Dealing with Clueless People: My Frustrating Experience

[Astronuc]

She's the same one who calls another post-doc for help every time she needs to set up an infusion pump. I thought this was some complicated apparatus from the way she tells it, until I needed to use it. The set-up requires you to insert a battery, load a syringe, stick the syringe in the pump, connect the syringe to the infusion line (connects with a needle hub, just as if you were sticking a needle on a syringe), and stick the pump in a little backpack on the sheep. It took 2 min to set up...and most of that was trying to get the sheep to stand still long enough to strap the backpack on...oh, wait, no, the first time it took 10 min, because I had to find the batteries. I think my 3 year old nephew has toys that are more complicated than that.

Some people are just not mechanically inclined.

Maybe she is a theoretical biologist, not an experimentalist.

 

[Moonbear]

Some people are just not mechanically inclined.

Maybe she is a theoretical biologist, not an experimentalist.

Oh, another good one from yesterday...we were getting ready to start, and the technician hadn't come in with dry ice yet (we were a bit ahead of schedule, so I called the lab to let him know we'd need it about an hour earlier than he had been coming out with it). He seemed shocked..."No dry ice? There should be plenty."

I reply, "No, there's none out here yet."

His answer, "But I checked yesterday and there was still some left from Wednesday."

There were a few chunks leftover from Wed. that were in a -20 C freezer in a cardboard box (we had run out of styrofoam coolers to transport it because the temperature got warm enough this week that we needed them all for regular ice) ...of course they had fully sublimated by Friday. This did not seem to occur to him that dry ice stored at -20 will not last two days in a cardboard box. But, he's not generally so clueless, but seems to get a bit "ditzy" when he's stressed, and when we have big experiments running, he gets stressed worrying about them, even though I keep reassuring him that he needs to let me do the worrying about the experiment and he should just focus on keeping the supplies and samples organized, and to keep the vacuum evaporator running (it's a bit temperamental, and he is mechanically inclined enough to coerce it into running almost continuously for a week, which it has been doing between our experiment and that of a grad student who we let use it overnight ).

Though, with regard to mechanical inclination, does it require mechanical inclination to see a clog in tubing and change out a connector? This doesn't even require tools. Just pull it off by hand and stick a new one in its place. It's not like I'm telling her to repair a broken pump, or design a new part (that's what I spent last week doing...going through the whole set-up and identifying missing pieces, then running to the shop with instructions like, "I need a thingamajig about the diameter of my finger with a hole in the center big enough for this needle, and a screw over on the side that I can thumb-tighten, and..." I was actually quite amazed at how well the guys in the shop were able to transform my "thingamajigs" into actual working parts that did exactly what I needed them to do. )

 

[Moonbear]

As for the girl, I was kind of impressed. You don't have a button on the copier to do what she did. She had to figure out how a way to do what she did, and she had to do it quickly enough to get the copies to the meeting on time.

That does seem to require a certain degree of talent for being clueless, doesn't it? You can't even just stick the stack back in the paper tray to print on the second side to get that outcome, you'd have the first and last page back-to-back if you did that. Sometimes it's quite amazing how people manage to do things, because it actually requires a good deal of effort to screw something up in just the way they did it that you'd think they might figure out something was wrong well before it got to that point. That, or the other guy gave confusing instructions to her and she was sitting there thinking, "What an idiot...why does he want two copies of every page in the stack?"

 

[Astronuc]

I've learned never leave things to chance. Sometimes I have to be painfully explicit with regards to copies or other work. For some people it's not so obvious.

The other side of it is that I always tell those who with me or for me that if they can think of a better way to do something, please make suggestions. I've worked for some pretty autocratic managers of whom most people were afraid to suggest alternatives.

At the previous company, I ended bailing out managers who got in over their heads. In one case, the president of the company told me to keep an eye on one of them.

 

[kokoro]

Ah man I deal with that alot. I mean you know the MSR machines? (the ones that read your debit and or credit card) WELLLLLLL EVERY customer and i mean nearly EVERY customer can not figure them out

"wheres the ok button?" There is NO ok button it says IF OK PRESS ENTER. ARGGHHH
"wheres the no button?" Right in front of you... maybe the button that says NO

etc. etc.

Its ok though I've been reading jung and he dealt with it too. NO one looks. No on listens no one reads or feels. People are guided very blindly through life. and on top of everything I have NEVER EVER had trouble with ANY MSR machine ever. regardless of how different they are!

All it takes is a few extra seconds and you read and look! ;.;

So I hear ya!

im still learning how to deal with it! I mean I am not smart compared to most people on this bored I am a neanderthal but I still get how idiotic people are.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

I need a job, you got any openings? If some people can get away with what you're describing, why can't I get a job?

 

[Astronuc]

In a recent survey, more than half of workers said they feel a great deal of stress, and 77 percent said they are burned out. Why? The main cause cited was difficulty with other co-workers!

Then I heard about 'asymmetric information' and its affect on society and the economy. One example is where bosses hire 'idiots' because they don't know the people are 'idiots'. So sometimes people get stuck with co-workers who are incompetent. Makes one wonder about the bosses.

I had a boss, actually the president of the company (previous one) actually tell me about his big hiring mistakes. That was after the people in question had left the organization. Heck - I knew pretty soon after the people (management leve) were hired that there was going to be problems - for me!

I really dislike baby-sitting people who are supposed to have significantly greater experience and capability than myself - and they only have experience (which really means time) and marginal or very little technical or scientific competence.

 

[Evo]

I have a technical job and I have to deal with non-technical clients. I just had one client that had no idea what he was talking about and was throwing around all kinds of technical terms that made absolutely no sense. I don't want to embarrass these people because I need them to buy from me, and usually if I keep them talking long enough I can figure out what they need without making it obvious that they are clueless. This guy came up with a term that was so off the wall that I finally had to ask him to explain what he thought the term meant because I truly couldn't guess. When he explained what the acronym stood for that he was using, and it dawned on me what he really was trying to describe, I almost burst out laughing. I did blow it though, I actually told him that in my (very long) career, I'd never heard it called that.

Here's a question for my fellow techno-nerds like Anttech. Can anyone here guess what the term "gold car" would have to do with MPLS?

(hopes her client doesn't come to PF )

 

[Astronuc]

This guy came up with a term that was so off the wall that I finally had to ask him to explain what he thought the term meant because I truly couldn't guess.

When he explained what the acronym stood for that he was using, and it dawned on me what he really was trying to describe, I almost burst out laughing. I did blow it though, I actually told him that in my (very long) career, I'd never heard it called that.

Discretion in face of idiocy is sometimes very difficult. Fortunately the people I encounter know the terminology.