conservations I wish I didn't have multiple times a week

[the_siobhan]

"Hey, can you help me with X? It's not working?"

"Sure. Can you give me more info about why it's not working?"

"I don't know. I try to do X and it doesn't work."

"OK, but can you tell me what happens instead? Does it give an error message? Does it give a result you don't want? Does your computer explode? I need more information to diagnose the problem."

"Oh, it gives an error message."

"OK, and what does the error message say."

"I don't know, I closed it."

*turns off microphone, sighs deeply, turns microphone back on*

"OK, can you try it again and take a screenshot of the error message and send it to me."

"Sure!"

*email dings two minutes later*

"OK, I'm looking at your email and the error message says, 'Cannot perform X as Y is not set up in the parameters.' Did you try setting up Y?"

"No. Should I try that?"

"Yes, please try that."

"Oh it worked! Thank you so much!"



I got a promotion for this.

Comments

[sanguinity]

It has long surprised me how many nominally-literate people struggle with practical reading comprehension, and yet it's true: a lot of nominally-literate people struggle with practical reading comprehension. And the more frustrated or upset they become, the worse their reading-comp gets. I used to be ???? that parts of my then-job were literally just reading to people what was freely available for them to read themselves, but eventually I learned to just shrug and read it to them, if that's what it took to get things done.

[the_siobhan]

That's the thing. If it were one person, or even two people, I would say, "Oh hey, un-diagnosed learning disability, that's gotta suck" and just get on with my day.

But it happens every second day and it's so many people.

[elusis]

Now let's iterate on this.

1) The person is my student.
2) If I tell them to read the thing, I am intimidating.
3) If I do not tell them to read the thing, I am not clear on what I want from them.
4) Either way, they file a complaint about me.

[the_siobhan]

You really are in an unwinnable situation.

[elusis]

Kobayashi Maru, man.