Help! I'm Tired of Being My Family's Tech Guru

David Eddie hears from a reader tired of always having to deal with his parents' computer problems. But does he have a fair gripe?

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie hears from a reader tired of having to deal with his parents computer problems. The reader writes:

I recently moved back into my parents' home after finishing my undergrad. We all get along – I'm grateful for the food and washing machine, they're happy to have me home, and I'm on track to be back living on my own soon. But one thing has really been grating on me: They constantly need my help with their computers. They are both retired and spend virtually all day at home on their laptops. They just don't have the sense to solve simple computer problems. I feel like it's all we ever talk about. (I've started counting: It's about 16 questions a day now.) I cringe whenever I hear them call my name, expecting the next inane question about a misplaced file, or how to copy and paste. Why does this annoy me so much? I'm usually a helpful, good-natured guy. Is it that I must constantly re-explain IT issues that are so maddeningly obvious to me? And what should I do about this? Am I being spoiled for complaining about helping those who raised me and still let me, a grown adult, live under their roof? I've fantasized about laying down a ban on any computer questions, but all I can see is their perplexed, puppy-dog faces staring from the computer screens to me and back again the next time they’re stumped.

Eddie responds:

I hear this type of complaint a lot – not just with respect to relatives, but also vis-à-vis the techno-peasantry of one’s, let’s say, slightly older colleagues: “Hey, Gen-Y guy, sorry to bother you again, but I’m having another problem with my computer …”

Everyone wants free IT help. I have one friend who constantly has to travel from his apartment to his mother’s home in the suburbs to help her with computer stuff. So it becomes a whole evening: dinner, drinks and a little postprandial IT action.

Me, I lucked out in this department. My father is actually a computer whiz. He was an early adopter. I remember him and my computer-geek brother, Paul, sending something called “e mails” to each other back in the eighties.

(It seemed like a dumb Pet Rock-type fad to me, one that would soon pass – like the craze for using CB radios on family trips. “Dad,” I remember asking him, “if you want to talk to Paul, why don’t you just call him?” Who knew?) My mother, meanwhile, doesn’t even have a cellphone, let alone a computer. “I lived for 70-some years without these devices,” she says.

“Mom, that wasn’t really living,” I answer. But does she listen?

Which brings me to my first piece of advice: Maybe your IT irritation is an opportunity in disguise.

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