Have you ever noticed that the people who are always telling other people what to do and who act as if they know everything about everything are the very same people who never read the instructions that come with the gadgets they buy, or who never listen to instructions from other people? It’s as if they have an aversion to being told how to do anything because they’re just oh so very smart.
Not!
Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine—a person who I shall not name because I do not want to destroy what is otherwise a nice friendship.
This person sticks a nose into everything, no matter what, even things that are totally alien. For example, I’m a writer of fiction, and have been for several decades, while this person doesn’t even like reading the daily newspaper and struggles with writing thank you notes. But, on occasion when I’m in the middle of crafting a particularly thorny part of a work in progress, does not hesitate to tell me what I should have my main character do, sometimes suggesting something that’s not even in the genre I happen to be writing at the time. Once, an especially good cover that the publisher had selected for one of my books was roundly criticized by this individual because it had too much blue in it. The title of the book was ‘Big Sky Country,’ by the way, so the blue that this person objected to was the sky.
In addition to being a writer, I’m also fairly competent on a computer. Unlike many of my generation, computers do not intimidate me. In fact, when I was a teenager, way back in the 1950s, I actually built a working copy of an analog computer from a kit, and when I was in the army, I worked with the prototype of the computer-based artillery fire direction computer. This person has a tablet and a laptop and can turn them on, but not too much else. Buttons get pressed randomly on occasion causing the machines to freeze up, and I get called upon to ‘fix the problem.’ And, guess what. I have someone standing looking over my shoulder the whole while I’m unsticking the sticky mess, giving instructions and action-by-action critique of what I’m doing.
Instruction sheets that come with merchandise get thrown in the trash before the equipment is put into use and even a suggestion that the instructions should be internalized before trying to use something is met with a glacial stare and a pout.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that, thanks to lawyers and litigious customers, many instruction booklets nowadays read like legal briefs. But that doesn’t make them any less useful, it just requires that you read them a bit more carefully. I would recommend paying extra careful attention to instructions that have READ BEFORE OPENING! on the front page, or the instructions in small letters that say ‘This product should be refrigerated.’
It could save you a lot of headache, and money, and if you’re the type who doesn’t like reading instructions, be kind enough to keep your mouth shut around others. – NWI
