I went over to my father’s house this afternoon to install some window blinds. He’s had a severely bad back since New Year’s Day, and can’t really keep his arms above his head like that for too long. No problem.
But the instructions were a mess. Clear as mud! And these were Levolour blinds, too. Supposedly a high-end window treatment company.
Good thing I have a little experience with these things, because I was able to figure out how to properly install them just by looking at the hardware. But I pity the neophyte who barely knows which end of the hammer to use.
Why can’t these companies write intelligent, cogent installation instructions? How much would it add to their overhead to have someone with better-than-third-grade-level writing skills write their instructions? Nice of them to have them translated into Spanish, though. Now they’re bilingually incomprehensible.
Huh. Reminds me of the “installation instructions” that came along with a garage door spring I had to replace recently. Honest-to-Og, the “instructions” gave FIVE different steps and THREE different diagrams on HOW TO INSTALL (THREAD) THE SAFETY CABLE THROUGH THE SPRING.
Step 1: Attach safety cable to first support by <blah blah blah blah>
Step 2: Put unattached end of safety cable into the spring.
Step 3: pull unattached end of safety cable through other end of spring. (really. They had to tell you this.)
Step 4: Install spring.
Step 5: ensure that safety cable is hanging completely loose.
Step 6: attach safety cable to door track using <blah blah blah>
Step 7: raise and lower door to ensure that safety cable is not hindering door or spring motion.
THREE diagrams! Oh, and they had it translated into Spanish, French, and I believe Chinese. (May’ve been Japanese or Korean or something; I’ve no idea what each looks like).
So they could insult peoples’ intelligence AND be completely useless in four different languages. So VERY helpful there on how to install the spring: “install spring”. Yeah, thanks guys. VEEEERY helpful. Glad I still had the OTHER spring attached so I could see how to ACTUALLY “install spring” (and thread the damn door cable, since the pulley system rather fell apart when the spring broke).
Someone once explained that writing the user’s manual or the installation guide is quite often not a priority, and that when the time comes they hand the job to someone they can spare, i.e., someone who isn’t currently doing real work as a consequence of having things like job skills or generic proficiency.
I can’t help but think there’s at least a saltshaker’s worth of truth-grains to that. The genuine skill is called “technical writing” and I’ve seen it well done but I’ve seen ample evidence that most companies can’t be arsed.
Me, I know I’m in trouble when the illustrations consist of reduced fine-pen drawings so that you’re looking at spiderweb-thin lines, and parts vaguely identified with illegibily small letters or numbers and arrows.
I know I’m in really deep trouble when the installation text that goes with the spiderweb-scratches consists of giving names to component parts that don’t exist until I create them out of smaller pieces and then informing me that I should bring them together so that they end up where they belong – “Take the larger of the L-shaped ended widgets and rotate it at an angle from the base of the doohickey’s spline apparatus until it sockets into the U-shaped thingamububble that’s formed by the merging of the three cylindrical deelybobbers referred to in Diagram A”