Rube

Here at the tail end of a career where I've spent at least some portion of my time providing technical support to the end users of technology in industry, education, medicine, insurance and banking, there isn't much I haven't seen. That includes devious middle school kids getting around security protocols designed by the brightest minds at Apple. It also includes people with multiple advanced degrees who can't read instructions on a screen that tell them to click a button labeled "Next."

I was around when Internet connectivity was introduced to the workplace. I worked with truly lovely and talented teachers at the tale end of long careers who valiantly tried to switch from paper grade books to buggy DOS-based student information systems. They would apologize when asking for help and just about always use the phrase "I am not a computer person." I'd say "That's OK, I don't know how to teach kindergarten." Some learned faster than others. Some, sadly, never learned and retired.

OK, that was a quarter of a century ago. I don't have that attitude any more. According to Consumer Affairs, 91% of adults in the US have a smart phone - which is a hand held computer with an operating system. Computer skills are taught in public schools. Most universities require students to have a laptop. Desktops and laptops have been ubiquitous in business for many years. And yet, and yet - I still get hit with "I'm not a computer person."

Somehow, the decision makers in many workplaces have decided that demonstrating competency with one of the basic tools of a job isn't a requirement. They hire people like me to hold the hands of their employees, enabling them to forego skill development because they can just call IT when they can't find a file they were working on yesterday or they've forgotten their password for the third time this month or they can't figure out how to make PDFs open in Adobe Reader.

We require our employees to figure out how to get to work. When automotive technology changes, we don't hold their hand to show them how to plug in an EV. People buy Smart TVs every day, and they figure out how to watch Monday Night Football. Most of my fellow grandparent types manage to get Candy Crush installed.

It absolutely blows my mind how many people using Windows don't know how to find apps by clicking on the start button. I've spent over 30 years being told by IT managers to put the icons for MS Office and the installed browsers on every user's desktop. I don't expect people to use a hex editor or anything, but come on, why do we work from an expectation that people are stupid? Why isn't learning to use a password manager a basic skill? There's a sizable population who truly refuses to use self-service password resets. If they can't call the help desk to get their password reset, they just sit there, not working. WTF?

I've probably written a version of this post four or five times before. I'll finally retire soon enough and then I won't worry about it anymore. It will be someone else's turn.

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