Thursday, August 23, 2007

Read the instructions.

When I dropped my car off at the shop to have the broken axle mount repaired, the guy behind the counter was the same guy who pulled the wheel and told me the bad new day before yesterday. He took a long time writing up the work order to make sure that the floor technician knew what to look for and what needed to be done.

Geis: "I work at a help desk and know all about it. Many's the time I had to write explicit instructions to second level support about what to do to fix a particular problem, only to have them not do that and have the user calling back the next day wondering why their problem hadn't been fixed."

So, half an hour later the floor technician comes back and says:

Tech: "I drove it around the block and couldn't find anything wrong with it."

Geis: "It was making a thunking noise two days ago. I brought it in and they pulled the wheel and called it a broken axle mount. I looked at it and it looked broken to me. After the wheel was put back on, it didn't make the noise anymore."

Tech: "I couldn't replicate the thumping noise."

Geis: "That doesn't make it un-broken. Please, just pull the wheel and look at it."

He must have pulled the wheel and seen that it was, indeed, broken, because in another half hour I was presented with a bill for $260.

What is it with these people? Do they think we are morons? Do they think the coworkers who explicitly tell them what's broken are morons? It it arrogance? Laziness? Not enough oxygen to the brain? What?

No comments: