Tell them to go away for 5 minutes. Change the background colour or something. They will usually say "that's fixed it!"
I really don't think I'm getting across the level my main customer base operates at.
I'm not exaggerating for affect when I say I have customers who will, if they leave work on Friday and for instance the... Chrome Icon is above the Outlook Icon on their desktop but come into work Monday and for some reason the Outlook Icon is above the Chrome Icon they will literally stop and refuse to work until someone comes by and moves the icons back to their original spot. Any attempt to move information into their brains will be meet with a stubborn, oddly proud, and completely unflappable "Oh I'm not a computer person."
And the thing is... some of these people actually perform complicated tasks during the course of their jobs but they don't "know" how to do them in the literal sense. What they know is route memorization of tasks. They are pigeons trained to peck this button, then this button, then this button with zero concept of what makes what happen. They have zero actual computer skills and were in general never "trained" in any real sense of the term but just shadowed some now long gone person and watched them do it until they memorized the steps they were taking but with zero understanding of what is actually happening. It's all Cargo Cult Computing. All they know is what motions to go through, there's zero conceptual understanding of anything.
I used the metaphor earlier if I taught someone how to drive only by showing them the exact, step by step functions to perform on their car to drive to work but never telling them that the one peddle makes the car go forward and the other one makes the car stop and the wheel makes it turn. They know when they get to the end of the road they have to turn the wheel left and the car turns left onto the other road, but they don't know that turning the wheel is what makes the car turn left so if they ever have to turn left in any other context or situation they have zero idea what to do.
9 times out 10 they can't even verbalize "The Chrome Icon and the Outlook Icon aren't in the same spot." At least once a week minimum (much, much more if we've done an upgrade or anything that changes how stuff "looks" over the weekend) I have the following trouble call, almost verbatim.
"My screen looks different."
"Okay what's different about it?"
"I don't know it just looks different. I had everything the way I wanted it on Friday and now it looks different."
"What's different about it?"
"Things aren't in the same place."
"Where did what go? What has changed?"
"I don't know I just know it looks different? Can you get it back to the way it was?"
Which literally ends with me just moving icons around on their desktop randomly until I by pure chance get it back to the "way it was" in their heads. I then have to sit and watch them as they open every program, folder, file, and icon to "make sure they all work."
Change their background color? That would send a full 1/4th of my user base into full on existential crisis, I'd practically be pulling them out of Plato's Cave.
