This One Went to 11

[Dips]

I've posted before about the amazing lengths and effort some of my customers go through to avoid having to think, read or follow directions.

Such as sending me a screen image of the directions or forwarding an email they received from us with the directions on it and telling me something along the lines of "Hey, I got this. Now what?"

I now have a new high (or low) on the Pointless Effort to Avoid Thinking Scale (PEATS). It came in my inbox today. Actually it came twice, as you will see...

The first email asked for some help with activation. It contained a long and tragic story about who he was, how important his organization was, how big a hurry they were in and the great an terrible loss they were suffering because they couldn't activate. Sadly the writer omitted their serial number so I couldn't even look it up to see what I could do for them. He also referred to some attachment with more information. I'm sure I could have found more information there if he had actually attached them.

I was gearing up to write back and ask some follow up questions when he wrote back stating he forgot the attachments with his previous email and here they are. This looked promising. We all forget attachments sometimes.

So I opened them wondering if the information in the attachments would give some wisdom I could use to solve his problem. The first one was a scanned copy of a printout of an email we sent to him with instructions on activating. Read the previous sentence again for full impact.

The second one was a scanned image of the serial number card from his product box. At least he found a way to let me know his serial number.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

The first one was a scanned copy of a printout of an email we sent to him with instructions on activating.

Oh, I did. I read it a couple times.

Ho-lee crap.

[Dreamstalker]

Scanned...printout...of an email?!

And here I thought that tale was an urban legend...

[Becks]

And yet, this person has basic understanding of how to use a computer...

[Canarr]

Hey, some people ARE computer-illiterate. Back when I was studying, a couple of my classmates went to the US for a few months on internships.

One of them told me about her father's first attempt to contact her via email.

He composed a nice, long email without any trouble.
He printed it out to show to his wife.
He then deleted the email instead of sending it.
He decided to send the printout by mail instead of typing it again.

I assume he *could* have scanned it and attached it to another email, but I doubt he had the know-how back then. Now, it might be different.

[protege]

So I opened them wondering if the information in the attachments would give some wisdom I could use to solve his problem. The first one was a scanned copy of a printout of an email we sent to him with instructions on activating. Read the previous sentence again for full impact.

" me up Scotty. There are no intelligent life forms down here" is all I have to say.

[friendofjimmyk]

I had to read that a couple of times for it to actually register that it actually happened. I need some aspirin.

[MadMike]

Scanned...printout...of an email?!

That sounds sort of like what the geniuses at my job did awhile back.

The company decided to get rid of most of their paper forms and put them on the LAN. Makes sense so far.

I assumed that we would be able to download them into Word, fill them out, and then email them to the proper department. But when I tried, I ran into several problems:

First, it took much longer than it should have to download one of them, even with our high-speed connection.

Next, when I tried to open it with Word, it wouldn't open. I went around several times with this before I figured out what was going on. Apparently, in their infinite wisdom, they took paper copies of the forms, scanned them into uncompressed bitmap files (and they were crooked on top of that), and saved them with a .doc extension. So they didn't really get rid of anything. You still had to print them out, fill them in, and hand-deliver them.

I guess these geniuses never heard of OCR software.

[WHShit]

Is the title of the thread a reference to the Almighty Spial Tap...or am I just nuts?

[Lace Neil Singer]

^That was my thought.

I will also say I fear for the state of the human race after reading that.

[Dips]

Is the title of the thread a reference to the Almighty Spial Tap...or am I just nuts?

Yes. In this customer's case the PEATS scale went to 11.

[MadMike]

Is the title of the thread a reference to the Almighty Spial Tap...or am I just nuts?

Can't it be both?

[lordlundar]

" me up Scotty. There are no intelligent life forms down here" is all I have to say.

Take me with you!

Can't it be both?

I think the seconds a given.

[pbmods]

But my favorite part of the whole situation is... with the time and effort it took to find, print, scan and send the email (not to mention come up with a sufficient sob story to get your attention)... couldn't he have just found somebody smarter than himself (couldn't have taken long) and activated the damn thing??

[Dips]

But my favorite part of the whole situation is... with the time and effort it took to find, print, scan and send the email (not to mention come up with a sufficient sob story to get your attention)... couldn't he have just found somebody smarter than himself (couldn't have taken long) and activated the damn thing??

That's my favorite part too. What makes it better is that the skills he was afraid to use were: 1) reading, 2) comprehension and 3) instruction-following.

Yup. Reading, comprehension and instruction-following are so difficult that you need at LEAST a two-year elementary education to master them all. Best to ask an expert before attempting to use those skills.