Thursday, March 03, 2005

Miss Information has a frustrating conversation. Repeatedly.

Miss Information sometimes thinks back fondly to the days before Internet access. Well, sure things were inconvenient. Research was harder, you couldn’t look at celebrity mug shots on The Smoking Gun, you actually had to own cookbooks and radios, it was harder to meet people who share the same fetishes, you couldn’t go online and vent about your annoying job…yep, life sort of sucked. On the other hand, she is tired of people who believe that having opposable thumbs means they can (or should) use a computer.

She has the following conversation several times a day:

Customer: Internet? (Oh, yeah, another bad thing about the Internet is that people no longer speak in complete sentences.)
Miss Information: Ok, do you need to use e-mail?
Customer: Yeah, need Internet.
Miss Information: All right, but some computers are filtered and won’t let you use e-mail. Do you need e-mail, today?
Customer: Wanna look at website.
Miss Information: (quickly becoming suicidal) Ummmmm…an e-mail website?
Customer: Internet.

…and the fun begins again.

Is it too much to ask that people just answer the damn question?

3 Comments:

At 3:03 PM, Blogger Nike said...

It would be less frustrating if they just grunt and point.
At least you would know how to dumb it down for them!

 
At 5:01 PM, Blogger tinylittlelibrarian said...

I hear ya! :) My particular favourite is when they come up and exclaim "I'm computer illiterate!" and then demand that you do a bunch of stuff on the computer for them. It's not something to be proud of in this day and age.

And oh, the the elderly/non-English speaking/just not smart people who need to sign up for a Hotmail account.... I feel faint at even the thought.

 
At 1:48 PM, Blogger Miss Information said...

Sometimes Miss Information wants to take people gently by the hand and explain to them that "the Internet just isn't meant for everyone".

 

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