Older generations often have a hard time adopting new technologies, which is completely understandable.

When they give others a hard time for using them, however, it can be pretty annoying.

That is what happened in this story, where a father almost ruined a trip by disparaging GPS technology…Until his son turned it off.

Take a look at how this plays out.

No maps? I can do that.

So my father and I have had a stilted relationship for a long while, but in recent years he has been trying to extend an olive branch and I’ve been trying to accept.

This is confounded by the fact that, presented with any difficulty, he reverts to the bullheadedness that was a large part of breaking our relationship in the past.

Normally we take a small vacation once a year or two, just as father and son, to some mutual interest place.

Typically I do my level best to be driving for at least one leg of the trip, as otherwise I would have to sit through two legs driving barely at the speed limit.

Going without a smartphone until 2020 isn’t really something to take pride in.

Now, a quick aside that’s very relevant. My father has always been very proud of being technology adverse and slow to adopt new technology, to the point where he exulted over having a smartphone with GPS…in 2020.

He preferred and prefers a more hands-on way of doing things, such as consulting a physical map to see which roadways are needed to be taken in order to get to a destination.

That was fine growing up, but in the modern era that thinking is just time-wasting, in my opinion and experience.

Yes, if you’re in an area with no coverage you’re shit out of luck, but offline maps exists for a reason.

I digress.

Come on Dad, just because people like using modern conveniences doesn’t mean they can’t function without them.

On our most recent trip, my father was lamenting to me about how the youth of today can’t function without our devices in our hands, and how he misses being able to take a trip out into the wild (wild roads that is, no one in our family has ever been a fan of camping), with merely his sense of direction and general sense of roads being his guide.

He bemoaned how I barely even pay attention to street signs, relying almost entirely upon Maps telling me when to turn, and that we’re all living far too fancily, or something.

Now normally, I just tune out his extended rants on the decline of society and the sloth of the youth of today, but this trip I was feeling rather malicious, as he had previously brought up some of his annoying acts that had initially soured our relationship.

Hey, he hates technology, so I’m sure Dad will be happy with this…right?

So as I made it downtown near where I work and where I know 100% of the streets, I leaned over and switched off the GPS, and calmly drove over the river into the next county.

Cue an absolutely mental breakdown from father dearest, who demanded to know why I had done that, and a generally sad wailing on how we were now utterly lost and how would we make it back to society (I am slightly exaggerating here since this was a couple years ago and I don’t exactly remember what he said).

I turned to him, with the widest grin I could muster, and asked in the sweetest, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth voice, “I thought you didn’t like using the GPS?”

He only likes complaining about technology, not actually dismissing it.

Quite unfortunately, he didn’t get the hint (or was panicking too hard to) and just stridently demanded that I turn the GPS back on.

Unfortunately, deprived of Maps as I was, I had to guess where a U-turn would be, and after a couple false starts I found a nice place to flip back…five miles from the river.

As stated before, downtown is my wheelhouse, so once we made it back I just calmly dropped him off at his hotel, no harm done!

I don’t really have a satisfying ending, but hopefully I don’t get any more rants on the uselessness of GPS!

I sure hope that Dad learned from this experience and will be more accepting of technology (and those who use it) in the future.

Let’s see what other people on Reddit thought of this story of simple malicious compliance.

Glad to see that not everyone from that generation hates GPS.

I absolutely love that modern GPS can track traffic and route you around it!

Weird how the technology present when they were young is the only good technology.

This is actually a good practice, I’ll have to buy one for my vehicles.

GPS technology has come a long way, but it still isn’t perfect.

Keep up with the times, Dad.

Maybe one day he’ll be able to admit he wants to.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.