Not technically-minded

Fortunately I have a roadtrip on Friday, because Ted E. is gearing up to make this week a long one. Not only is he treating the Stress Fiend's continued absence as a calculated affront, but he's struggling once more with the concept that while he chooses to start at 8am while The Invertebrate and I start at 9, this doesn't actually mean he works more hours in a day than we do or that everything else grinds to a halt in his absence and we just put our feet up once he leaves.

It's an arrangement that's entirely his choice, but the amount of badly-concealed resentment he harbours about occasionally being the only person here for that first hour of the day is bewildering. Or would be, in a normal person. In Ted it's just another one of those things.

One of those oh-so-many things...

On the other hand, at least he's still capable of providing some entertainment at his own expense, as he desmonstrated in his latest exchange with a client. Bear in mind the following as you read this:

1. we work in an IT environment. Theoretically, even the administrative staff should have at least some knowledge of computers and technology beyond what a half-smart parrot can pick up from rote learning;
2. a large part of our job is software procurement (or, as Ted insists on calling it, "procruement") so there's also some assumption that we know just a little bit about software;
   
3. he's been in this unit for several years now. Again, theoretically, this would give a normal person ample time to acquire some rudimentary knowledge about software and IT concepts;
4. clients place the majority of their orders through a web-based interface, generating the small amount of legitimate work that Ted E. actually does. In other words, you wouldn't call it's significance to his job minor.
   

"Oh, I don't really know about anything technical ... You're using IE8? I don't know that one - what browser and version is it? Does it run under Windows? ... What browswer am I using? Oh, I don't know. I just click on the button and it starts my Internet Explorer. I don't know what kind it is. I only use what they give me."

I dearly want to see how his job was originally advertised - or what it was even supposed to be - and what the selection criteria were.