‘Scanners are complicated’: why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’

theguardian.com:

G arrett Bemiller, a 25-year-old New Yorker, has spent his entire life online. He grew up in front of screens, swiping from one app to the next. But there’s one skill set Bemiller admits he’s less comfortable with: the humble office printer.

“Things like scanners and copy machines are complicated,” says Bemiller, who works as a publicist. The first time he had to copy something in the office didn’t exactly go well. “It kept coming out as a blank page, and took me a couple times to realize that I had to place the paper upside-down in the machine for it to work.”

Bemiller usually turns to Google for answers. But he’s also found an alliance with some older workers, who are veterans of the copy room and can swiftly purchase shipping labels on the office UPS account.

Bemiller knows that the expectation is that he’d be the one helping them out with tech issues. “There is a myth that kids were born into an information age, and that this all comes intuitively to them,” said Sarah Dexter, an associate professor of education at the University of Virginia. “But that is not realistic. How would they 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 all 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 comes with Apple operating systems. Their formative tech years were spent using software that exists to be user-friendly.

But desktop computing is decidedly less intuitive. Things like files, folders, scanning, printing, and using external hardware are hallmarks of office life. Do they know what button to press to turn on a bulky computer monitor, when many simply