Boss: “I just got off the phone with [User] and she is furious. She says you just gave her a new laptop and it doesn’t work!”

I go over. The user and her supervisor are both crammed into her cube and loudly complaining about how the computer doesn’t work.

Me: “Good morning, ladies. I understand you have a problem with the laptop I gave you?”

User: “Yes! It just doesn’t work. It won’t turn on!”

User’s Supervisor: “The monitor just stays black. This is totally unacceptable. [User] has a lot that I need her to do, and she can’t even get her computer working!”

I look around. On the desk is the external monitor, the docking station for the laptop, keyboard, mouse… Something is missing. Right as I note this, the user decides to “demonstrate” the problem for me…. by pressing the power button on the dock.

User: “You see?! It doesn’t turn on!”

Me: “Uh… where is the laptop? That’s just the dock.”

User: “It’s at home, so I can work there, of course! But it won’t turn on here!”

Me: *Calmly* “You physically need the laptop to be connected to the dock. It will not magically connect when the computer is in another city.”

User & Supervisor: “That’s what Wi-Fi is for!”

Related:
Laptop Flop, Part 30
Laptop Flop, Part 29
Laptop Flop, Part 28
Laptop Flop, Part 27

When I was a teenager, I went to a boarding school for “troubled teen girls” for a short period of time. I was physically ill after finally being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, and my missing school was leading my grades to drop to the point where I was on the verge of being kicked out, so they enrolled me for a few trimesters as a way for me to catch up. A lot of the girls were suffering from severe behavioral issues and returning from wilderness camps, so it was a pretty intense group of kids.

Most Internet use was forbidden except in connection with schoolwork, and all of our computers in the computer lab faced inward so the teacher who was running the computer lab could see our screens. There were also very strict blocks that blocked almost everything except for educational websites. They’d never had any issues, until me.

I was annoyed at these restrictions and wanted to talk to my friends via email and post on forums. It was nothing malicious at all; besides my health issues, I was a pretty good kid. Unfortunately for the school, I was the first student that happened to know about using proxy servers to get around these restrictions.

I was constantly alt+tabbing, using tiny windows, and being on the lookout for when the lab monitor looked my way. This went on for months before a couple of students found out and asked me about it. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to cause trouble, and I knew that everyone suddenly having access would be impossible to hide. Of course, that meant that they went and told the principal about it.

They had no idea how I managed to do it. Even the so-called IT people for the school had no explanation! Frustrated, the principal forbade me from entering the computer lab again until I told them how I managed to get around the restrictions.

Unfortunately for them, I was leaving the school soon after anyway, so it didn’t make a difference. Amusingly, they wound up calling my parents because of the “trouble” I was making and complained that I was being uncooperative.

I don’t remember if anyone else managed to figure out what I was doing, and years later, my mom admitted that she was so proud to find out that the “trouble” I was making was being the first person to outsmart the school just so I could check my email and post on some gaming forums.

My coworker is a bit of a technophobe and he’s not old enough to use his age as an excuse. He just seems to hate new tech and deems everything as unnecessary. 

We’re in a small group talking about recent DIY projects, and I mention that I installed some smart sockets recently.

Me: “They’re pretty good; whatever you plug in, you can switch on and off with your voice.”

Coworker: *Snarkily* “As opposed to the not-so-convenient switch?”

Me: “Yes, they have a switch, as well, but we—”

Coworker: *Interrupting* “So, you bought a toy. What a waste of money. Do you even use it?”

Me: “Daily.”

Coworker: *Sarcastically* “You must save so much time, huh? What do you do with all that time you saved?”

Me: “Actually, we can’t reach the plug, so we can have light in what was a dark corner.”

Coworker: “Well, I suppose that’s an exception.”

Me: “And the night light for my eldest — she can fall asleep with the light on and I can turn it off rather than disturb her. Or the hair straighteners my wife can never remember if she switched off.”

Coworker: “Yeah, well, whatever. It’s mostly useless.”

It did feel good to shut him up for once; he is so sure he is right all the time. A few months later, he came to me, excited, admitted he was wrong, and asked me to help set one up for him!

Back in the early 1990s, Internet and its various aspects are not common knowledge, even though they have been around for years. My dad works at a national broadcasting company and I decide to try to send him an email from my office. I figure out his email address — not a trivial thing when there are a few different address protocols — and send a short greeting.

The next morning, my desktop phone rings.

Dad: *Angrily* “You were on my computer.”

Me: “Oh, yeah. I sent you an email and, apparently, you got it.”

Dad: “Is this some kind of hacker thing?”

Me: “No? This is how the Internet works. You can send emails from one computer to—”

Dad: “Just don’t do it again.” *Click*

I work the reference desk at a public library. A lady walks up to the desk and shows me a tiny picture of a computer screen she took with her phone camera; it’s the title of a book she’s looked up on another website that recommends books to kids learning to read. I can barely make out the title, but I do look it up for her.

After a while, she comes back with another of these tiny “screenshots” and this repeats until I notice that she keeps going back and forth from one of our computers around the corner.

Me: “Excuse me, I was wondering why you take pictures of the results you find when you could just look them up right there on the same computer?”

Patron: “Oh, but it’s so much faster if you look them up for me.”