It’s not ‘extra effort’. Clicking ‘OK’ is exactly what they’re normally doing on every dialog box they encounter.
The fact that so many ordinary computer users do these same ‘wrong’ things means it’s the user interface which is at fault. I’m reminded of once hearing a conductor, in a moment of frustration, chastising an orchestra with “there’s the same problems in this passage every time I conduct this piece”. I just thought “yeah, and what’s the the common element in all of those situations?”
You could have told him you guys were out of brown and white gravy but you still had some yellow gravy left and then drowned the potatoes in butter. 
But that probably would have pissed him off more.
I have to agree… I’ve done it myself when having computer difficulties! I think, “oh, goddammit!” and click the error message away, then think, “wait, what did that say?” And then I have to re-create the error message so I can fix it. :smack:
“How big is a twelve-inch pizza?”
About a foot.
Joe
You’d better cut it into six pieces; I don’t think I can eat eight.
You have to admit, serving mashed potatoes without even having gravy as an option should be illegal.
The customer is not the problem. The problem is with whoever decided to use “desktop” to describe what’s on the computer screen when no programs are running. There was ALREADY an accepted usage of the word or phrase “desktop”, and it should not have another meaning. Desk top should only mean the top of the desk. Things that are on desk tops include papers, telephone, lamp, etc.
In fact, this is a deep problem running throughout the technology field. Someone takes a word that already has a standard definition, and then adds another definition on top of that. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.
Especially considering how easy it is to make gravy. Or open a jar of gravy, for those eating places that don’t carry ingredients, but just warm up stuff that’s been cooked at another location.
However, a lot of the time, the first thing to do if you have an error is to close all applications and reboot the machine. An astonishing amount of the time, other than check the connections, it works.
Of course, if the error happens a second time, yes, you need to see what the error message actually is. Remember, the user’s purpose is not to debug the problem and make it go away permanently. He just wants the thing to work NOW.
I fully agree. Software developers don’t always seem to know that describing something as a ‘desktop’ (or similar) is a fantastic metaphor when it comes to creating graphical interfaces, but that it means nothing to the regular computer user. Seeing people who are proud to have a neat and tidy desk, but have fifty thousand icons for Yahoo toolbars, eBay links, and every piece of software ever installed on their system shows that the metaphor doesn’t magically become a reality.
On the other hand, everyone knows what a ‘mouse’ is. Nobody had to be clever with all sorts of metaphors. They just found a good way to describe, or rather to communicate, what it looks like.
Working as a waitress/waiter is a job I couldn’t handle. I talking to a friend of mine who waitresses at really swank places and said something to the effect of “well I bet people are nicer in there.” Oh no they are not. She says you get the same level of assholery there as anywhere else; they just where nicer clothes.
From back in my days of bagging groceries at the grocery store the cashier and I are doing our thing and:
kid: <whiny voice>* I want a CANDY bar!*
Mom: No, they are bad for you
repeat several times
Cashier: [finishing up]Anything else?
Mom: Two packs of cigarettes
Cashier and I both pause look at each other–did we just hear that right?
Customer calls to complain one of their scales (that we service) is “all over the place,” and won’t hold a steady weight reading. I show up, and the scale, a fairly sensitive device, is on a table butted up again a support for a fast moving conveyor (vibration). There’s also a 36" fan on “High” blowing directly on the scale.
Another customer rents one of our counting scales for inventory. It has an AC power cord, but also a battery pack for remote ops. where outlet power may not be available. I tell the customer on Friday morning that the battery is rated for 12 hours, and to leave it on the charger over the weekend so it will be good and fresh Monday morning.
Monday morning the customer calls back, saying the scale is broke. I show up and…the battery is dead. Customer is perplexed and angry. Customer is moron.
I install a camera over a truck scale for a customer. I’m aligning the camera, with the customer watching the monitor from the service counter telling me via walkie-talkie “left, right, up, down, etc.” I get it aligned to his satifaction, and tighten everything down. I get them to confirm one last time that the camera is aligned to their satisfaction before having them sign off on the work.
Not twenty minutes down the road heading to the next job, and my boss calls. It seems the manager that *just signed off on my work *called my boss and told him I left the camera out of alignment and unfocused. We billed them for the return trip.
It’s a chain restaurant. Even if the manager decided he wanted to do this, he can’t. No one who works at our location has any say about the menu. I thought it was common knowledge that chain places make new dishes by “committee.” They don’t take suggestions from customers or staff. At best, once or twice a year we might hand out surveys asking how you like a particular dish. But to think I have any say in whether or not we have gravy? You’ve got to be a little slow.
Oh, I’m not blaming the server or manager. I’m blaming whoever thought that serving mashed potatoes without having gravy available was a GOOD idea.
A woman came into my store today, marched right up to the counter, and exclaimed loudly, “MY GLASSES ARE WRONG!” "I can’t see SHIT out of them. " I have her sit down, check the lens Rx. Check the Rx on her old pair, match materials, turns out the Rx is identical. I offer to take her back and have her see our doctor again.
“LOOK, I’ve been wearing glasses for 10 YEARS! I know these are wrong!, You didn’t put the lenses in right! I can tell!”
Funny, I have been driving for about 15 years, and I certianly couldn’t tell you if someone put my alternator in backwards…
I tell her the Rx is the same as her old pair. She says she can see out of those, but not these. I ask her to put her old pair on, she says, “Oh, I can’t see out of these right now, I am wearing my contacts.”
“Did you try wearing your new glasses without your contacts?” I ask.
“No”.
I stared at her for a full minute willing her to somehow understand what she just said…
I don’t understand why people think she’s so goofy. They took her money, didn’t have what so ordered and refused to refund her money. That’s called theft. Substituting a different product that the customer doesn’t want doesn’t make it all better. Why the police didn’t take her side is the weird part.
Well, I sort-of agree, but it’s not REALLY theft. It’s store policy, supposedly. A sucky policy, but that’s how they do it. It’s not a police matter, perhaps a small-claims court matter. What are the police supposed to do? Arrest everyone in the store who refuses to refund her money, because they’d be fired if they broke policy?
Frankly, though, I cannot imagine a retail establishment taking her money, explicitly for McNuggets, then saying, sorry, we don’t have it, but not being willing to give the $$$ back. That happen at the movie theater? The car dealer? “Sure, the Honda Civic is $15,000, let’s finance it! Oh, wait, we only have Accords - you have to take one of those…”
Joe
Yeah, but it’s still not an emergency requiring 911, and geez she she should grow up. Waah, I want my McNuggets! :rolleyes:
Well, first off 911 is only for life-threatening emergencies. Police departments have non-emergency lines for things like theft so that nobody dies in a fire because you were tying up the lines with your McNugget problem.
Secondly, it’s silly. If someone walked up to my table, took my McNuggets, and chucked them in the trash…I’d be a bit baffled. I might yell at him a bit. But I wouldn’t be calling the police or pressing charges. Life presents us daily with small challenges. Sometimes it presents us with outright unfairness. But we learn to deal with them.
We don’t call the police every time we don’t get our way. For exactly the same reason we are told not to be tattle tales when we are kids, even when we were on the bad end of things. It’s not a good use of resources and at some point you just gotta suck things up.