Captain's Lock

My mum told me this story. It happened to her last week.

Her manager's secretary was on her lunch break, and the manager came running through into my mum's office in a nervous panic.

"I've done something on the computer and I don't know what happened and I can't fix it!"

My mum is no IT guru. She works with young people mostly, giving talks in schools and advising kids on a one-to-one basis. But she offered to help anyway.

"What were you trying to do? What has happened?" She asked.

"I don't know! It's gone all wrong! I was trying to write an email and then it broke."

My mum looked at the email that he had been writing and realised that he had accidentally pressed the CAPS LOCK key. She fixed it, and died a little inside.

I don't know if that's heartening or disheartening to me. I can't decide. It reminds me of my time as a temp when I had to save a phone number into my manager's mobile phone because he couldn't do it. I had to do it several times after that because he refused to learn how to do it himself.

I am not lying when I tell prospective employers how good I am with computers and suchlike. I am the Tempest Typist for a start, and that's just one of my many skills. That works out just fine for me, and I understand that not everybody is as electronically endowed as I, but I cannot abide stubborn stupidity. Now I know for sure that it is not just endemic to the field of temp-work.

As frustrating as this is for overqualified office drones around the world, there is an upside. If someone is too reluctant to learn new skills, that can only make me look better. Stories like these give me CV bragging rights...right?