What are your best tales of being treated like a genius/alien because you can use a computer?

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Ok_Basil1354@reddit

Remember the Yellow Pages? I was hired on a week's contract to help out the office manager. Turns out my job was to organise her emails. She spent about 45 mins telling me how busy she was and how she just can't keep on top of it. The way she organised her emails was by setting up a folder for each sender/client. That was it. She had thousands of unfiled emails, but did not know she could sort her inbox by sender, and bulk-file. It took me maybe 20 mins to do that job, and she was horrified as she thought it would take her the rest of the week because she thought I'd have to do it one by one. I asked what else I could do and I ended up hoovering the open plan area. We agreed I'd not come back the next day but they'd pay me for 3 days or something.

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CRJF@reddit

Working on a 2nd level support team in a call centre. Colleagues opening individual records on a sharepoint and updating them accordingly. Me discovering that you can just amend the rows directly in sharepoint, so you can do hundreds at a time. Getting a bonus because I'm covering more records than the entire rest of the team put together and then trebled. In the 2 years we did this nobody once asked me to show them how it was done.

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Born-Necessary9533@reddit (OP)

Haha yeah it's the lack of curiosity that gets me sometimes. I don't know everything, but half of computer proficiency seems to just be thinking "there must be a better way to do this"/willingness to google

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StinkleMcFart@reddit

I’m always shocked how most people have little curiosity and no initiative. I self taught myself Excel and have basically become some sort of indispensable wizard. I spend 99% of my time doing vlookups and pivot tables and I’m treated like the second coming.

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Tumeni1959@reddit

I used to work in corporate world, and it used to blow my mind that they ran training courses on how to use Word. How to format headings. Include page breaks. How to PRINT, FFS....

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plankton_lover@reddit

Effing hate vlookups. Have you tried xlookups? They're supposed to be more user-friendly, but I normally resort to simple vba because at least it defines errors lol.

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StinkleMcFart@reddit

I’ve tried but my work has a lot of users on an older version so it makes sharing workbooks harder. Tend to stick to vlookups for that reason. Once everyone is on 365 I’ll switch as it’s far less limiting.

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smoopdogg@reddit

In my old job I figured out how to get an AI to cut down my workload by 50%, and nobody would be able to tell. I ummed and aahed about keeping it to myself, and eventually opted to share the technique with the rest of the company. Literally nobody adopted it or asked for more details or anything and I spent the last year there essentially doing half the work of everybody else and still getting paid the same

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CRJF@reddit

"It's just how we've always done it" Nice one Keith, you crack on with your 60 forms a day pal. Just knocked 100 off in the last 5 minutes but you carry on mate.

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Tumeni1959@reddit

I recall folks wondering how I managed to Copy/Paste without using right-click and drop-down menu options. Ctrl+X = Cut Ctrl+C = Copy Ctrl+V = Paste

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VardaElentari86@reddit

My team think I'm an IT whiz because 1) ill try turning something off and on again and 2) I can read instructions and use Google. My attempts to get them to try those two things before bugging me never work.

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ThirdOfTheStorms84@reddit

I think because it’s become somewhat of a joke that people really don’t understand that turning it off and on again will actually fix a lot of stuff.

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SeditiousPocket@reddit

I'm a computer genius simply because I can google. Sharepoint workflows to automate a bunch of stuff to make administrative tasks less time consuming? Of course I can do that! Create a scorm package training programme for Moodle - no problem I call myself an efficiency driver but I'm actually lazy and happy to do the hard work (googling and watching Youtube how-to's) up front so that I can be doing less work later down the line.

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smoopdogg@reddit

Plus learning how to get the computer to do your work for you always turns a boring task into an interesting one, which I for one greatly prefer!

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NewCrashingRobot@reddit

This week I showed a colleague how to extend displays between her laptop and monitor. She had always been duplicating the displays. She called over other colleagues so I could show them too. Every single person I showed is in the "digital" team at my company.

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smoopdogg@reddit

My old job was at a web agency, and I was literally the only person there who knew HTML or any sort of code, or anything about how the web works. What HTTP is, etc. It just blew my mind that these people could find work by knowing very slightly more about the internet than their clients, but still almost nothing.

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Dartzap@reddit

There's definitely a strange generational knowledge thing that happened between the 90's and 2010's when people had easy access to computers/laptops by default and then the rise of the smartphone and tablet. The strange knowledge that I possess but younger colleagues don't? *Keyboard Shortcuts* Control C and V are considered witchcraft Control Z is the devil's work.

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Metal_SysAd@reddit

This is an interesting point, the newer generation pretty much live in a "it just works" world, whereas the older generation grew up in a world where you had to jump through a lot of steps to get something to work. It's certainly led to a decline in methodological problem solving abilities.

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Left-Car6520@reddit

I had a young colleague who was really good at a bunch of tech stuff. Super bright and sharp. But I mentioned using some simple Excel functions to clean up some data and she was befuddled. "I.... I dunno, I've never used excel really. I find it weird. The interface is so old and clunky, and yeah I've just never used it at all'. So of course I promptly crumbled into dust and blew away in the wind.

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WorldlyAstronomer518@reddit

I don't use windows at home. So I sometimes have the "how to do x in windows". Look at the answer and go fuck that and just do it in my own PC instead. I should just setup a VM really.

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SteveBrucesDressSize@reddit

ITT people on their high horses because they know about keyboard shortcuts and older people dont. I'd bet there are hundereds of things they can do which you can't. Im mid 20's and i didnt know many of these shortcuts, no idea what find & replace is and ive worked in an office for like 7 years now. Some people didnt grow up playing with Pc's and shit, and its harder to learn as an adult

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Left-Car6520@reddit

No one's laughing at you for not knowing, Steve. We're laughing because it's just funny, in an entirely non-mean way, when you realise that something that is second nature to you is actually specific knowledge that has become uncommon. The Youth laugh just as much when people don't know how to use smartphones or social media. The Gen Xers laugh when Zoomers don't know how a rotary phone works. Boomers of today probably laughed when their parents couldn't figure out whatever new technology they grew up with. It's just harmless amusement at how things change.

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eclectic_radish@reddit

and yet you've learned what ITT means after spending significantly less of your time on Reddit

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Disco_Killer@reddit

I very drunkenly fixed a computer for someone once during a house party. It wasn't showing a display output on boot but having a bit of knowledge with the "all-in-one" boards that so many cheap student computers were built with I realised that the "GPU" was controlled by the BIOS. Something must have got fucky with the BIOS setup but without a display output it was impossible to diagnose so I just popped out the BIOS battery, left it a while to drain any residual voltage, lobbed it back in and hey pretso, display output. There was probably a jumper on the board somewhere but I was way too pissed to be fumbling around a cheap motherboard looking for it so I did the next best thing. Computer owner was ecstatic as up until that point she had no idea how to get her uni work back. More recently I wrote a macro for someone which has saved them hours of work which was met with much rejoicing.

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talkingtongues@reddit

There are 10 types of people , those that understand binary…

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Iamamancalledrobert@reddit

Colleague: “I wish there was a button you could press that turned all the capital letters into small ones!” Me: “There is” Colleague: Stares at me in fear, as if I am an impossible genius

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bunnyswan@reddit

Can you tell me how ?

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Iamamancalledrobert@reddit

Ctrl+F3, I think

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fishter_uk@reddit

I think it's shift+F3, but try both. What's the worst that can happen? It'll cycle through UPPER CASE, lower case and Proper Case. The same is true use GBoard on an Android phone. Select some text and press the shift key to change the casing.

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Iamamancalledrobert@reddit

See, I don’t even know the right command; just knowing it existed was enough to inspire awe

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bunnyswan@reddit

Thank you

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VolcanicBear@reddit

g~G Vim ftw. Yes I know it would swap the upper case to lower.

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Timely-Science-8655@reddit

I've never learnt the g commands. They seem crazily powerful.

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VolcanicBear@reddit

g - go to ~ - change case of letter G - end of file They are indeed awesomely powerful once you start to get used to them, as you can just string together commands. Also incredibly annoying a lot of the time when you inevitably get the number of lines wrong.

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ThrowingStuffAway190@reddit

Not particularly funny or anything, but I have a few colleagues who think I am a whizz at Excel because I can use a few relatively basic things like vlookup.

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Pimp_out_Pris@reddit

I wrote 14 people out of a job with an excel macro and a bunch of automation that drew data from a bunch of central sources and then spat out a set of reports, without human error, every month. Wasn't too popular after that. The other end of the spectrum is being the "family IT guy" because I understand the basics of computers and how to put them together. That's now extended to friends of family IT guy.

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Born-Necessary9533@reddit (OP)

Yeah I don't think people realise how much you can do with macros and hotkeys, with zero coding knowledge... and that's probably for the best in terms of people's jobs haha

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Pimp_out_Pris@reddit

If people understood the power that comes with Microsoft Excel, half of the software suites sold to businesses today would not exist.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

How did you find the best way to learn macros and hotkeys? Is YouTube a good shout for a beginner?

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ToriaLyons@reddit

In a previous job, we all went on Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access courses. The latter was a waste, but, even though I already had several years of experience in the former, I learnt so much.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

I've only ever worked at one place that offered these courses and I was too young and foolish to enroll at the time. I've had to teach myself the basics but I want to be wizardry level!

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danielroseman@reddit

These days, ask ChatGPT to write you the macro.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

Wow, thanks. Will give this a go!

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Nine_Eye_Ron@reddit

I use it for JSON, PowerApps and PowerAutomate all the time now.

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Pimp_out_Pris@reddit

Figure out what you want to do in pseudocode and then google how to do it in VBA or standard formulae basically. That's all I've ever done. Have a problem in the first place and then figure out how to solve it in Excel. I've not once sat down and watched a tutorial on Excel in general, I've always had something I wanted to do with it that I hadn't been able to figure out myself.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

Thank you! I don't have the patience to watch lengthy videos so googling sounds like a better option for me

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1968Bladerunner@reddit

True dat - it's a veritable powerhouse in the right hands

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ToriaLyons@reddit

Did a year maternity cover as a cashier in a bank. At the end of the day, we had to add up cheques in batches of 50 into a calculator. Any errors, and we'd have to start from scratch. My speed and accuracy entering data onehandedly using the numeric keypad in subsequent jobs was unparalleled. Conversely, I managed some temps who, despite having a separate numeric keypad, used to hunt-and-peck the top row. It infuriated me for some reason. People who could type, but couldn't enter numbers accurately.

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Swimming_Marsupial@reddit

My dad, in complete disbelief: That's not you *texting* is it? He'd heard the tapping of my fingers on my smartphone screen and couldn't believe anyone could type that fast. I'm not even that fast, I'm average.

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Diega78@reddit

I managed to get a refund from TalkTalk for my mother's elderly friend because they were ripping her off whilst she also had Virgin internet at the same time. In my mother's neighbourhood I am a wonderchild. I'm 44.

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JackStrawWitchita@reddit

Way back 20 years ago I was an early adopter of early versions of smartphones. I could Google on my phone while everyone else was just playing snake on their Nokias. Well, I stopped into a very rural pub way up in a remote part of Wales where the locals were engaged in a pub trivia contest. While sat at the bar, I noticed the two old guys who made up one trivia contest team struggle with an obscure cricket question. I quickly looked up the question on my prototype smartphone and leaned over to show the two old guys the answer on my tiny phone screen. The two old guys eyes went big as the saw the text on the screen with the answer they sought. Then they turned their faces to regard me with the most terrifying 'burn the witch' looks I've ever seen. I left without finishing my pint.

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dream234@reddit

SPV?

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edhitchon1993@reddit

Someone attempted to April Fool me by putting a post-it over the laser on my mouse. I didn't notice for three hours because I basically use my mouse to wake my computer up and then do most of the rest of the navigation by the keyboard. As with you they didn't know about Alt+tab or even using the Windows key to launch the start menu. I probably subconsciously clocked that my mouse wasn't working and used the touch pad for some things, but I genuinely didn't notice until they told me. I'm often asked to do stuff in excel, or quick data processing (tables out of a pdf etc.) because I am very quick at working out what the specific combination of find and replace in word and excel is, and because I can touch type very quickly even if the data can't be copied and pasted I'm still the best bet for quick data entry. Why do I have these skills? I spent my youth playing around with Office whilst waiting for the phone line to be free because our computer was too slow for most games. Also I once read the user manual for Windows 95 and a lot of it still applies!

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terryjuicelawson@reddit

Getting a command prompt up these days to do things makes you look like a proper hacker. It used to be just how you ran certain programmes.

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BaronsCastleGaming@reddit

I'm always baffled at exactly HOW computer illiterate people are. Like, I get it if you're over a certain age and never worked in any sort of office environment, but I used to work in accounts and every accounts job I've ever interviewed for has expected at least a base level of competency with excel and word. And yet, on multiple occasions while dealing with totally different people (who all also worked within their company's accounting function), I've asked someone to send me over a spreadsheet, only for them to send me over a photograph taken on their phone of the spreadsheet open on their screen.

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OkTry4424@reddit

I do a bit of video editing here and there and am constantly astounded by now video editors far far more skilled and advanced than me keep the default shortcuts on Premiere or the like, and use the mouse so much. I've had such people blown away by how I do it - Move all your editing controls such as shuttle controls, zoom in/out, add edit, ripple cut to previous/next edit, and so on, over to asdfg and qwe. You can take long clips like say an interview with someone with a b roll on another track and almost "type out" the edit without having to move your left hand from the keyboard or your right hand from the mouse.

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BaronsCastleGaming@reddit

Here's the thing though - I just... prefer the mouse. Its not that I find keyboard shortcuts to be some strange unholy technology or anything, I just like the control of being able to drag things around with a mouse, and because I'm so used to using it, I can work fast enough with it for it to not be an issue. I'll use keyboard shortcuts for obvious things like cut/paste/copy/change tools (in premiere) but not for actually manipulating things in the edit window

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MangoKakigori@reddit

Well it’s not truly connected to this but years ago back when the Xbox 360 came out I was playing call of duty 3 (released a long time ago) and my grandma saw and just couldn’t get over the fact it wasn’t a video and they weren’t real people It was pretty entertaining

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AJCham@reddit

My Mam had the same reaction to a footy game on the PS2. I also scared the bejesus out of her when I was playing Socom late into the night and she heard me using the game's voice commands.

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BaBaFiCo@reddit

My father in law came over a few years back and asked who was playing. He believed the highlights on FIFA were real life footage.

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Hypohamish@reddit

Oh man, memory unlocked for Socom - I remember buying that game solely for the voice command thing.

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SpudFire@reddit

As a software developer, my life is like one of those Royal Navy adverts. If you can write a line of code, you can fix my printer. If you can fix my printer, you can recover my email account. If you can recover my email account, you can make my internet faster.  I mean, I can do most of those things but it's usually a case of googling the issue and trying solutions other people have said fixed it for them...

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Seanthebaker@reddit

About 10 years ago my dad was fixing his mates laptop and for the life of him couldn't figure out why the wifi card wasn't connecting, I came home school and asked him what wrong, said give me a minute, hit the keys to turn wifi on/off a couple of times, turns out the indicator led was backwards, on for no connection and off for connection, I felt so proud of myself, dad was not happy, he'd spent all day searching for answer

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PickletonMuffin@reddit

I once attended an interview for a really low level admin job. Part of the interview was to populate a spreadsheet with some data and do some calculations. I popped in some really basic formulas and was done in 2 minutes. The interviewer was amazed when I said I was done. I showed her the formula and her mind was blown. I think she thought I had to manually do the sums or something. It was very bemusing. They offered me the job on the spot.

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afungalmirror@reddit

I need two screens for the work I do on my office PC. Chief executive came up to me while I was working and casually asked what the advantage was of having two screens. I tried to say "you can look at two things at once" in the least sarcastic way possible, which I just about pulled off. Then I showed her how you could drag and drop a window smoothly from one screen into the other. Her head just about exploded. (She's of the generation that doesn't understand how to us bookmarks in a web browser. Every time she wants to go a website she visits frequently, she googles it and clicks on the first result. In almost all other respects, she's a superhuman genius).

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

My grandmother believes me to be a genius with computer for some reasons. She told her neighbours I would be able to fix their broken tv. After insisting that there was no way I would be able to fix it, I reluctantly agreed to have a look. I look at the back, noticed the cable hanging loose. Plugged it in and established my reputation as tech genius for my grandmother’s friends and neighbours.

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dibblah@reddit

Happened with my grandmother too, I just changed the input to the antenna, she thinks I worked magic.

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NoCryptographer9800@reddit

using shift + windows key + left/right arrow to move windows between my monitors, is apparently quite an exotic skill.

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Hobbs16@reddit

da fuq?!! Mind blown.

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InternationalRide5@reddit

Must confess I've got that key combo written on a post-it :)

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StinkleMcFart@reddit

Work in IT and was helping an IT manager with excel. Asked him To select a cell and then “Ctrl c” he looked at me blankly. “Ctrl c then Ctrl v”. Looked at me blankly again. “Copy and paste?”. Another blank look. An IT manager who had worked in IT for 30 years.

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karlware@reddit

Not strictly IT but when I was once being shown around a workplace, there was a room where people were having trouble playing a DVD. While they fiddled with wires, I ejected the disc, noticed it was filthy, wiped it on my trousers and, hey presto, a wizard walks amongst us

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Defiant_Attempt1469@reddit

Literally just told my co-worker she can use the wheel on her mouse to scroll...

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LFC90cat@reddit

Took over as office manager for a woman who went on maternity. She compiled daily sales reports from excel. Loads of copy pasting into tables. The week she left I spent a few hours creating macros for the reports. Basically did her job every morning in a space of a second. Managers loved it as I could run an accurate report in seconds rather than her usual sigh and couple of hours before they for them. Spent the rest of the day reading and browsing forums. Easy life job.

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the_doesnot@reddit

I had a manager get really excited to show me his new trick. Ctrl + c and ctrl + v He wasn’t even that old.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

I had the same situation! I was being trained by someone (in fairness to him, he must have been in his 60s), and he told me that there was a quick way of doing a certain task. Reader, he highlighted something and copied and pasted it somewhere else. He even told me that you can left click a mouse sometimes. It was actually really cute and I remember that day fondly.

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the_doesnot@reddit

Yeah. I did show him a few more shortcuts that really made his day.

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Comfortable-Use5648@reddit

Awww that's so cute!

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Sinnistrall@reddit

This is what I was going to mention, had a couple of colleagues seem amazed when I used keyboard commands to copy and paste. Throw in a ctrl + A to start with any they are really impressed

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Lybertyne2@reddit

Around 2000 my grandparents, who were technologically advanced and not fuddy duddies, had an email-type thing on their TV with which they'd communicate with my grandad's brother in Australia. When I was staying there they'd dictate and have me type as I was faster. They loved it when I finished typing but the words were still forming on the screen.

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furrycroissant@reddit

I showed someone how to snap a window, that blew their mind. And exporting data into Excel, and then using rules to colour code as I go. She's so lovely but a bit dim

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nezbla@reddit

I mean, I'm an IT consultant and I've worked in tech since the mid 90s. I could write a book full of these. But a stand out moment off the top of my head would be just a few short years back helping an elderly friend of my mother over a remote support session. "Oh my god!! You can move the mouse!?!? How is that even possible???". Poor old dear, I solved her problem (she'd had some wonky driver / windows update fail, I can't even remember the specifics) - but apparently the fact I'd been able to remote into her PC scared her. (Bear in mind this was all above board, I was on the phone with her and just using Teamviewer with her permission and all). Mam told me she was going on about it for weeks telling everyone her son is some kind of super hacker genius. Apparently for a good while she didn't even plug the computer in because "If he can do it then anyone could". Technically not wrong I suppose but I felt kinda bad I'd freaked her out that much. Ended up calling her and explaining that it's very normal thing tech support people do every day, but talking her through how to keep everything up to date, and telling her about the whole scammer setup and to not give anyone access like that even if they say they are from Microsoft or Amazon or whatever. Another one that springs to mind was working as a team lead in a small help desk team for a non-tech company. Had to do a long cat6 cable run and one of the youngsters got the ticket. He was hunting around trying to find an appropriate length cable, brought me this expensive request and I looked at it and went "Nah that's stupid, I have a reel at home - I'll bring it in tomorrow and just make it to length...". Lad's face in awe and wonder... "What, you can do that??" Yeah man, crimping network cables is not sorcery. Ended up showing the whole team how to do it, not a particularly important skill but if you're working in IT sometimes a kinda useful one. Not something I'd have considered particularly impressive but the guys thought I was some kinda genius because I knew how to put a cable together.

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ReluctantApple@reddit

Happens quite a bit. Granted I worked in IT for a long time, but that's not actually relevant, as OP's post shows. The problem, as I see it, is this..... since PCs, mobiles and tablets became common we now live in a "learning world". The tools we have at our disposal (Word, Excel, even your favourite e-mail client) are complex and sophisticated. Even the "settings" of your mobile are complex. And they change and advance all the time! If you don't want, or cannot be bothered, to explore and learn how they work your life will always be harder than it needs to be. Many are also "afraid of breaking it" or "being scammed if I get it wrong on my phone/computer/tablet" and soo too inhibited to explore and learn. I know somebody, for example, who has not yet grasped "cut and paste" despite repeated attempts to explain how to do it and why it is so useful. They just seem to vanish into the "too hard" mindset every time! This is an unfixable problem!

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crucible@reddit

I work in tech support, this thread is painfully easy to relate to. Especially basic stuff like Alt-Tab or Windows key + arrow to move windows around. I try and tell people but some just refuse to listen...

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DameKumquat@reddit

I've always been the person who knows weird stuff, but the key thing was knowing about this new software called a search engine, way before most people did. Started my career using Yahoo and then this much-improved one called Google. My Head of Division in particular thought I was a total genius. Even now people get routinely amazed, even though all I'm doing is using good search terms and some excluding filters, typing fast while on a Teams call. Amazing how many people don't know how to search 'from: organisationname' or similar in Outlook.

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manhattan4@reddit

I created a couple of pivot tables and introduced some filters in Excel for someone who's job it was to create weekly reports. They had been at the company for decades and had been manually copying and moving data around the achieve the required formatting. This was their main job role which took most of their time but they had almost no understanding of Excel. I didn't tell anyone else because I was an underpaid and unappreciated temp who wouldn't have been rewarded.

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BannedNeutrophil@reddit

I'm a data scientist moonlighting as the office Excel Guy because I use its advanced features a lot (it's a much more powerful data platform than many people appreciate). So... most days at work, really

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