One of my clients tasked me to do some computer work for her - it's something I'm doing from my apartment so it's less than the usual rate, and as it's something I'm doing from my apartment, I'm genuinely fine with that. It involves checking to see if her webpage is up to date, going through and seeing if each page that lists certain January events has those events listed on the January masterpost in turn, or if the masterpost for each month is missing certain items.

To keep track of everything as I went, I made a spreadsheet to stay organized. After a couple hours, I sent it her way to make sure I was doing it right from the get-go and wouldn't need to redo more than a couple of hours. She said the work I was doing was fine, and to compile all the missing masterpost items when I was done, but she was confused by the spreadsheet. I explained it to her, and she said that wasn't the issue: she understood what I was doing, it was that she'd never used a spreadsheet.

I understand her professional life began and ended before spreadsheets became a thing, but I hadn't thought she'd never used one. Even as a way to keep track of addresses or manage a list with a lot of moving parts. I'm inclined to believe her that she's been informed they exist and she's simply never had reason to bother.

In some ways, I envy and admire that.