A blog a day (#8)

TYPING SKILL

Year: 1990. 
Place: Somewhere in India.

"Raj, have you completed the report of XYZ company?"

"From my side it is completed. Ms. T is typing the report."

"It has been about 3 weeks. Why hasn't she completed typing the report?"

"She is new to the Personal computer in our office. We bought it only about three months ago. The staff haven't yet got used to the system and the word processing software."

"Who is teaching them how to operate the machine?"

"No one. That is what we wanted to inform you; but you were away and we couldn't get in touch with you. The staff say that no one has taught them how to use the machine and the software for report typing. In fact, they were telling me initially that if they had to do it on the manual typewriter, they may have completed the report by now."

"What were you doing? Couldn't you learn that and help them type the report?"

"???"

The above is probably an apocryphal story about a mythical consultancy organisation, but I am sure it may have happened in any organisation during the time personal computers were being bought in Indian companies and the staff were expected to start using them immediately. The word processing software that was used those days was "Wordstar" or "Word" on most machines. It had a decent suite of editing tools. Though it was not very difficult for us engineers to learn the software, the same cannot be said of most staff members in the organisation. Some may have expected a decent allowance to start using computers; some may have been reluctant to use the system due to a mistaken fear that any problem in the machine may be attributable to them; some may have just felt scared that their importance would be somehow diminished.

When a personal computer landed in the organisation that I worked for and we had a report to bring out in a short time, I volunteered to type out the report myself. Now a staff member, whom I would like to  call Ms. P was surprised to see me type the report using the keyboard like a professional typist would do! Touch typing - using all fingers and thumb to type with certain fingers being used for certain letters.

I didn't learn touch typing in office. I learnt that on a manual typewriter that my father had. While I was in high school, he insisted that my younger sister and I learn touch typing. He taught me the rudimentary lessons (asdfgf, ;lkjhj, etc) and asked me to fill multiple pages. Then came sentences and then copying from newspapers and periodicals. Both my younger sister and I learnt touch typing quite early in our life. Little did we know that the skill acquired during our younger days would come in very handy in our later life, when almost all normal business (and leisure) activity is being done on computers and keyboards have still not been rendered obsolete!

Learning a skill is never out of fashion, even if the machine on which the skill is acquired has become a rarity and is generally only a museum piece.