IT issues? Youngest finds an old skool solution

Exiting the workpod, Youngest says: “I’m going to The Library with my friend.” Hmph. Wonder where she’s really going? Off to cruise the stores as she calls them, no doubt, buying unfeasibly teeny tiny items of clothing that stretch to adult size but which she’ll return anyway, claiming they’re WAAAY too big no matter how often I tell her a bit of draping is classier.

Before she left I heard the words “IT problem, Adobe, wi-fi, network, IT people said it’s me, blah, blah, blah”. (Greta says it so it’s OK).

I had stopped listening at “IT issues”. Too painful.

I have a friend who works in IT (none of us know what he actually does, including his wife) but we ask him to fix techie things despite his habitual response: “RTFM (Read The Effing Manual)”.

He’s right. I followed his instructions with the telly manual and it worked, until the elderberry grew so big it tickled the satellite dish so Country Girl and I chopped it down, producing lots of firewood for when all the lights go out, plus I can now watch Scotland’s march to footie victory (maybe).

IT friend’s point is, apart from laziness, most of us can’t articulate the problem. We don’t have the vocabulary, the abbreviations and words being meaningless for those who spend their time staring at the screen wishing it looked like it did yesterday. He forwards a joke going round work: “To replace programmers with robots, clients will have to accurately describe what they want. We’re safe.”

For IT people it must be as tedious as listening to other people’s dreams – apart from my friend’s in which she inherited a major sofa company and on her first day in charge announced that from now on every sofa would be full price, no discounts. Or Eldest Child’s dream about being Rod Stewart’s love child but not being allowed to borrow his early albums. Or my recurring one about one of my children being accused of attempting to set fire to the National Museum of Scotland, oh wait, that really happened, and no he didn’t in fact. It was… never mind.

My phone pings. Youngest, with a picture. “Look! I’m in The Big Library with my friend, studying. Isn’t it amazing? Superfast wifi. It’s so chill. AND they have BOOKS too (!!!) You’d love it. The Library.” Who knew?