Can't Find the "On" Button Continued

Part 2 out of 3 from my parents after they moved into their new home with all new appliances and gadgets after realizing nothing has an “on” button anymore.

· New gas stove. Nowhere does it say “On.” The old one had a nice knob to simply turn on, then turn the other way for off. On this new one, there’s a right pointed triangle that apparently you have to push to start the oven. Why a triangle? It didn’t say anywhere how hard to push it, so it took us weeks to figure out that it needs to be pushed “very hard,” like “as hard as someone in their 80’s can push it” hard. So when we’re ready to use the stove, we better mean business and push that triangle like we mean it.

· TV remote. No on button again, but it does have a couple of power buttons and some random buttons instead. After weeks of pushing all the buttons in various combinations to no avail, we figured out you can just tell it what show you want to watch and it magically appears! It must have heard us struggling, felt sorry for us, and just changed the channel itself to what we wanted. Although sometimes it says “repeat” back to us, and we don’t understand what more it wants. Is it judging us and the old tv shows we watch? Maybe it’s sick of playing our favorite shows over and over?

· New computer. It does have an on button, but it’s hidden in the back like it’s some sort of secret. I can’t see the back, so I have to feel around and hope that the button I’m pushing is the right one. Once the computer is on, then the fun begins. No idea how to do anything after that. The printer at least tells me what to do, and I’m so thankful for that.

· Dishwasher. There is a start button to push, but don’t get confident too soon. That’s not enough. There’s another button to push after that and you only have 3 seconds to push it to fully get the thing to turn on. We don’t know what will happen if we don’t meet the 3 second deadline. All this stress is more than we need at our age.

· House thermostat. No on button again. I know there is a snowflake that means air-conditioner. If you choose that manually, you’ll be ok. That was easiest for us, so that’s what we do. The other option is to program it from your phone. Some of our neighbors (who are also in the same gated community with new homes) accidentally got on the phone program and all sorts of bad things happened with their house temperatures at all hours of the day and night. They had to have help to uninstall the phone program option. Let that be a lesson to us all.