Just Read the Goddamn Directions

I returned a book to the library this afternoon.

The library of which I speak has recently put in new automated book return stations. You walk up, press a button, put your book on a tiny little conveyor belt, and press another couple of buttons. It's drop dead easy.

I will confess that these new systems run a Red Hat flavor of Linux and they've had some functionality issues with their deployment. This should not, however, cause the sight that Stef and I saw last week.

A middle aged woman apparently decided that following the instructions on the screen was beneath (or above) her. For every step necessary in returning a book, she failed. Miserably. By the time we'd arrived so that Stef could return her selections, this woman had already gotten into the Spanish instrucciones, and by that point, it was Game Over. Incapable of reading the directions, she also deduced that the helpful animated graphics were also not going to be of any use, either.

After two or three failed attempts to get her book to slide along the conveyor belt (it will reject a book that isn't face down, spine on the right so the bar code can be read correctly), she succeeded in physically fastballing the book as hard as she could into the guts of the station to the point where the machine could not very well pick it up and spit it back. Having gotten the book out of her hands, she weighed her options: try to tell the return station that she was done versus just walk away. Rocking back and forth on her feet, inching first closer to her car, then further away, she ultimately chose to press the "finito" button, but was unable to figure out the following screen asking her yes/no if she wanted el receipto.

Incapable of any further analysis of the situation, she impatiently opted to punch the touchscreen like a girl and retreat to her vehicle.

I don't really understand how people can just approach technology and not want to follow the instructions. More so, I don't get how people's behavior can so quickly descend to the level of Neanderthals as soon as they encounter a step they aren't expecting. It only serves as a reminder that computer proficiency comparable to that in Zoolander is not ficticious, nor is it always funny.