GRAMArrett Bemiller, a 25-year-old New Yorker, has spent his entire life online. He grew up in front of the screens, going from one application to another. But there’s one skill set Bemiller admits he’s less comfortable with: humble office printing.
“Things like scanners and photocopiers are complicated,” says Bemiller, who works as a publicist. The first time she had to copy something in the office it didn’t go exactly right. “It kept coming out as a blank page, and it took me a couple of times to realize that I had to put the paper upside down in the machine for it to work.”
Bemiller often turns to Google for answers. But she also found an alliance with some older workers, who are veterans of the copy room and can quickly buy shipping labels on the office’s UPS account.
Bemiller knows that the expectation is that he is the one to help them with technological problems. “There’s this myth that kids were born into the information age and all of this comes to them intuitively,” said Sarah Dexter, an associate professor of education at the University of Virginia. “But that’s not realistic. How are they going to know how to scan something if they’ve never been taught how to do it?
Gen Z workers tend to be well-equipped to edit photos and videos from their phones, or use website builders like Squarespace and Wix. They grew up using apps to get work done and are used to the ease that Apple’s operating systems provide. His formative technological years were spent using software that exists to be easy to use.
But desktop computing is decidedly less intuitive. Things like filing, folders, scanning, printing, and using external hardware are all hallmarks of office life. Do you know which button to press to turn on a bulky computer monitor, when many simply close their personal laptops when done with them? (No, says one reddit user who works in IT and has resorted to putting a sign over the power button on work computers).
Steve Bench organizes workshops on generational differences in the corporate world. “I joke in my sessions that my Gen Z intern didn’t know how to send a letter,” he said. “They asked me where the sticker went. I said, ‘You mean the seal?’”
The technology company HP coined the phrase “tech shame”, to define how overwhelmed young people felt when using basic office tools. According to the study, one in five young office workers reported “feeling judged for having technology problems,” which made them less likely to ask for help. And in another survey, the employment firm LaSalle Agency found that almost half of the class of 2022 felt “underprepared” when it came to technical skills relevant to entering the workforce.
Dell used their own survey of respondents between the ages of 18 and 26 to find that 56% of respondents said they “had very basic or no education in digital skills.” A third of them said that their education had not given them “the digital skills they need to jump-start their careers.” What they know comes from the apps they use in their spare time, not from Office Depot’s tech supplies.
And so we’re back to printers, which remain especially hard for Gen Z to figure out. “When I see a printer, I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” said Max Simon, a 29-year-old who works in content creation for a Toronto small business. “Looks like I’m discovering an ancient artifact, in a way.”
Simon, who makes humorous videos about corporate life for his audience of more than 220,000 followers on TikTok, falls into the category of young millennial. He considers himself something of a shepherd for Gen Z staff who feel lost navigating Google Suite and other everyday software.
“I invite them to a Google Meet and they ask me, ‘How do we get a link to that?’ But the link is already in the calendar invite,” Simon said. “Like, it’s 2023, this is the world we live in. Things that seem pretty straightforward often catch Gen Z off guard.”
For Simon, it’s another problem to attribute to the brain-melting power of social media. His hunch: Apps like Instagram and TikTok are so easy to use that youngsters expect everything else to be a piece of cake, too. When they don’t, they are more likely to give up. “It takes five seconds to learn how to use TikTok,” he said. “You don’t need an instruction book, like you would with a printer. The content is so easy to access now that when you throw someone a simple curveball, they’ll swing and miss, and that’s why Gen Z can’t schedule a meeting.”
When it comes to accomplishing simple tasks, sometimes Gen Z has to be a little creative, or downright evasive. Elizabeth, a 23-year-old engineer living in Los Angeles, avoids the office printer at all costs. “I feel like I just haven’t been taught things that some people consider basic knowledge, and I’m too shy to ask,” she said.
Bemiller, the publicist, accidentally killed a work laptop because he didn’t know how to call for help. Every morning when he turned it on, he would receive a pop-up from the Dropbox storage service, which he always accepted without reading. After a few months, the computer started running very slowly. He often died without warning. Bemiller couldn’t get any work done and his manager asked for a new laptop.
By the time the replacement arrived in the mail, IT had fixed the problem and it was completely preventable. As it turned out, every time Bemiller accepted the popup, he gave Dropbox permission to back up everything to the computer’s drive. At the same time, he gave the computer permission to back up to Dropbox.
“He was constantly backing up everything on himself,” he said. “Murdering that poor laptop is still a lot of fun for me.”
Sometimes the bosses bring in experts to help with the division. Jason Dorsey is co-founder of the Center for Generational Kinetics, an Austin-based research company. Managers tap him to lead workshops that unite employees of all ages around their mutual struggles with the computer. In one exercise, he places attendees in a circle, where they share the different technological advances they remember experiencing.
“It’s extremely humanizing,” Dorsey said. “You’ll have someone who remembers the first color TV, another person who remembers the first answering machines, and a kid who can do their job on a smartphone. It helps us recognize that the diversity of these experiences is a strength.”
But there’s at least one thing that sets tech-less Gen Z workers apart from their older coworkers. Younger people seem more willing to learn and can quickly adapt to new skills, even if it takes a few rounds at the printer to fully master the art of scanning.
“Gen Z are very comfortable navigating software they’ve never used before, because they’ve been doing it all their lives,” Bench said. “They are used to trial and error. They may not be a godsend for the workforce that automatically comes in knowing how to do Excel, but they are quick learners.”
