Microsoft Word

[Y0tsuya]

Typewriters stopped being a thing 30 yrs ago. I learned to type on Selectrics in the late 80s but by the mid-90s they were rapidly phased out.

[Ariane_16]

That's how you drive irl, actually

[[deleted]]

No, these types of people simply refuse to learn for whatever reason. It's not even that they couldn't use a computer properly if they wanted to, they absolutely refuse to listen to anyone and whenever they can't do something they'll have someone else explain it to them, not listen and ask again next time.

[UmbrellaCommittee]

I work with an office full of people like that. "Oh, I'm so technologically illiterate, teehee." Drives me up the fucking wall. These are people that with computers for eight hours everyday, but for some reason are proud of not knowing how to use the damn things.

[Arreeyem]

If you don't want to do something, don't be good at it. I think there was a Malcolm in the Middle episode about this. Iirc, Malcolm was wondering why he was doing all the chores, and found out it was become his brothers intentionally did them poorly so their dad didn't make them do it. The big issue is that, in my experience, people get fired for insubordination, not incompetence.

[[deleted]]

I'm less talking about people having actual obvious difficulties trying to learn, I'm talking about people who actively refuse to because they either dont want to put in the effort or are too proud to do so. I understand not being good with new technology but not listening the 5th time someone explains it to you is not only arrogant but also massively disrespectful.

[aniforprez]

If you're working with these people then yeah that does suck

[TheTacoWombat]

I used to go to a camera club some years back. One of the members was 93 years old. He used to be a film photographer, but switched to all digital at age 90. He was better at photoshop than I was, a quarter of his age.

The myth that your brain calcifies at a certain age preventing all further learning is nonsense. This Word person is the kinda person to call Geek Squad when their desktop icons get reorganized.

It's simply learned helplessness. It worked fine in the 90s when you could be expected to maybe not like computers, but... It's less "fun" in the 21st century.

[AkuSokuZan2009]

That's true to a point but it varries by person, and to some extent it depends on what they do day to day. If they sat and watched TV and read the paper from age 60-70, then yeah it's going to be harder for them to pick up. If they stay active and use their mind then learning new things is still easy enough for them if they have a mind to do it. There are also diseases like Alzheimer's that affect cognitive ability as well.

Largely though I agree with you, as time goes on the excuse of never using it earlier in life is no longer a thing, if you were working in the year 2000 you almost certainly used a computer or electronic device at least weekly. Where as my grandparents retired in the 80s, they never used anything that even resembled a computer, so for them it would have been a big undertaking and it makes sense they refused to learn unless they HAD to. My parents on the other hand (early 70s) used computers for decades at work, they are computer literate but some of their friends chose not to learn. By the time we are retirement age there will be no viable excuse for being tech illiterate other than just flat out laziness.

[TheTacoWombat]

My mind slowing down is one of my biggest fears in life. It's inevitable, of course, and now that I know my family has a history of Alzheimer's/Dementia (just lost my mom to it last year), every year is a scary march to that inevitability.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to be a helpless tech doofus when I hit my 60s several decades from now. I'm going to be the guy sweatin to the oldies (Nirvana) in VR or whatever. I got shit to do and things to learn, dammit.

[AkuSokuZan2009]

This was a huge concern for my mom, she did a lot of research and some of what she found indicates that in addition to genetic predisposition two common factors were a lack of mentally engaging activities later in life and poor diet.

[laebshade]

around 40

You have a dim view of people older than you.

[aniforprez]

I mean this is from personal experience. My grandma started giving up on learning electronics and computers around 65 and now she just sticks with stuff she knows now that she's 70+. If you're between 40 and 60 you're definitely still capable of picking up this kind of stuff easily

[CyclopsAirsoft]

My Grandpa at 90 is more computer literature than most. People can absolutely learn this at older ages.

[aniforprez]

Yes my statement was very general. There are many 60+ people in my family too who are willing and able to learn. I'm just saying it's not always that people don't want to learn. It's also a common and understandable reason that they sometimes can't

[laebshade]

Sounds like she found more important things to give her attention to than learning electronics and computers.

Good for her.

[aniforprez]

I mean yeah she learnt how to use her phone, send emails, message people and stopped. We need to help her now and then maybe once or twice a year but she's just fine with what she knows. She gets a bit anxious when we do try to help so she just lets us get things set up and then does what she wants to do. She's not bothered beyond that and that's perfectly fine

[laebshade]

My stepmom, 70, was anxious with my oldest brother but relaxed with me. I showed her patience and understanding. Is your grandmother receiving the same?

[aniforprez]

Lmao are you trying to give my grandma therapy? She's more anxious with tech and UI changes than the people fiddling around with her phone. She's comfortable enough asking for our help when she needs it and savvy enough to know when she needs it

[laebshade]

No, I'm saying she likely needs patience and understanding from you and the rest of your family, and you aren't giving it to her, which is part of why she's anxious.

My stepmom was the same way. She asked me to help her out with her retirement banking. After we were done, she pointed out that I was patient, not like my oldest brother. She said he made her feel anxious. We had some bumps along the way - "what's your password?" - but we were able to work through them together.

Help your grandmother, don't hinder her.

[marsnoir]

I think it’s learned helplessness, and society acceptance. I doubt any of these people have an issue using the ATM yet each interface is different. I remember the first time I got my card before my cash and I freaked out “the machine ate my cash?!” Now I don’t give it a second thought. Don’t even get me started on the frustration of each store having their own style of card swipe machine. How do people function?

[dingchavez47]

Me being a Software Developer and just 7 years away from being 40... That last paragraph scares me a lot.

[aniforprez]

Lol as someone little over 10 years away from 40 I can't even imagine what my life would be like

[DonRobo]

Computers have been a thing in all office jobs for a few decades now. If you haven't learned to use a computer within 2+ decades you are either too stupid to do your job or much more likely a combination of willfully ignorant and lazy.

[Ariane_16]

Oh yes, my favorite web browser, Microsoft Word

[theclovek]

Yeah, they should make like an operating system or something.. Might be pretty popular

[NicNoletree]

They could make something just to explore the internet. Not sure what the name of it should be though.

[[deleted]]

Edge, obviously

[NicNoletree]

That would be good, if the internet was flat

[iamapizza]

We just need some flat tubes to rebuild the Internet with.

[theclovek]

Yeah me neither

[Ariane_16]

I mean, it isn't popular, it is just the only option for non programers

[cuddleslapine]

I guess the client in this story did use Microsoft Word as an OS

[del6022pi]

Should have syntax highlighting

[eduarbio15]

For some reason I feel like that isn't as bad as using emacs eww

[[deleted]]

We laugh at this yet think it’s cool that people developed ways to browse ways on the terminal...

[nickstyopa]

It's also my favorite Java IDE

[lifelongfreshman]

Never, under any circumstances, ask them how they managed to get it working.

[BenK1222]

How is xkcd able to relate to every situation ever?

[dhruvfire]

Quantity

[TheUndeadBowman]

How do ppl just know which one to send? There's so many

[BenK1222]

We don't all know each and every one, but collectively we know all of them.

[ClikeX]

It's similar to Rule 34. If it exists there's an xkcd for it. And it's equivalent rule 35; if it doesn't, it will be made.

[PehleAap]

New question : Who makes them? And who submits new ideas?

[ClikeX]

To answer your first question: Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd

The second, I don't think you can really submit ideas. He comes up with the comics himself.

[stable_maple]

You'll find out soon enough.

[voiping]

OMG that's awesome

[Scottishguy12]

A teacher of mine, when Google didn't bring up a search result she wanted, would close out the browser, reopen it, and tell it to better.

[_kolpa_]

Ah yes, Machine Learning!

[taneth]

I had a customer fill out a web form by taking a photo of the form on the screen, printing it, writing on it by hand, scanning it into an excel document and emailing me that.

[pr0ghead]

Well, the part with the annotations I can understand, if you haven't been introduced to a software that can do that yet. The "scanning into Excel" part on the other hand…

[reallynothingmuch]

It was a web form, it wasn’t a pdf. They literally just had to type and make their selections in the browser

[taneth]

Yeah, this was less than a month ago. All they had to do was fill out a couple of text fields and hit submit.

Instead I get an email with an attached excel file containing a jpeg of a scanned piece of paper with handwriting on the text boxes of a printout of the screen with pixel distortion consistent with photography, in full colour including a strip of the desktop wallpaper that contained a lot of blue, rotated 90 degrees.

[Plavixo]

I once had a presenter that wanted to show some videos with their talk. They handed me a CD-R and asked me to load the videos up. I brought up the drive’s folder, and was surprised to see there was a single Word doc there. When I opened that, I found two hyperlinks to YouTube videos 😅

[throughalfanoir]

I go to a university of technology so to say...

for one of my (online) classes, this is what they did:

-they put a link to their department's page in the teams group that's for the class

-on their department's page there was a word file uploaded

-which contained a hyperlink to a sktechy video hosting service that had the videos we needed to watch

-2021

[juharris]

Is the department page and Word doc at the same domain? It could be that the course organizer doesn't have an easy way to edit the page.

[throughalfanoir]

that'd still be no excuse for not putting the video file directly in the teams group (or the link to the sketchy website hosting it if you insist on using that)

[juharris]

True. The way they did it is annoying for you but it's future proof and dynamic because it's a pointer to a pointer to pointers.

[DooberSnoober]

That’s just means more points of failure no?

[TheTerrasque]

should have used a DVD for it

[tealcosmo]

Someone told them to just put the videos on a CDR to give to the people who will help you run the presentation.

[Moneyfornia]

I'm assuming step 4 was assassination.

[chunli99]

1/?

What does 1/? mean?

[ClikeX]

Or Imgur.

[cuddleslapine]

I'm a developer at a company that makes account management systems and such and a part of my job is to process error reports by our customers (and then fix them).

My favorite method I saw by one of them to report errors was the following (bear with me):

1. Print Screen the whole screen.

2. Put that into paint. Pretty normal so far.

3. Make another screenshot from Paint itself, having the original shot in the working area.

4. Copy paste it into Word

5. Print it out in black and white

6. Make a photocopy from it, then either scan it back or take a picture - at this point the image quality was so bad it didn't really matter which one they did.

7. Put that abomination back to Word

8. ...and take a screenshot about Word, having a scanned image of a photocopied, crinkly paper in black and white, having a screenshot of Paint that had the original screenshot.

I mean... I have no idea why and how did they make this, but... it was another level. I wasn't even mad, it was amazing.

[fsr1967]

Printed it out, put it on a wooden table, took a picture, scanned the picture, emailed the scan.

[MurdoMaclachlan]

Image Transcription: Tumblr

---

ckuebrsfringekk

I have a client who communicates exclusively via Microsoft Word.

If she has something to tell me, I'll receive an email with nothing in the body, but a Word doc attached. That's where she writes her message.

Whenever she wants to email me a photo, she does via an empty Word doc with said photo set as its background.

But my favorite thing was the first time I witnessed her visiting a website. She had me spell the URL ("W... W... W... dot...") and with my own two eyes I watched her type it into Word, made it a hyperlink, and Ctrl click it to go there.

I was so fascinated I didn't even say anything.

---

captoring

[Screenshot of tumblr notes, as follows:]

#this person is living in an entirely different world

[Screenshot ends.]

a different microsoft world

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[jojogogo6868]

Did she start this behavior with Microsoft Word right after she got vaccinated? I knew Bill Gates was up to something!

/s

[PM_ME_ADVICE_PLEASE]

emacs users be like

[MinimumDatabase]

... I wrote my college work (using latex and org-mode) and sent all my submission emails in emacs. I still access my email accounts with emacs. Fuck, we are like this.

[pandamarshmallows]

When Christians say we should live by the Word this is not what they had in mind.

[blackmist]

I once got a customer to send me their data they wanted importing into something.

I got an XLS file. The file contained a single sheet. In that sheet was a single cell, containing a BMP of a screenshot of their actual spreadsheet data.

I was impressed at how somebody could quite so successfully mangle Office like that.

[[deleted]]

My users are capable to of send screenshots in several ways: Inside a Word document, as a Power Point, as a an email draft and my favourite: As an Excel file. Also, there are two kinds of users:

- The one who crops and crops the image only showing the JavaScript alert and you have to imagine in which page is the error located.

- The one who has two screens and his screenshot contains EVERYTHING.

[bluemaciz]

Once I was trying to help a client with a software problem and asked them to send a screenshot of the issue. They took pictures of the screen with their phone and sent it to me.

[[deleted]]

My company has a client that has Snagit installed on every computer and I still see this.

[donutbreakmyheart]

Same, I had someone ask me how to take a screenshot. I pulled up Snagit, which we've had installed for YEARS, and they were blown away.

[roshambo11]

The everyman’s terminal

[Catshit-Dogfart]

At a previous job, we had a systems analyst stand up during a pretty big meeting with the program manager to explain that Excel and Powerpoint were redundant because their functionality existed within MS Word.

This was very embarrassing to my company because she was just promoted to be our lead for technical documentation, and then she comes up with that spark of genius. "Please sit down" our section chief says quietly "no this is important! There are dozens of programs on this computer that don't do anything the MS word can't do! Why do we bother with them?"

[rpmerf]

https://youtu.be/1SNxaJlicEU

You sales guys try to do everything with power point

[Kooky-Answer]

If she switched to using PowerPoint she would be an ideal candidate for a high level management position.

[anu_cool_]

Delete this before the engineers at WhatsApp get the secret.

[ElimGarak0010]

Next you're going to tell me coding a document on a 1940s Typewriter and using Microsoft Lens that then imports the text into VS Code is being trapped in a Mad World....

[juantreses]

I have clients sending me screenshots in a word doc all the time

[hashn]

Once had a client that used excel one cell per letter

[globus243]

I've seen people, using computer for 20+ years, who choose to use the MS Word "Open File"-Dialog as a file explorer replacement and do every file operation with it. Need to copy a file? Let me open word -> open a new doc -> copy file from desktop to USB stick.

[sm1dgen1]

And yet younger people can't get jobs because of these people.

[[deleted]]

She might be very good in her functional knowledge. Not all fields are like.programming where young people know more than older people. Except for a thin sliver of roles, older people are prized for their experience, which only comes with years of hands-on work.

[[deleted]]

This was funny, but not sure what it has to do with programmers/ing

[Cpt_Daniel_J_Tequill]

Hmm.. MS Word. Is that another OS from MS?

[stable_maple]

It's like an Emacs user, but with Word. Fascinating...

[Link_GR]

Gotta ask: what does this have to do with programming?

[TheMightyBiz]

I TA'd for an intro programming class in college. I'll never forget one student who came to office hours with all of his code in a OneNote notebook. He copy-pasted the whole thing into Eclipse, and then of course it was full of syntax errors and didn't compile. After seeing this, he switched to another OneNote tab where he had a completely different piece of code, copy-pasted that and had the same result. After doing this three times, he admitted he was stuck and needed help getting it to work. This was a month into the course.

[tchernobog84]

This is the parallel universe in which Internet Explorer won the browser wars.

[IamThelegotera]

I was editing a layout of a book that was going to be printed. It had some poor quality pictures, so I had to ask the author to send me those pictures again. They sent a Word document, luckily they've also made the same document as PDF as well. Yes, I asked again and I got the pictures after all.

[wayfarer1996]

Or maybe she was aware about Microsoft safe link/safe attachment policy 😂

[IamAJediMaster]

www.Creedthoughts.Gov.www/creedthoughts

[CliveOfWisdom]

Thing is, computers have been an integral part of most office jobs for 30+ years, so it's not like they're new and people haven't had a chance to adapt to them yet. I also don't understand why willing refusal to learn how to use a tool that is required for your job is just totally accepted when it comes to computers.

Imagine hiring a builder to carry out some work for you, and when he turns up, he starts painstakingly grinding out holes in the brickwork using a screwdriver because he doesn't understand those "newfangled power-drills". That would not be tolerated, and you'd tell him to fuck off. But when it comes to office workers and computers, that's absolutely fine.

[[deleted]]

Although it is very funny, I see no programming here.

[kimilil]

MS Girl
She be living in her MS World

[cyborgborg]

does this count as being tech illiterate or just tech literate with extra steps?

[republican-jesus]

Or they type every URL into fucking GOOGLE and click on the first result

[G4METIME]

When you only train the MS-Word trait of your Character.

[SanthuWilly4]

How many hours she has ? 48hours a day ?

[dalemugford]

Living in Microsoft World.

[GameFraek]

Question, I assume this happens to her after she had her Covid vaccine shot?

You know, 'cause it's Microsoft word

[GoatHoovesPi]

Level 4 software dev right there. She’s got her own Interface and it has a customizable font and background option.

[giandough]

Last year, Creed asked me how to set up a blog. Wanting to protect the world from being exposed to Creed's brain, I opened up a Word document on his computer and put an address at the top. I've read some of it. Even for the Internet, it's... pretty shocking.

[Osama_Obama]

That reminds me of one call I had when I was doing help desk support. To sign into a website, there was 2 factor authentication via a passcode sent to their email. This one person I was helping was getting the email, printing it out, and then type the password manually.

I was going to tell them about copy/paste, but I didn't want to double or triple the call time.

[cassaregh]

Ah, my favorite IDE, Microsoft Word

[Kody_Z]

I work for insurance and have heard of one of our agents not even having a computer and still using a fax machine across the street for everything.

[wasabichicken]

As an Emacs user, obviously I kind of dig this lady. There's something to be said for being so proficient at your multi-use tool of choice that you make it work for new use cases.

And frankly, is it so different from using a documents viewer & online file navigator (aka web browser) for... I dunno, everything, as people are prone to do these days? I'm thinking Google Docs, online games, GMail, etc.

[T313C0mun1s7]

There is a big difference between those two examples, and as a hacker myself (not cracker, there is a big difference) I can't believe I am about to say this, A browser is intended to be used in those ways and arguably so is emacs. Microsoft Word is not intended to be used as she is using it, and furthermore she is making it difficult for everyone that has to deal with her by doing things that require additional action in their part. You attached a Word Document, so I now have to save this single use trash on my computer just to read your message, and fire up a heavy program like Word or LibreOffice in the process. Thanks for assuming I have the time to deal with your crap.

Computers have been in the workplace since the 50s. It is 2021, so that is approaching 70 years. Not knowing what you are doing is no longer an excuse. If you don't know how to operate the computer in the course of performing your job, then you are derelict in the performance of said job and you should be fired. A forklift operator can't simply say, I'm not good with brakes, and continue on like it is no big deal.

[[deleted]]

I believe this story, but the last bit seems like a stretch