To find people who refuse to embrace technology irritating?

[Sophiehoney]

I don't mean people who genuinely struggle

I am irritated with people who absolutely refuse to even try.
I am sure a lot of the time they do it on purpose. They use the whole "I don't do technology" thing as a personality trait, to be quirky and "not like all you young people" when simply being a bit older is not a reason in itself, as Mumsnet proves!!

People at my work are moaning like hell because the system of filling in patients notes at the end of the shift in a book with a pen has been replaced by handheld devices (basically phones) that are more secure and can be completed on the go. They are so simple but some people are refusing to learn so others are filling their notes in for them.

A lady at the doctor's today point blank refused to even try to sign herself in on the machine. It was literally just a case of pressing a button and then filling in a form with her name and DOB using a keyboard. She declared proudly "I'm not doing this, I don't do technology, I don't even have a mobile phone!" And made he poor stressed receptionist with a line of people waiting come out and do it for her.

My mum will pop round a million times a week with "something she needs me to on her iPad" and it's usually just something trivial like reading an email and sending a one line reply that I know she is capable of. I've stated getting my 13 year old to do and she pays him £1 every time so every cloud 🤷

But these people do irritate me when they expect others to pick up their slack by refusing to try.

AIBU?

I think of tech like a bus. I'm running to catch it but it's getting further and further away. I can still see it but i will never be able to catch up with it.
Meanwhile DH is proudly sitting on the sofa in his slippers with no intention of going anywhere by bus!

Guess who has to learn how to pay carparks, bills, book his vaccinations etc etc..?

I'm only early 60s and I didn't grow up with tech, didn't use tech during my career and couldn't afford tech with growing DCs. But I can still see the bus!

I'm only early 60s and I didn't grow up with tech, didn't use tech during my career and couldn't afford tech with growing DCs. But I can still see the bus!

I'm a little older than you @namechange62 and can still see the bus.

One of the reasons I didn't want to retire until now was that I didn't want to lose any technical skills. I didn't realise that I knew so much until I started training my replacement.

Like you, I didn't grow up with tech. We didn't have calculators at school for maths O level, I didn't start using Microsoft Office until I was 35 and I got my first mobile at age 36.

Funny you should mention calculators.. we were the last group to take our O level maths paper without being able to use one. 1979 if I remember. The next year my brother sat his and there was a calculator paper..
Then in early 2000 I did my GCSE maths and they introduced a non calculator paper.. being the oldest student there I was the only one who could do mental arithmetic and sums on paper! And I got a B! I tell you I cried..

@RampantIvyI suspect your SIL is the type to feign dependency in any situation. I was shocked about 10 years ago when a neighbour got a call while we were chatting and said she had to book her mum a taxi. I said does she struggle with online booking? She nearly laughed, no she doesn't have a smart phone but that's not the issue. She phones her daughter to phone a taxi. She doesn't like to make phone calls, pretends she doesn't know how. Her family members have been asked for years to do admin on her behalf, phoning for medical appointments, restaurant bookings, tradesmen etc. The woman was in her 60s. These days you might say she has an issue with tech but it was always thus. Maybe it was MH related or hidden disability but from what I could tell it was neither, she was just kind of useless

Retired now, but right up to the end, I worked with people of a similar vintage who used to print emails out in order to read them, and might take a week or so to respond (🤷 😵‍💫)
Personally (to use the bus analogy from upthread 👆) I'm actually on the bus, and waving at those trying to catch it.

It's not compulsory to use a Matalan card or to give your email in order to buy from Matalan. They want you to but it's only so they can send marketing.

Another who didn't grow up with tech. We had slide rules at primary school. However I did adopt tech as it evolved, DH is 76 and worked in tech from leaving uni, he was always an early adopter of new tech. My younger sister who is only 64, oth doesn't have her own email address, claims to not use tech as it doesn't interest her implying she is too high minded and intellectual to be bothered. I've offered to help but she relies on her DD to do it for her.

I do dislike the complete the smartphone reliance and do try to do things without a smartphone/apps as much as possible but also they do have their users beyond a pc. Things I have recently used my smartphone for.

1. Help a woman who got on the wrong train going to the airport. The advice the train conductor would have involved traveling 1h in the wrong direction to then have a 1h30 travel in the right direction then getting on the train to the airport. I looked at other public transport routes and then found her a local taxi number and this got her to airport in time.

1. Train significantly delayed, a woman trying to get to her daughter's house to look after sick child so that she could go to work. Our station has two routes to the same city but she was wanting a stop only on one route. The train to the other route was running so I found her a train that she could get on from the city back to the town she needed to get too. We are at a completely unmanned train station

1. In the supermarket I realised I had forgotten my purse. I don't like using cards through my phone but I do have a banking app on my phone. I was able to save the details of my phone and add my bank card and was able to pay for my shopping. I'm a 25 minutes drive from a supermarket so it would have been huge inconvenience to have had to leave and come back with my purse.

1. Doing an activity with our scouts, turned out the leader had booked the wrong branch. Whilst they were trying to go through the logistics of rearranging it to the branch we were in and the cost of doing so. I found that we were only a 20 minutes drive to the correct branch and by the time we had gone through the replanning we could be already in the correct branch. We got them all there and had a great day.

Wait, Matalan et al have SELF CHECKOUTS? My God.. (obviously I don't go out shopping much, lol, all online via the PC) I'm shocked.. I know there are the ones in supermarkets, which, if I'm ever in there, I avoid like the plague, I'm the one that the assistant has to come to because the thing's gone wrong..

@Superscientist I do take your point, I was on a train recently when my destination disappeared from the display in the carriage. Other passengers DID have a smartphone, spoke to their son at home, & he checked on his smartphone & confirmed that our train had been 'cancelled'. The train's staff knew nothing about it, supposedly..
I've had better journeys..

@Superscientist

A big yes to using apps to navigate public transport. A real game changer to use bus apps to see exactly where they are, so you don't end up waiting for a bus that is never going to arrive. Not a problem in big cities when the bus is every 5-10 minutes, but when you're only a "once per hour" service, you really need to know if it's coming or not, even moreso for the last bus of the day where you can find yourself stranded if the "last" bus doesn't appear.

Both my DS and I use trains quite a bit, and again, the various apps have been a life saver. DS often travels very long distances and has found himself in trouble due to storms, train break downs, etc., and often uses different train apps to find alternative routes. Several times, he's been told either "lies" or misinformation by railway staff (on train or at stations) that would have made his situation worse rather than better. He could use an app to see whether the "suggested alternative" trains were actually running, and often they're not. Happened to me to. Once trying to get back from Bath to London on a stormy weekend. Station announcement at Bath station said all trains to London were suspended, so told everyone to get on the next train to "x" station where they'd change to a London bound train that was running. I checked the app and saw the other train had also been cancelled, so I didn't get on it. I saw there was a train still planned to depart Bristol to London and could see the train was at the platform in Bristol, and still showing as running on the Bristol departure screen, so I waited on a virtually empty platform, and lo and behold it appeared an hour later, I got on and after a very slow journey, I got to London. Heaven knows what happened to everyone else who went to X station and then would have had to get a train back to Bath, who'd have missed the train I got on. I kept checking the apps, and no trains went from X station to London that afternoon!

It's strange that train staff either don't have access to, or don't use, the multitude of apps that are available, as the official train departures/journey system often seems very slow to be updated.

Another time, I took a train to an end of line terminus station. I knew that the outgoing trains were the incoming trains with around half an hour turnaround time. It was single platform so no other train could be there. My homebound train was showing on the station departure boards on time, but I knew from the apps that the incoming train wasn;t coming - it had been cancelled on route due to a train fault. I could see it on the app as to its current location, literally over an hour away, static on the tracks. Yet the station departure boards were still showing it as being on time, just 15 minutes away. Then as the time passed, it just changed to "delayed". I knew it wasn't coming. It was a two hourly service, so the next would be two hours away, so got on the app to find if there was a bus to a different station on a different line - there was, 30 minute journey, so I took that, and then plotted a new route from "new" station home. Whilst I was at the station, there were no announcements other than the automatic announcements which mirrored the departure boards, so completely useless for giving everyone waiting any real information as to what was happening.

Wow, @Superscientist, well done you! Amazing!
(not sure why the train companies can't do the same, however..)

I'd have probably still been waiting on the platform to this day!
Am full of admiration!

I suspect the "I don't need a smartphone" posters never use buses and trains and if they drive, only drive locally.

I suspect your SIL is the type to feign dependency in any situation.

@Dontlletmedownbruce your observation is spot on.

@Superscientist while out for a walk, I recently helped a disabled elderly gentleman be reunited with his dog which had run away by putting the picture of the dog on the local Facebook page (he had a picture of the dog on his phone, which I took a photo of). Ten minutes later someone messaged me to say they had the dog and could I call them. They were both reunited within half an hour.

i am more than competent with tech, have a smart phone, chromebook and a tablet and used it at work on a daily basis before I retired with no problem at all. What really fucks me off is the constant changes, the updates, the stupid apps for the most basic things. When I go out for a meal I like to read a real menu and tell a server my order and to be able to ask questions, I do not want to scan a QR code to get my food. Can't go swimming unless I pre book via an app so I don't bother anymore, I used to just rock up at the pool after checking the opening times and buy a ticket at the desk, it was far more spontaneous. I have given up using the council's website as a bot "anwers" all quries apart from the fact that all it seems capable of is directing you to the council tax payment section. I needed to conact school admissions and speak to a human and was nearly weeping with frustration as all i got was " Sorry I do not understand your question, please enter a word like "council tax" or "missed bin collectIon" It is up to whoever programmes these things to make them more receptive and easier to use.

Buying a last minute ticket online for things like swimming takes seconds

the council have closed my local pool to save money so it's a non issue for me these days!

@Lifeomars

When I go out for a meal I like to read a real menu and tell a server my order and to be able to ask questions, I do not want to scan a QR code to get my food.

I'm the opposite, I far prefer ordering a meal on the app so that I can take my time to customise and look at what options I have. I have a hearing impairment and usually struggle to hear waiting staff, especially in noisy/busy restaurants, and especially (as is often the case) they have strong accents. Often when I've tried to ask for something a little different, i.e. swapping one side with another, I've been unable to make my choice heard, and likewise when a waiter mumbles several options to me I often struggle to hear the options and likely to just say the first thing I can hear. With an app, those struggles disappear as most good apps give you plenty of options for customisation. Restaurant apps have been a real game changer for me.

Even better sometimes if I'm meeting someone in a restaurant, and am running a little late, I ask them to text me the table number and I order online via the app so that it's on it's way by the time I get there meaning not having to wait as long as if I'd waited to order until I arrived there.

Of course, that's another advantage in that everyone in the party can order their own meal/drinks via the app, and pay for them in advance separately, so there's no embarrassment of splitting the bill at the end of the meal.

I'm mid 70s and have tailored tech to my needs - if I need more then I install the relevant app and crack on. Stuff I don't need gets uninstalled. I love being able to look at my bus trundling along on the Arriva app so I know exactly how long I've got; I won't add bank cards to my wallet (a step too far for me) but I like the supermarket savings I get by using their reward cards. Horses for courses.

The charity I volunteer with doesn't have any members under 60. Many are over 70 and several are over 80.

We all use WhatsApp and email to arrange meetings, socials etc. We also have some meetings on Zoom, and everyone is able to use it.

A very good friend of mine is 88. She uses WhatsApp and orders everything she needs online.

It isn't an age thing at all. It is a mindset, what you are used to and what you want to be able to do.

Pretty much everywhere has self checkouts now. Lidl, Aldi, Primark etc
They have done for a while actually

Probably not to the same extent. If you take a slip to a teller, for example, that's an extra set of eyes to notice something is wrong. Especially if they know you which often used to be the case.

The only form of tech I really WILL NOT use, are parking apps. Fortunately we don't have many around here and all the machines take cash or card (although, as the 'card' part is often broken, wise locals carry a small amount of parking change everywhere).

My attempts to use a parking app have so far failed miserably - the app wouldn't download and I was in a hurry or I was worried that the poster telling you which app to use might have been spoofed. So I am of the 'all car parks should let you pay by various methods' opinion.

Other than that, I am fine with the tech I need to use, so far.

This reminds me of one that really pisses me off. We have an apple tv account that is convinced it needs to send notifications to an iPad which has been dead for many years. We don't have a new one because I don't really but apple products, they are just too expensive, and there are other things I don't like about them.

I'm reasonably tech savvy as I use it for work and part of my job is helping other people. My DH is very tech savvy, does a lot of programming and unusual stuff which he generally has to teach himself.

Neither of us has managed to successfully resolve the problem. I suspect it's because Apple doesn't want us to.

I find reading on a phone difficult, especially a menu. It is just so unnecessary

Agree. It's particularly frustrating if you just want to glance over a menu to see that there's something you all fancy.
We stayed at a hotel during COVID restrictions where there wasn't a single menu to be had. We gave up trying to navigate the app and went out instead to a Toby Carvery.

We've gone camping a few times to France, you know those massive sites with static mobile homes and multiple pool areas. The kids usually got involved in kids camp and the weekly events were displayed at the kids club. Usually with a sign in sheet for specific activities. A few years ago on check in we were told its all on an app now which we downloaded immediately. I wasn't too happy as I like to keep my phone off as much as possible on holiday. Every day each child had to be signed into kids club on the app, and names put on a list for activities. Fair enough I guess. But there was no WiFi at the campsite and there was no mobile signal either. There was only one place the app could work, which was at reception and at the kids club. So every morning all the parents would gather around the club door on their individual phones scrolling through multiple options when they could have just signed a sheet. Progress eh?