Put down the chocolate-covered banana and step away from the European currency systems.
I think about this thread every time someone asks me for (usually computer related) help with something but keeps talking over me or asking questions/making suggestions that are entirely unrelated. I usually find myself saying either ‘don’t just ahead of me’ or ‘just answer the questions I’m asking you’ but I suppose “Put down the chocolate-covered banana and step away from the European currency systems” works as well. In any case, I think a lot of us have been in that situation and most of us were thinking ‘you asked me for help, let me help’.
One of my favorites was back in high school/college. Back when saving things on 3.5" floppies was the norm, this was a very regular conversation I had.
Them: I keep getting an error when I try to save this.
Me: What does the error say?
Them: I don’t know, I just hit okay.
Me: Alright, um, hit save.
[they hit save, then clear the error before it pops up]
Me: Try that again, but don’t clear the error so we can see what it’s saying.
[they hit save]
Me: STOP, don’t touch anything.
[me, reading error]
Me: It says there’s no disk in the disk drive.
Them: oh, ok thanks.
Then I have to find a way to very politely explain that a lot of the errors will tell them what the problem is and how to fix it.