Paul Monckton

Someone I know well (and won't name) doesn't like computer games. In fact she declares a profound hatred for them.

This brings to mind many questions, including: "But if you never play them how can you know that you hate them so much?" Or: "Why waste so much of your non game-playing time hating them? Why not just think about something else?"

Anyway, I digress. Having left the room for a few minutes I returned to find her playing a computer game. "But I like this one. This one's good," was her reply.

Is it really a hatred of the concept of computer games per se, or is it more to do with their image? The game she had chosen was a simple browser-based 2D puzzle game, ideal for office time wasting. Go ahead and waste some now; I'll meet you back here in a few minutes.

In our office there are two kinds of people, those who are 'technical' and those who are 'non-technical'. Both of these groups use PCs or Macs all day in their job and both are equally proud of their technical or non-technical status.

When a non-techie has a problem doing something in Excel, I'll gladly help. The second time they have the same problem I'll be somewhat less glad about it.

What's really, really bad for my willingness to help is when I offer to explain how the program works so they can solve the problem themselves next time, and the shutters come down accompanied by an imagined finger-blocking of the ears.

They won't listen, because they don't want to know. Like the man who will avoid the station platform until the last possible second lest he accidentally spot a train. They must maintain a comfortable distance between themselves and technical 'mumbo-jumbo'.

They don't want to accidentally learn something - it might turn them 'techie'. And, as we all know, allowing your brain to understand an Excel macro is but a stone's throw away from throwing all of your friends, family, social life and fashion sense into the Recycle Bin for good, and setting up permanent residence in DM-Antalus.

If, like me, you know at least a little about how to use your PC and you work in an office where there are many other PC users, you've probably witnessed the following situation many times.

A new temp is found sitting in the corner, desk piled high with fan-fold printout, fingers tapping away furiously at the keyboard.

Closer inspection reveals the reason for their current employment: manually searching through reams of printed data, re-typing selected chunks into a poorly designed spreadsheet and printing them out again.

And they will probably just send it all off to another temp where the process will be repeated in reverse.

An office full of technology and we're reduced to this? It's so very difficult to keep quiet: "But the original data has just come out of Excel ... Couldn't we just email ...? But a macro could ..."

This remorseless and insouciant waste of resources is the 'non-technical' approach to problem solving.

The work gets done, the temp gets employment for a week and no trains get spotted. Everyone's happy. Don't make a fuss. After all it's only time and money that's being wasted - the company's money, not mine.

On the other hand, perhaps if there was a little more time wasted playing computer games and surfing the web, and a little more interaction and interest in computers fostered by companies, then there would be a few more technical solutions employed and perhaps a little money saved.

No, wait; that's crazy talk. Sorry.

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