Users' Manual, or Caveat Idiotor
I've often had the thought that most activities and products should bear the simple instruction: "Step 1: Don't be a moron" -- especially when reading about lawsuits over TooHot! McDonalds coffee, or hearing about various Darwin Award - worthy people and events, or when reading user's guides / manuals for stuff.
Yes, I'm That Guy that reads Those Things. Moreover, when there's no manual included, I google vigorously to find one. And I'm grumpy as hell when one doesn't exist.
While it does give me a giggle (and secretly warms my OCD heart) to read a manual that spells out each and every ridiculously obvious step in painstaking detail, sometimes even I confess that there's a line. I know that there are legal issues, matters of liability, wherein it is about protecting the company when they advise, "Exercise Extreme Caution with these needles; please do not stick them in your eye, or your children's eye or eyes, or your pet's eye, nor in your other eye, etc., when and whether or not you are or are not crossing your heart and hoping to die, intentionally or otherwise...."
I would operate on the assumption that most would not need the warning, as most individuals are not drooling idiots by nature. And, yes, "when you assume, you make an ass..." and, YES, people really can be total freaking mouth-breathers, especially when mob mentality kicks in, AND, YES!, people can also do that thing that total toolbags do, wherein either for profit or out of pure rebellion against all authority of any kind whatsoever, they do just the thing you say not to BECAUSE you said not to, and because there might be settlement money in it for them and marginal embarrassment for you that's mostly really for them, or rather that you are blessed to have to serve customers like them.
This rant brought to you by the delight I experienced in reading the below:
Yes, I bought something "AS SEEN ON TV." And, yes, though the pitchmen for such things seem hardly human, they acknowledge, by advising the use of common sense in their instructions, that the users are human, with all the praise and prejudice that entails.
Satisfied.
Yes, I'm That Guy that reads Those Things. Moreover, when there's no manual included, I google vigorously to find one. And I'm grumpy as hell when one doesn't exist.
While it does give me a giggle (and secretly warms my OCD heart) to read a manual that spells out each and every ridiculously obvious step in painstaking detail, sometimes even I confess that there's a line. I know that there are legal issues, matters of liability, wherein it is about protecting the company when they advise, "Exercise Extreme Caution with these needles; please do not stick them in your eye, or your children's eye or eyes, or your pet's eye, nor in your other eye, etc., when and whether or not you are or are not crossing your heart and hoping to die, intentionally or otherwise...."
I would operate on the assumption that most would not need the warning, as most individuals are not drooling idiots by nature. And, yes, "when you assume, you make an ass..." and, YES, people really can be total freaking mouth-breathers, especially when mob mentality kicks in, AND, YES!, people can also do that thing that total toolbags do, wherein either for profit or out of pure rebellion against all authority of any kind whatsoever, they do just the thing you say not to BECAUSE you said not to, and because there might be settlement money in it for them and marginal embarrassment for you that's mostly really for them, or rather that you are blessed to have to serve customers like them.
This rant brought to you by the delight I experienced in reading the below:
Yes, I bought something "AS SEEN ON TV." And, yes, though the pitchmen for such things seem hardly human, they acknowledge, by advising the use of common sense in their instructions, that the users are human, with all the praise and prejudice that entails.
Satisfied.