From using an actual atlas to find their way around, to having a television blaring in every single room of the house for no reason, people share the most frustrating 'old people' things their parents do.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
Assuming we don’t have eyes
“Every time my mother or father notices I’ve opened the refrigerator, no matter how far away they are, they will loudly tell me the contents to the best of their recollection, as if some kind of black veil shrouds my vision into the refrigerator: ‘There’s some leftover turkey, ham, brussel sprouts, carrots, I think some macaroni…maybe some of that tuna fish from yesterday…'”
Endless options
“I don’t know if it’s an ‘old person’ thing or just a ‘mom’ thing, but my mom has developed this habit of giving me way too many options of things even when I don’t need them. For example, I recently visited home and it was cold, and I didn’t have a hat. This was our conversation:
Mom: ‘This hat doesn’t fit me or your dad, you can take this one.’
Me: ‘Ok, I’ll wear this one, thanks.’
Mom: ‘There’s also some more hats in the closet that I can get out for you if you don’t like that one.’
Me: ‘No, I’m good, I’ll wear this one.’
Mom: ‘There’s a really cute hat that I think is in the closet in your sister’s old room. I’ll go up and get it and you can see if you like it more than that one.’
Me: ‘No, I’ll wear this hat.’
Mom: ‘I have a big box of hats in the garage, too, I can go get that and you can look through it.’
Me: ‘No, I’ll wear this hat, it’s a fine hat, I like this hat, I’ll wear it.’
Mom: ‘Or we could run over to Target and see if they have any nice hats.'”
Everything is THE MACHINE
“My mom calls every electronic in their house ‘the machine’. Computer, printer, router, modem, t.v, radio, iPad, vacuum… everything is ‘the machine’. She tells me ‘the machine is broken’ and I have to ask, ‘what is this machine?’
Mom: ‘The machine! It won’t turn on! Has it been hacked?’
Me: ‘The computer?’
Mom: ‘No, the modem’ … the wifi router was unplugged.
She also does this on tech support calls. I feel so bad for them.”
The clueless school IT person
“My mother used to drive me nuts about her computer. She was a teacher and got an email from her school IT person, who obviously didn’t know too much about IT, that told her to delete her win32 file. I had to explain to her for an hour that her IT person’s email had been compromised somehow. She insisted, ‘No, win32 is a virus and I have to delete it.’ Finally, after telling her, ‘if you delete that file, take it to the computer shop because I’m not fixing it,’ she relented. Side note, I was working in the computer field at the time but I guess because she changed my diapers at one point, I couldn’t possibly know more than her school IT person.”
Broken computer wheel
“My mom doesn’t just suck at technology, she regularly makes me face palm because she’s incapable of understanding the basics, like the power button or the close window icon on her browser.
She actually called me once to say that the wheel in her computer was broken.
‘Nothing is happening on my computer and that little wheel stopped turning, what should I do? Can I get a new wheel? Will that make it go?’“
Extremely indecisive!
“My biggest gripe with my parents, is that over the years they have become very indecisive. I remember a year or two ago we were waiting to board a flight and neither of us had eaten since we had begun our journey and we don’t like to eat on airplanes because the food usually sucks. So at this point we were all super hungry, and decide to sit down and order drink in a place that does a full English. Next thing I know, they both go off the idea and start talking to each other for a good 15 minutes, just discussing if they should get food at another place. Then starts our good over 45 minute walk around the airport as they read out all the menus of each place until they finally settle on the place we started at.”
Atlas is much easier to use
“My parents still use an atlas when we go on vacations. They won’t use Google Maps or even print Map quest instructions. It’s actually impressive but it takes us longer to get where we’re going, because my mom can’t find the next turn they need to take and then my dad will look at it and they’ll spend ten minutes on the side of the road looking for the next turn. When I join the conversation and say ‘Guys, Google Maps tells us exactly where to go and the fastest way to get there,’ they always insist that the atlas is much easier to use.”
Specific order drinks
“This makes me cringe every time.
For my parents, it’s more about their drink orders. They will get weirdly specific about how much ice or lemon they want or don’t want. My mother-in-law is the worst, as she will give these vague yet exacting instructions about her drink, and if they get it wrong (which they always do because her instructions make zero sense), she’ll start spooning ice onto a plate, where it promptly melts, and the poor server is stuck trying to figure out how to avoid spilling it everywhere.
Another story about my mother-in-law on this topic: she was once in Germany visiting my wife’s brother and his family, and pulled this act at a German McDonald’s. She tried to explain, in English, that she wanted a drink that was half diet Coke, half regular Coke, with light ice (although light ice to an American, in Germany would be pretty heavy ice), in spite of the fact that the person working the till didn’t speak much English. So she was doing the talking slow and semi shouting thing while gesticulating wildly, with a very full line of people behind them.”
Theme park television house
“Entering my parents’ house was like entering a theme park dedicated to television. Every room had a tv and they were all on. The living room tv covered nearly a whole wall (this is a modest, split level home in the rural Midwest) with all furniture pointed at it. It was always turned up VERY LOUD and if I ever tried turning it down during commercials, they would look at me bewildered and blinking. They disliked spending time at my house because there was no tv in the kitchen. They watched golf, old westerns they’d seen 100 times, random daytime talk shows, Jeopardy, and the evening news. It was impossible to talk to them about anything.”
A normal nightly occurrence
“Falling asleep in front of the TV.
My mom will insist that we watch this program, that she assures us that we will love, or that it’s great, and she kind of impose what she want to watch on the whole family, without asking if maybe we wanted to watch something else.
And then she falls asleep in the first 30 minutes, snoring loudly. But don’t even try to change channels, she will wake up and tells you that she was watching.”
Might be a family curse
“Stealing glasses and silverware from restaurants. My mom has a drawer full of mismatched silverware from probably 30 years of petty larceny. Oh yeah, and about 50 crab crackers from Red Lobster even though she has never made crab legs or lobster herself.
My sister does it now and I fear my family might have some kind of curse that forces the women to gather restaurant utensils like a bunch of magpies.”
Frustrating Skype calls
“I love my mom to death.
That being said, I lived overseas for 7 years and Skype was our main form of communication. Here’s my favorite moment (keep in mind she’s 70 this year and never got the hang of it all 7 years prior) :
‘Is the camera on?’ (Up to her ear if on cellphone)
‘Mom, I can’t hear you. Did you mute it?’ starts talking ‘yes mom, you muted it. Hit the microphone button so I can hear you.’ continues to keep talking without hitting the button ‘I’m going to hang up and call back.’ I do this and am greeted with ‘WHY DID YOU HANG UP?!’
(On her laptop with the camera angled to the ceiling) ‘mom, aim the camera at you please.’ aims It more at the ceiling ‘never mind just talk.'”
Endless hours of news commentary
“She watches news commentary for hours every single day while drinking, chain-smoking and yelling at the tv. It’s so unhealthy on so many levels and it just feeds this horrible beast of news commentary, which is the most divisive device in society right now. With 24/7 news on several channels, it’s become like 5% news and 95% commentary. She’s just listening to what she already believes parroted back to her but it somehow makes her feel more informed. And it makes her really angry and upset. It’s just really annoying and I don’t know anyone under the age 50 who does that.”
No task is done quickly and smoothly
“Everything is way more difficult and time consuming than it should be with my mom, and I don’t get it. Grocery shopping goes from 1 hour to 3 (she’s not handicapped or disabled in a way that would slow her down). Any issues with tech support or customer service that should take minutes, turns into hours and there will always be some magic issue that complicates things. This isn’t just when I’m doing stuff with her as an excuse to spend time together, it’s everything. She swung by CVS to pick up a prescription, they have a drive through, took an hour. I don’t get it, like I don’t understand how/why but nothing she does goes smoothly or quickly, I’ve started noticing this with other older family members too.”
Absolutely no online shopping
“Absolutely refusing to buy anything off the internet with a credit card cause hackers will get their card number. All to happy to call someone over the phone and read their card number off to a complete stranger. I’m assuming they think the swipe card readers at gas stations, ATMs, and Wal-mart must communicate back to the bank via telegraph or something similar. I’ve pointed all this out but they know (heard about) that one person who had a bad experience buying online so there’s that.”
End of message signature
“My parents are fairly tech savvy but I was added into a Whatsapp (messaging service) group with a bunch of friends of my dad (all around 50-55 years old) and every single person ended their message with ‘sincerely [person who wrote this].’
These weren’t long messages either, it looked like:
‘Yeah I have time that day
sincerely, Betty.'”
Constant yelling and loud noise
“I was over at my in-laws’ for christmas dinner and at one point had to deal with the following stacked assortment of noises:
A pressure cooker, loudly and forcefully hissing.
Dishes and silverware clattering to get the table set.
Dishwasher running.
Christmas music, with volume set to be audible over all that.
Five people old-shouting over the rest of the ruckus to coordinate who was setting out what, where this dish or that was going, etc.
Would it not have been bad form, I’d’ve just left right then. ‘You know, I’m not that hungry, I just need to go home now.’ I don’t get old people and yelling and noise in general.”
Volume up, hands-free speaker on
“My dad (who can hear a pin drop from a mile away) refuses to talk on the phone normally. He always drops whatever he’s doing, puts it on the table in front of him, turns up the volume all the way and puts it in speaker, and instead of talking into it, he yells in its general direction. So whenever I’m around and he makes any sort of call it’s always, ‘OH HEY BOB, I HAVEN’T TALKED TO YOU IN AGES, WHAT, SORRY MY PHONES ACTING UP,’ he _then stands up and holds the phone at arms length, whilst raising voice to jet plane volume:
‘IS THIS BETTER?!'”
Cordless phones are a thing, mum!
“When my mum takes a call on her mobile phone while in public she will get angry at everyone for speaking and will ask them to be quiet. You know, rather than walking away with the phone.
Mum, it’s not 1987 anymore, phones are cordless now, especially that one you tote around in your handbag and have since 2005.”
Stubborn or old-school?
“My dad does the old person tech support thing, but he ARGUES with me about it. I have to re-teach this guy how to use email attachments three times a month and he wants to tell me how I should be updating the drivers on his laptop, because god forbid he ever for one second not be the highest authority on all forms of knowledge. I’ve instituted a rule that I won’t so much as touch his computer unless he leaves the room first.
Also, the thing where he keeps telling my kid brother to apply for jobs by turning up in person with a paper copy of his resume and refusing to leave until he can give it to a manager.”
Wiz kids to the rescue
“Every couple of months my dad turns on orientation lock and panics that the phone is broken. He then won’t use his phone until I fix it because ‘everything is too small in portrait.’ But REFUSES to let me show him how to change the setting himself. ‘Technology is too good these days, I don’t wanna know, I’ll leave it to the wizkids to figure out.'”
Close the door!
“My mom yells ‘CLOSE THE DOOR!’ whenever I either open the refrigerator door or the outside door (when it’s cold outside). I only visit her every now and then, but whenever she pulls this on me I am ready to leave in .2 seconds. Really, close the door you say? Interesting, I had always thought the right order was; open door – make love to door – make painting on door – set door on fire. But closing it? Hmm… interesting.”
Not a difficult task
“My mom called me while I was in another country to log her into her Spotify account. First, she doesn’t have an account. She doesn’t have the app. She’s sure she has never ever ever used my dad’s Spotify. I tell her to ask my brother who was in the next room or just follow the instructions Spotify gives or use my account. Then I heard:
‘Why are you always so difficult, why can’t you just help me!?!?’
She called me later to apologize after she actually made herself an account successfully! It wasn’t so difficult after all, who knew!”
[Article [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7miflu/whatoldpeoplethingdoyourparentsdowhich/?sort=top)]