Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Hitch, I am not going to try and claim there are no people in the world who seem unable to follow even simple instructions, but when I feel my patience crumbling I try to remind myself that - just like any remote conversation, like we're having here - it's very easy to get into misunderstandings over very basic assumptions.
Microsoft products are quite notorious for their visual changes between versions, so it can be important to know what version (operating system and product) you are discussing - but even discovering the version can be difficult.
<snippage>
And computer software in general is pretty notorious for bugs. Sometimes the computer at the other end is not doing what you assume it should be doing. I've even had software I've written myself sometimes surprise me thanks to odd interactions with other software in particular installations.
And, finally, there are some people that have difficulty with the basic concepts. Not having spent a life-time acquiring this stuff as second nature, they are so distracted by the idea that when they move this thing on the desk (and remember there are myriad different forms of hardware used to move the mouse pointer on the screen) they don't have much left over for reading everything that's on the screen - not being something they do every day, they don't necessarily know what things to look out for.
How many words were on that image you sent? You and I know where to expect things to appear, but some people have to read what's there, all of it, and if they're feeling under pressure (and if we're losing our patience they probably are feeling under pressure), they're probably skimming and missing it. One thing I would suggest is do not draw your red-pointer arrows in a neat horizontal or vertical, they look too much like part of what is actually on your screen. The person is likely to go looking for a neat red arrow on their screen and not find it. Scrawl the arrow across the page, the more hand-drawn it looks the better - not saying that's a panacea, but it might help a bit.
ETA: Hmm... I worry the above might sound a bit holier-than-thou or something. I should point out that my wife plays a game of picking who I am speaking with by the tone of my voice, and counting how often I have to repeat myself. Sometimes patience can be hard to find.
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FWIW:
I sent him an email, with the image, and I told him that on his version of Word, the "bar" might be yellow. Might be pink. But that he should look for the notification. (We hear this about how people "can't" edit in the downloaded Word file all the time, so...I'm accustomed to instructing people--who apparently, CANNOT READ the WARNING below the menu ribbon, mind you). I said, in the email, that sometimes, MS/Office will refuse to open a file, because of security measures, yadda. I told him to look below the ribbon, and I sent him the image.
And yes, he said he was using Word 2016/Office 365, so...AFAIK, there should not have been any real significant differences.
(Also--there have been repeated incidences with this pair of authors, in their apparent inability to READ. So, I might be less forgiving than I might be for others.)
I just...I don't understand how people can effing sit there, look at a piece of software, and see that yellow bar and not say "oh, gosh, what's THAT SAY?" I mean...
really?????? These two are writing some big how-to book. I constantly wonder, how do they expect anyone to understand what they've written, given their own behavior of not bloody reading?
I'm simply tired of it. I fear that I'm getting dangerously close to replying to people who are asking me the same s**t, over and over, that we've ALREADY answered, in our handouts, by sending them the same damn documents or links again, with some canned thing that says "please read the materials we gave you previously." I mean, the utterly cavalier attitude, that our time is worth NOTHING, so it's okay not to read what we tell them to read, but instead, waste our time basically sending them the same info that we previously gave them, by effectively "reading it to them" in an email...it's infuriating.
I never ask a software provider for assistance unless/until I've tried to read all the available materials, read forums, etc. Never. I just will never understand people who just won't bother to at least TRY to understand something first.
Hitch