You may wind up playing the role of tech support for your boss

The Story:  There isn't really just one story here, so I'm going to share a few of them.  Now, I'm not saying that everyone has to be an expert at all technology all the time.  I'm not even saying that everyone has to know all the basics, because even those change just often enough to be confusing (thanks, Windows 8 & 10).  However, it is still kind of funny when the person signing your time sheet calls you into their office, and you're starting to do that what-could-I-possibly-be-in-trouble-for thought process, and they ask you for help with their computer.  Relief washes over you, but just temporarily, because you have no idea what they're going to ask you and if you'll actually be able to answer it.  So, you just buck up and do your best, and if you can't answer it offhand, you mess around with the program until you do, or else you google it.  It can be tough to keep your cool when your supervisor is looking over your shoulder, expecting you to be a computer wiz and you don't really know what you're doing, but you don't really have a choice -- fake it 'til you make it.  Here are some questions we've answered for our various bosses over the years:

• How do I print the attachment to this email?  It's asking me to sign in, but I thought I already was.
• Here are the answers to my security questions and my iPad.  Can you sit at my email and reset my password for this app?
• (To an actual technical support agent on the phone)  I don't understand what it is you're telling me to do, so hold on.  I'm going to get one of my more technical employees to talk to you.
• How do I share this? (on facebook)
• Do we get YouTube here? (as if it's a premium channel or something)
• I want these in alphabetical order but I don't want to type them all again.  (in Excel)
• How do people still get on our website when the power is out?
• What's a hashtag?
• Okay, this is already getting too technical.  Just tell me if we can do it and how much time it will take.  I don't need to understand the problem; I just need to know if there's a solution.
• I'm trying to save this attachment on my phone, but I can't find the folder to put it in.
• This picture is way too small.  Can you blow it up or do I have to call them and tell them to send me a bigger one?  (when looking at a thumbnail at the bottom of an email)
• What is even the point of twitter?
• Why won't this print?
• The internet is broken.

The Lesson:  While we all respect our bosses and generally presume they know more about most things than we do, it's nice to be reminded sometimes that everyone's human, and that nobody can possibly know everything.  The best thing to do in this case is to not act like it's weird, even if you feel weird giving technical advice to your superior, and if possible, explain the problem so that they can understand it themselves next time. Just be prepared to be unprepared to answer questions in the future.

The Resources:  Google.  Long gone are the days when librarians think google is the devil (despite some of their more questionable monitoring practices and algorithms).  Sure, it's not the answer for everything, but for easy reference questions and technological advice, any internet search engine (Even Bing and Yahoo) is going to probably get you a short answer to an acute problem.  For learning whole subjects, I think books are still the way to go, but web searches have saved my butt on a number of occasions.