I’ve heard stories of people printing out and filing emails but never thought I’d actually see it. This new cow-orker is in her mid-50s, and she is a supervisor (not my supervisor though). She just started, and I have had to show her how to do things like:
[ul]
[li]Open a web browser and open her email.[/li][li]Change the subject of an email.[/li][li]How to save a document.[/li][li]How to copy and paste from a Word document into an email.[/li][li]How to attach a document to an email.[/li][/ul]
She was also trying to send a document to our boss with a few paragraphs of comments regarding the document. Instead of attaching the document to an email and writing the comments in the body of the email, and she typed out a letter in Word, printed it, and wanted to scan it with the document, and email the scan. I showed her how to put the text of the message directly into an email. (That’s when I had to show her how to copy/paste.)
Lastly, yesterday she asked me for a bunch of file folders, and I heard the printer going for a long time. I wondered what she was doing… I just discovered she is PRINTING OUT EMAILS and filing them. WTF??
In addition to this new cow-orker, I have been amazed at my other cow-orkers’ lack of technical skills, and they’re in their 30s. They’re unable to do simple things like correctly format a Word document. Things like they start typing and don’t realize that their text is formatted as a heading, and the whole body of their document is in huge, bold font. Then they print it out and give it to me, with no realization that anything is out-of-whack.
Any other dinosaur cow-orker stories you’d like to share?
Given that PC technology is relatively new, I’m not suprised. My mother still has a hard time switching from tv to DVD player . My sister in her late 30’s isn’t that computer savy either, it’s not that she’s dumb. She just really hasn’t had the need, nor the desire to get into it. She recently had a problem with her laptop it was frozen due to malware and couldn’t reboot. She didn’t know what to do and called me. I had to explain to her how to remove the battery/hook it back up, boot in safe mode and run an antimalware software that I had installed on her machine a long time ago, that she never ran or updated.
I wouldn’t call PC technology ‘relatively new’ as far as a human lifespan is concerned. Computers have been in relatively common use since the time I was born - I was using them since I was 2 years old (yes, literally - my mother has pictures of me, as a baby in diapers, using a PC XT) and for someone who is actually employed in a field where their use is common to not have learned to use them after 30 years of computers being around I would definitely call ‘dinosaur’ like. It’s willful ignorance - people going out of their way to NOT use them and do things the way they used to, claiming it’s ‘easier’ or ‘simpler’ for them.
Ironically, my father, who worked at IBM for 30 years, is like this now. He pretty much shut down learning after Windows came out, and now is very incompetent at computers. He still has great difficulty comprehending folders and a file system, and very often has trouble finding things he saves. My mother tends to insist on printing all sorts of ridiculously useless documents and keeps them around to the point where she has great piles of papers in folders.
I had an old boss who used to have me print out all of his emails. He would hand write his response on the bottom, and then I would have to transcribe that into his email.
This was 17 years ago. I still thought he was an idiot, but to think that someeone does this type of thing now? The mind boggles.
I print and file e-mails all the time. What’s wrong with having a paper backup? Sometimes it’s easier to locate a piece of paper in a file than to find an e-mail. I suppose it depends on what you’re comfortable with.
That said, I’m wondering how the OP’s co-worker got the job. What she describes as the co-worker not knowing are basic skills.
I have to print out a lot of e-mails since I work in research and the sponsoring companies want hard copies of pretty much everything, but other than that, I would only print them for very specific reasons.
And I agree - if you have been working in an office job in any notably-sized company, you have almost certainly been using a computer for the last decade at minimum. Even that’s underestimating.
Note that the coworker is a supervisor.
I had a supervisor who also printed out emails; it was a time saver – he could read them while in meetings or traveling between sites.
(Of course, he wouldn’t have so many emails if he hadn’t insisted that every one of his staff cc him on every single email they sent.)
A place I used to work made the non-painless transition from dictaphones/typist to desktop computers while I was working there.
It was interesting - the owner-directors (husband and wife, nearing retirement age) really struggled with the transition and tried to implement policies where we would dictate emails, the typist would type them up into a word document, email it to us internally, we would copy and paste it into a new message and send it. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to realise that just wasn’t practical.
Now (a dozen years later, in a different workplace), we’ve just resolved the debate over the policy for organising email history in Outlook (the two sides of the debate comprising: a)you must create a nested folder hierarchy and drag/drop emails into their rightful place and b)just move anything you need to keep into a single ‘old mails’ folder). It was resolved by not imposing any policy - rather unusually, management acknowledged that different approaches work best for different people, and forcing the wrong approach on a person leads to stress and unproductive administration.
Wow, if only someone would invent some sort of portable electronic device that could connect to a mail server on the move and store emails, then display them on some sort of screen or something. What would be really neat is if it had a keyboard too, so you could actually write replies to the emails while you were away from your desk.
I’ll bet some techno whizzkid is already onto it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the results in our lifetimes.
My husband is never without his smartphone, but he also keeps binders of all documents related to each specific project (he’s an engineer.) So if he’s working on a shock mount to be installed in a UAV, he’ll have his design drawings, any vendor brochures or data, all related emails, notes from design reviews and meetings, and who knows what else all printed out and arranged in a 3-ring binder. He finds it easier to flip to a specific tab than to pull out his phone or get on his computer and search. Plus the binder never suffers from dead batteries.
It works for him.
But he does know how to use email as it was intended - he doesn’t print it out and scan it as an attachment to another email…
It’s possible that she is one of those people who simply documents everything having been burned by a bad job in the past. If she has a printout of all the emails filed away she can always go back to a hard copy from a long deleted email and double check facts, back her own memory up, or provide documentation to get her out/ someone else in trouble.
I have a coworker who also prints out everything. When she sends a letter to a client, she’ll print a duplicate and send it to be imaged into the file. It’s been explained to her many times and a few of have shown her that all communications can be mailed out without her having to physically touch the paper - generate the letter in the electronic file program, a copy is automatically stored, and the letter goes right to the mailroom for the support staff to pop into an envelope.
She also prints out every email received.
She is not technologically challenged, though, she is a hoarder. Her cube is disgusting. Her home is one where there are small pathways to get in/out of rooms.
Sometimes a hard copy of an email really saves the day. A co-worker just recently left, taking with him a ton of institutional knowledge. While cleaning out his office, someone found a stack of printed emails documenting exchanges that happened years ago. They provide proof that X federal agency instructed us to do something that we’re now realizing is bullshit and that I’m currently trying to fix. Without these emails, my case would be weaksauce. And this coworker’s PST files had been deleted after he left (not to mention, password protected).
But these are obviously very important emails and not lost in a big stack of useless ones.
On the flip side, I just realized how much I’ve gone completely paperless at work, when I had to print a document the other day (Needed a real live signature and had to be sent by fax…) – at which point I had to
Figure out where the %&^* printer was
Configure my computer to use it.
Granted, we moved into these offices recently, still, it meant that I went nearly 3 months without ever actually needing to print anything.
FWIW, I’m nearly 50, so I grew up before the Age of the PC, but I’m one of those “geezers” who has taken to technology like a duck to water.
