Christmas time is a time of joy, family, giving, and life. Unless its 2020.

Jokes aside, there was always one thing about Christmas time that grinded my gears, and I think it can partially be portrayed with this meme:

This is especially true around Christmas time. When your Grandmother or some older member of your family gets a new piece of technology and as far as their concerned the only thing you study is “computers” so they assume you can help them. Well, I’m a programmer not the annoyed IT guy from your work.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind helping if you ask, but this rant isn’t so much about helping people, as it is a rant about the misunderstanding of my field and how some people react when I tell them “I don’t know”.

“Well aren’t you supposed to be good with computers?”

Not all of them at once.

Just because I work on a computer all day, does not mean I am an expert on literally anything computer related. No, I do not know how to set your printer up. No, I don’t know why your computer is running slow all of a sudden just because you said “All I use it for is email”. No, I don’t know why or how your Facebook got hacked.

Now I understand there are many people who do not understand computers and these are not stupid questions to them as they are legitimate concerns. However, these are not questions I can answer without knowing all the information. I need to look at the printer manual to set it up. I need to take a look at your computer and see what you accidentally downloaded from the “free gift card” websites. If you clicked on a link that looked like it was from Facebook, but asked you to log in again even though you’re already logged in, you just gave your username and password away to a hacker (okay I can sort of answer that one). Anyone who’s reading this probably gets what I mean though.

If you have any experiences about this you would like to share, please leave a comment on my GitHub Discussions Forum!

Have a safe, socially distanced, and Merry Christmas! And Happy Holidays!