Just once

I work in a small office. So when I sit at my desk and I hear fists banging on tables, grunts, and a stream of cussing, that even makes me cringe at times, it can be difficult to concentrate. Soon after the fit of outrage I am called into the office and asked for help. Now I am not tech support, apparently I know more than our tech guy does, but I see what I can do. I get up, straighten myself out and stroll into the office.

Most of the time they have a complaint that things keep closing on them or 10 windows keep opening or everything is taking forever. The first thing I ask is for them to go through what they were doing. And then they go off double, triple, and quadruple clicking everything. These people click like it is some kind of tourette twitch or something. They don’t seem to understand that you only need to click once most of the time. I mean computers have been mainstream for more than 20 years at this point and the click/double click protocol hasn’t changed much in that time. So I don’t know where this obsessive double click culture has developed.

They will be on a website and double click on a link, yes 2 new windows will open instead of one. And websites do take a sec to open so clicking on the link a third, forth, or even fifth time just doesn’t help the situation. Or a window will be minimized on their toolbar and they double click it. It will maximize then minimize then they will rage about the POS machine isn’t working. Or they will double click on an icon to run a program or open a file, which is fine, but if it isn’t instantaneous then they double click again and again and again. Then of course the computer will slow to a crawl and takes 10 minutes for anything to happen. At that point it turns in the FPOS needs to be thrown out the window.

Now I am not saying the computers we have a t work are good, or modern, or efficient, but for the most part they do work but it just takes a minute. If they would be just a little patient and calm down they would save themselves a whole lot of stress. I swear one day one of them is going to pick up the desktop and throw it at the wall and then have a heart attack. For what? Cuz they couldn’t control their need to manically click on things?

Then I have to stand their, over their shoulders, and go through the utterly simple process with then. “Go to toolbar and click once,” “Go to the link. Click once. It is loading,” “Go to icon double click. No nothing is wrong, don’t click it again. No wait. See.” But it is so funny when I tell them to click once. They carefully move the cursor over the link/icon and with the slow purposeful movment and anticipation of that hand going for the doorknob in a horror movie they click. You can see the restraint it takes for them not to click again. And then when things magically work the look of relief appears on their face. There is no one behind that door and they will be safe for a while longer.

They then explain how it just wasn’t working before and they can’t understand why. I nod saying don’t worry about it and just be patient with the computer. They are all smiles at that point and start typing away and doing whatever. I go back to my desk and set back into doing whatever boring task I was up to. But I know in about an hour the banging and the cussing will start again. They quickly forget the restraint of the single click, and break down in frenzied clicking storm. I have done what I can do but getting up and going into that office is getting mighty tiring.

Tra