Stupidity Can Be Found In The Oddest Places

There is an unfair stereotype in university IT that the older the professor, the worse they are at technology. This is entirely untrue because absolutely nothing seems to correlate with how comfortable a professor is with technology — age, intelligence, diligence, and certainly not degree. I’ve observed a slight statistical correlation with the field they’re in, but it’s shaky at best.

So, I try not to judge anyone until I’ve seen them actually at a machine. But on one particular occasion, I regret to say I fell prey to assumptions.

We had received word that a new professor was starting, and they actually stopped by to introduce themselves to our team. If you want good service from IT, boy, is that a way to leave an impression. They were young, humble, and they just emitted this impression of intelligence — all the signs of a user we could give a computer to and never see again, which is just how IT likes it.

And on top of this, when we asked if they had any special requests for what they wanted on their machine, they specifically asked for Chrome. My estimation of their ability went sky-high. I had dreams of future tickets, easily resolved, aided by their wonderful ability to assist with troubleshooting.

That is, until the day they got their new computer and reported their first ticket: they still wanted Chrome installed.

I was, frankly, baffled. Not only was Chrome set to the default browser on our image, but I had taken an extra step to log in as the user and put the icon on a prominent position on their desktop, since they had specially requested it. It could not be any more installed.

But weirder things have happened before. Maybe some serious problem had happened with their new machine and Chrome was somehow deleted.

I was so baffled that I asked if I could see the machine in person, and they brought it by right away. I watched as the user logged in and clicked on the Chrome icon on their desktop, successfully opening Chrome.

There were no triumphant sounds of understanding or a sheepish apology. Instead, they kept going.

Now, Google likes to change up the contents of the default tab when you open Chrome. This particular design prominently featured a button saying something like, “Learn more about what you can do with Chrome!”

The professor continued to click on “Learn More About Chrome,” click the link, “Download Chrome,” and point.

Professor: “See! It says that you still need to download Chrome.”

I admit, troubleshooting this problem had me stumped.

Eventually, I managed to convince the professor that if they visited literally any other site on the Internet, they would be just fine. They went away satisfied.

That afternoon, I started to write a feedback email to Google:

Me: “Bug found: user can still navigate to ‘Install Chrome’ page even if Chrome installed.”

But ultimately, I decided against sending it. It was out of the ticket scope, anyway.

Ticket closed!