Over ten years ago, I worked at an Apple Store and my job title was “Creative” but that pretty much just meant I spent all day teaching cute little old people how to use their new computers.

One day, this sweet little old man came in for a lesson (we’ll call him Bob). Bob wanted to create an email address so he could email his granddaughter.

We pulled up the page (let’s call it email.com) and Bob started to enter his info and he came to the username section and asked what he should put so I said “oh, you know, something like [email protected] but more unique because that’s probably already taken.”

In order to give him privacy, I was looking away from his screen when he finally proclaimed “I got it! I’m [email protected]!”

I was absolutely shocked, so I looked over at his screen and that’s when I realized Bob had become the proud owner of [email protected].

@Alice reminds me of some of the addresses people used when signing up for the email service I used to work for (not one you probably would have heard of).

So - did they manage to get in touch with their granddaughter?

@edaross yes! We didn’t have time in that session since they were only an hour long and the poor guy took a LONG time just to create the email address, but we had a follow-up session and he did email his granddaughter!

@Alice
Ah good.

Reminds me _another_ incident, when I was the tech helper at an Over 50's Coffee Morning where they also had access to computers. I spent an entire summer teaching one of the visitors how to use the Web mail system they'd signed up to. And then that Web mail system changed their interface and she had to re-learn how to use it!

@edaross ohhhh, poor Beatrice!