I used to work for a multimillion dollar consulting firm doing desktop support. The gentleman who was in charge of several large government contracts decided he needed to send a letter via e-mail and wanted to know how to do so. Easy enough I suppose, until he happily handed me his letter on a sheet of paper crumpled up into a ball.

"That is the letter I want to send," he said. "Can't you stuff it into the floppy drive and send it"?

I tried to contain my laughter and explained to him how e-mail worked. Of course, after I left, I went outside and cried tears of uncontrollable laughter.

My boss never could get the hang of e-mail. He only used e-mail for one thing:sending weekly messages to his daughter, an English instructor in Saipan. We will call her Mary Smith, but that was not her name. Her address was simple enough, but every week he would call me over to the computer with another problem.

Boss: "It's gone! The e-mail I just spent an hour typing is gone!"

Me: "What happened"?

Boss: "I clicked 'Send,' and it just disappeared!"

Me: "It's in your outbox, because you told the computer to 'Send' it."

Boss: "Oh."

This happened almost every week. Either that or:

Boss: "It won't let me send this message."

Me: "You need to type her exact e-mail address, not just 'Mary Smith' in the To: field."

Boss: "Well, how many Mary Smiths could there be in Saipan"?

or...

Boss: "I send e-mail every week, they ought to know who it goes to by now!"

or...

Boss: "I thought computers were supposed to be smart!"

He would always send his e-mails on Tuesday so they would get to his daughter by Saturday.