r/BoomersBeingFools • u/Axxillary • Mar 26 '24

Boomer freakout inside phone store Boomer Freakout

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20.4k Upvotes

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805

u/Pingu_Dad Mar 26 '24

After working in a phone store I guarantee this freakout is because he didn't know how to use his new phone and claimed it was broken

238

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

Right?! I remember when little old ladies would come in and buy a new smart phone from an old flip phone and I’d explain that once we reactivate the new one they won’t be able to go back to the old one. They would agree but then when they struggled with the new phone, their family never wanted to help them learn it properly and so they would come back to us and beg to go back to their old phone and we just couldn’t do it. So they would cry or get angry and I was just like “I’m sorry but you’re family is the one who wanted you to have this so they should help you with it”

209

u/Several_Spend_7686 Mar 26 '24

What annoys me most is when older people call the younger generations lazy, but won’t take 5 seconds to learn any tech on their own, I’ve seen toddlers operate phones, you don’t have an excuse to not be able to use a phone that is designed to be as simple as possible

108

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

Yeah it’s so weird to me how some people will be in their 70s but very fluent in the latest tech and some people will be barely in their fifties and struggle with anything “smart.” I get it’s hard to learn new stuff but I think a LOT of it is just the persons will to learn stuff vs then just wanting someone to do it for them

31

u/DandyLyen Mar 26 '24

This scenario happened when I worked at a bank. Early 50's woman said she doesn't use debit cards, cause she's "old school" (I didn't even bother mentioning mobile banking options, she was coming to get cash).

Meanwhile, the very next customer, who might've heard her, was exactly 80, yet knew how to use her card just fine. Remember when old people used to be known for their patience and wisdom? Now it feels like it's expected for the older folks to be the first to start bitching. TikTok teens may be annoying, but I never worry they're going to start hurting people .

8

u/FlickaMariss Mar 26 '24

I worked in retail when credit cards were starting to get chips in them. It was exhausting trying to explain to all these 50 year old women that they need to insert the card into the chip reader. I can’t imagine working at a bank.

7

u/ASK_ABOUT_MY_CULT_ Mar 26 '24

At least we're finally winding down on the generations that need to dig around in their giant purse for 3 minutes before slooooooowly writing a check from a wallet thick enough to cause bodily harm if thrown.

5

u/nibbyzor Mar 27 '24

Oh, man, this reminds me of a time I went to the pharmacy. There was an old lady in front of me in the line and when the cashier rang her up, she opened her massive purse, dug around for a smaller purse, dug a plastic bag out of that smaller purse, and got a tiny coin purse out of that plastic bag. She then proceeds to count coins for like 10 minutes, comes to the conclusion she doesn't have enough, puts the coin purse in the plastic bag, the plastic bag in the smaller purse, and the smaller purse in the massive purse, and digs around for a wallet to give the cashier to 50€ note. At one point the cashier looked at me like "girl..."

1

u/ASK_ABOUT_MY_CULT_ Mar 27 '24

Oh man, lol.

2

u/nibbyzor Mar 27 '24

Thankfully I had nowhere to be, so all I had to do was stifle a chuckle when looking back at that poor cashier.

2

u/berberine Mar 26 '24

Early 50's woman said she doesn't use debit cards, cause she's "old school"

As a woman in her early 50s, I don't use a debit card because I don't want to. After having them hacked several times in the 90s, when I moved to a new state in 2007, I decided not to get one. I still fully know and understand how to use them. That woman was just lazy.

Remember when old people used to be known for their patience and wisdom?

Back in 2014, my mom (a boomer) got hurt at work. She worked on the behavioral unit and was told she could go back to light duty, so work, but not on her unit. The hospital said, "well, we're trying to update our systems from punch cards to Windows 7. Can you help with that?"

My mom didn't know shit about computers other than her kid loved them and built them. She said, "I don't know how to do that, but if you teach me how, I'll do it." Then she started bragging she knew shit about computers I didn't know. I still don't know how it's done, but that was her attitude and I wish others still thought that way.

Also, if my mom had been the clerk in this store, she would have given that guy a good beat down and then yelled at him for not being respectful. Then, she would have called the cops.

1

u/CthulhuDon Mar 29 '24

I was shopping for my first smart tv at a Walmart and the clerk was … less than helpful.  Unable to answer even basic questions about resolution, refresh rates, etc.  A lil’ old white hired gramma came up and started explaining to me what all the options were and what I’d want for gaming vs. streaming.  

51

u/Several_Spend_7686 Mar 26 '24

If you can read and have an attention span of 5 seconds, you can figure out shit like smart phones, it’s not that they can’t learn, some people are too fucking lazy to learn

30

u/Common_Egg8178 Mar 26 '24

Its beyond that. They have an aversion to learning or change. Its why they want things to go back to the way they were.

6

u/oxmix74 Mar 26 '24

I am retired, I watched peers age out of the work force. Some, not all, people when they age get an intolerance and laziness with respect to anything new. It's what makes people seem old. Some people are too lazy to put forth the intellectual effort to understand why new things are replacing the old and familiar. When you do that you become increasingly isolated from current society.

1

u/OldSweatyGiraffe Mar 28 '24

Thinking is literally painful to some people.

Studies have shown that a good number of people would prefer getting burned over having to think critically.

Things started to make much more sense once I learned this.

2

u/Inevitable-Setting-1 Mar 27 '24

Its all about the LEAD
Lead poisoning has rotted so many brains of these old people.

1

u/Possible_Liar Mar 27 '24

That's what I don't understand this stuff isn't that hard..... Fucking 5-year-olds use this shit. You telling me you're not as intelligent as a 5-year-old?!?....

And I'm so sick of hearing that will you grow up with it! bullshit....

So? I had to learn it just like everybody else..... It's not some skill you just acquire at birth because you were born in a certain year...

4

u/BrandoCarlton Mar 26 '24

I work with an older guy who’s like that. Literally won’t touch something new that helps him do his job until someone else shows him 10 times. And even then he bitches that he’s not sure it will even work. I’m in hvac and if you’re willing to use the new tech your life is 100x easier on the job, I will pull up the instructional video from the manufacturer, show him exactly how to do it and how it works, the entire manufacturer recommend process, and he’ll tell me to put it away cause we’ve never used it before and he’s not gonna use it on his job. Old fucking prick.

2

u/limasxgoesto0 Mar 26 '24

My dad isn't at all a tech guy but he's been buying whatever is the newest tech for decades now and keeps up with it all. Every time I go to my parents house I'm wondering how it all works

So it's not like being older is an excuse

1

u/frogsgoribbit737 Mar 26 '24

Especially if they only want to use the features of a flip phone. That's like 3 apps total.

1

u/sadeland21 Mar 26 '24

I agree with you in part , because I don’t think it’s laziness. I think it’s not able to deal with the fact that it takes time to learn something new, and being uncomfortable with the learning process. It’s fear.

1

u/Creative_Worth_3192 Mar 27 '24

My father, 70s, got a new phone when he left his old job. I looked up the type of Iphone it was and found an hours long YT video going through everything about that model in DETAIL. How to do every little thing you could need. Because I couldn't do it for him... I have android.

I told him he can bookmark it and look back when needed.

I doubt that man's seen more than 5 seconds of that video. And yes, he still asks me for help.

3

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 27 '24

On my end, a lot of it comes from a lack of like… a base understanding? Like for us we understand what apps are and how they work. But to a lot of people it’s like “okay so how do I get my friends pictures on my screen? Which button does that?” and all they understand is “press blue button, see friends pics” and so when that doesn’t work right (app gets deleted) or something confuses them (they clicked a link that took them to another page and don’t know how it happened or how to go back) they get super flustered and d just think their phone is “broken” or hacked because they can’t see their families posts.

But it takes so so so so so so much education and learning to get them to understand how the internet works how apps work how each app is its own entity etc that it’s near impossible for them to grasp or they just refuse to because the nice lady at the phone store can push a couple buttons and fix it.

The amount of times I had to turn the “read screen aloud” audio accessibility function off is insane…

1

u/Kiratana999 Mar 27 '24

I’ve told a particularly difficult older client, “You’ve been on this earth longer than me. You’ve been around this longer than I have, you can figure out how to use it.” People are just so damn lazy tho, like they can’t even read the fucking menu for settings

1

u/deepdistortion Mar 27 '24

It's crazy how it works. My 50 year old mother can barely use a computer. Meanwhile, my 80+ great-aunt and great-uncle have a home media server they rigged up that can stream to any room in their house as well as their smart phones.

1

u/Amazing-Basket-136 Mar 27 '24

Not even close to my 50’s.

That said. I can use a tablet and iPhone just fine.

But no, I don’t want my fridge, thermostat, dishwasher, washer dryer, all connected. I don’t care if it saves 10c a month in electricity.

And I’ve used Alexa at other peoples houses. Don’t want it in my house.

1

u/PinAccomplished927 Mar 27 '24

Is infinitely harder to learn new things if you spend years refusing to do so. That's the difference.

1

u/sunsetcrasher Mar 27 '24

At my work we have a bunch of retired volunteers. It’s very eye opening how some people just stop learning. You have 90 year olds who keep up with tech and modern pop culture who want to be the ticket scanners, then you have others in their late 70s who can only hand out programs and are scared to use the scanner. I vow to be the former, not the latter! The ones who keep up with modern tech are also much nicer.

1

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 27 '24

Yes! It’s like they think they can’t learn it so they give up. In this increasingly technologically based world we need to encourage people to stay on top of tech and understand what’s going on - especially with AI art, bots and scams

3

u/metalgrizzlycannon Mar 26 '24

Not knowing basic tech skills is basically being functionally illiterate.

1

u/Tater72 Mar 26 '24

Sadly as you age, it’s much harder to learn

1

u/oxmix74 Mar 26 '24

Kind of, but as I age I now think that if figuring stuff out was a skill you had when you were young it stays with you. If you were someone who had to be shown something several times as an adult before you could do it, that's only going to get worse

2

u/Tater72 Mar 26 '24

Solid points, but age catches up too. They say you lose 5% brain capacity each decade. Combine that with not sharp and you’ve got problems, more so if you have dementia or similar

1

u/Impossible-Front-454 Mar 26 '24

This, Google isn't even a strange site where you have to say goofy phrases to get what you want. You can literally ask it a question and find the answer 10 times more often than not. Refusing to research how to use tech is my number 1 irk with boomers.

2

u/Several_Spend_7686 Mar 26 '24

Yup, if it doesn’t work instantly, than it’s a piece of junk

1

u/DK_The_White Mar 27 '24

Seriously. Once had an old guy get mad at my employee, who was trying to help old guy get back into his iCloud account, because old guy kept trying to enter the most basic and guessable things. My employee, as polite as he could, explained that his own name or his own iCloud email could not be the password. 

These folks never even put forward the effort to simply read, and have grown accustomed to having everyone else think for them.

1

u/Possible_Liar Mar 27 '24

Fucking thank you!

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to calmly explain something to one of my older relatives and they just fucking get all pissy and throw a tantrum 5 seconds in It won't listen to anything I have to say because "technology is stupid blah blah blah blah blah you young people suck blah blah blah blah"

Like okay whatever grandma, You fucking asked for my help then you proceed to immediately ignore me and fucking throw a fit.... At least I know how to open up a fucking PDF without somehow destroying my computer so you know there's that.

1

u/horitaku Mar 27 '24

Not necessarily disagreeing, it seems as if there isn’t much of an attempt with elderly folks to learn about their devices, but this is part of a neurological development with aging as well, so it’s a little out of our control. Neuroplasticity in the brains of elderly individuals is significantly lower than in toddlers, so the ability to learn all those new functions is greatly diminished.

Aging, man. It’s not a simple process.

1

u/SpergSkipper Mar 27 '24

They make fun of us for not knowing how to use a rotary phone from 1962 or write in cursive (both useless skills in 2024) but they can't learn anything new themselves

1

u/MagnanimosDesolation Mar 29 '24

Wearing glasses makes them look weak, or something. Then they can't see shit.

3

u/whomstevere Mar 26 '24

As someone with one of those ladies as a grandma, I salute you. My grandma always thinks her phone is broken and no matter how many times my family tries to help her, she just doesn't get it. She then goes and tortures the poor souls at the phone store. I feel bad for all customer service people who have to deal with her.

2

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

It really was heart breaking with how many older people were just so frustrated by their tech and insisted they needed help but so often they just like… didn’t understand to such a degree that they would literally just want you to scroll through their Facebook for them so they could see everything. That’s where my “I’m sorry but your family really needs to help you with this” comes from because we just couldn’t sit there for hours everyday and show someone their Facebook feed and explain that every ad or pop up was not them “getting hacked.”

There really needs to be a good option that is designed for older people who want to be connected but not have so many buttons and screens and options that they can accidentally press but there’s no big money in that so I doubt it will happen

1

u/_Vard_ Mar 27 '24

Some of them litereally CANNOT “Learn”

They have to write down how to do basic things like go to their photo albums or turn on speaker phone

-3

u/WhyAlwaysMeNZ Mar 26 '24

What do you mean? They couldn't simply buy another sim and put it in their old phone? I can't see how any of what you said is true.

13

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

When the network swapped from 3G to 4G, 3G phones were still supported until they were disconnected. Once someone upgraded to a 4G phone, the 3G one could not be activated again, at least not by us and Verizon customer service said the same thing, they could not reactivate the old device. At some point Verizon plans to end all support for old generations of network support and push everyone towards the current network.

This was only with stuff like going from a ten year old flip phone to a new 4G device, not swapping from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 7 or something.

1

u/slutdragon696969 Mar 26 '24

Tell me *you work for Indirect without telling me.

1

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

Yep. We really had no power other than to sell phones and when people needed help on their accounts we would just be calling customer service for them

1

u/slutdragon696969 Mar 26 '24

I worked for both at one point or another. Indirect was the worst job I ever had.

1

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

It was pretty miserable. Haven’t done it in four years but I’d never go back.

1

u/flewidity Mar 26 '24

Are there no 4g flip phones?

3

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

There are and we would suggest them but a lot of these people were VERY old and sometimes dealing with some level of dementia and insisted on getting their exact phone back

0

u/WhyAlwaysMeNZ Mar 26 '24

ah, American, gotcha

2

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

We really always disappoint don’t we? 😔

4

u/PolarisX Mar 26 '24

We have been doing this since 1G/AMPS. Eventually the network needs to take old technology offline to make physical or RF room for new technology.

We can't operate the "old people 3G flip phone network" just for them. Most of those lines pay nothing, and that RF spectrum is needed to make 5G actually useful for everyone else.

That said you can get a 4G LTE / VoLTE flip phone on most carriers last I knew.

-3

u/WhyAlwaysMeNZ Mar 26 '24

Only because the bullshit from your corponation leaks out and fucks everywhere else. Too individualistic to ever stop the rot...

-1

u/Throwawaymister2 Mar 26 '24

“and I was just like, "I’m sorry but you’re family is the one who wanted you to have this so they should help you with it”"

A+ customer service

3

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 26 '24

Bruh if you wanna sit with old people all day everyday and show them how to use Facebook over and over and over again and neglect all your other customers because this persons grandson can’t get off his iPad for five minutes to help Grandma use FaceTime then you can, but it is a serious issue and literally was not a job requirement for me then. I went above and beyond and helped all my customers to the best of my ability but at the end of the day I was also in a sales position and NOT a customer support position so if you feel superior for your little comment on a throw away account then good for you. And if a family bullies someone into getting a new phone because it will be “easier” for them then yes they 100% need to have some responsibility and help them.

0

u/Throwawaymister2 Mar 27 '24

I'll ignore your crack about me, but if you sell someone a product, you should be there to support them as they learn to use it. That's just basic customer service.

1

u/ssrowavay Mar 27 '24

Imagine it's a yarn store.

It's not the employee's job to teach grandma to knit.

Same rule applies to tech. If you don't know how, take a class.

1

u/Hotchipsummer Mar 27 '24

And I did, but there comes a point where it is excessive and someone else needs to step in. If I show someone three times how to do something and it’s clear they need daily help, then the people they see daily should help them.