What the hell happened to the American intellect?
I spend forty hours a week talking to people all across the country, guiding them through simple tasks related to their computers and televisions. Over the ten months I have been doing this I have discovered that we are well on our way to Mike Judge's "Idiocracy". Polysyllabic speech is foreign to a majority of my clients, simple instructions are impossibly difficult. Indeed, many are even illiterate. Americans are having the intelligence sucked from their skulls by popular culture, a woefully inept educational system, and their own laziness.
Initialization: Can you pronounce this word? You are in the minority. One piece of equipment my customers routinely call about returns a “Client initialization error” when it is unable to load boot information from the network. The way this boot information is loaded from their LAN is not simple and I don't expect everyone to understand. I don't even expect everyone to know how to say this word without sounding it out. What I do expect is for those who have to sound it out to at least get all the bloody letters in there! In-till-ay-shun, ish-ul-shun and inish-uh-lay-shun are not even close for God's sake.
Their ability to pronounce words is only slightly better than their ability to follow instructions. When I tell you to double click on “Network Connections”, for the love of God don't respond “I clicked 'Wireless Network Setup Wizard!'' When I break it down monosyllabic style for you and say “Look for the big, silver and black box with a bunch of green lights and the brand name '2Wire' on it.” don't come back and tell me you found the silver box that says “Motorola”.
Okay, I think I'm finished venting. These morons are just driving me insane.
Initialization: Can you pronounce this word? You are in the minority. One piece of equipment my customers routinely call about returns a “Client initialization error” when it is unable to load boot information from the network. The way this boot information is loaded from their LAN is not simple and I don't expect everyone to understand. I don't even expect everyone to know how to say this word without sounding it out. What I do expect is for those who have to sound it out to at least get all the bloody letters in there! In-till-ay-shun, ish-ul-shun and inish-uh-lay-shun are not even close for God's sake.
Their ability to pronounce words is only slightly better than their ability to follow instructions. When I tell you to double click on “Network Connections”, for the love of God don't respond “I clicked 'Wireless Network Setup Wizard!'' When I break it down monosyllabic style for you and say “Look for the big, silver and black box with a bunch of green lights and the brand name '2Wire' on it.” don't come back and tell me you found the silver box that says “Motorola”.
Okay, I think I'm finished venting. These morons are just driving me insane.