Recently, while out on an IT call, my client begins to tease me for talking to myself.
“I’m not talking to myself; I’m talking to your computer.”
He laughs. “And is it talking back?”
“We’re effectively communicating, thank you.” Privately, I’m thinking, It’s you the computer’s got issues with, not me. We’re cool.
I frequently talk aloud to computers while I work with them. It’s not that I’m pulling a Scotty visiting the 20th century, talking into the mouse like it’s a mic. I just work through my trouble-shooting steps one at a time verbally as well as digitally. I think if more people were willing to consider their computer as its own entity and converse with it accordingly, many problems could be avoided. I’m not saying that you need to give your laptop a name and offer it a cup of tea, I’m just saying that this piece of equipment operates under a set of predefined rules and its providing you with a response that falls in accordance with that set of rules, so if you’re not getting the response you want, logic it out. If computers aren’t worth “talking to” then you have no recourse except to throw up your hands and say, “It’s broken.” (I love hearing that. I always look for cracks and smashed parts.) A more useful approach is to say, “Obviously you and I are miscommunicating. I have a printer. I know I have a printer. I can see it right here on the desk. How do I go about explaining to you where you might find it so we can agree on this point?”
See how just that little bit of dialogue opens up possibilities other than sledge hammers and TNT?
The key to troubleshooting is much like the key to most relationships: you have to listen. You have to bloody well remember what you’ve been told, too. That’s also a good relationship tip. And take things one step at a time. Don’t blurt out all your ideas, quandaries, and perplexions all in one gasping breath like a bottle full of vinegar and baking soda that someone shook up and threw in the middle of the road. Bottling is bad. Deal with your issues one at a time. As your therapist might say, we’ll save those other things for another session.
Yesterday morning, my toddler woke up with what was essentially a computer problem. I hear him rustling around in his crib. I hear a note of dismay as he handles a favorite toy – a Curious George monkey in banana pajamas, as it turns out. I hear the following string of very logical conversation issue from the crib.
“Monkey. Monkey not working. Batteries. Monkey batteries. Mom!”
There you have it. The monkey is not lighting up as it used to. The monkey may need new batteries. There are no batteries in the crib. To acquire batteries, Monkey and I need to first acquire Mom. Very logical. He could have thrown the monkey across the room and refused to speak to it. This would not be entirely unexpected behavior from a child of less than two years. An adult would of course tell him, “That’s not nice. Be kind to Monkey. Let’s see if we can fix it.”
Thus I am paid to go to a client’s office and say, “That’s not nice. Be kind to Computer. Let’s see if we can fix it.”
This is not strikingly different from what I do at home, except that the toddler bothered to trouble-shoot his problem before calling Mommy. Hmm.
You can apply this trouble-shooting idea to all sorts of monkeys in your life, with or without banana pajamas, but it is certainly essential with your computer. The computer isn’t mad at you, it doesn’t hate you, or have a personality problem. So break it down. Establish the problem (one problem, mind you), come up with a hypothesis (research is useful here - see that help button? the one covered with digital cobwebs? press that sucker and see what happens), test the hypothesis, take a look at the results, draw some conclusions, repeat. You might remember this from high school chem. It’s called the scientific method. Fabulous for monkey trouble.
So talk this problem through with your monkey and see where it gets you. Or you can get pissy and call someone like me in help. I’m happy enough to be Mom for you. It keeps us oatmeal and apple juice after all. I’ll listen to your side of the story, listen to Monkey’s side of the story, and then determine which of you needs new batteries.
Just don’t get mad if it’s you. There are only so many problems I’m willing to trouble-shoot for you.
