Of Computers and Coworkers
Oct. 30th, 2001 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterToday, one of my co-workers, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty (which is me) called me, twice, to ask for help. She called me a couple of times before, a couple of weeks back. The first time, it was to ask me...how to turn the computer off, so she could move it.
That's right. How to turn the computer...off. ("You click on the start button, then select 'Shut Down'--" "Oh, so you mean it's just like my laptop?")
Today, the first time, in a nicely symmetrical display, she needed to know how to turn the computer...on. (To be fair, it wasn't her fault this time--apparently in moving it, the power switch on the back had gotten jarred off, so the pushbutton on front wasn't working. She actually managed to figure it out by trial and error for herself, after we got off the phone--after she'd tried about everything else.)
And then, after that--just a couple of hours ago, in fact--she needed to know why the mouse wasn't working when she'd taken one out and plugged the other in. (Doing which is typically not a good idea, as I'm sure most folks reading this already know.) I directed her to shut down and restart--and she didn't know that she could access the Start menu by pressing the Windows key on her keyboard. That's right! One of MS's main "convenience" features--and she didn't even know about it.
I feel like I'm living in my own personal User Friendly comic strip.
I don't know what it is. I mean, I know she's not stupid. She's a professional employee working for a business firm; she does number crunching and writing that would be either difficult or tedious for me to do. I find myself facing the weird dichotomy of how someone can be so smart in one way...but know so very little in another.
And yet...my Dad is also smart. He has a Master's degree in Library Science, he repairs antique clocks for a living--and if he sometimes forgets what a "K" is, or has trouble understanding the difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-RW, well, at least he asks intelligent questions, and more often than not he can figure out how to do things on his own. He seems to have very little trouble working with the computer in ordinary situations. And he's probably at least twenty years older than this woman, too, and so should (in theory) be "further set in his ways" and "hard to teach new tricks."
I thought I had a point here, but now I can't find it. Oh well. To bed.
That's right. How to turn the computer...off. ("You click on the start button, then select 'Shut Down'--" "Oh, so you mean it's just like my laptop?")
Today, the first time, in a nicely symmetrical display, she needed to know how to turn the computer...on. (To be fair, it wasn't her fault this time--apparently in moving it, the power switch on the back had gotten jarred off, so the pushbutton on front wasn't working. She actually managed to figure it out by trial and error for herself, after we got off the phone--after she'd tried about everything else.)
And then, after that--just a couple of hours ago, in fact--she needed to know why the mouse wasn't working when she'd taken one out and plugged the other in. (Doing which is typically not a good idea, as I'm sure most folks reading this already know.) I directed her to shut down and restart--and she didn't know that she could access the Start menu by pressing the Windows key on her keyboard. That's right! One of MS's main "convenience" features--and she didn't even know about it.
I feel like I'm living in my own personal User Friendly comic strip.
I don't know what it is. I mean, I know she's not stupid. She's a professional employee working for a business firm; she does number crunching and writing that would be either difficult or tedious for me to do. I find myself facing the weird dichotomy of how someone can be so smart in one way...but know so very little in another.
And yet...my Dad is also smart. He has a Master's degree in Library Science, he repairs antique clocks for a living--and if he sometimes forgets what a "K" is, or has trouble understanding the difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-RW, well, at least he asks intelligent questions, and more often than not he can figure out how to do things on his own. He seems to have very little trouble working with the computer in ordinary situations. And he's probably at least twenty years older than this woman, too, and so should (in theory) be "further set in his ways" and "hard to teach new tricks."
I thought I had a point here, but now I can't find it. Oh well. To bed.
