This is really impressive. I’m sitting in a dorm computer lab. There’s a computer next to me, which is often vacant, because the mouse is missing one of those essential little rolly thingys. People are not at all willing to believe you when you tell them a computer mouse isn’t working. We’re on Victim Number Eleven at the computer next to me. They come up, I tell them the mouse isn’t working, they give me a “how would you know? I, of course, have magical mouse powers and would KNOW if the mouse wasn’t functional” look, and then proceed to be thuroughly disgusted with the computer when they log on to discover that egads! the mouse doesn’t work!
So…would you believe me if I told you the mouse wasn’t working? Because now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure I’d believe someone…[of course, I know that there are ways of using said machine w/o mouse. and I wouldn’t give them the evil look. but still.]
Obviously the same phenomenon affecting doorknobs and elevator buttons.
You’re standing in front of a closed, locked door for a scheduled meeting (say a classroom) – someone else comes along, and they simply must try to open the door themselves. Why, exactly, would you be standing outside a closed door if it was open.
Then there’s the even more baffling elevator one. You push a button to call an elevator – while waiting, someone comes along and presses the already lit button.
Because many times I have come across a crowd of people standing in front of a classroom door, and it was unlocked. Then they all look sheepishly at the first guy…
Have you ever noticed the people at crosswalks who repeatedly push the button until the light changes? You only have to push them once, and no amount of repeated pushing will make the light change faster. Of course, people notice that as they are pushing the button that the light eventually does change. I suppose that reinforces the notion that they made the light change more quickly than it would have otherwise because they were pushing the button when it changed.
You’re on a train in the UK.
You want to sit down.
You see a vacant seat next to another passenger.
One polite thing to say is “Is anyone sitting here?”
(And what would you do if they replied “Yes, there’s an minature invisible unicorn there - with his horn facing upwards!”? :eek:)
You’re on a train in the UK.
You want to sit down.
You see a vacant seat next to another passenger.
One polite thing to say is “Is anyone sitting here?”
(And what would you do if they replied “Yes, there’s an minature invisible unicorn there - with his horn facing upwards!”? :eek: )
The prob with cross-walk buttons, is that, unlike elevator buttons, which light up, cross-walk buttons do nothing to indicate that the button push has registered. They’re usually pretty heavy-duty and stiff so it’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly how hard you need to poke the thing. Combine that with the mysterious permutations that the traffic lights at many intersections go through, leading one to wonder when exactly you’re supposed to get the ‘WALK’ sign, if ever, and, well, I confess to pushing the button a few extra times myself.
Then of course you get the folks who just stand there going push push push push push push push . . . and then cross against the light anyway.
I wouldn’t believe. But I feel fairly justified in my disbelief.
I fix computers for a living, so I actually do know more about whether something is “broken” than the average person. I find it’s not uncommon that someone tells me something is broken when they just weren’t using it correctly.
Because I fix computers, even if the mouse is in fact not working, I might be able to rectify the problem.
And as part of my job, my policy is never to believe anything anyone tells me. I have to test everything myself, because people are often confused, misinformed, or simply lying to you because they don’t want you to fix the problem, they want you to fix what they think is the problem.
