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Comment by fuzz4lyfe | Hacker News Reader

At this point anyone who works in a office has had a computer on their desk for two or three decades. If they decided not to learn how to use it I don't have much sympathy. Much of these situations are what is called performative ignorance, where someone pretends to be ignorant in order to get someone else to work for them.

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> anyone who works in a office has had a computer on their desk for two or three decades. If they decided not to learn how to use it [...]

Knowing how to operate equipment and understanding how to troubleshoot it are very different things. It's exactly why IT support, car mechanics, or electricians still exist.

Some people think that knowing how to use a computer makes them experts, then they start spreading that "knowledge", and IT support ends up with all kinds of seemingly stupid calls where someone is (or took the word of) such an expert. Other times people just want to be helpful and play back what they heard from the IT personnel during the last case because that appeared to be similar for them, even if the issue was radically different.

> Knowing how to operate equipment and understanding how to troubleshoot it are very different things.

While that's certainly true, there's plenty of stories out there (and I've experienced a few myself) of people who just refused to use basic common sense, reading comprehension, or understanding of physics 101 when dealing with computers.

Yep, I knew a guy at another job who did this with his wife: when she wanted him to help with laundry, he'd intentionally do it badly enough (probably involving bleach) to ruin clothes, making her so frustrated with him that she always did the laundry.

But why? Laundry has to be the easiest household chore there is. It takes 30 seconds to load the machine then an hour later another 30 to load the drier or a couple of minutes to hang it out.

If you're going to be lazy keep dropping dishes while you wash them or send the lawnmower over a big brick.

I agree about the laundry, so I really have no idea.

Have you been talking to my entire HR Department?

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