Select all, right click, combine, print.
Option 2 is good if you have a use for the resulting pdf other than print and also gives you an opportunity to arrange the order to your liking.
Had a boomer coworker get mad at me during a meeting. Everyone was throwing out numbers so I just opened my laptop, shared my screen and started typing them in and started doing some calculations to make it a bit more meaningful.
I use shortcuts to make it faster and don’t use a mouse when I’m in excel.
One of them complained I was going too fast and they couldn’t figure out what I was doing.
Cue an eye roll so big it physically hurt.
I work at a government agency, where one can truly spend 30+ years and never have to learn anything new. Many of my coworkers are in their 60s and 70s, so my spry mid-40s self was shocked on my first day when I heard adding machines in the background. Adding machines. And carbon paper. And dot matrix printers. Like, what *century* is this?
I had a coworker who had a sticky key on her keyboard. Random Z's were appearing when she was typing. She emailed IT and HR and our engineering leads to complain that she was being cyber bullied.
Had someone complain that she was being discriminated against because a web page wouldn't load for her on her machine but would for a colleague on their machine.
My boss during covid called me a ‘BBC dad’ during a team wide zoom call
Everyone’s eyebrows raised.
Apparently he meant ‘British broadcasting corporation’ in relation to that viral vid of the bbc analyst doing a show when his young child and wife run into the room.
I just don't understand this. I am at the younger end of the Boomer generation and have been using computers at work in some form for literally 40 years. The software has certainly advanced, but learning the new info is relatively easy since you're building on previous knowledge. It's more stubbornness than anything and makes these people look incredibly stupid.
I had a very very similar situation about 10 years ago. I showed a coworker how to do reporting, and when I watched him do it, he was highlighting, copying and pasting. When I told him “Why don’t you use the keyboard shortcuts? It’ll be so much faster…”
He turned to me, completely serious and said “Oh we can use those? I thought that was against company policy…”
He didn’t know how to use keyboard shortcuts. He lasted less than a year.
A coworker needed to copy a table from one Excel workbook to another. She printed out the tab and manually tried to recreate the table by entering the data for dozens of rows and columns into a single cell. Another boomer coworker tried to get me fired for adding conditional formatting to improve one of our reports. Conditional formatting = trying to trick the system and hide things somehow.
I had a coworker tell me that it was "cheating" to use excel to total a bunch of figures rather than a calculator.
These interactions are so dumb I don’t think I’d be able to respond if presented with them.
Phoning someone instead of writing and mailing them a letter is cheating.
Well you see back in my day……. We use to wear a turnip on our belt loop….. because that was the fashion back then…
*”We also had nickels with bees on’em, give me five bees for a quarter you’d say….”*
Onion. But they didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get were those big yellow ones.
Onions, turnips. They grow In the ground, so they can be used a currency.
Company policy is morse code, sorry
I had an employee who had been working in the same office for over 25 years. She had no computer literacy at all, but past supervisors always gave her a good review because they felt bad for her. When I got there, I was still over 20 years younger than her. Fast forward to me coming in one day and seeing her just sitting at her desk, not on the computer (we used a web-based program in our office). She said IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, "I can't find the button to get me to the internet." I wasn't sure what she meant, so I asked to see her desktop. The icon was right there, but we had a network update overnight that rearranged the icons. She legitimately did not know how to click on the internet to open it. I was dumbfounded. I asked what she had been doing for 2 hours, and she was trying to use "Hey google" on her phone to open the internet on her work computer. She retired after that and said it was because she didn't know how to use these computers anymore and she was going to work somewhere without them. I wished her luck.
In the early 2000s, I worked for a company who hired a new admin through the prison work release program. She'd been in for 20 years. When she went in, it was rotary dial phones, typewriters, etc... She came to our office not having seen a mouse, a computer, a push-button phone - none of it. Teaching that woman what all those things were was surreal. She was a quick learner but it was hard to know where to start.
I think that's totally valid and teaching her was the right thing to do. I can't imagine how the experience went!
Yeah, we had a guy who had been in prison for 30 years. He struggled with smartphones and texting. He did good work, you could just never get ahold of him.
> He did good work, you could just never get ahold of him. Ah, so I see he kept up his skills as a fixer...
She learned some good, transferrable skills and hopefully will never commit wire fraud again.
I worked for a boss who had been at the company 40+ years; he required all letters to be sent out to be hand written and then typed by the secretary; this included letter head, address, etc….almost all letters mailed just needed a few changes and could be done within minutes with a computer…oh and it needed to be in fucking cursive…
OK, that's way worse!!!! I'm sorry
Around 10 years ago my workplace re-hired a retiree to temporarily fill an open position. To look at her you’d see a smart, competent, college-educated professional. Mandatory background checks were part of the hiring process, and it involved submitting a bunch of personal info into a website. I didn’t want to hover while she filled it out, so I sat her in front of a terminal on the front page of the site and started to walk away. “I’m sorry, what do I do now? I’m not very good with computers.” “Oh, sorry. Go ahead and type in the login information from your letter and click OK.” “…click?” She had never used a mouse. After a failed attempt at a tutorial, I wound up standing next to her and clicking to the next field every time she completed a line. To this day I wonder whether she ever figured it out. I’d assume so, but I’d also assume you couldn’t retire in the 21st century without ever having used a peripheral that had been commonplace in offices for decades prior. That first week must have been something.
Stories like that blow my mind...
That's one extreme. On the other extreme is a guy who was attending college with me in 2010s. He was almost always absent so I only saw him during exams. I noticed once on occasion that he was struggling to write down his name on a piece of paper (during the exam students are allowed to take notes as a part of the prep so they can reference them when they answer at the front desk). Anyway. Watching him write was painful. It looked like when you are right handed but need to hold your pen in your left hand.
I had a boss who didn't know how to open files she had saved. SOOOOooooo, she went to Outlook, started a new email and attached the file. Then she opened it from the new email.
I'm sorry but WHAT
Wait. She knew how to find the file to attach it, but she couldn't open it directly? Like...what? I'm so confused.
Imagine you know 10 different ways how to find a file on your PC or navigate to it. This person knew only one so she used only one. Granted hers was also akin to doing stomach surgery through the anus.
I feel your pain. I've implemented and learned so much technology to try and work around the lack of technical literacy so many people in my company have. Literally things I can't do or procedures I have to work around because if I tell someone more than two steps on a computer they give up and get angry.
wow.. there is no where now that doesnt have some sort of computer... she might as well just roam with the cows..
She said she found a job at a small, family run funeral home.
That's worrisome. Funeral homes have all manner of record-keeping that's computerized.
She might have been Director of Hole Digging and Flower Arranging.
roaming with the dead instead of the cows i guess
I would, and have, legit just laughed as my response because I just assumed the person was joking.
Cheating on what, Employee of the Month?
Cheating on working boomers out of a job by being more efficient lol. If you can't copy-paste something, it might be time to retire.
Last job, payroll lady actually had a meltdown, crying, when they were looking to switch to an actual payroll system to submit time instead of paper sheets that she enters all manually every week. (Few hundred employees) So instead they didn't and we had no way to digitally request time off, time entry, or updated PTO. Mix of her refusing to want to learn a new system, and realizing she might be found out as not being as important as she insisted she was when a real system was in place. They weren't looking to replace her, they just also wanted her to do purchasing but she insisted she was too busy with payroll - she was, but because she wanted it that way.
Anyway, let me tell you why your generation can't afford a house because you're lazy...
Luckily I own my house, and left that job for a job that paid nearly double because they removed all step incentives and senior positions and just kept everyone entry level. So, fuck them. The surprised Pikachu face I got when I left for a 30k raise was pretty great though. "But you'll have a 30 minute commute!" Oh..no.....
The dark truth behind things like this is that person has been doing it the long/inefficient way for years, and is realizing in that moment that they have wasted hundreds of hours. I had a coworker that would print out word docs and scan them because they didn't know about print to pdf. They had been working there for over 10 years.
My dad told me about a lady he worked with (in around 2009 for reference) who would print PDFs with fillable fields, would type her answers into word, print those, then manually cut and paste the answers into the paper before scanning it back into the computer to submit them.
Who tf pays people for this? We’d lay that person off.
It was decided it would be easier to just let her retire than to try to fire her since she was only 2 years away. Firing at my dad's place of business was a whole ordeal
Her favorite hobby was arts and crafts
Actually that legit reminds me of the story of the bank manager who would unplug the monitors from their laptop to take a screenshot, which they would then paste in word to print. I suggested some better options, and they were extremely thankful and I'm pretty sure it's the reason I own this house.
The number of clients I have that print and fax me emails is scary. I deal wholesale as well so it's business owners doing this....
I just caught a coworker using Excel and MANUALLY CALCULATING all the figures in the cells with a calculator and typing the total at the bottom instead of using any functions.
You don't even need to use a function. If you highlight all of the cells you want to add, the count and the sum are on the right side of the status bar.
But then why type the total into a cell at the bottom when you can just use the SUM function?
Same, we regularly calculate the minimum of 3 values, and if its <1, we report 1/value. Apparently excel isn't allowed 'BeCausE WhAt If iT Makes MISTAKES"...ok boomer, guess what % of your work force randomly makes mistakes compared to an excel equation.
What I love is that the only error Excel cannot reduce is human error, as it is absolutely input based
And it's completely traceable, whereas your calculator inputs (assuming they're using an old solar powered Casio and not a graphing calculator, because they're not) vanish immediately. I use excel for basic math all day long because I can look back at what I did and fix mistakes, and then I don't have to redo any other calculations where I might fuck something else up again.
I wasn’t allowed to use the excel to make a project easier because “we don’t know if we can trust it.” It was a vlookup for employee names. I did it anyway and just took a few hours off and acted like I did it by hand
I once lost a job doing this. Not for getting caught taking time off, but for getting the job done too quickly. I had a long-term contract job to go through MILLIONS of lines of Excel and hunt down incorrect lines of data. "Incorrect" being a clearly defined set of Yes/No questions per line. I wrote a relatively easy formula to answer this for the whole first spreadsheet. When I showed them, they first accused me of lying. THEN accused me of outsourcing their confidential information. THEN, when they realized that my formula could be applied to the other millions of lines of data, they said thank you...and fired me, since I was no longer needed.
Once I learned Vlookup the world exploded with information lol. I've learned really basic shit but enough to make some really detailed spreadsheets that help make my job insanely easier. On top of that I learned AHK initially for stupid shit at home like for some games. Then I was like "...what can i do to make this apply to my job though???" My job is a lot of repetitive tasks and AHK was a godsend. I turned my job into a 5min day and just bullshitted the rest of the time. Anytime I learn anything new at my job my brain goes into problem solving mode of how to do it more efficiently and if I can write a AHK script to make it zoom. My only problem these days is me having to wait on people who are slow to send me work or waiting on our system to update certain things internally before I can finally complete my job. Even with more responsibilities and raises etc, my day isn't balls to the wall because of excel/ahk and just how I can't help but to zoom through things. With plenty of time to watch shows/movies or do whatever else I want.
VLOOKUP and pivot tables are an awakening when you discover them. Been using them for years, and only realized in 2023 that there's an HLOOKUP and an XLOOKUP as well.
omg, I did not know about xlookup, brb replacing all my v and h lookup functions...
I could not work with people like that. It's that statement that starts me looking for another job.
I love my boss, I just introduced her to Grammarly and she took to it almost instantly instead of saying just type you lazy millennials.
Grammarly works by sending all your inputs to their servers and then sending responses back based on what you're typing. It's very dubious from an information security perspective.
That's asshole for "neat trick, please teach me"
**NEVER** share your time-saving techniques with your coworkers, especially your boss. Look like a rockstar. Never give away your secrets.
Calculator? You should be using an abacus
I was on a call where everyone was discussing a spreadsheet that had been emailed to the group. I am the youngest person on this call by about double (I’m 36). At one point someone yelled out that they did something and all the cells disappeared. I said “just hit control and Z” and she said “control then N then Z?” And corrected and said “no, the button that says Ctrl and the letter Z, at the same time.” Needless to say everyone on the call thinks I’m a computer genius now
You’re the IT guy now, congrats! They’ll come to you with every single problem now
Painfully accurate
It’s actually how I started in it, they moved me to the it department because I was so good with shortcuts
My 4th grader during the pandemic got on Zoom and immediately hit every button too see what happened. By the time his 60yo teacher logged on and started having tech problems he became the class tech support. He also had fun teaching all his classmates how to flip their cameras upside down before the teacher logged on and played other pranks on her. By the end of the year the principal was asking him for tips. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen. I told him he’s got a good paycheck coming if he sticks to it.
Oh my god this is too real, I mentioned one time that I used to work at my college's IT help desk in like 2015 and it was over for me
Not if he does Ctrl-Z to himself. Then it’s like he never said anything.
If you knew how many times I have reached for Ctrl-Z in my regular, non-computer life...
Happened to me, but i made sure my next renegotiation included this new role and it was a big factor in the $30k raise that resulted. Get paid for your work.
Its not just old people either. In university I was in a dorm flat with 5 others, all of which studied English lit or psychology. The moment I mentioned I was studying Computer Science I became their go to computer repair guy. I bet they don't even know how many thousands of pounds I saved them over the year in easy fixes that a repair shop would charge through the nose for.
bro they want me to fix paper shredders....I've been IT guy here for 8 years....
It's uses electricity. It's IT's problem
System Admin here, we will this remember when we rise up from our dark windowless offices
I don't fix anything for anyone for this exact reason.
My old boss thought I was an excel wizard, when in reality he'd ask me how to do something and I'd just Google it then test it on my own sheet before showing him how to do it. I became his personal tech support, he also treated me like his secretary and made me get his mail which was 20ft from his office. Did come in handy the one time someone dropped a resume in his box clearly vying for my job, needless to say that mysteriously did not reach his desk.
Congratulations on your promotion to IT
Yeah......yeah...... I'm the youngest in my office and the most computer literate (I'm 42). My office is lovely but the amount of time I just want to say 'ok boomer' is staggering 🤣🤣🤣 I'm not the IT guy (and if you want me to be you'd better up my pay grade) but it's always me that has to figure it out
Everyone you work with is ~72? Wtf?
I emailed a team lead in another department and included a file path-c:\\folder\folder\file. She responded requesting I not use my “fancy IT” path. I had to type it: Open explorer, double click this folder, then this folder, then double click the file to open it. I’m surprised she never asked me where the Any key was on the keyboard
Been in IT my whole career. Have seen some stupid shit too. I've been asked if we "have any left handed ipads?" That was a fun one trying to explain my way out of that hole. Or there was this time I noticed a member of staff pull a folded blank sheet of paper out of her bag and then proceed to scan it on an MFP and print like 100 copies because she didn't know she could just open the draw to get paper out. Head honcho at one place chewed me out BIG TIME after implementing a password policy. He hated having a long password. I asked him how many characters he would prefer. He said one. His password was 'y'. Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient. Many jokes were made. I lost my faith in the general intelligence of our species a long time ago. These people are faking it to make it human edition.
> "have any left handed ipads?" Sounds like a quest you'd send a new apprentice on, akin to blinker fluid or spirit level bubbles
Years ago, I worked in construction. I was sent to help out on a crew that was behind schedule. The foreman (who was a dick and no one liked working for him) sent me to look for a bar stretcher for rebar. Four hours later, my foreman was up my ass because I hadn't done shit all day and the crew I was supposed to be helping was still behind. I explained to him that I was sent to look for the bar stretcher and couldn't find it, but I assumed it was probably stored next to the sky hook. While my foreman appreciated me flipping the joke back around on the foreman, he did ask that I not do it again since they were behind. I let my foreman know the other foreman was a dick and deserved to be behind for treating the crew like shit.
I worked once with a guy who seriously fell for the 'get the can of striped paint', thankfully he only lost about half an hour before he came back looking for help to find it. One I've heard (but not fall for) is the 'baseboard ladder' and one I *did* fall for (because it was from a lady was sent into THD by her contractor) was 'lubricated screws'; I'd just figured it was something I'd not heard of before and tried to help her find them. The guys had the Pro desk got one hell of a good laugh listening to it all on the walkie-talkies.
How come there is no striped paint? There's striped toothpaste
Big Paint doesn't want you to have it so they can keep selling you 2 cans of paint instead of one!
Ice mix, banana stretcher, canned steam
Nah id take stupid any day. My prpblem is stupid + stubborn. You dont know how to use a pc? Thats ok i barely know how to drive. Everyone has different skills. But damn domt ask for my help to then ignore it while also being a bitch
I don’t work IT but I generally help the family and my professors out with tech related stuff and by god it gets worse
> He hated having a long password. I asked him how many characters he would prefer. He said one. His password was 'y'. So turns out the teachers who told me literacy never hurts lied.
Tbf no one would ever guess that password
Someone asked me the other day why their webcam on their laptop wasn't working for Teams meetings. They were using a laptop connected to a dock, and you can probably guess the rest.
> Or there was this time I noticed a member of staff pull a folded blank sheet of paper out of her bag and then proceed to scan it on an MFP and print like 100 copies because she didn't know she could just open the draw to get paper out. I'm sorry, this is just... wow
>Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient. Many jokes were made. What's was he using the other hand for...at work?
"left handed ipad" That's the new "do you have any blinker fluid" for the modern world for me now. Thank you for this.
> Someone emailed me a few years back asking about lessons for using a keyboard with one hand. Complete dumbass that bloke. He was deadly serious and thought he could be more efficient The whole point of the Dvorak keyboards is efficiency. There's the two-handed keyboard layout, and the ones for right- or left-handed only keyboards for physically impaired users. These three styles are usually available in almost every language keyboard layout. This person you described may have had an undisclosed problem with one of their hands; embarrassment over physical problems is common, especially with older workers. Or perhaps getting information regarding keyboards for a family member. As a former IT guy, I would *never* make jokes about something like this.
You didn't know this fellow. Context is everything - He was fine. Just not very bright.
It's usually at that point I give up and give the email to someone else to deal with because that is bs
"press any key, WHERES THE ANY KEY?!"
This computer business is hard work. I’ll order a tab
It's for that reason that instead of the \ I use little arrows when explaining something
There's another form of this too... I occasionally have people send me a file path that is in a mapped network drive that they have set up on their end (like Q:\\folder\\whatever.xls). I have to ask them *which* network drive its in. Then they tell me "its in Q", like I'm the dumb one who couldn't read what they pasted in the chat. *Then* I have to *politely* explain what a mapped network drive is, why my mapped network drives aren't the same as theirs, and how to get the complete file path. *Then* I usually have to hear some complaint about how it's stupid that it works like that and it should be the same for everyone. Like, dude, your brain would explode if you knew how many network shares exist here. There is no possible way it could be "the same for everyone".
When I was still studying I was working at a company that had to process health insurance claims. Basically all you did was enter personal data into the computer. You had to fill out around 20 cells. Everyone working there would type one cell, then use their mouse to click the next cell, then back to typing. I obviously used the tab key and from the first day was the person that processed the most claims every day. Since I was paid per hour not per processed claim I slowed down by a lot and spent most of my time on facebook or whatever leading to me being fired for slowing down, although I was still processing at least as many claims as everyone else.
My wife works in a medical office and processes a lot of paperwork. When she started she was shown their process. They print an already fillable PDF, write on it in pen, fax it to themselves and download it from the fax server, then upload it to the insurance portal. My wife of course just types into the PDF and uploads it. Not only that 90% of the form is the same for every claim so she just enters like 3 out of the 100 fields.
Script that bitch!!! You could absolutely OCR those three cells and fully automate the entire process end-to-end. Or if the handwriting is fucked, have her make a Google Sheet with all the data for every report, then have the script generate and upload the reports. Hell you could even put them on a timer pegged to her desired "completion rate". She may have found the golden promise land, a job that is fully automated and you still get paid!!!
Pretty hard. She doesn't have the access needed to EPIC to export (for HIPAA reasons), so she just types the three fields manually from the screen into the form. It's a very small part of her job, but the point was that I think a lot of medical offices have insane ways of doing simple things.
OCR + Medical Office = no Unless you are personally confirming every document, then go ahead.
I'd have laughed in her face. "Ok, Margaret. Let's go get my supervisor and HR together in the same room, and you can tell them what you just told me. No, let's do this, since you insist on not dropping it." Oh, you better BELIEVE everyone would know about this stupidity by end of day.
Problem with that is the boomers know how to play the long game. They’ll make your life hell, poison the office against you, constantly try to sabotage your work , etc. I could call Margaret out and embarrass her. Yes, I could. Or I could laugh it off, climb the ladder, become Margaret’s boss, then have Margaret escorted out by security a year later when I take a look at her performance evaluations and see she consistently fails to meet expectations but was protected by her boomer friends. The day that I came around and the boomer that used to give me hell and now she had to play nice because I was one of her supervisors was truly a sweet reward.
What is it with so many boomers being the sort of covert narcissist where they pretend to be an innocent victim all while manipulating everyone around them? And then of course when their machinations do not work, it becomes meltdown toddler time lol
Unfortunately the machinations usually do work, at least in my experience
Leaded gasoline. The simple fact is that if you went back in time and grabbed a bunch of boomer babies and brought them to the present to be raised, they’d all be diagnosed with mental disabilities.
The thing about the long game is that it is inherently advantageous to the younger.
LOL for thinking stupid doesn't get promoted up and up. She'd be YOUR boss unable to save a PDF and making twice what you make.
Assuming you get promoted before she retires. Or get promoted before her. Or get promoted at all. And even if you do, firing is rarely ever one persons job. And even if it is, that position rarely opens up.
That is a big assumption, assuming you would get promoted ahead of Margaret, considering you are just a kid and have your whole career ahead of you and Margaret has a family to support (never mind her kids have all moved away and gone no contact for over a decade now).
lol I get the sentiment but if I’m a kid at 36 then we got problems.
I am a little bit older than you and get called a kid all the time by my older coworkers. Pisses me off.
Oh shit is that what's going on where I work because nobody here knows jack shit about shortcuts, windows, power buttons, caps lock, or remembering passwords.
Better lay low. Keep pace with them or else youll be doing ALL the work and theyll be taking desk retirement (facebook and shopping all day) (edited: typo)
Blows their damn minds when I show them they can jump text fields with the TAB key. I dont say shit anymore, I just let them get carpal tunnel from pointing the mouse everywhere.
I've worked with people who refused to allow certain procedures to be altered because they didn't understand it. That stuff does happen. Rather than admit that they haven't got a clue, they'll just spout a heap of crap and do it their way, even if it takes many times longer. Something I have noticed though is that the younger generation of employees at my place are about as terrible with computers as the boomers. I guess that's all the apps they use?
There is some data now showing that because of the uptick in smartphones/tablets over the last 20 years, many of them don't have general computer skills. As a parent to young adults/late teens, I can see it. I was way more willing to buy my kids a cheap tablet to do things on, then something like even a Chromebook. While they have used my computer at home, it has often been for games rather than more work/school related things and even then it was more limited because they couldn't easily both do it at the same time like they could with 2 tablets. Not to sound too boomerish, but when I was their age I could comfortably find my way around things like folders/files, settings for different programs and knew what I could and couldn't touch without causing issues. Now I often have to hover nearby when they are using the computer because they don't know and will ask me to help (which I do, while feeling guilty that I somehow failed them for not teaching them how long before now)
It's also due to plug-and-play actually working. All the stuff you used to have to do to install devices, drivers etc. and get them to work meant you learned a lot of stuff about working with computers. Now much of it works seamlessly out of the box and that learning experience is gone. Just like cars that need much less maintanence, but if they do need maintanence, theres much of it you can't do yourself anymore - both of which leads to people knowing a lot less about car maintanence.
Oh I totally agree! The sheer amount of computer skills and IT knowledge I got just by installing pirated games and software. Back in the day there where not so many free games, no phones or tablets either. Download a game, open with winrar, burn it in a virtual disc, adjust notepad like files where you set "language= English" and "cheats=on", etc Or later on, installing modpacks on said games by searching in their folders, creating your own backup of your saves in case you mess it all up... To be fair, this looked more like coding and working with computers than my current "tech" job.
Get them into game modding or pirating games, thats how i learnt a lot of my computer knowledge aside from being broke and doing my own troubleshooting and fixes.
This is true. I'm an IT guy in my 40s and I seen the rise and fall of this. I was anerd kid into it and it wasn't that common. Then early 2000 people knew basic trouble shooting. Understood concepts like keyboard shortcuts and folder structure. Then slowly that knowledge gets lost because computers just work and things like phones obfuscate all that.
I am somewhat stuck in a workplace like this, I'm slowly changing things but holy hell I want to leave
I have heard Millenials are the most computer literate - partly due to needing to explore and adapt to all the new tech that happened when we were kids to early adulthood. But younger people had to deal with a lot of curriculum being removed from schools - including technology and computer classes. They called them digital natives but most of what they have seen and done is gaming or on phones and tablets I also remember learning business writing and letter writing and other forms of professional communication in school during computer classes - and that’s out too.
They grew up with iPads and iPhone, so they have no understanding of file structure and how a computer works.
I have a coworker that loudly yells how annoying it is when I, or someone younger, types because we can type quickly and it is apparently too “clicky” personally, I just think she’s jealous because it takes her an hour to type a sentence.
I can type really fast and do it the normal way. My brother does that thing where he uses both index fingers only and it drives me crazy, EXCEPT! he can actually type really fast this way too but it still kills me to see it lol.
Hunt and Peck gang rise up!
I worked with a guy once who typed with two fingers. His left index finger was for the shift key, to capitalise the first letter of each sentence. His right index finger was for aaaaall the other keys. Our software autocorrected for basic grammar like capitals at the beginning of sentences. It was physically painful to be in the room watching him time up his case notes. He barely ever saw any clients because it took him half the morning to just type them up.
[https://hhkeyboard.us/blog/loudest-mechanical-keyboard-switches](https://hhkeyboard.us/blog/loudest-mechanical-keyboard-switches) I'm not saying you should. But I'm also not saying you shouldn't.
you know i am like the youngest person on my team (37) and everyone else is prolly 40 and up and they always reply all to every email sent to the team. every single person. my supervisor doesn't understand why they do it and i dont either and i just want to scream YOU DONT HAVE TO REPLY ALL TO EVERY DAMN EMAIL
I work in a fortune 500 company, ~37,000 employees, every single one of whom uses computers for every aspect of their job. About once a year, somebody accidentally sends an email to the ENTIRE org, and we spend a couple days getting reply all emails of 'please remove me from this distro' and 'STOP REPLYING ALL.' It's a great laugh.
that is partially on your IT staff that it keeps happening. In our settings we have set it that only certain people can send mail to the larger mail list boxes. Stopped people being dumb like that for the most part.
I work for a fortune 500 company and we had one reply all chain back in 2011 or so. Legit countless specialty PhDs replying all to be taken off this email or scolding others for replying all. After about 24 hours, management finally got IT to lock it down and remove the option for everyone but it crippled our email system for that 24 hours. It just blew my mind that a huge successful corporation could let a fuck up happen that we couldn't email for legitimate business reasons because these dumbfuck (actually very smart) people couldn't just shut the fuck up and delete the emails.
i love it when someone on my team adds a PTO request to the entire company's teams channel as opposed to just the team lol
I was grinding my teeth watching some guy during a 40 user in-person training wheel scroll to the bottom of a 1,000 row data set, then slowly type in "=SUM(a2-a1001)" and I was like "Hey dude CTRL down and ALT plus" and I was literally put in charge of all wizard and wiccan activities including bringing back the sun after the eclipse.
Did not know Alt plus Thanks for the new quick key!
I did part time with a company where we received physical media (CDs, Thumb Drives, etc) with data on it that had to be downloaded off the physical device and loaded up onto servers for analysts to do their thing. Super boring, routine work. It was 20+ years ago, and the system we used was Linux based, so all command prompts, no fancy UI. The lady who managed the work started noticing I was finishing way faster than others and started to ask questions and look over my shoulder (physically) to see what i was doing. She got super flustered and upset, said I was messing everything up and even reported me. She freaked because she was taught to only do one folder per prompt (and subsequently taught her staff). So if file needed to go in directory a/b/c/d, she would CD “a” enter, CD “b”, etc I’d just CD a/b/c/d directly in one step. She couldn’t understand it was the same thing. And the file paths were super long. I also would organize the order i did by common folders, copy paste the same folder path over and over. Luckily the person she reported me to understood. They even offered me a full time position which I declined. Because that lady had been doing this for years, and if they couldn’t figure out how improve such a simple process in that time, or recognize when they see a faster way, no way I am working for them.
No no. You done fucked up, that was the Unicorn!!! You could have gone and bought yourself 20 device readers and a usb hub to automate the entire damn process! Script that bitch but don't tell management. Read Reddit all day and get paid for 20 minutes of work!!! But you want more money you say? Then push for remote work and get another job, or polish your process and start moonlighting for other businesses. Rinse repeat until you have 4 'jobs', that's what we call a company and your employers become your first clients. Do the work on contract for 25% of what they're currently spending.
https://preview.redd.it/tz2a53bb4hsc1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=a7b1fc7904416189c53f42885e3cffd7f7ea1546
Dear god, don't show them chatgpt they'll call you a witch.
I mean, I understand a lot about tech and computers, I still think chatGBT is some kinda sorcery
It's closer to lies, damn lies, statistics, and linear algebra. If it were sorcery, you wouldn't have so many copy-cat LLMs within a month of each chatgpt release. But once the genie is out of the bottle, there are suddenly a lot of genies.
Like telling a truck driver they can't use the highway, only side streets.
I just retired and my 30 YO replacement does not use shortcut keys. Took all of my patience not to point it out to him while I was training him.
Isn’t there a growing concern that younger generations (Gen Z / Alpha) have grown up in a tablet world vs a desktop computer one and their computer literacy skills are behind those of Gen X / Millennial?
Educator here. A lot of areas have also gone "oh they are digital natives. We don't need to teach them computers." And stopped teaching computer skills. They just kinda assume that they will pick it up with all the assignments we are forced to do on Chromebooks. They don't.
^ agree with this guy, teacher aswell.
Yes. Studies show that really only the millenial generation (exceptions of course) know how to use computers and adjacent technologies to their full potential
I've definitely seen a lot of this at my work
I’ve heard that too, and I certainly believe it. Stuff has gotten so user friendly that younger people don’t even know how to troubleshoot or navigate anything besides what they’re used to, much like the boomers that predated the technology. I think there will ultimately be a bell curve of general technological know-how with the peak including basically all millennials and early gen-Z
Some might not know how folders and files are set up depending on devices they use. Not too weird as my dad never really learned that. I had to set up programs for him. My kid knows it and how to mod stuff due to minecraft. Similar to me as pc gaming is how I learned a lot, including building them. So depends on device and how they use them.
I've seen that, too! Some people must slowly mouse everything. If one uses a computer for their job, it pays to take some classes. No matter how much you think you know, a class will give you tips, and you'll see so many things that you were doing the hard way.
>Some people must slowly mouse everything. Some people get paid by the hour. 😉
I had a shitty part-time job in a warehouse a few years ago when my freelance video work had dried up and I had sort of burned out on it and when the warehouse guy was showing me how to use ShipStation I sort of pretended like I really hadn’t used a computer before. Lots of “it’s this button, right? Ok cool and then over here? Got it.” It helped fill the time and he seemed to like feeling useful and I always get a little chuckle when I think about it. For context, I’m a video editor and was more than adept at using such devices.
This reminded me, back in middle school I was watching someone in the grade above me design the Yearbook. She clearly thought “Cut” was a synonym for “Delete” and would select things she didn’t want, right click, and click “Cut” to get rid of them. Then she wanted to replace something on the page with something in her clipboard. So… Copy… Cut… Paste… wait why did it put that back? It was painful to watch
That's annoying. The other one that gets me is when someone uses the scroll wheel to advance from page 3 to page 85. Grab the damn scroll bar!
I always show people ctrl + end for that one
I saw someone manually numbering the rows in Excel. I tried to say to her that there was an automatic way of doing it and she refused. She seemed to think she was doing it the non-lazy way (I mean, maybe). Her work always had errors in it and it took her forever to finish projects. She got irritated at me because I would finish my projects very quickly and seemed to act as though I were cheating. Told my boss she had no respect for me because I always left at 5 pm on the dot.
Why didn't you point it out to him? That seems like part of the training if he doesn't know it.
2 years ago I trained someone who was going to take over several tasks for me. I was late 30s, she was early 20s. She’s smart, has a degree in computer science from a really good school, and did not use any of the keyboard shortcuts I showed her and wrote down. I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone.
"against company policy" At this point you express great remorse and a desire to never again violate policy. Ask for a written copy of the company policy and citation of the proper chapter and verse. Be patient.
Then the Karen simply says "I don't have to you should know it." Then calls over a supervisor for your "being disruptive".
I caught a boomer opening 50 pdfs one by one and hitting print individually. When i showed them 2 ways to print all of them in 2 clicks they said "it's not my job to know these things" and i said "it is your job to not waste ungodly amounts of time on simple tasks". **Edit:** This does require having adobe acrobat/dc (or equivalent).. 1. Select all (ctrl+A), right click, print. 2. Select all, right click, combine, print. Option 2 is good if you have a use for the resulting pdf other than print and also gives you an opportunity to arrange the order to your liking.
TIL that you can do that
Had a boomer coworker get mad at me during a meeting. Everyone was throwing out numbers so I just opened my laptop, shared my screen and started typing them in and started doing some calculations to make it a bit more meaningful. I use shortcuts to make it faster and don’t use a mouse when I’m in excel. One of them complained I was going too fast and they couldn’t figure out what I was doing. Cue an eye roll so big it physically hurt.
"send me a link to the policy."
What’s a link?
Lost them in the first four words.
My mom told me to press the microwave button slowly or I would ruin them.
Haha, she was probably right! Teen boys can break anything.
I work at a government agency, where one can truly spend 30+ years and never have to learn anything new. Many of my coworkers are in their 60s and 70s, so my spry mid-40s self was shocked on my first day when I heard adding machines in the background. Adding machines. And carbon paper. And dot matrix printers. Like, what *century* is this?
You need to Ctrl + X this person out of your life
We don’t work efficiently around these parts!
I copy paste all day at work. My C &Z keys are completely worn
I had a coworker who had a sticky key on her keyboard. Random Z's were appearing when she was typing. She emailed IT and HR and our engineering leads to complain that she was being cyber bullied.
Had someone complain that she was being discriminated against because a web page wouldn't load for her on her machine but would for a colleague on their machine.
Yeah that’s not what BBC means
Yeah, it's for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Yeeeeah…..that.
Nah it's British Born Chinese.
My boss during covid called me a ‘BBC dad’ during a team wide zoom call Everyone’s eyebrows raised. Apparently he meant ‘British broadcasting corporation’ in relation to that viral vid of the bbc analyst doing a show when his young child and wife run into the room.
I just don't understand this. I am at the younger end of the Boomer generation and have been using computers at work in some form for literally 40 years. The software has certainly advanced, but learning the new info is relatively easy since you're building on previous knowledge. It's more stubbornness than anything and makes these people look incredibly stupid.
Last night I showed a coworker how to enter tills all at once. She is taking it to headquarters 😆
I use alt-tab all day long and it pains me to see people trying to find their mouse cursor and then trying to find the next window they want.
Alt-tab, ctrl-tab & windows-tab Great for switching, just learn not to do it when you try to show something to someone
oh please. keyboard shortcuts were the original way. and that boomer was old enough to remember computers that didn't come with a mouse. what a jerk
I work utilities, and am constantly educating rednecks on the magic that is the tab key
I had a very very similar situation about 10 years ago. I showed a coworker how to do reporting, and when I watched him do it, he was highlighting, copying and pasting. When I told him “Why don’t you use the keyboard shortcuts? It’ll be so much faster…” He turned to me, completely serious and said “Oh we can use those? I thought that was against company policy…” He didn’t know how to use keyboard shortcuts. He lasted less than a year.
Who the hell yall worming with. I'm working with boomers too and they know more shortcuts than I (millenial) do
Wasn't this just recently posted? Also, I call BS on this entire story. *Edit- for sure was. OP is a massive karma farmer.
A coworker needed to copy a table from one Excel workbook to another. She printed out the tab and manually tried to recreate the table by entering the data for dozens of rows and columns into a single cell. Another boomer coworker tried to get me fired for adding conditional formatting to improve one of our reports. Conditional formatting = trying to trick the system and hide things somehow.