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I was in my thirties when ...

use_what_works_4_U 6th Jan

@billvick
I went to work at the Genius Bar. I always assumed that the only way to know the depth of a client's knowledge was to ask them to explain their problem to the best of their ability (saves a lot of time in most cases, too) and then what they've done to address it already, or if they have any ideas about what to try. I found that the "ignorance issue" was only slightly skewed at the elder end of the age range and was HUGELY skewed at the younger end. If age were the only metric, the most even distribution seemed to occur for the 20 to 60 year old subset.

You cannot assume, you can only investigate, and then educate if needed. Probably a third of my time on the floor was spent educating customers of all ages about their technology so that they wouldn't have to keep coming back to see me. It made for a very happy clientele, all in all. I will say that the ages who couldn't "be bothered" to learn something new were largely under 18 and over 65-70. For those folks you just do the best you can until they come back in the next time.