When she was trying to explain File Allocation Tables to me as we attempted to fix my disk as a kid.

Thankfully, both of my parents worked in IT from the '80s, so they’re generally pretty good at getting things figured out.

“I tried deleting all the emails”

I don’t know about most painful, but my dad bought a phone many months ago and last week, he wanted to know how to turn on the flashlight on it. I was ready to edit the notification dropdown or give a five step explainer or whatever.

Turns out, nope, you just pull down the notification bar and there’s a pretty obvious flashlight button right there. The problem is, you see, he did not know you could drag down the notification bar. There were dozens of notifications there.

I really cannot blame him either. I don’t know what UX designer came up with just putting a bar at the top and expecting users to know that you can drag on it. But yeah, still, ouch.

A few weeks ago, my parents complained that the laptop kept going to a “screensaver” while they were trying to work on it.

So I changed the screensaver setting from like 3 minutes to 15 minutes… but it kept happening. I knew something was up when they said “well it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to reopen the Internet every time.”

Guys… it was a touchscreen laptop. They were grabbing it by the corner and closing out the window. 😆 And one of these people showed me how to make a website in HTML when I was younger…

Are we all doomed to be daft in our old age?

Any time my parents, on Whatsapp video, want to turn the camera round to show me something.

“C’mon you guys! There it is right in front of you the whole time. You’re dereferencing a null pointer! Open your eyes!”

I had to text my mom a screenshot of the browser menu with the ‘share’ button circled so she could share a link to me of the website she called me to help her use

My dad had a printer that wasn’t working for months. I finally looked at it when I was over there and found that the USB cable was plugged into the ethernet jack.

What’s the start button? Every time I say click: they don’t know if it’s left or right.

Tech Support?

Bruh, my parents forced me to file their taxes for them. 😭

printers man. it’s always some bullshit about how the printer doesn’t work anymore, no wifi, no ink, it’s printing some random HP bullshit Instead of what they want

call me an asshole but I told my parents I would strictly not help them with printer stuff anymore

they would also make me scan like 40+ pages back and forth. I hate scanning as well which is part of the agreement I made with them. they need to scan 49 pages ? ok then go to the library they probably have machine where you can dump a stack and have it scanned

if you’re wondering about the frequency and volume of scanning the reason why is because I come from an ass backwards country that does not do e documents

Mother in law calls me during work, blaring warnings sounds blaring in the background, warning her that she has a virus and NOT to try to reboot or unplug the computer….

MIL: what do I do/why is this happening?

Me: you clicked on something… unplug the computer

MIL: but it says not to

Me: it’s ok, it is trying to get you to call the number so that you will give them money

MIL: I am too afraid

Me: ok, if you want to give them money or your credentials so that they can take all of your money, feel free. Just don’t drive to Walgreens to buy gift cards again… you will miss your soap operas

MIL: Ok, I’ll unplug it

I bought my mother a laptop and she treated the touch pad like something that was to fragile to actually use. So she hardly used the computer because no matter how many times I showed her you could actually press it and move your finger across it and it wouldn’t break and she kept asking me how to move around the desktop using the keys cause “I don’t want to damage it”. I finally got fed up one day and found myself tapping the touch pad really hard repeatedly while saying “See it won’t break!!!” She ended up giving the laptop away cause she was too afraid to break it.

the fact that my grandmother absolutely, hard ass refuses to do anything that would improve her situation. Just bitches and moans and has great big narcissistic pity parties until someone forces it down her fucking throat.

For example, her vision isnt great, she complaints its hard to use the computer cause she cant see to type (Shes one of those chicken peck typers). I tell her to get a large print keyboard with a backlight, it’d be easier for her to see and use.

She says no, it wont help. nothing will help. boo hoo pity me blah blah bullshit.

Long story short, it goes back and forth for a month, with her refusing the idea, refusing when I directly link her to a keyboard to buy (it was cheap, too), etc etc. Just making a big fucking woe is me pity party out of it.

I finally say fuck it, buy the goddamn keyboard myself, take it over to her house, put it on her computer.

within 5 minutes “Why didnt you tell me about this before? Its amazing! I can see it and use the computer again!”

Shes the reason i’ve been balding for 20 years.