Pushing Buttons

Yet another tech support session with his mother almost tips Olly Mann's patience levels over the edge

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Forgive me if I’m a little tense, but I’ve just got off the phone with my mother. An unscheduled hour. Mum had apparently spent the morning drafting emails on her iPhone, only to find them clogging up her outbox folder, because, as it turns out, she recently reset, and then promptly forgot, her Gmail password. So, she dialed up her friendly neighbourhood tech support: moi.

Is there anything worse in the world than providing a parent with computer lessons? Actually, yes: providing a parent with computer lessons when you are not even there. When you are, essentially, working blind. So, when they scream, "it’s asking me for a password!" you have to calmly deduce what the "it" is, from a hundred different variables: perhaps the settings app on their phone, perhaps a pop-up window, perhaps a website login, or a fraudulent text message.

"Call me on FaceTime, so I can see your screen?", I pleaded.

"How can you possibly look at my iPad screen, whilst I’m using it to video call you?!", she shouted back. Answering this would have taken another ten minutes, so on we soldiered, in audio form. I cracked open a bottle of wine.