Computers and patrons don't mix

A large percentage of the people who enter our library are there to use the computers. Unfortunately, many of these people are unfamiliar with computers, and we spend a lot of time helping them attach documents to email, open attachments from email, print pictures of the grandkids or celebrities, find Google (the address bar is particularly confusing for many patrons), etc.

Most patrons are grateful for our help and are polite. Some are not.

One of the latter types of patrons is in quite frequently. He is one of the worst of these types of computer users, because he thinks he is a computer expert. He's not. Anyway, he approached the desk and showed me a color printout of a photo from the web.

"I want this to print bigger," he demanded.
"Okay, let me show you how to do that," I said.
"I know how to do it, I know how to do a lot of things with computers," he countered.

Hmm. I thought about how to proceed. Ignore? Give attitude? Be polite? I decided to be polite, because who am I kidding, I always go that way.

"Oh? How do you make the image larger?" I asked as if I really cared to know.
"I press the button that makes it bigger and it prints bigger."

I was pretty sure I knew which "button" he was talking about, and I was also pretty sure that this would not work to print the image larger.

"Well, so, how do you do it?" the patron demanded.

I explained that since our library computers were not equipped with photo editing software, I usually used Publisher to manipulate the size of an image before printing.

"But that's like 20 steps, it would take forever to do all the images I have to print!" he said after I showed him how to copy the image and paste it into Publisher. Which, by the way, involves 3 steps. "My way is much faster."

"But, my way gives you more control," I said with a touch of snottiness (I couldn't help it).

In the end, I told him to use whatever way he wanted, and he finally left the desk. I didn't tell him that he only gets to print 10 pages in color each week...