DH has been using a calculator to add things recorded in Excel

[RokaandRoll]

AIBU to think this is absolutely astonishing?

I found out because we were doing a new budget spreadsheet and he read out what we spend on different things each month while I recorded each item in Excel. He then asked me to read the amounts back to him so he could add them up. I was like WHAT??? I'll just add a formula in Excel. He said "really, you can do that?" I asked him what he thought Excel was for, and he said he didn't know as no one had taught him.

Have you ever found out someone was doing something in a completely bizarre and illogical way on a similar level as this? DH is in his 50s and is a quite intelligent person (or so I thought). He has used Excel in his job although obviously not extensively. AIBU to be completely shocked?

Most Excel users only use it for forms or lists.

I thought this was going to be him double checking excel, like he didn't trust it to add correctly. This is funny also.

Sorry, in my job. I don't have time to be flicking around spreadsheets in "idle interest" because, you know, I have work to do! 🙄

Honestly, some people.

I don't even own a PC or laptop apart from my work one, so I'm not idling around looking at excel spread sheets in my spare time.

Meanwhile I get my work done faster than my peers precisely because I invest my spare time in self development. Or "idling" as you call it.

But you're far from unique in confusing inefficiency for busyness so it's not fair to single you out.

Have read a few pages of this thread but so much is going over my head lol.

I'm 55 and went to grammar school. We had a computer room but only those in the top maths set were allowed regular lessons. I think we dunces in bottom set were allowed to go in and dust them once.

Most of my early work experience was in retail before I went to do a stage management course at college, so I didn't have much to do with computers till I got together with my now ExH. He had been into computers since they first came out (boy thong apparently as my late DP followed a similar pattern).

ExH set up his computer complete with dial up Internet- I was about 27 / 28 and encouraged me to play with it. I was nervous, inept, but excited. After a few hours it crashed, so I asked for his assistance. He almost fainted and asked in horror "How many windows have you got open?"....

"What's a window?" I nervously asked.

It took him a week to get it back to normal.

Since then I've improved and learned by trial and error. I've done admin jobs using various systems, and learned by writing down each step in a notebook until it sunk in.

I remember when we were still at school a few of the girls had access to their parents home computers, and I suggested to my Mum we could get one. She scoffed. Too expensive and they'll never catch on was her opinion. Then she had to learn how too use them as secretary to a firm if accountants and at 776 when she died was a proficient silver surfer frustrated at her daughters ineptitude in the field.

Personally I'm a Luddite at heart. Tech is a necessary evil and I resent it. Mainly.

When I saw the title of your thread I thought there was going to be more to it for you to be getting that wound up. Now I’m laughing and feeling relieved that I’m not the only one who gets disproportionately annoyed at seemingly trivial stuff like that! I do love a good Excel spreadsheet but the worst thing is when you have to fill in a form by editing a Word document that was created by someone who has no clue about formatting, so when you start typing everything jumps around all over the place. Does my nut in.

My mother was 76 when she died, just to clarify. She was amazing but not actually Methuselah.

One only really needs to know the programs and applications for the current job. You go off to the next job and use the new employer's programs or apps.

In the interview process I tell them I have never met a program or application I couldn't master so whether or not I have used their programs in the past is irrelevant.

Attending training for a program you are not currently using is pointless. Nothing is reinforced with real-world usage. Given a new program, or a new task on a program you've used before, you just google it and find a 3 minute video on how to do it.

I'm 60 and started coding on a mainframe (in a job where I had zero experience and had to self-teach).

From my experience in the workplace, the people who throw their hands up saying, "Don't Know, Don't Want to Know" on a program they should know, is strategic incompetence, but not knowing a program you don't need to know is totally normal.

Well, what things have you never learned to do, find difficult, cannot do?

Can you play the piano? Bake an amazing cake? So on and so forth. I know it might sound like comparing apples to oranges, but I don't think I would ever find myself talking down about my husband, behind his back, on social media.

Feels really narcissistic to me.

Poor husband.

For the first several months I used Excel, the only way I knew how to resize columns/rows was to go into the cell properties and enter the size I wanted. It often took quite a few laborious guesses to get close enough to what I wanted. The first time I saw someone click and drag, I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

Nah, I have a data team to do spreadsheets and data, I have a finance team who do my finances, my employer would 100% see me doing these things as wasting my time. I am there to do strategy and policy, not self develop my excel skills. 🙄

Omg, my dh has just walked in the room and I’m lmao at this. He does exactly the same 😂

My DP was gobsmacked when he saw me Alt/tabbing through the various different programs I had open on my computer.

Yeah, if my audit career has taught me anything, it's that employers generally discourage supposedly senior staff from developing the skills to actively review work they're relying on.

But in that case why are you on Excel at all? If you have teams of people to use it for you.

It's interesting you say "honestly, some people". Because I'm increasingly thinking that there is a divide between two types of people: one type who takes literally an extra few minutes of clicking menu tabs, or asking Google something, and forevermore saving themselves time doing a task.

And the other people who are too daunted (or in this pp's case too lofty/important) to spend those few minutes. And, like op's dh, have to get a brick calculator out because he's never touched those scary Excel tabs such as "Formulas" or "Help".

"Honestly, some people", such as myself, are like this with other things too. Everyday appliances in the home, or in the office. I like noticing what other functions they have. It's interesting and satisfying, and as mrsdineen says, it can save you time later.

I can't imagine having so little curiosity, let alone making a virtue of it. "Honestly, some people", indeed.

But it takes all types to make a world. Luckily we have the idle-curious types as most new discoveries and inventions have started with a spark of idle curiosity.

@karriecreamer
I can understand some people wouldn't realise you can turn those numbers into a graph automatically, but the mind boggles to think they didn't realise that with the World's most popular spreadsheet program it wouldn't be able to add a few figures together.

My mind boggles at the thought there are people out there who aren't able to understand that not everyone has ever had any reason to use a spreadsheet.

Is he generally stupid? Or is this just one thing you found odd?

If he's 58 or over, he's never had a computer or software lesson at school.

When I grew up, calculators - we'd heard of them and marvelled at them.
First time I used a calculator was at secondary school. The maths teacher had one on his desk. He was called out the room. I switched in on and typed 123x123. I then went back to my desk to work out manually whether 15,129 was the correct answer and "this calculator" was correct.

In 2000 - practically no company had a website.
In 2005 - practically no company had a website.
You'd be amazed by how much has changed in the past 20 years.
Excel - best MS software programme of all - unless your job directly involves using it, you don't know how useful it is.

And are you aware there used to be "Easter cookies" in every Excel spreadsheet in the early noughties years?
You had to find the precise square in an Excel spreadsheet and if you clicked on it, a very basic 3D short script to run up/down stairs/ rooms would appear?
The programmers found it by searching through the code and then gave the rest of us the co-ordinates.

So maybe don't mock your husband?

57/58 is still a relatively young age never to have been taught anything at school about computers - and even then it was very basic.
Even in the 1990's you didn't learn computing without basic 1-0-1-0 coding (which was not popular with students)

Even in the early noughties, how important and useful computers would become was not known.

I bet that wasn't your experience of learning computers?

My mother has never used a computer, let alone a spreadsheet. I don't expect her discuss vlookups with me. Why the hell would I?

We're not taking about people who've never used one. We're talking about people who do "work with spreadsheets" but lack the intuition and intellect to even wonder what the magic box they're sitting in front of can do.

Edit - she's never used a desktop PC or a laptop, before someone points out that her phone or similar meets the technical definition of a computer.

I'm a big fan of being able to work from home, but I do actually think that some of this just "noticing" what other people in the office are doing is something that teams miss by not all sitting alongside one another.
(I realise in this particular post it was your dp, not colleague , but, generalising)

I'm of a generation not brought up with computers, as are many of my team, and crucially, the main part of our job (ie, what we are employed to do) is not 'office work' . There have been many little 'tips' that people have shared with colleagues because they were sat alongside one another and either one noticed someone else doing something in a long-winded way that they were then able to show them a short cut for, or one was able to say 'does anyone know if there's a way of....'. Or 'I've just found out that you can do X by.....'

You’re missing the point of the thread that the op is talking about someone who does use a spreadsheet!

Well no, I wasn't replying to the OP, I was replying to the post I quoted, from where the thread has meandered to over all the pages people have been discussing.

However, in the OP, there is no suggestion that her dh is used to using spreadsheets. She said he was reading out what they spend, and she was "recording each item into Excel".
For all we know he could be a mechanic or a grave digger or a counsellor or a hairdresser or a gardener or a dog worker or a surgeon or a lawyer or do any one of hundreds of thousands of jobs that don't involve adding numbers on a spreadsheet.

"He has used Excel in his job although obviously not extensively"

Yes.
I have to put some data onto Excel sheets in my job too.
So, like the dh, I "have used Excel in my job but not extensively"
But I've never had to add up any columns of figures. Never been any need.
That's the point.

It is v handy in that you have a record of what you've added up. I've never been particularly nifty with calculators and always found excel more intuitive. And things like, opening a second tab to check or practice something without messing up the original info. I'm a bit of a fan girl though obviously ☺️

your employer and yourself don't think you should have a basic understanding of what they work with? Odd. Autosum is one of the most basic functions of excel. Saying you look at excel files for any portion of your job and claiming not to know how to use autosum is like claiming you don't know how to change the font in word.