All of them

My mother once threatened to evict me (was still living with them) because I asked her to back up her important files for me to carry them over to the new office computer I had set up for her.

She flat out refused to even attempt it or answer any of my investigative questions. This woman had been using windows computers for work for over 20 years at this point, but the thought of opening an explorer window apparently terrified her so much we got into an actual shouting match over it.

My cousin was way older than I so his kids were my age. He brought his laptop over because it was showing weird porn ads at very odd times. I usually charge a bottle of alcohol and then throw a big party with that alcohol because I was the go to guy for the neightborhood. Anyway, the porn he was watching was really intense and not at all what you think of as “normal” porn. So I told him everything I found and he said his 15 year old grandson borrowed it when ever he came over. I was genuinly scared of that kid from that moment on. Clown porn was the lighter side of what I saw.

My nephew wanted to play games on my computer while I was at work. He was arriving later so I wrote down all the steps on paper the way I had showed him before.

Mom calls upset hours later saying they can’t get the game running. She gets flustered powering on the computer, refuses to take a picture of the screen while in a fit, and powers off everything without letting me even try. Good god. 😂

The silver lining is that he’s a little older now and can do it on his own.

I love it though

I can feel my blood pressure rise as I read through this comment section.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to help family members and friends “fix the sound” on their computers because they somehow changed their default audio output device without knowing it. I really wish people would just check their audio settings when they have a problem with it, instead of calling me to help every time.

The forgetting everything I took the time to explain even after “dumbing it down” to the simplest terms. Can’t blame them too much as it’s age related, but frustrating nonetheless.

Refusal to use a password manager. They write down the passwords plaintext in a physical pad. Not awful, all things considered, but then write down the password alphabetically without maintaining consistency in naming. Say it’s a password for a streaming service on a Sony TV. It might be under Sony, TV, or the name of the service; and all three titles might be entered in the pad because they couldn’t remember what they’d written it down under the first time. Then had to reset it and wrote it down under something else. So now you have passwords for TV, Sony, and Service, guess which one is right? Heaven help you if there’s more than one Sony TV in the house or something. At least the password managers go by website and a user created name so you have two chances of finding it.

When offering help over the phone they click or tap the wrong thing that leads to an incorrect page or menu, swearing they did it right, and being unable to locate the thing I’m telling them to look for after I led them step-by-step to the correct solution. This one’s pretty infuriating when many menus look the same and my questions about what they’re looking at only gets generic enough responses that I think they’re in the right place. It’s often only corrected when I ask them to take a pic with their phone and send it to me so I can figure out how they f’d up. I ended up installing remote desktop apps on their computers eventually so I could just do the work myself, quickly, with far less fuss.

My father is 85, used to be a dev. No issues, maintains his file sync between his two sites by himself via various clouds. Sticks to Windows.

Can’t get him to use proper passwords (as in random generated stuff from his password manager) though, he insists on needlessly peppering the weak-ish passwords he comes up with and storing that in his decent password manager instead. I guess you can’t win them all.

My parents had a new printer installed by a “professional” but it wouldn’t show on the network. I tried everything, reinstalling drivers, unplugging and plugging cables again…

After hours of nothing working, i got desperate and just flipped through the menu of the printer on this small LCD display. There is a DHCP setting. The DHCP is set to a fixed address. The router every now and then reboots and gives new dynamic addresses. The printer refused its dynamic address all this time.

Just don’t. You’re wasting your time with this IT stuff anyway and now theirs too. And you should have fixed the printer not printing yesterday already.

It’s a thankless job.

I don’t know about most painful, but my dad bought a phone many months ago and last week, he wanted to know how to turn on the flashlight on it. I was ready to edit the notification dropdown or give a five step explainer or whatever.

Turns out, nope, you just pull down the notification bar and there’s a pretty obvious flashlight button right there. The problem is, you see, he did not know you could drag down the notification bar. There were dozens of notifications there.

I really cannot blame him either. I don’t know what UX designer came up with just putting a bar at the top and expecting users to know that you can drag on it. But yeah, still, ouch.

printers man. it’s always some bullshit about how the printer doesn’t work anymore, no wifi, no ink, it’s printing some random HP bullshit Instead of what they want

call me an asshole but I told my parents I would strictly not help them with printer stuff anymore

they would also make me scan like 40+ pages back and forth. I hate scanning as well which is part of the agreement I made with them. they need to scan 49 pages ? ok then go to the library they probably have machine where you can dump a stack and have it scanned

if you’re wondering about the frequency and volume of scanning the reason why is because I come from an ass backwards country that does not do e documents

Mother in law calls me during work, blaring warnings sounds blaring in the background, warning her that she has a virus and NOT to try to reboot or unplug the computer….

MIL: what do I do/why is this happening?

Me: you clicked on something… unplug the computer

MIL: but it says not to

Me: it’s ok, it is trying to get you to call the number so that you will give them money

MIL: I am too afraid

Me: ok, if you want to give them money or your credentials so that they can take all of your money, feel free. Just don’t drive to Walgreens to buy gift cards again… you will miss your soap operas

MIL: Ok, I’ll unplug it

My mom (78) got a new kindle a couple years ago, after the previous one lasting over 10 years.

She’s not been using it now because “it’s not okay” anymore. After a lot of poking and prodding remotely (we live in different countries) to get to understand what the issue was for the kindle to “not be okay”, I managed to get her to tell me that “the screen is blank”. I said I’d check it soon after when I went to her place.

When I travelled there, not long after, I checked the kindle, turned on the screen, and it was blank. Because she’d finished a book and the last page was blank. All worked fine.

I have told her, but she refuses to use the kindle because “it’s not okay”.

In a separate conversation I offered to give my sister my really old kindle as hers is actually broken. My mom heard that and said she wanted it because hers is… Not okay.

The insistence and willful ignoring of what I said is the most infuriating part.