Meet the new scanner, same as the old scanner...
I have been busy these past few weeks creating the Container World Website (ta da!), so that Container World can put its bits of Container Related Paper onto the world wide web just like every other container company.
I have had to make it simple to use at the Container World end so that anyone can manage to upload a bit of Container Related Paper. To this end, I have installed a Content Managment System, plus various plug-ins to organise the CRPs, done at least 3 impossible things according to both the webserver adminstrator and plug-in developer (who seem remarkably unaware of how their server and plug-in actually function), reinstalled Windows on the old office server and set up an automatic system for uploading the CRPs and another automatic system for adding them to the CRP-arranging plug-in.
All that the heroic staff of Container World are required to do is scan the bits of paper and watch in awe as my mighty automatic systems do everything else. We even got a new, separate scanner which is set to save the scans into the right directory on the right computer, so they don't get confused. And I even wrote up some instructions and stuck them onto the new scanner. The instructions say (in two short paragraphs of slightly more office-appropriate English): "Scan the bit of paper and watch in awe as my mighty automatic systems do everything else"
The new scanner is exactly the same as the other office scanner. The one they've been using for about a year. The machine is the same - you put the paper in the same place, and the graphical user interface clicky-button thingie on the computer is the same - you click the same clicky buttons.
They insisted I show them how to use it.
Sigh. It was my fault for sticking those two small paragraphs of written instructions to the scanner. The problem is they have an all-consuming terror of being asked to read instructions. You can see The Fear in their eyes as they are confronted with the horror of potentially having to Learn New Stuff! From Teh Writings!
Its not like my written instructions are hard to follow. I keep 'em brief, and they are clear and articulate and unambiguous and friendly and even amusing on occasion, dammit, but it makes no odds because no-one, from S-the-uber-boss downwards, ever reads my instructions - they shy away from them like an elderly horse confronted with Beecher's Brook. This is why I have to endure telephone conversations lasting two hours*, and show people how to use scanners that they've been using for a year.
Perhaps this is just normal behaviour. Perhaps this is the way the vast majority of people react when confronted with three lines of text explaing to them how to do something simple: "Writings! Noooo! Run Away!!" . I don't know. Am I the only person in the world who thinks that reading is quite a handy thing, actually? Working at Container World makes me depressingly aware of all the ways in which I am strange odd weird unlike the others there. They're usually too polite to mention it, just as long as I don't ask them to read anything.
*on how to cut and paste a file on a computer running the Windows operating system.
I have had to make it simple to use at the Container World end so that anyone can manage to upload a bit of Container Related Paper. To this end, I have installed a Content Managment System, plus various plug-ins to organise the CRPs, done at least 3 impossible things according to both the webserver adminstrator and plug-in developer (who seem remarkably unaware of how their server and plug-in actually function), reinstalled Windows on the old office server and set up an automatic system for uploading the CRPs and another automatic system for adding them to the CRP-arranging plug-in.
All that the heroic staff of Container World are required to do is scan the bits of paper and watch in awe as my mighty automatic systems do everything else. We even got a new, separate scanner which is set to save the scans into the right directory on the right computer, so they don't get confused. And I even wrote up some instructions and stuck them onto the new scanner. The instructions say (in two short paragraphs of slightly more office-appropriate English): "Scan the bit of paper and watch in awe as my mighty automatic systems do everything else"
The new scanner is exactly the same as the other office scanner. The one they've been using for about a year. The machine is the same - you put the paper in the same place, and the graphical user interface clicky-button thingie on the computer is the same - you click the same clicky buttons.
They insisted I show them how to use it.
Sigh. It was my fault for sticking those two small paragraphs of written instructions to the scanner. The problem is they have an all-consuming terror of being asked to read instructions. You can see The Fear in their eyes as they are confronted with the horror of potentially having to Learn New Stuff! From Teh Writings!
Its not like my written instructions are hard to follow. I keep 'em brief, and they are clear and articulate and unambiguous and friendly and even amusing on occasion, dammit, but it makes no odds because no-one, from S-the-uber-boss downwards, ever reads my instructions - they shy away from them like an elderly horse confronted with Beecher's Brook. This is why I have to endure telephone conversations lasting two hours*, and show people how to use scanners that they've been using for a year.
Perhaps this is just normal behaviour. Perhaps this is the way the vast majority of people react when confronted with three lines of text explaing to them how to do something simple: "Writings! Noooo! Run Away!!" . I don't know. Am I the only person in the world who thinks that reading is quite a handy thing, actually? Working at Container World makes me depressingly aware of all the ways in which I am strange odd weird unlike the others there. They're usually too polite to mention it, just as long as I don't ask them to read anything.
*on how to cut and paste a file on a computer running the Windows operating system.