Specific Knowledge

Do you ever notice how in your dreams, no matter how weird things are, they seem to make perfect sense?

I was taking a nap earlier and woke up in mid-sentence from a dream I was having. I had started out  saying " As long as we keep attacking these one point buildings..." and then I woke up. I know that I was suggesting a strategy and that I was leading a team. But, whether or not we were playing a game or fighting for our lives, I could not honestly say.

The point is, I was directing the group with perfect clarity. Our clothing, specific location and individual attitudes all made sense. I knew the people that I was working with and that I could count on them.

But, if I had just woken up in the body of  this person that was doing the leading, I think it would have been a completely different story. Because right now, in the full light of consciousness, I have no idea what was going on. The circumstances, overall choice of dress and even the demeanor of my team seem to clash with one another.

My current point of view contains no real frame of reference for what was going on.

It reminds me of how people who have no idea what is going on often like to tell the experts in a field how wrong they are about the solution to a given problem. Most of the people living in my home do or have done technical support at some point in the past.

And we all have "horror" stories about customers that call up and tell us what is wrong and what we need to do to fix it. They are aware of the symptom that they are having, and due to either their own scant experience or the word of friends and family members they make up their own mind about what is wrong and latch on to whatever they think the fix is as being what we need to do. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, the customer is actually not correct about what the problem actually is, hence their solution is wrong also.

They do not understand computers or how they work and most of what they say and think about them is wrong. You can't just tell them that though or they get angry and ask to talk to someone who actually knows about computers, thus dragging the process on even longer without getting any results.

And the sad part is its the same in pretty much every field, not just computer tech support. People act the same way towards experts everywhere, telling them that they don't know what they are talking about when the truth is in fact the exact opposite.

It just does not make sense to me. When you have an illness you go to a doctor. The doctor does some tests, tells you what is wrong, and sends you home with a prescription to solve what ails you. Only an idiot tells the doctor that he is wrong and ignores his advice. When and if you argue with the doctor, you look like an idiot to him and everyone else that sees what is going on. You may know more about your body, but who knows more about medicine? If you knew what he knew you wouldn't need to go see him. You would write your own prescription fill it and go on about your business.

Well, an auto mechanic is a car doctor. A computer technician is a computer doctor. The account rep that you call when there is a problem with your cell phone is a cell phone doctor. Each one of them knows more about their specialty than you do. When you call them, you aren't telling them what the problem is. In almost every case, you do not have the knowledge or experience to make an informed decision about what the problem actually is.You are telling them what the symptoms are. They then use their much larger pool of knowledge about that particular thing to determine what the actual problem is and what needs to be done about it.

Realize that reason the other person is there, on the other end of the phone, is to diagnose, troubleshoot and fix whatever it is that you are calling in about. Also realize that you telling them what is wrong and what they need to do to fix it, just gets in the way and makes the problem take longer to resolve. The best thing you can do when calling for support is to admit, to yourself at the very least, that if you could fix the problem you wouldn't need to be calling for support. Then do your best to follow the directions of the technician so that things can be resolved as quickly and sanely as possible.