People Break Down The Most Tech Illiterate Thing They've Ever Seen Anyone Do
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Technology can be equal parts the most amazing and the most frustrating parts of our day. At work, what's supposed to be a helpful shortcut can easily become a nightmare from which it feels like you'll never awaken. "What do you mean the copy machine is down again? What was wrong with my old laptop? Work is giving us all new phones?" If any of this sounds familiar, it might be coming from someone who doesn't understand technology as well as they think.


Reddit user, u/Lo-Fi_Kuzco, wanted to hear the funny story when they asked:

What's the most tech illiterate thing you've seen a person do?

Madness And Chaos And Anarchy

Giphy

This girl I know took off the W key on her keyboard and switched it with her A key and was super confused when the key binds weren't switched.

132752

Why would you even want to swap the places of the A and W keys?

Brandonlego

That's...No. We've Moved Past That.

My partner works in IT. He asked once to have an excel spreadsheet sent to him so he could just copy and paste serial codes - the person took a photo of the spreadsheet on their screen, attached it to an email and then sent it.

Elvisiscoming

You'll Get Your Directions In A Few Days

My mom one time went on Mapquest, looked up directions for something for me, printed it out, and snail-mailed the print-out to me.

sjlwood

Oh My Gosh! What An Intense...Face?

My aunt visited Niagara Falls last summer and witnessed a terrifying event.

A man drove his jet ski too close to the falls, was swept by the current, and his vehicle overturned - dumping him into the water.

Thankfully, he was able to grab a branch sticking out of the water and held on for dear life while the rescue team pulled him to safety. His jet ski wasn't so lucky and was sent careening over the falls.

My aunt pulled out her cellphone to capture this on camera - the initial disaster, the rescue, and the fate of the jet ski - amounting in about 45 minutes of footage.

When she went to show us what she had filmed we were treated to 45 minutes of her face, and just her face, reacting to the entire event.

She had switched to the forward facing camera and didn't realize it.

WeakCounty6

Running Before You Can Sit Up

Had a class in grad school (not required for any degree) with a course description that said we'd be learning some basics of R and other technical things that would be related to the topic. Two people were in the class who couldn't download a file from a website. They consistently derailed every class asking for tech support- even when the professor told them to take notes and see him after class or during office hours so they could figure it out (he had very generous office hours since he was an adjunct and worked full time on campus).

Why would you sign up for an optional technical class like that if you can't do basic computer tasks???

MairiElpis

Technology Is Amazing, But It's Not Magic

I work in web dev, which includes some occasional photo manipulation.

One client brought in an old photo of her great-grandfather, with his back to the camera. She wanted me to turn him around in photoshop so she could see his face.

Another client got absolutely livid with me that I couldn't take the hyperlinked words from her webpage, port them over to her print ad, and still have them function like a link.

Hysterical_Realist

An Odd Little Duck In A Pond Of Swans

I'm in a high school engineering course, and we were doing 3D modeling on laptops. This one girl who was clearly just there to fulfill graduation requirements used the trackpad every day for over a week, and if you've ever tried 3D modeling with a trackpad, then you know it just doesn't work.

Eventually, I asked her why and she responded "my mouse doesn't fit" and proceeded to prove to me that her mouse (USB) in fact does not fit into the SD card slot. It still amazes me that a 16 year old kid who has grown up in the 21st century does not know how to plug in a computer mouse.

DoctorDonut0

Right Idea, Wrong Outlet

My dad who is 95 and completely computer illiterate, knows that you can look up anything on a computer but doesn't know the right words. He was talking about an old boxer the other day, I think it was Jack Dempsey. He stated some stats of his career and when I expressed surprise he said, "Go look it up on your Ebay. They'll tell you I'm right!"

neverdoneneverready

Every Picture Gets Its Own Little Cradle

My mom makes a new folder every time she uploads a new picture. She has like 600 folder with one or two pictures each. She doesn't see the problem

lettucec-nt

Wow...

Wants to edit a Word document. So does the following.

Print the document. Open new Word document, and write the corrections into a new sheet, and print that. Take scissors, and cut the section out, and paste onto the original printed document. Scan the result to email, and delete both the original and the corrections document, and save the new PDF in the location instead. Print out this PDF, and file it as the new copy, and shred the old one, without changing the document revision number.

was completely unable to use cut, paste or edit any document at all, and this in a field where documentation is all compassing, and where every step has both documentation per step, and a trail that must include earlier drafts and revisions forever.

SeanBZA

Students Becomes Teacher

my English teacher once told us "I have to get a new phone because my phone has run out of storage yet again" and we were all like girl...just back up your phone

inram19

When You're Physical Assets...Betray You.

I used to work for a software company that had a Point-of-sale program which was used by a local gas station/convenience store. They were having an issue where credit cards would always fail for one particular cashier. We spent a long time pouring through her profile and the code to find the issue until one day the manager swiped a card using her profile and it worked fine but still failed when she tried it.

I went on site to see what was going on and figured it out almost immediately.

The cashier was both very short and very well endowed in the chest area (imagine Dolly Parton but a few inches shorter) so she had to stand on a small box and lean forward to swipe the card. When she would lean forward her breasts would mash keys on the keyboard adding extra characters to the card number, causing them to fail.

I tried to think of how to professionally handle this while doing my best to not bust out laughing. I decided to just move the keyboard away and have her run the card again. It worked fine.

She immediately realized what the problem was and just said "Oh my God, it was my boobs?" At which point I could no longer contain the laughter and could only nod. We all had a good laugh over it, as did my bosses when I got back and told them.

EyeofAnger

Here's My Address And Social Security Number, Too!

old lady asking someone to withdraw money at the atm (and giving strangers the pin for her card) because she didn't know how to do it.

She does this regularly.

IHitMyRockBottom

There's a ridiculous amount of people who will just yell their pin to me in the drive through to withdraw money because they don't want to fill out a withdraw slip or use the ATM. Same goes for their SS number.

Just a PSA: bank tellers don't want to know your PIN or have you yell your personal info to them. Just fill out your slips and stop b-tching about giving them your driver's license.

RecentlyThick

When The Wheels Are Better Than The Car

Wasting an entire tech budget on peripherals, with no computers to attach them to.

FrostySection67

A school I worked at spent more on nice monitor mounting brackets than they did on the computers. I thought that was stupid at the time, but they've survived several generations of computers and are still very useful since it's at an elementary school and there's a huge difference in position needed for first graders versus fifth graders.

Creepy-Value

I Don't Trust Technology To Send The Pictures I Took With Technology...

There are a few people here at work who will take a picture at the job site, print the picture, scan the picture to their email from the copier, and then forward the email to the recipient.

IIlIIlllIlIIlllIlIIl

My mom is kinda like this. She will copy a URL from her laptop to a piece of paper and bring it to me in the next room.

Tesla-Ranger

That's Not How That Works At All

My professor wants to take a photo with an iPad instead of a phone so that it would look larger when uploaded.

HappyTrees_

This Is The New, "Did You Unplug It And Plug It Back In?"

Giphy

My Nana once asked my Grandad to turn her laptop on for when she got home. He ended up ringing her because he couldn't find the button to turn it on. So she was getting annoyed saying it's right there in the top right corner! After a minute or two of utter confusion she stopped, laughed, and asked if he'd opened the lid of the laptop.

He asked, what lid?

CapableGrapefruit2