Now, I am not completely without compassion and I don’t expect everyone to be a tech geek. But still, there are times when the desire to ask, “DID YOU READ THE FUCKING DIRECTIONS OR ARE YOU JUST ILLITERATE!” (thanks, Tom – your royalty check and t-shirt are in the mail), is very strong.Those of us who work in a technology intensive field, have to work with technologically challenged people, or just have common sense and are searching for the glimmer of the light of intelligence in any co-worker’s eyes, might understand the picture above. I don’t know whether it is a fabrication, a clever bit of photoshoped humor, or a real help screen - but to whoever submitted this picture to Google Images… I understand and feel your pain.
True story… back in my days of working at HP we had just such a challenged admin. She was trying to install software and got stuck when the message appeared “PRESS ANY KEY.” For the life of her, she could not find the key to press that was labeled “Any.” So, she called the help desk and told them that her keyboard was missing a key... you can’t make this stuff up.
For nearly two years, I have been the equivalent of our little business’ help desk. I have endured the slings and arrows of outrageous inquiries about email, “broken” PC’s, keyboards, and mice (mouse’s, mouses?) that were actually unplugged or otherwise disconnected. I “fixed” copiers and printers that were out of paper. I “made the digital camera work” by charging the batteries. I have been a hero, a savior, a god… but no more.
I hired someone to take on one of my five jobs where I work. For the past week, I have experienced the singular joy of redirecting all of the calls of technology doom and disaster to another. I feel a sense of relief that I have not known for lo, these past two years. While he is taking it all in stride (yes, HE – I had the audacity to hire a male in our little gynocracy), I sit snickering inside waiting to see how long it will take him to mutter the bold words above.
Ah, life’s little joys… ya gotta take ‘em where you can.
8 comments:
I am technologically illiterate,but that woman's just plain stupid!
:-) A Little joy yes,especially good at the expense of others at work.
Trust me - you are not technologically illiterate. You have a couple of blog pages and you knew how to leave a comment. You would be a giant amongst this sort...
People never fail to amaze me at their stupidity.
The ANY key...I love it!
Actually I have the opposite problem at work. I feel that ageism and sexism frequently rear their ugly heads when it comes to tech matters, with the younger set automatically assuming that, just because I am a 56 year old woman, I must be dumber than a doorpost when it comes to technology. When we had the training session for our new laptops, I noticed that the training assistants who were moving about the room seemed to hover around me. When I call in with a legitimate problem, a real malfunction, they start with a question like "Have you turned the laptop on?" (OK, maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.) I notice that they speak very slowly, as if I have an IQ of 50. I finally lost a few weeks ago, when I stopped by the office to do a report that is simply much easier to do on the office network directly, rather than on remote connection at home. But when I sat down at the office computer, it was not connected to the network and, when I checked on connection status, I saw that it had not been connected for 3 days. I called out to the office person in the adjoining room that the computer was not connected. She yelled back, "REFRESH!" I guess I should have been grateful that she didn't ask me if I'd turned the computer on, but I was pissed and just went home to do it on the remote connection after all.
But, I digress...enjoy your liberation from the tech responsibilities, and sit back and enjoy the show.
If only there were a delete key for some of the people you work with...
One by one...
Yay! Another t-shirt!! We're going to be millionaires!
Gotta love truly dense people. Whenever I have to help someone, I always tell them to first check the connection between the keyboard & the chair...& they don't get that either.
Thom, my external hard drive will not work. The cord fell out of the USB port and the switch is turned to off, do you think this might be the problem or do you think its just something simple that I am overlooking :)
-- Tom --
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