Sticky Notes
My third job after leaving school was as a Tea Broker. If truth be told, I wasn't really one; I'd bluffed my way into it, having been employed as a trainee tea broker in my previous employment. My job entailed selling half-chests of tea.
Back in the good old days, every week, all the brokers would gather at Sir John Lyon House and bid on all the latest tea from around the globe. You bidded pennies on chests listed in the catalogue, so, for example, a starting bid of 17p per chest on thirty-seven chests. Now, when you won the thirty-seven chests, it might turn out that one of them was only half of three-quarters full. This is where I came in. My job was to record all these chests in a leather-bound ledger straight out of the Charles Dickens era and then try to sell them.
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The problem was that they all had to be recorded under the plantations and not what they were. My job would have been so much simpler if I could have listed all the Pekoe Fannings or Assam together, but because I didn't know the plantations, I stuck post-it notes on the relevant pages. This, of course, was before computers were widespread. One morning not long into my three-month probation my then boss with the glorious name Richard Picton-Warllow called me into his office:
"What's all these post-it notes, young man?"
The game was up; I'd been caught red-handed. While I wasn't sacked on the spot, it seemed obvious that my days were numbered, so I handed in my notice. Even at 18 years of age, I seemed to have a good nose for when to cut and run.
You just need to put some water in.
My aunt owned a mini in the 1970s. It was yellow with two black stripes running from boot to bonnet and, if I remember right, a couple of fog lights. Her grandfather, her father, spent the weekend rebuilding the engine.
Off my aunt drove, only to find the car starting to overheat. She rang her dad from work, and he told her to call into the garage on the way home and put some water in. Oh, she put water in alright. She filled up the engine via the oil filler cap on the rocker cover! Water and pistons do not make good bedfellows.
Can you help me?
Over the years, I've posted lots of examples of people's computer illiteracy. I cannot understand how some people manage to keep their jobs when it's evident their skill levels amount to being able to switch the damn thing on! I find it annoying that back in the day before computers were commonplace in the workplace, one of the first questions they asked you at an interview for an office job was: "How many words per minute can you type?"
Even I have done some speed tests over the years, it's amazing how fast you can type with two fingers. 😉
These days I'm convinced the interviews go something like this:
Interviewer: "Can you use a computer?"
Candidate: "Oh, yes. We have one at home."
Interviewer: "Excellent; when can you start?"
I've seen it all. From people who think the internet is down because Chrome won't open. People who put seven million shortcut icons on their desktop because they don't know how to navigate or open documents in Word or pdf. To those who don't have a clue how to use an email client other than reading and replying to emails.
The point I was trying to make in the first two examples was that we all try to blag our way into things "Of course, I can drive a car! I have no idea what goes on under the front thing but I can drive one." 🤦♂️
Please, if not for yourself for your IT supports sanity, try to learn a bit about the the tool that pays your wages. 🙏
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Podcaster. FOSS, Linux & Creative Commons Advocate.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
What is the suitable penalty for people who use the desktop as their main document storage folder?
A flogging. 😉
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You can bluff a lot with computers now you can just look things up. A lot of my early jobs had no internet access. We would use actual books to work out how to do things. These days it's all so diverse and I just know a tiny bit of what goes on. The youngsters will just these newfangled AI doofers.
I can see the quality of IT Admins deteriorating to not even minimal. Things were bad enough with the "Google is your friend" SysAdmins, but now, with AI, any fool can be a competent support guru. I prophesise that IT support can be given over to AI and humans made redundant.
Our IT Support ticketing system here at work, for example, already has "Canned Responses", and they introduced AI into the program last month, which learns repetitive issues and resolutions. I see no difficulty in someone emailing our system. The AI responds by sending them a link for Remote Desktop. The AI logs into their computer and talks to their computer's AI (They'll all have that by default soon, too!), and they resolve the issue between themselves and probably quicker than a human and most definitely more cheaply.
There's clearly an opportunity coming for one or two big Automated IT Support companies. Maybe Microsoft would offer it? Imagine your PC being £50 more expensive but with one or two years of support. Most businesses wouldn't even give it a second thought.
I'm sure there are savings to be made for routine stuff that humans find tedious, but the bots need to escalate the rest to humans who know their stuff. We're going to be engaging with more bots in future, so get used to it.
😆 You're really funny! The last part made me remember the TV Show "The IT Crowd"
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