I've had many similar computer tales with my dad, I can't think of a specific example, however one time my patience must have appeared to be be wearing thin and he said "I never complain when you ask me to help you with DIY!", I replied that I was generous enough to let him do that on site rather than from 200miles away over the phone...
My dad's absolutely no trouble.
Has zero interest in technology, refuses to even learn how to send a text nor pesters me to show him.
Occasionally borrows my Mum's old iPad (yep, she's got 2 - the 'small' one is 'too small'. Yep, I know, she wanted an iPhone).
Has figured out how to find the Rolling Stones and/or White Stripes on Spotify, can navigate to the BBC and use Google find his religious brainwashing propaganda material of choice.
Quite happy, and all is good in that particular hood.
Me – ‘Fine. Have 3 x different lists, stuff missing all over the place and the need to scroll sideways on half the sites you visit because of that monstrosity down the side.’
We're back to the cheesecake again.
Someone at work has their email archived off into monthly folders (which is wholly pointless now that we're on Office 365, but anyway). So far so normal, right? Except, the folder for October 2018 is inside the folder for September 2018 which is inside the folder for August 2018 which is inside... and this goes back years. A little part of me dies every time I see it.
Oh, yeah, I told her to log a call with IT to get it all sorted out along with her 37 other local .PSTs with names like "old stuff" and "older stuff" and have it all uploaded to the O365 server. I still don't think the IT guy has forgiven me for that one.
self-defecating practice
Lolz - thats brilliant - intentional or auto complete? Whichever I am going to steal it and use it
I sometimes get 'Google has deleted my account'. What they mean when they say this is that they have closed the pinned tab in Chrome. They usually ring me in a panic when I am at work so I have to attempt to talk them through the steps to get access to their Gmail accounts on the phone.
My Dad on the other hand is more of the ‘fix this’ “why, what’s wrong” ‘it’s not working’ school. It’s not that he can’t do it, he’s just not even slightly interested so you end up showing him the same thing several times.
I try to avoid actual work related support at all costs as a developer. We have tiers of support for that. However I keep getting dragged into some as certain customers (these are business customers) in certain countries escalate things to the top and then I get pulled in as the engineer who can "fix" it.
The usual stuff from these particular customers is the above. "Fix it", "why what's wrong", "it's not working, fix it".
Spend ages trying to work out what's not working (that support should be doing), remote sessions, arguments with them about why it doesn't work because basically they haven't even configured the thing properly or bothered at all beyond just install the software. Getting nowhere telling them what they need to do, they drag their boss in who repeats "fix it" in a more aggressive tone.
Ultimately they want us to set the whole thing up and also maintain it, for free. Which isn't what we do. We're not a managed service and there's no service contract.
Similarly arguments to "fix" something it was never designed to do in the first place. i.e. implement a feature they want, for free, now, over the phone.
I get the feeling it's all deliberate. It's also fairly common from certain parts of the world.
“it’s not working, fix it”.
How I love these, let me count the ways. "My computer isn't working" can mean anything from "an external website we have no control over is down" to "it's on fire."
Would you take your car to a garage and go "it's not working"? No? Then for the love of [deity of choice] WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?
We once had a business customer who called us and had a real go at us telling us that her website wasn't working, we were losing her business etc. I went online and checked its status and it was fine. We suggested that it might be her internet connection so could she try accessing a different site such as the BBC. She told us that she couldn't do that because engineers were working in the area and the internet was down...
I had a user once who absolutely wouldn't give me any information ever. I'd get messages on Skype:
"Can you come up?"
What for?
"I need you to look at my computer."
Why?
"It's not working."
In what way isn't it working?
"It doesn't work."
What's happening? What symptoms are you seeing?
"Can you just come up?"
Etc, etc.
So, I'd trail over to the other end of the building to discover that she'd forgotten her password on some remote system or other, meaning I'd then to go all the way back to my desk to reset it from my laptop. Something I could've done in about 5 seconds if she'd told me what was wrong.
I told her to log a call with IT to get it all sorted out
What had they done to upset you?
It's not just computers..
We bought my mum a simple mobile phone, she never takes it anywhere, she leaves it plugged into the power cable next to the bloody home phone, doesn't see that this slightly defeats the object!
They installed a new boiler with a digital thermostat screen on wall, i travel down to see her in July and she has the heating on full blast and all the windows open as she can't use it..
Then she got Sky TV, but wondered why she could never get most of the services, she'd had it 9 months and had never connected it to the internet.
And don't get me started on her 13 month old car, it's amazing how many people have "pranged my car whilst i was in Morrisons" she has used that excuse 4 times now
What had they done to upset you?
Well, I was damned if I was doing it...!
On a more serious note OP, I'd suggest your dad asks his GP for a memory test. My dad's declining ability to deal with this sort of thing was the first sign of his cognitive decline.
Had a guy had been on our website at home and seen a red bike he'd be liked so came in to ask about it, I naturally enquired about which bike it was. He said it was on our website so I could just check what he'd been looking at, I told him I couldn't see what he'd been looking at on his home computer and he insisted that since it was our website we should be able to check. Eventually figured out which bike it was but still amazed how some people function day to day. He wasn't even that old.
I like this thread, how many times have I had a call saying "the internet doesn't work"?
Me - well can you see the BBC website?
Dad - yes but I m not getting my emails through
Me - ok, that's fine as long as you haven't changed anything it's just a glitch
Dad - ah, well I went into the operating system and changed things
Me - operating system?
Dad - yes, you know where I log in, so I tried the password that I used 3 months ago and now its not working
My dad's pretty good, but recently I've had a few chats about why answering the spam email or clicking 'unsubscribe' is not being polite, it's the wrong thing to do ...
He also has working black and white Nokia. Yet felt the need to 'upgrade' on my brother in laws advice to Android. Which weekly seems to confuse him or need email settings re-setting as a few second wait for messages to download means in his head the app or OS is broken and needs a clean install. .
Had this WhatsApp earlier today...
'all looking good at the moment, got Mojave front page up and managed to get on top of passwords, so just YouTube to sort out now......maybe turned it off like mail. Are you free?'
...been busy all afternoon. Someone's turned off YouTube?
This thread is brilliant and especially shrieked at the image of a person using the mouse as a foot pedal, that is so funny!! On the other hand some of the above examples rings a bell ...
