memes

When I was younger having to fill out timesheets in Excel for my mum.

Always forgetting their passwords to their accounts and having to reset their passwords for them.

Providing them access on my Netflix account and then when Netflix had the changes where you can't have it in two homes asking me why they can't get on, cancelled my subscription in the end.

Email attachments and when they go over the max attachment limit complaining about having to upload their files to the cloud.

Volunteering my help to others...

The list could go on and on.

I appreciate my parents but when it comes to helping with technology it sometimes drives me up the wall.

Trying to teach my dad to double click.

Click twice really fast kept translating to two slow clicks. Took 2 hours of showing him how to do it.

I'm real proud of my mom actually. She couldn't even navigate the desktop when she started, but she has turned into a real techie. I used to have to do everything for her, but these days if she has a problem she looks up solutions online and is usually able to sort things out herself. She's 79. The only "old person" thing she still does is store files on her desktop and also keep a billion tabs open on her web browser lol.

Trying to get my elderly mother to understand the difference between wifi and mobile data. Maddening.

Dad calls me randomly one evening. He can't find the youtube app on his smart TV. I try to help him navigate it but over the phone communication isn't really working especially since things I assume anyone would know (like the home button on the remote) don't translate well to him. He gets pissed and tells me "why do you even work as a programmer what did you even learn in university?". Apparently I missed my Samsung smart TV UI classes.

Its not the tech issues themselves but my dad always worried about anyone changing any settings on the family computer (even the screensaver) and he had the attitude that he had to do things himself. He's computer illiterate, can barely see to read and a slow 1 finger typist. Even him inputting a postal code into a Sat Nav takes so long, so many repetitions, it's truly painful. So imagine when things stop working. I'm not a tech person either, so I'm trying to figure out a solution while he's talking about some random computing issue he heard about on the radio decades ago and telling me not to change the settings and break the computer lol.

My mother once threatened to evict me (was still living with them) because I asked her to back up her important files for me to carry them over to the new office computer I had set up for her.

She flat out refused to even attempt it or answer any of my investigative questions. This woman had been using windows computers for work for over 20 years at this point, but the thought of opening an explorer window apparently terrified her so much we got into an actual shouting match over it.

When I found out that my dad doesn't know what the backspace key does on the PC keyboard. His whole life he's only ever used the Del key and always positions the cursor to the left of text he wants to delete. He used to work at IBM for over 30 years and learned to program back in the day when computer code was printed on punch cards. But I'm pretty sure keyboards already had the backspace key back then.

Every time my grandma needs help with her phone I always have to go and delete like 10 apps because she just keeps installing random useless ad ridden crap. She has like 6 diferent weather apps. She keeps installing random fucking gps navigation map apps. You open them and boom immediately ads. They just don't learn.

My cousin was way older than I so his kids were my age. He brought his laptop over because it was showing weird porn ads at very odd times. I usually charge a bottle of alcohol and then throw a big party with that alcohol because I was the go to guy for the neightborhood. Anyway, the porn he was watching was really intense and not at all what you think of as "normal" porn. So I told him everything I found and he said his 15 year old grandson borrowed it when ever he came over. I was genuinly scared of that kid from that moment on. Clown porn was the lighter side of what I saw.

They needed me to help them because the Flash drive "wasn't working". They ended up shoving it in backwards and completely destroying the port. I asked why they did it and they said it wouldn't go in.

I can feel my blood pressure rise as I read through this comment section.

Dad: "I don't have my wallpaper anymore on my desktop !"

Me: "Ok, what's in C:\User...\Pictures" ?

Dad: "I don't have C:, I juste have D:"

Me: "WTF ? You don't have a C:\Windows folder ?"

Dad: "No, I just have a D:\ drive. Windows is installed on D"

How th fuck did he managed to not have a C drive ????

My grandfather had directories full of young teens, even his desktop wallpaper. They were definitely over 18 but still... I never said a word, just acted normally.

Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has "popped up" in some app that she's using. I tell her to just close it and she says "how?" I then say something like "just click the OK button ... or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color ... or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner ... or click "Done" or "Close" in the toolbar, on the left or right sides ... or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it ... or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app's bottom bar."

I've actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there's any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.

My nephew wanted to play games on my computer while I was at work. He was arriving later so I wrote down all the steps on paper the way I had showed him before.

Mom calls upset hours later saying they can't get the game running. She gets flustered powering on the computer, refuses to take a picture of the screen while in a fit, and powers off everything without letting me even try. Good god. 😂

The silver lining is that he's a little older now and can do it on his own.

I cannot tell you how many times I've had to help family members and friends "fix the sound" on their computers because they somehow changed their default audio output device without knowing it. I really wish people would just check their audio settings when they have a problem with it, instead of calling me to help every time.

Clearing about 5 rows of taskbars from my mom's internet Explorer years and years ago. Finding out she was paying for McAfee recently.