having to be the tech support person

[KellyHabersham]

*this is mainly directed towards my mom, although my sister's husband has a minor part in it*


My mom has a desktop computer, and she gets her Internet service bundled in a package from the cable company. A few weeks back, the computer crashed, and while we were able to get it working again, we were NOT able to get the Internet connection going. Now, here's where my rant comes in:

- my sister's husband mentioned some number you could call and go through a computer-assisted process to fix Internet problems. However, he would NOT call and do this, he insisted that my mom do it because he "wanted her to learn how in case he wasn't around".

- Mom is, to put it politely......not good with computers, refuses to learn, and because she doesn't know anything, she's dumped the responsibility for calling and getting things fixed with me.

- I am not really happy about this, because I can't hear that well over the phone, I know NOTHING about my mom's computer or Internet connection, and I don't feel it's fair that I should get stuck being the "tech" person just because she can't/won't learn how to do things for herself.

[HYHYBT]

Have you told her?

This is a large part of why I got Mom to use a Mac. Not that it's necessarily easier, but at least when she calls with a problem I can go through it on my computer, looking at exactly what to do and where things are, rather than having to talk her through something I'm less familiar with and cannot see.

It does not, of course, help if the problem is with the ISP, but otherwise it's been helpful many times.

(Mom tries, and she's generally smart at other things, but she just doesn't get certain aspects of the computer. She can use it OK, mostly, as long as she's doing what she's used to doing and nothing goes wrong, but that's about it. And it drives me crazy that she consistently double-clicks links on web pages as if they were desktop icons.)

[KellyHabersham]

Well, what I would like to tell her is that it's frustrating that she won't even try, and that while my sister's husband was kind of an ass the way he went about it, he DID have a point - there are a lot of tech-related things which Mom is unable to do because she can't/won't learn, and always wants someone else to do it for her.

(not saying that I'm against helping people, but she does know that I HATED having to be the "computer/office equipment tech" at my secretary job, and she's doing the same thing which people at that job did)

[telecom_goddess]

IMO you should refuse and force her to either learn how to deal with this stuff herself or she shouldn't have a computer.

There's no reason that she can't learn this on her own.

[jackfaire]

Bring her the box her computer came in when she asks, "What's this for"

"Well mom since you don't want to be responsible for your own toys we are going to pack it up and take it back to the store."

Kind of turning the whole parent/child dynamic around.

[powerboy]

At times, I do not mind being the tech person. I just hate it, when I have to keep showing the same things over and over again to the same person. To me, its fine the first few times becasue maybe I was not clear enough.

[jackfaire]

Yeah I make it clear to my mom she needs to pay attention because I am teaching her to fish.