Just because some of us might not be considered technology experts, doesn’t mean we’re stupid.
Twice in the past week I learned of two examples in which so-called experts looked down on some mere “amateurs” and tried to make them look stupid. Unfortunately for the experts, they only made themselves look stupid.
The first example occurred when someone I knew went to a certain cell phone company to replace a phone a washer had destroyed. He had another phone already, so he didn’t need to buy a new one; he just needed the number from his old phone switched to the other phone.
The customer service representative looked at the phones and said the switch wouldn’t work. “That’s an Alltel phone and won’t work,” he said.
Either the guy was new to the company or he was trying to pull a fast one to sell a new phone, but Alltel was the company his had been until a switch took place last year that frustrated thousands of customers. Yes, it was an Alltel phone, but it still was compatible with the phone company he worked for.
Instead of arguing with the customer service representative, the guy went home and got his wife’s cell phone, which was identical to the one he was trying to switch to. Realizing he wasn’t going to fool the guy, the customer service representative reluctantly made the switch, but not before trying to argue the battery was dead in the new cell phone so it wouldn’t work. The guy simply took the battery from his wife’s phone and put it in the new one and said, “make the switch.”
The second example occurred to me as I was attempting to get some help from the computer lab support person at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point library.
On Sunday, while working on a paper, the computer at the library stopped working. I had saved my file recently, but apparently I had saved it to the wrong file on the computer desktop and not the H drive as I didn’t know I was supposed to do, unbeknownst to me.
Figuring I’d come back when the computer was working, I left, not worrying too much about it. When I came back on Wednesday morning, I discovered the computer and the three others around it were “Out of Order.” Now I was worried.
I told the nearest library employee about my situation and he kindly referred me to the computer lab assistant who referred me to another person who promptly told me that nothing could be done about it. The hard drive was probably wiped and I would have lost everything, she said.
Confused by the word “probably,” I explained my situation again, wondering why she made such an assumption that the hard drive was wiped. Thankfully I did so, because one of the library’s computer guys, Miles, overheard the conversation and stepped in. “If the problem is affecting other computers around it, the hard drives probably weren’t wiped,” he said as we took a walk upstairs to look at the situation.
He looked at the computers and determined something must have gone wrong with the wiring and that he would fix the issue before I came back later in the afternoon. He assured me the hard drive hadn’t been wiped and that I will be able to access my report when I return.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed he’s right, but I’m definitely thankful he got involved in my situation. I’m thankful too I questioned the initial diagnosis. Just because I’m not an expert, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.
The moral of the story: don’t be afraid to second guess what someone may tell you in technological matters. Second guessing might bring favorable results (or at least I hope in my case, which is yet to be fully determined).
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Dec. 9, 2011.
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