It’s not funny or endearing

When I hear someone say “I’m bad with computers, can you help me with this?” I cringe. I cringe hard. I don’t think they realise what they sound like.

Are you also terrible with using running water? Towels? Telephones? Light switches? Are there any other integral parts of modern life that you haven’t figured out yet? ¹

Computers are not a skillset that you can be bad or good at. They are so entrenched in our every day life that to be unable to perform basic task in a timely manner on a computer is so absurd that I don’t have words for it. It’s a basic failure to develop yourself.

If you’re a typical white collar mid-level office worker, chances are that greater than half of your day is spent on a computer. You’re probably regularly using Excel spreadsheets, you’re using Microsoft Word to type up any form of text document, you’re exchanging PDFs with co-workers and clients, and you probably use some sort of email client for regular emails.

Let’s take an absurdly simple task as an example. You have some files in a folder, and you want to move some of those files into a new subfolder, while keeping others where they are. If you’re remotely competent with a computer, you select the ones you want to move, and you cut and paste them into the new folder. Total time taken, maybe ten seconds. And most of that time is taken up with deciding which files are to be moved.

For our “haha I’m bad with computers” hero, they would make a new folder and drag each file one by one. At some point, they will probably put the wrong file into the new folder, at another point they’ll accidentally copy a file instead of move it, or create a shortcut to it and move the shortcut. And they’ll be there until 7pm doing this. ²

As a man in his late twenties, I fully recognize that I have an advantage over many older people in the corporate world, because I grew up with computers that were more or less the same as the ones we have in offices now. Those born before me remember a workplace without computers at all. Those born after me will be growing up with touchscreens instead of keyboards and mice.

My contemporaries and I were born at just the right time to be conversant in pretty much every aspect of current technology, and as such we take for granted what is no doubt a non-trivial thing to learn. My computer skills are no more or less impressive than anyone else of my age or generation, but in comparison to a significant number of people I have worked with, I’m a veritable computer hacker. ³

But if I have to explain the concept of double clicking to another grown-ass man tomorrow, ⁴ I think there will probably be some consequences. If I have to look over and see a fully functioning adult human right clicking to copy and paste, I can’t be responsible for my actions.

¹ – I once met a man who swore up and down he had never seen a movable bollard before. The bollard retracted into the ground to let a car out and he nearly fell over. I had no words.

² – And get a pat on the back for “burning the candle at both ends”. I almost wish I could reassure you that this wasn’t a real anecdote.

³ – Every time I use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy and paste, you would think I had just parted the Red Sea from the looks that I get.

⁴ – For the eighteenth time this week. Not that I’m counting. ⁵

⁵ – I’m totally counting.

Open Here is a Lie

Friends, today my day was completely ruined.

I’m a man who enjoys his simple pleasures. The afternoon sun. Waking up on a day off work. The first coffee.

And, my afternoon packet of Maltesers. ¹

Maltesers, like many bagged chocolate wonders these days, come with an “open here ——>” line marked on the bag. However, today, that line was a lie. I was lied to. And I was lied to by chocolate! That’s the one friend you think will never betray you.

Now I have to go and find scissors! ²

I dislike this. I’m a civilized man, and I open my chocolate using the marked lines, not with bladed weaponry like some kind of savage. This slightly cooled my coffee, which meant that instead of having the perfect chocolate treat with a perfectly warm coffee, I had to settle for a mangled bag and coffee that would barely be suitable for a peasant.

Tomorrow, I shall be giving the Maltesers another chance. Tomorrow, they will not fail me. They will learn obedience, or I will learn to enjoy a more cooperative treat.

The Angry Australian

 

 

 

 

¹ – For the Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltesers

² – No, I don’t keep scissors at my desk. Why would someone not keep scissors at their desk? I’ll tell you why. Because when Bertha from Accounting comes stomping down the hallway for the third time in a day, shouting about who took her scissors, it will never be me, and I will never have to deal with it. And she’ll waddle on.

Escalating Exasperation

Escalator – An escalator is a moving staircase – a conveyor transport device for carrying people between floors of a building.

We all know escalators. They appear in shopping areas all over the world, are common in lobbies of major buildings like hotels, airports, and movie theatres, and are overall pretty damn fantastic devices. They even double as stairs when they break down. They move pedestrian traffic faster than stairs, they are incredibly safe, and they can go in a lot of places where elevators are not practical.

The problem? Most of the world’s idiots don’t know how to use them. You see them everywhere. Two big-boned women standing side by side as it struggles and strains to carry them and their Diet Coke to the top. A group of teenagers who climb on board and use the travel time as an opportunity to bunch up, turn around and chat to each other. Because they desperately need to share latest news on who kissed who at Josh’s house party last weekend, oh my god did you hear what Becky did that slut how can she even show her face oh my god I knowww. ¹

Here’s how you use escalators. You walk up to them. Left right left right. March on up. Then you climb on board, being careful not to let your loose shoelaces catch inside the mechanism and feed you into the machine. ²

Then.

And this is very important.

You keep walking. You do not stop and stand and turn to others and chat. You keep walking. Move those feet. The escalator is moving. If you move too, you are moving much faster. The whole point of an escalator is to provide a quick way to get people up to a higher level without causing chokepoints on stairs and in elevators. The lazy bumpkins who step on to an escalator and just wait to be carried to the top are causing chokepoints that don’t need to be there. If you have some reason for not being able to walk, then you stand to one side, single file in your group, and allow the able-bodied to walk past you.

By far the worst offender for this is IKEA. Every IKEA I’ve ever seen has the same asinine design. You come in from the parking area. There’s a lift, a set of stairs, and an escalator to get to the main level. Then there’s one more single escalator to get from the main foyer to the showroom level. ³

When I go to IKEA, without fail I walk up the stairs (because there’s inexplicably a herd of actual bovines standing on the escalator waiting for it to carry them up to the top), then step on to the second escalator, where I am forced to stand still behind people who seem to have forgotten that escalators are functionally no different than stairs. When I reach the top, it is four hours later, IKEA has closed, and I am forced to camp out for the night in one of the “there’s no way a 7sqm apartment could actually look this good” apartment displays. Then I wake up in the morning, and stand behind more people on the escalator back down to my car.

All of the above applies to travelators in airports. The human conveyor belts, transporting us to the airplanes and overpriced concession shops, cramming us together while we all contract fatal diseases and die.

None of that matters, however, because an empty travelator is some of the most fun you can ever have while travelling for 36 hours. Try power walking on one sometime. It’s the closest you’ll ever come to being The Flash.

The Angry Australian

 

 

 

 

¹ – I actually nearly died writing this sentence. My brain began to liquefy, my fingers began to shrivel and fall off, one by one. I staved off death only by immediately performing the most adult task I could think of. Paid the gas bill instead of buying myself a videogame.

² – I maintain that everyone has had this fear. I still check my shoelaces before I step on an escalator.

³ – Where you then proceed to take an immediate left and go down to the market hall, where you buy fourteen tea towels, five sets of plates, three hundred glasses, spend a total of $3.50, and forget to buy the things you came for entirely. Don’t get me started on IKEA. What a great place. If nobody else is there.

Inauspicious beginnings

We open our discussions here with a problem.

In order to create a presence on the Internet, in order to create a location where I could divest myself of the accumulated frustrations of everyday life, I needed a theme. Well, I didn’t need the theme. WordPress needed the theme, as it very helpfully informed me when I created the page.

“Select a theme.”

God. I haven’t even written a post yet. What do you mean, select a theme?

Who even knows what theme they want anyway? I want text, on a web page. Does that have to be themed, now?

You’re trying my patience. So I start browsing some of the themes. Oh, this one has a picture of a cup of coffee on it. I suppose that’s for people who will be writing their blog posts from a coffee shop, on a Macbook. ¹

I eventually found one that looked to have the least amount of nonsense, and went with that. I’m sure I’ll discover something unnecessary eventually. And then I’ll have to start all over.

I suppose it will do. I write Tuesdays and Thursdays. Why those days? Because those are the days you need something to read at 9:30am, when you’re starting to think about the third morning coffee and you need to tell yourself that you’ll read just one blog post before you get on with the day. Whatever helps you get through the day, chief.

The Angry Australian

 

 

 

¹ At ten thirty in the morning, on a weekday. Because that’s where successful people are on a weekday morning, at a cafe with their Macbook.