The dreaded Right-click

[pcshark]

OK, this happened to me a couple of years ago when I was working in the MIS department of a large sprawling company which dealt in IBM Midrange and Mainframe systems. We had some top notch AS/400 and RS/6000 people who could spin your head with their knowledge, but who also unfortunatly knew very little about the wierd mysterious world of the PC. Consequently, some of the calls I got were pretty "out there."
One call in particular I will never forget. I don't remember what the problem was, only the whole situation, which was particularly funny.
A woman in our marketing department (who should have known better anyway!) called me and told me that she was having a problem with her network. I asked her if she could see her networked drives, and she said she didn't know. So I asked her to open Windows Explorer. A short pause later, she said it was already open. I asked her what drive letters appeared, and she said NONE. I asked again, saying there should at least be an A: and a C:. She said that those were not visible at all, and that all she could see was the little icon in the top right corner which looked like an "e" that turned into the earth and back again. I asked her if she had Internet Explorer open, and she said "Yes, that's it." So I asked her if she was having a problem with her network or the Internet, and she said "Both." Ok, I said, close Internet Explorer and open Windows Explorer. She said she didn't know how to do that, so I said "Click Start, then Programs, then Windows Explorer." She told me that she had deleted a bunch of icons, maybe that was one of them, she didn't see it. No problem, I said, do you still have the icon that says My Computer? She said yes, and she was looking right at it. Good, I said, put the cursor on the icon and right-click it. I even heard the click, and she said OK. Now, I said, from the menu that pops up, click Explore. There was a pause. Then she said, "What menu?" I said, when you right click the Icon that says My Computer, does a menu pop up? Again I heard the click and then she said "No." Now I was confused, thinking, what kind of problems is she having? So I asked her to reboot her computer, thinking maybe something was kinked up in her session.
After she rebooted, I asked her to right-click on the icon again. Again I heard the click, and again, she said that nothing had happened. Now I figured I'd better go over and see what's going on. So I took a walk over to her office, in another building on the campus, and when I got there she was sitting at the Internet Explorer screen, which was giving her an Error 404. I said to her, now standing over her shoulder, close Internet Explorer and right-click the My Computer icon. She did, but this time I saw that she was clicking the LEFT mouse button. I said to her, no, click the RIGHT mouse button. She clicked the LEFT one again. I said, Click the button on the RIGHT SIDE of the mouse. Then she said "Oh, when you said right-click, I thought you meant click the right mouse button." I said, that's what I meant. She said, "No, I mean I thought you meant to click the CORRECT button."
By the way, she was on the network fine. She was getting the 404 error because the URL that a friend of hers sent her in a letter (dead-tree type) contained a typo. And it still astounds me to this day that she makes 6 digits writing a newsletter for the customers of that company.

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R. Bret Walker, CNA

[Jeremy Gilbert]

I have to agree, right clicking is the single hardest concept for the computer inept. The worst problem I found with right clicking was that people would always right click after you told them to right click once. I finally got so fed up that I figured out how to do everything without the right mouse button so that I would never have to tell someone to right click.

Jeremy