Technology

Some people are just unteachable when it comes to computers.

It's not that they're stupid. It's not that they're too old or not logical or don't understand the lingo or don't have experience or whatever. It's that their brains are wired differently than most of us. So they end up interpreting every little step in a way that is shockingly different than what one intended.

For example, today I was asked to help someone copy a file (a Word document). Now that's not my job, but it is so ridiculously easy, that I thought it would be no trouble. It took me 20 minutes to help her do it. Seriously. Something that should have taken about 1.5 seconds took 20 minutes.

Now there's at least 8 different ways to copy a file in Windows. And it seemed that every time I walked her through one of the ways, she found a way to do it wrong. And because I wasn't staring over her shoulder, I had a hard time figuring out what she was doing wrong because she SAID she was doing exactly what I told her to do.

Finally I thought of an absolutely fool-proof way of copying a file. I broke it down into these steps:

1. Open your My Documents folder.
2. Single-click on the file you want to copy so that it is highlighted.
3. Go to the Edit menu and select "Copy"
4. Go back to the Edit menu and select "Paste"

That would undoubtedly copy the file and automatically name it "Copy of [filename]."
No sweat right??

Didn't work. She said that her "copy" menu item was greyed-out. In my mind that meant, "well, then you didn't single-click on the file so that it was highlighted." But she insisted that she did.

I refused to give up on this way of copying because I honestly couldn't think of a simpler way to do it. So I persisted. Several times I asked her to re-play back for me every single thing she did and not leave out any steps. After about the third try, I finally figured out what she was really doing.

When I said "single-click on the file so that it is highlighted," she:
double-clicked the file,
which launched Word and opened the file in Word
Then she single-clicked on the "File" menu in Word, which of course highlighted the word "File".

So, naturally when I said "select copy" from the Edit menu, it was greyed out because now she was in Word, and there was no text selected to copy. I did finally get her to copy the file (since she was already in Word, I had her go to "Save As..." on her File menu.)

This isn't the only example, but this is how it goes. I say, "Click A" and they think I mean "Click Ayyyyy". It sounds right. But it's not.