[ForHackernews]

I went to university with a girl who didn't know how to operate a dishwasher. At first, I assumed it was because her family had not been wealthy enough to own a dishwasher; later, I found out it was because they were so wealthy they had servants who loaded and ran their dishwasher for them.

[wutbrodo]

The problem I have with people who say things like this is that these things are easily Googlable. I didn't "know" how to do laundry until I went to college (my sister and I had specific chores and laundry was one of hers). During a fight with my sister when I was still in high school, I recall her using that as an insult: "You don't even know how to do LAUNDRY".

I needed to do laundry my first week of school: I couldn't (and to this day can't) even fathom what the phrase "know how to do laundry" meant. Separate whites and colors (or don't), put the clothes in the machine, and press the button.......what kind of mental deficiency is required for someone to think there's an actual gap between "knowing how to do laundry" and "not knowing how".

Loading a dishwasher and cleaning a toilet would seem to be similar. The only gap between "knowing" and "not knowing" is perhaps three seconds of Googling (in case there's some pitfall about what you can and can't put in there).

[michaelchisari]

The only gap between "knowing" and "not knowing" is perhaps three seconds of Googling

Have you ever worked tech support and had to help a lawyer or doctor set up their router?

It's not about mental deficiency.

[wutbrodo]

That example is not relevant in the slightest. Setting up a router quite clearly requires prior knowledge, even if that knowledge is something implicit like "familiarity with navigating Web UIs" or "general familiarity with basic networking concepts".

Neither of those are applicable to doing laundry. There's literally no knowledge required other than "clothes and detergent go into machine". Hell, you don't even have to know WHERE to put detergent because machines are variable enough that they usually just tell you where to put detergent.

[michaelchisari]

So nobody has ever shrunk clothes before? Or ruined whites? Or mixed ammonia and bleach to clean a floor?

[wutbrodo]

Honestly, that stuff is a lot harder to do than you seem to think it is. My gf has never even bothered separating whites and colors and she's never ruined any article of clothing in the laundry. By contrast, setting up a router is not something you can just feel your way through without _any_ prior knowledge (even prior knowledge unrelated to that specific model). Shit, without prior knowledge you couldn't even get to the router config page.

> Or mixed ammonia and bleach to clean a floor?

The first part of your comment was a reasonable point, but what the hell are you talking about here? You do your laundry using bleach and ammonia....on your floor?

[tsotha]

So you screw up once and you learn. Why do you have to learn now, when your labor is in demand, rather than later (accepting OP premise) when the value of your labor has been arbitraged away?