Watching someone use a computer. It takes the patience of Job sometimes.
10 thoughts on “I Have Been There”
It’s fun to have known micromanagers stand over my shoulder, watching me use the computer. I purposely make clunky moves because I know, deep down, it’s annoying the bejeezus out of them. 🙂
I take the opposite approach to k. I deliberately use keyboard shortcuts and programmed macros so that no one easy easily follow what I do or duplicate my work. That and using clunky moves would annoy me far more than it would annoy anyone watching me.
I maintain that working on a computer while a group of people watches is the new ‘showed up forgetting to wear pants’ nightmare.
Try doing it over the phone with engineers who should know how to use a simple inventory/planning program, but instead have raised learned helplessness to an art form.
Heh, I so recognise this. My father’s mental image of the internet is that of a university library catalogue. He uses Google as his home page and doesn’t know what the URL bar is. He also doesn’t know what directories are for. Amazingly he manages to use the internet a lot. The other day I had to talk a German aunt through selecting the correct microphone settings. She could hear me, but I couldn’t hear her and had to rely on typed descriptions of what was going on. Not knowing all computer technology terms in German this wasn’t exactly easy. It took us ten to fifteen minutes to get the problem sorted out…
I’m with Brock- I memorized a lot of two-character+spacebar commands with AutoCad 25 years ago, and usually keep my right hand on the mouse (with scrollwheel thankyouverymuch). tr-space click click to trim an object… it makes the work fly from my mind onto the screen.
who should know how to use a simple inventory/planning program
This reminds me of engineer/PhD colleagues who used to refer to JD Edwards software as JD Backwards.
My wife hates it when I’m standing next to her as she navigates, for this exact reason.
OK, now highlight that
OK, control-C
OK, paste it into the search box… yeah right there, control-V for godssake!
Enter. Yes, press enter, now.
We’ve come to an agreement, she gets up and I sit down. Not that I will necessarily get to the correct page faster (bs), but because she is MUCH more patient than I am (true).
What’s wrong with just ripping the mouse out of their hand and shoving their chair aside? That is why there are wheels on the chair.
How funny…I Stumbled on this yesterday, and the first person I thought of was Rand…
It’s fun to have known micromanagers stand over my shoulder, watching me use the computer. I purposely make clunky moves because I know, deep down, it’s annoying the bejeezus out of them. 🙂
I take the opposite approach to k. I deliberately use keyboard shortcuts and programmed macros so that no one easy easily follow what I do or duplicate my work. That and using clunky moves would annoy me far more than it would annoy anyone watching me.
I maintain that working on a computer while a group of people watches is the new ‘showed up forgetting to wear pants’ nightmare.
Try doing it over the phone with engineers who should know how to use a simple inventory/planning program, but instead have raised learned helplessness to an art form.
Heh, I so recognise this. My father’s mental image of the internet is that of a university library catalogue. He uses Google as his home page and doesn’t know what the URL bar is. He also doesn’t know what directories are for. Amazingly he manages to use the internet a lot. The other day I had to talk a German aunt through selecting the correct microphone settings. She could hear me, but I couldn’t hear her and had to rely on typed descriptions of what was going on. Not knowing all computer technology terms in German this wasn’t exactly easy. It took us ten to fifteen minutes to get the problem sorted out…
I’m with Brock- I memorized a lot of two-character+spacebar commands with AutoCad 25 years ago, and usually keep my right hand on the mouse (with scrollwheel thankyouverymuch). tr-space click click to trim an object… it makes the work fly from my mind onto the screen.
who should know how to use a simple inventory/planning program
This reminds me of engineer/PhD colleagues who used to refer to JD Edwards software as JD Backwards.
My wife hates it when I’m standing next to her as she navigates, for this exact reason.
OK, now highlight that
OK, control-C
OK, paste it into the search box… yeah right there, control-V for godssake!
Enter. Yes, press enter, now.
We’ve come to an agreement, she gets up and I sit down. Not that I will necessarily get to the correct page faster (bs), but because she is MUCH more patient than I am (true).
What’s wrong with just ripping the mouse out of their hand and shoving their chair aside? That is why there are wheels on the chair.
How funny…I Stumbled on this yesterday, and the first person I thought of was Rand…