Working in support staff jobs often means demystifying things that are, well, really quite simple for most people.

What would your approach be to explaining a two-step process to your work team? One guy recently shared how that task proved to be a lot more difficult than he expected.

Here’s what went down on Reddit.

I can’t make the instructions any simpler…

So, I got a ticket through about downloading some software we use and asked me to install it for them.

It’s a PWA (Progressive web app), so they can install it themselves.

It’s made for us.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to navigate.

The time it takes for me to get remoted on, while having a lot of other work, just isn’t worth my time.

So, I try and get the user to do the install themselves, and keep myself free for the other more important stuff I have going on.

I just sent them the link and a screenshot of the webpage and an arrow showing to click the “Install App” icon and then on the install prompt that appears, to click “Install”.

It’s a good idea in theory.

I got a response saying that the instructions were not clear enough…

I want to be crystal clear, this was not confusing in the slightest.

I literally said “Go to [website] and click the install app icon and install” followed by the screenshot.

Still likely not enough for the tech illiterate.

There was no technical jargon, essentially “Go here, and click here, it will look like the screenshot (with arrows on it)”.

It was a two step process.

I had to get a sanity check off someone to check I wasn’t lacking self-awareness of my instructions being too difficult.

They likely weren’t.

They just sighed and said it’s so simple and most, if not all, people should understand it.

I could understand if my screenshot didn’t look like what they saw.

That would be easy to solve.

They told me it wasn’t clear, not that it was wrong or different.

Working in a support role usually means simplifying something down to terms that somehow become complicated again. Let’s see how the Reddit community weighed in.

One person immediately called out the obvious.

Another lamented how common this behavior is.

Some tried to have nuance.

Someone shared their own term for this situation.

Though one person defended the Users.

Digital code will always be a foreign language to some.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.