User Error
User Error
Did you ever have a love hate relationship? I had a friend once who I couldn’t get out of my head. Then he turned into a brief boyfriend who I also couldn’t get out of my head. I would think of him all the time. Then the boyfriend relationship ended and as much as I hated him for the type of person he turned out to be I still couldn’t get him out of my mind because I loved him so much. I couldn’t understand it - this love/hate thing. How can you love and hate someone so much at the same time. This was when I had that aha moment about how close love is to hate.
There is a new love/hate relationship in my life now…
This relationship has always been very fragile. He doesn’t always like me and unless he’s acting flawless, I don’t like him. I know this doesn’t sound fair. Still, we have agreed to be together although I feel like I work really hard at nurturing this relationship and he doesn’t do his fair share. I’m always the one that needs to start the interaction and he’s the one that usually ends the interaction, many times when I’m not ready. Our communication skills suck.
I don’t fight him. I embrace him. I don’t call him names or hit him or throw him across the room (although I have been tempted). I’m not abusive. I try to be kind. I treat him gently, I whisper sweet compliments. I don’t even feel hostile toward him until he turns on me which actually happens more than I care to admit. And still I am almost always the one who gets blamed when something goes wrong.
“User error” they say.
My computer and I have had this strained love/hate relationship for over 25 years. From the time computers first came out where they were as big as a desk and you had to go through your phone line to get internet I have been aware of a peculiar invisible shield that I possess that interferes with the communication between me and any sort of technology.
Many many things have gone wrong while I was working with technology over the years. When I tried to explain to my sons or husband - “User error” they would say never quite taking my issues seriously. One day I opened my computer at work and started putting in the schedule for the next day. It’s about a 5 step process for each patient and at the end you have a lovely schedule of all the patients, what procedures they are having with what physician at what time, all neatly in a row. It takes about a half hour, if you’re lucky. I completed the entries and hit the enter button to print out the schedule but what I got was a schedule of the same patient over and over again even though I had put in 16 different patients. When I called my IT guy he said “Hmmm, you must have put it in wrong. User error.” Now I had been putting these schedules in every day for the previous seven years so I KNOW it wasn’t user error.
Another time I opened my computer and everything was upside down. Looked through all my settings, other people looked through all my settings, even the IT guy looked through all my settings but no one could figure out how or why this had happened or how to fix it. “User error” my IT guy said. I reviewed my day in my head - had I said something wrong to my computer? Did he find out I was working on other computers besides him? Was he jealous? Was he angry because I came in late that morning? We just shut it down and the next day the computer was in a better mood and everything was right side up again.
As my frustration continued to grow over these issues no one could understand or fix I continued hearing from my husband and my boys “Mom, it’s got to be user error. There’s nothing else it could be.” Then one day I was sitting next to my husband in his office. I was trying to show him something on my computer when it just went wacky. I turned to my husband and said “Did you just see that.” He said “Yeah, wow, that was weird.” From then on he was a believer.
I currently have an app that opens up every time I open my computer. I have gone to my settings and told it not to do that. But it continues to open. I had one of my sons go to my settings and tell it not to do that. It actually stopped for the time he was with me. Then, as soon as he left it started opening again. When I asked my son about it he said “I don’t know Mom. I just don’t know.” At least he’s not telling me it’s user error anymore.
I have similar problems with TV remotes (I mean really, how many remotes does one TV need?), cell phones, printers and my Peloton bike but my computer is the one that really gets under my skin. I named my newest computer just in case it was feeling unloved and I occasionally sing to him just like you’re supposed to sing to your plants. But no, it’s never enough. He remains belligerent toward me.
But as I said in the beginning it’s a love/hate relationship. My computer brings me my mail every day without fail, he answers any questions I throw at him, reserves tickets for me, finds hotels for me. He remembers and plays my favorite music, reminisces with me with photos from the past. We go to movies together and he holds my stories close to his heart. How can you NOT love all that?
I have come to terms with the fact that I will never get along with computers. We have reached a truce, tenuous as it is. My new laptop has agreed to cooperate as long as I don’t ask him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. I have to open him slowly and wake him up gradually or else he’s in a bad mood and that does not bode well for me. I treat him gently, whisper sweet nothings and don’t tap his keys too hard. And as long as he doesn’t proclaim “User Error”, the relationship has hope.