I wish I never told anyone I worked or studied tech. Especially older family and friends, because their requests for help are relentless.
A lot of friends are chill with it, and I don’t mind doing a little bit of help, but sometimes people are who are OFFENDED when you don’t want to help. In the same way a contractor friend won’t remodel your home for free, I am not going to fix every single issue you have with your computer for free. I’m happy to give advice, but i’m not going to work for hours without pay to fix everything.
Go to the Linux Mint or Opensuse website. Download and flash to USB drive. Install. Install. Install. It will save you time in the long run. I hate people asking me Windows questions.
Quadruple the amount of questions you get with this one weird trick! With great questions like “Is this not Windows? I asked if you could set me up an ad blocker, what the fuck did you do to my computer? If you were upset with me asking, why not communicate boundaries instead of vandalizing my belongings?”
You take the time to show them where the browser is. Where the word processor is. Where the spreadsheet app is and you’ve covered 95% their average daily use.
Not the oc but when I ditched windows lots of years ago I dropped the free tier for its support too. I’ve had no major troubles with anyone that accepted my offer to switch to Linux, it’s more effort upfront to teach them a few things but after the initial phase of getting used to it and setting everything to their needs and taste they’re roll mostly on their own.
This is part of the reason why my parents got my grandfather and iPhone. It was getting harder and harder to find feature phones (flip phones) and this way they have the same phone as him so when he’s having trouble describing something they can see the same thing on their phone.
Sounds like you are too blunt. Never tell them no. Listen to their problem and just reply with a ‘Id have to look into that’, or an ‘I can come over when I get a chance’. If they persist, have a couple projects they can help you out with and tell them 'sorry Id love to help, but Im (going to the dump / painting the kitchen / gotta do seasonal yard work / etc). If they offer to help you, then you are kinda on the hook to help them. If they dont follow through… you can subtly bring it up (still gotta move that couch). You dont have to be a dick about it. It can be fun messing with folks.
Honestly I’m tech support for some people, but I need help with some of the more advanced stuff, so I have a tech guy too.
If you really want someone to stop bothering you, botch the job.
Or just make yourself out to be utterly incompetent; let them think you’re bad at your job/hobby.
“What happens when you google it? If that doesn’t help I don’t know what else to try, sorry /shrug”
“Ask ChatGPT.”
I’m a professional photographer which is sort of tech adjacent to people that don’t know much about tech so I get this too which is funny because my brothers career is based around helping people with their tech problems and they think I know just as much as he does because we both “work with computers”
My family have always been cool about it and willing to work around my schedule when they needed something. Usually they return the favor with some cash or baked goods even though I’ve never asked for payment.
I’d say it’s a pretty general phenomenon. Expertise and entitled consumption of it as a service. Even in a professional setting, with a service/support dynamic, it can be abused through entitlement pretty often.
Moving to another country helped to remedy this. I highly recommend it. It still won’t stop your hopeless mother-in-law from constantly dropping hints that she’s having technical problems on PC or Android whenever you’re around, just to find out 100% of the time that it’s always something beyond your ability to help (ie: the Girl Guides website is absolute cancer, her printer software appears to be the womb from which all malware is produced, or she requires administrative support on six different levels after somehow locking herself out of her account, her business email on outlook, her personal email, her recovery email, and some weird matrix of temporary guiding logins/passwords that she swears were properly written down (or are an old printed email containing a long, convoluted link that has long since expired), and you’re honestly just impressed that a person could get themselves this deep in a hole).
Let me fix the order for future tech folks:
after somehow locking herself out of her account, her business email on outlook, her personal email, her recovery email, and some weird matrix of temporary guiding logins/passwords that she swears were properly written down
constantly dropping hints that she’s having technical problems on PC or Android whenever you’re around
Moving to another country helped to remedy this.
Set boundaries early lol
Physical therapy - i tell everyone to put ice in it and take Aleve for 3 days if it doesn’t interfere with your meds.
I have a friend that’s a doc. We’re not supposed to tell people because they will to spend all night talking to her about their medical problems.
It’s the same with plumbers, accountants, garage door repairers, mechanics, nurses, … everyone.
We all think, “why does everyone want my help for free?” but we’ve all asked someone with a skill for advice.
My father in law was a proctologist - and also a man I didn’t really enjoy spending any time with. One day during one of those strained compulsory family dinners - not sure which, maybe Thanksgiving - he turned to me and said with this false jovial air:
“Hey, you’re a computer guy. I have this problem with my Windows laptop. Could you take a look?” and proceeded to unpack his laptop, which he had brought along, clearly to have me fix it.
So I got up, started undoing my fly and said “Sure! Hey, I have piles. Could you take a look?”
He got up and left without a word, and never came back. His wife kept visiting though, thankfully. She was lovely. But I got rid of him for good that day. But I did have to face the music with my wife 🙂
I just saw your comment on lemmy shitpost
Hey, you’re an ass man. I have this problem with my bum. Could you take a look?
A lot of people struggle to internalise how capitalism works, because it’s unnatural. In a natural communist society, you ask your friends and family for help with the things they’re good at, and they help you. But under capitalism, you need to sell your limited time and energy for money in order to survive, so you can’t afford to help your friends and family for free. This is confusing to many people, because their instincts are telling them to act like communists, the way human beings are supposed to.
You can solve this problem by joining the communist revolution and restoring our economy to its natural state.
I dont really get what this has to do with capitalism. They could also reciprocate in a capitalist society but don’t? They don’t need communism to bake some cookies or serve a meal. Just anything to make it worth my time
You’re describing a gift economy, where people give labour and resources away for free. People are stuck between their instincts, which say to behave as if they’re in a gift economy, and their environment, which says to hoard resources for survival. Many people resolve the conflict between these competing systems by acting both cheap AND entitled. In a communist society, people would still be entitled, but they wouldn’t bother hoarding their cookies, because their job wouldn’t demand all the cookie baking time. So they’d act the way you describe.
Just goes with the territory
You can go the nuclear option. My mother used to complain constantly that her computer was slow, and could I take a look at it. This developed into a fortnightly ritual where I would remove the Internet Explorer toolbars she’d added that took up a full third of her laptop’s screen, then run an antivirus scan for 5 hours or so to remove the malware she kept re-installing. Eventually, I got tired of it and told her I would either install something she couldn’t mess up as easily, or she could fix her own problems going forward. She agreed to trying something new, and her laptop got a nice Linux Mint install. I guess she really loved her malware, as she soon lost interest in the laptop, despite offers to show her how to do what she wanted to, which really weren’t more elaborate than opening Firefox and going to her email, facebook, etc, but I guess a new desktop icon and no toolbars was a bridge too far for her.
When the laptop is configured as a Perpetual Engagement Machine, is it any wonder that stripping off all the flashy “CLICK ME! CLICK ME!” buttons causes your mom to lose interest in it?
Feels like you took all the bells and flashing lights off her slot machine. Why even pull the lever if its not going to overwhelm your senses with engagement?
I set my dad up with Ubuntu some years ago. He wasn’t the worst windows user, but he had some troubles.
Now he’s a big Linux fan. Updates his OS himself sometimes. He’s not extremely savvy, but he gets by enough.
Yeah, my parents don’t seem to understand that this is actually work. To them, I’m just sitting there, having a bit of a chat with them. I now work in the field and they have become somewhat more sympathetic after I told them that this is basically another workday for me, when they call me to come on a Saturday or Sunday. Like, yeah, I will get around to it, but I am often exhausted from work, which does make it a pretty big ask for me to continue working on the weekend.
“Oh, I wish I could help, but I don’t know anything about that. That’s not my area of expertise.”
Get good at variations of that theme or you will be miserable. That or start a side business where you charge for your services.
Honestly ive helped so much ive been completely cemented in everyone’s mind as a generalist. I worked IT at a computer shop, even doing logic board level rework, fixing iPad and iPhone screens, cameras and ports, I woodwork so I can fix, put together and install most furniture kits, and make some original stuff, with that you become generally handy so ive done basic electrical and appliance repair (fixed the dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and some smaller things) and even some light plumbing when fixing toilets and sinks and leaks.
“Good workers are rewarded with more work” right?😭
And as long as you keep sharing that information with your friends and family, they’re going to keep expecting free help. You need to get used to saying “I don’t know”, even when you do.
It stopped when I started asking for 50€ per hour. It was 20 years ago.
I was always really fortunate in that my family didn’t bother me too much with tech support requests - mostly because I didn’t really get into a technical career when I lived near them.
However, I did have the misfortune of becoming ‘the photographer.’ I always really loved photography, and when I could, I bought one of the first model DSLR’s. I shot mostly for myself. I’d sometimes do paid work, but generally, I just liked wandering around and getting pictures of things I thought were interesting. For about a 5-10 year period, I was just expected to be the photographer for every life event for everyone in my immediate family, and I found it really dehumanizing.
I was not Monument the friend, the brother, the son, the uncle, or whatever, but ‘the camera.’ I could not enjoy the experience of being at events, or even of taking pictures for myself unless I ‘forgot’ my camera at home, or flat out refused to take pictures for other people. I’ve had strangers interrupt me while shooting to take their picture - both with their camera (tourists, mostly) or with my own camera.
When my camera fell behind in technology, I more or less shelved it in favor of crappy cell phone pictures for documenting things, but I still sort of have bittersweet feelings about using a DSLR to make art. I feel like the expectation sort of ruined the joy of shooting for me.
