Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Girls are dumb

Well, ok ladies, I know you're not really dumb, but you have to admit that you are very slightly "special" (pejorative) when it comes to technology, aren't you? At least, that has been my experience, especially of late.

Three examples:

1.
Yesterday morning I noticed that one of my colleagues who sits across from me, well call her Pam, was slowly getting more and more frustrated with something that her computer wouldn't seem to want to do.

After a few minutes of watching Pam inching closer and closer to throwing her rather sexy, slimline Sony Vaio laptop out of the window in an explosion of super-colossal rage I eventually leaned forward and, so as not to feel the full extent of her wrath, whispered, "What's wrong?"

"It's my laptop," she explained, the vein in her temple waving at me. "I'm trying to open someone's CV and my computer won't let me!"

I leaned forward a bit more and pulled her laptop round towards me. "Show me what you're doing," I told her. So she moved the mouse cursor up to the "File" dropdown and clicked on "Open", by which point I had already ascertained what the problem was.

"Pam," I say, trying my best not to be patronising, because Pam is technically more senior than me. "You're trying to open a Word document in Outlook."

2.
Just over a month ago I persuaded my Mum to buy a new Mac Mini to replace the ancient iMac I gave her about three years ago.

Unfortunately I wasn't there when she tried to set the thing up, which meant that I got called with a zillion and one stupid questions like, "The booklet tells me to put the CD into the hard drive. What's the hard drive?"

Now don't give me that spiel about it being harder for people of my mother's age to learn even the rudimentary aspects of modern technology. Besides, she's only 53. It's been proven that there is no physiological reason (aside from actual ailments like Alzheimer's or senile dementia) why old people should suddenly become stupid. It's not that they can't work it out themselves; in my opinion it's because they're lazy. They have grown up children or grandchildren to rely on to install their new microwave. I'm not afraid to call my Grandma an asshole if she can't figure out how to plug in her brand new toaster. Yeah! I'll kick her in the shins too, the bitch.

Regardless, I let my mum off the first few dumb questions. But I did lose my temper with her when she called me during a client meeting. Normally I won't answer my mobile during a meeting, but when I saw my mum's number flash up (especially given the fact that my Granddad recently died) I figured that it must be something important. So I quickly excused myself and slipped outside to take the call.

"Mum, I'm in a meeting. What's wrong?"

"It's the computer."

"Mum! I'm in a meeting! Can't this wait until after I finish work?"

"Well just quickly then. The new flat screen I just bought. It won't turn on. I've tried everything but it won't work. Do you know what it could be?"

Upon further investigation, my mother and I established that the monitor was not plugged in to the power. No joke. Her logic was that she thought the "hard drive" (see, she learned one thing!) provided the power for the monitor, but I explained to her that would be like assuming that her DVD player provides the power for her TV.

3.
This morning my housemate informed me that she had not been able to listen to any music on her iPod for almost a week because someone had locked it and she couldn't work out how to un-lock it. Handing the offending item over to me she asked if I could fix it.

I flicked the "Hold" switch off and handed it back to her.

Being gay affords me a closeness to women that many straight men don't have. For that reason I believe that I have a good grasp of the mysterious machinations of the female mind. But I just don't get why the vast majority of you are so unbelievably rubbish with technology. I'm sorry if that sounds all superior and offensive, but seriously? What is it? Do you like us boys to patronise and rib you endlessly for being dumb? Are you secretly masochists in this respect? And surely it can't just be laziness. I mean, why would you walk around not being able to listen to music for a week, just because you're not prepared to spend ten seconds analysing all the surfaces of your MP3 player for signs of a switch which could be construed as being a lock?

I can guarantee that if a guy asks me to help him with something technical it will be something genuinely complicated. I have never known a guy to announce in the middle of the office, "I can't print!" It will be something like, "Can you help me configure this POP server?"

So what is it, ladies? C'mon! Give me something to work with here!

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