Technology vent

I genuinely don’t understand.

I know not everyone is a digital native. I know som people adapt more slowly than others to technology…

…but how is picking an option from a dropdown menu so difficult for multiple people???

Context: I was given a task at work to consolidate multiple contact lists. The solution I came up with was a master list living in a shared location. It has a drop-down menu in the top left corner, and you can sort the list by the roles of the people on it.

Cool, right?

OMG this thing has been such a pain. It’s annoying enough that everyone seems to have the wherewithal to filter the list (even though they don’t have to) but no one seems to understand how to un-filter it (or that data hasn’t been deleted just because they can’t see it).

But somehow… somehow…

There are a couple users who don’t understand a drop-down menu. I don’t even know if it’s that… they know how to pick one option from the list but not another..?

The menu has an option to pick a specific role or to pick everyone related to that role. For instance, you could select “IT supervisors” or “All IT Contacts” (which includes the IT supervisors… hence the word “all”).

A colleague came to me today complaining about a task involving the list. She said the problem was that leadership wanted her to contact just the IT supervisors, but all the IT contacts. I tried to explain that the list allowed for that, but she insisted she had to go through contacts, one by one, copying and pasting the IT ones who weren’t supervisors.

When I showed her that “All IT Contacts” was an option on the list (directly below the one she had clicked on), she acted like this was some crazy confidential information that had been withheld from her.

And she’s not the only one who seems completely oblivious to the fact that the grouping of contacts they’re looking for takes two clicks to find.

Like… how? How is seeing an option on a menu some advanced skill?? I feel like most of my job is just explaining super basic shit to people repeatedly.

…thanks for letting me vent.