Once upon a time, there was a man who couldn’t fool with computers.
“I just don’t understand the things,” he would say to the younger people in the office. “They are totally beyond me. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I don’t get ’em, I don’t want to get ’em. I can’t, with the windows and the menus and the software, and the – no. I just can’t deal with them. Huh uh. Can’t do it, don’t want to fool with it.”
This man would write out things long hand, and then give them to the younger people to type into the computer. He would never email, but would insist on calling people by phone and leaving voicemails, and then he would complain about not getting an answer until the younger people in the office sent an email. He would use obsolete paper forms in triplicate, which he had kept stockpiles of, and he would send those forms to accounting and shipping and so forth, and when they called to ask where he had even gotten such an old form, he would say, “I’m sorry, I cannot fool with those computers, with the boxes and do you click, or do you type, and I just – nuh-uh. No way.” Then the younger people in the office would have to resubmit the forms online.
Today, though, this man is easily using a computer along with everyone else, and if his office ever changes up the software, he learns it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
Moral: All us old dogs can quickly acquire new tricks by the bagful if there’s a bad enough recession on.
Accismus 