Working on a helpdesk, most days are like any other.

Similar customers, similar queries, similar outcomes.

But somedays things take a turn.

And that was the case for the helpdesk employee in this story who, when helping a professor with her computer, got a request they’d never forget.

Read on to find out what happened.

Got a question that actually stunned me

In the summer semester I was working at the Help Desk in a university library. I was the unofficial team lead, so I was fielding most tickets since tickets were slow.

I had a professor come up to the desk telling me her laptop wouldn’t upgrade to Windows 11 and the battery kept losing charge.

Quick test shows that yes indeed, the battery was borked, so I replaced it with one of the multitude I had salvaged from broken PCs the university just throws out.

But this story isn’t about my boundless private junkyard. It’s about this professor.

Let’s see what the problem was here.

I addressed why her computer wouldn’t upgrade to Windows 11 – it was because her hard drive was nearly full.

226 GB out of a 256GB SSD. Not enough space to upgrade. Easy fix? No.

I asked her if she uses her OneDrive and she told me no.

I told her it’s quite easy and secure, and since the university pays for 5TB per professor, she’d never have to worry about running out of space.

Read on to find out how she responded.

Her response? “Oh I don’t use that. Everyone can see it. See? This means I am on the Internet and everyone can see what’s on my computer” she says, pointing to the C: drive icon in File Explorer.

I collected myself and explained that this is not the case. I convinced her that we can use OneDrive as a backup while I replaced her hard drive, since the university has no means of cloning drives.

I started to walk her through the procedure, unaware of the verbal missile speeding towards me that will forever hurt my brain to think of.

Me: “Okay, first click on your documents folder.”

Her: “What’s click?”

Yikes! Let’s see how the helpdesk employee responded to that!

This just didn’t derail my train of thought, it sent it into orbit.

This kicked off an hour-long session of me explaining what clicking is, that a hard drive with partitions is like a pie chart, that people can’t see what her computer has on it without her password, that she has to double click on desktop icons, what double clicking is, and that when windows says Hi on her screen during a first login, it’s not a Microsoft rep trying to talk to her.

I resolved her issues, installed the new drive, put all her old data back, and she happily went on her way. At least her reception was positive and she wrote my director a glowing thank you note about me.

But “What’s click?” will now and forever be my bar of questions that makes the record scratch go off in my brain.

It’s both horrifying and wholesome that even in the mid 2020s, some people – intelligent people – still don’t know the basics of computing.

Even those who use it everyday to do their jobs.

It’s no wonder this helpdesk employee was shocked!

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person felt the helpdesk employee’s pain.

While others had warning stories about not backing up files.

Meanwhile, this Redditor had witnessed a similar, more literal experience.

It’s important not to patronise or make fun of those who simply know less than us about something.

Rather, it’s a nice opportunity to help them learn.

But the fact that this helpdesk employee was having to explain such basics to a professor is astounding.

Regardless, they did a great job.

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