- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
I used to work at an office where all of our documents were kept electronically. A few of my coworkers couldn’t figure out how to open any file type except pdf, so whenever I added documents to the system, I’d convert anything else and add a pdf copy for them.
Another group of coworkers was infuriated by this, because they believed I was spending hours every day scanning a ton of paper documents unnecessarily, because I guess they didn’t know any other way to create a pdf?
I ended up being called into a meeting with my manager to justify why I was wasting so much time scanning documents. I explained that I wasn’t scanning anything, I was just opening files that we received in an electronic format and clicking “export to pdf”.
He was blamed me for none of the people who complained knowing how to do this. We were all administrative staff.
Everyone here is bashing in op, but when you have to help the 50eth person who clearly doesn’t even understand the fundamentals of their job, with editing a word file even tho you already sent them the tutorial, it just gets to you. But I guess I did sign up for first level support.
Look, careers aren’t about doing your job well, they’re about being likeable whether or not you’re competent. If people like you you’ll get paid more even if you can’t figure out how to export a word document.
I agree wholeheartedly, OP doesn’t deserve the bashing, meme is dead on. My daily experience.
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I hate techs that think like this. Shit i can’t do a doctor’s job, I can’t do an architects job. I don’t expect them to do mine. In fact I want then to pay me all to do my job because they can’t do it.
Fuck you. Do you job better then them and be worthy of your money
If saving a PDF is part of your job, then it’s not IT’s job.
Uh… the whole point of the meme is that you are being paid less than someone who knows less and does less than you.
Exactly!
Stupid brain surgeons, don’t know how to save to pdf, I should make more money than them!
If you are a surgeon but, in the year 2026, haven’t learned ‘File>Save As…’ or ‘click the little disk icon’ I doubt your competence to have learned anything else. Saving a file requires far less education and adaptability. I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery.
“What’s a disk?” – Recently graduated surgeon
“The save icon. The same icon that’s used in every damned piece of software you used in the hopefully better part of two decades of education you got before they slapped a scalpel in your hand. If you can’t recognise it, you probably used chatGPT to fake your way through school and shouldn’t be a surgeon.” - patients of the world
Exhibit A
I don’t think I could trust a brain surgeon who can’t save to pdf in this day and age.
Yeah, I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery…
Ben Carson comes to mind. Right wing freak who was formerly the director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.
my dude, try having to do a job for someone who makes more that year than you will your entire life, and see them struggle with any simple task.
it doesn’t matter the task. you will shit your gasket at the fact they will make more that year than you will your entire life, and you will not get a tip regardless. it will piss your nugget twice the flip fuck off.
No… I’d rather go chill at the ymca
They don’t make that kind of money by being smart. They make it by screwing over everyone else for profit.
Dean at my college makes 4x my salary, he thinks I personally invented “VPN” to confuse him and make his life difficult
Followed by listening to them complain about how they are struggling with money because of how much their cars are costing them. Meanwhile I can’t even afford to learn to drive and had to walk or cycle to work in the pissing rain again.
Listening to the personal financial issues of people much wealthier than you is just the worst. I hate how this can distance me from some of my friends even.
Now combine this ordeal with getting them to properly sign the damn thing.
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Not to mention that damn AC vent blowing right on ya
depends
are they trying to export a PDF from Microsoft Word? because Microsoft makes that difficult nowadays
Isn’t it just alt,f,e,a?
Control-s save as>pdf is how I do but I’m not professional I’m teen
Still seeing classmates open chrome, search “google” in the search bar, click the link, just to end where they started is infuriating as fuck
It’s really not… There are several pretty straightforward ways to do it and they’re all pretty old standards. Save as > select PDF as the file type. Or if you have Adobe Reader/Acrobat installed, word has a button right under save as that says Save As Adobe PDF. Or you can print to PDF using the Adobe print function in the printers. Lastly windows has a built in PDF printer by default. All of these work pretty damn reliably. If you can’t save a PDF from a word doc, it’s either your computer or you.
You’re showing your privilege lol
When you save an office file to PDF and you are in a OneDrive environment, it doesn’t save it locally - it saves it to the cloud, and then downloads it locally. it’s fucked up
I’m not going to fault people for having trouble when the “save this file as PDF” option doesnt result in a PDF immediately in the save directory
Interesting considering I can save as a PDF while offline
if I remember next week, I’ll try to save one while offline and see what happens
I can tell you that if I use “save as PDF” while online with onedrive not running (whether because I shut it down or because it crashed and didn’t restart itself), the pdf will not show up locally for me
Apparently work computers are fucked up beyond comprehension
God those must be NASTY to use
Can’t you just print and choose “print to pdf” as your “printer”?
Apparently then it is bad for formatting and reading apps for the visual impaired can not pick up sections when they have been pre assigned (but I didn’t test just saw a real, need confirmation)
you can still do that
it’s buggier than it used to be, though
Yup, super difficult. Its not the default, so no one can find it.
No word of a lie, I worked in a place where HR would print the company credit card statements, load the printed sheets back into the printer scanner, and email them to each employee individually from the copier.
I’ve heard of something like that happening because they weren’t allowed to download pdfs from emails, but they were allow to directly send them to the printer.
Lamo. That sounds so much more difficult than just…… emailing the statements off the bat. I’m impressed!
I had a user come to me with a PDF issue my app was generating. They kept getting the document in landscape, and wanted it on portrait. They were the only user with this issue, and it stumped me. I checked the underlying code, and everything was set to portrait mode, except the last page, which contained a sketch and was set to landscape mode.
I asked him to show me exactly what he did when he made the PDF. Instead of just downloading the provided PDF, he had his system set to open it on Adobe Reader. He would then use a PDF printer (Microsoft, or cutePDF) to save the doc. His printer was set to landscape.
We just got a new employee at work. She is in her 60s and 100% computer illiterate. I had to give her training on how to use a mouse and how to click on bookmarks to open our shared sheets. She somehow deleted everything on one sheet the first day, but shes getting better. She doesn’t own any computers and her phone is some no name model from 12 years ago. Im kinda impressed shes made it this far.
She actually sounds like a treasure. Guide her well, and learn from her what you can.
I need to start faking computer illiteracy or at least downplaying my level of literacy. Employers notice how quickly I get computer-related tasks done, but then they expect that as my norm while my coworkers are struggling to use any device without a touch screen.
The last new hire I trained was in his mid-twenties and lacked basic tech literacy outside of the iPhone. I asked him to write up a quick protocol using a template I sent him. He typed the text of the Outlook file preview into notepad and went from there. I was baffled.
Disgusting. At least use vim!
Idk if windows (dad won’t let me swap :( noooooo) supports it plus I can’t learn to do stuff when tired
Heard people need tutorials to close vim nah I’ll stay with n++
You can install nano for powershell
Right? Any sane e-mail client allows you to directly open edits in your favorite text editor.
Just going for it and fucking up over and over really is the best way to learn how to use computers… I was lucky enough to go through that as a kid/teen so the consequences were pretty meaningless.
I had such a double take reading your username
I assume 1984 reference or is this a word used elsewhere I happened to learn from the book?
That’s the youngest I’ve heard of someone like that. My grandpa was like that and in his 90s and I still thought he should get a computer for at least banking and stuff.
She must have been in her mid 40’s when the iPhone came out, that’s young enough to be interested and learn about the tech. She must have just actively ignored it or refused out of principle or something.
In her 40s? Just how old do you think the iPhone is?
Oh wait, oh no,

Yeah, sorry time has passed. Would be cool if it didn’t sometimes
Age really isn’t an excuse. My mom was in her 70s teaching her school district’s apple tech how to use apple products. And this was like 2018.
Upbringing is the larger factor. Access to computers and technology at a younger age.












