One Way (Or The Other)

There are numerous stories in every industry and trade known to man of an outsider doing something that an insider knows is ridiculous. I’ve heard librarians joke about people who didn’t know the finer points of the Dewey Decimal system. I’ve shared jokes with other techies about users who were not sure how to use a computer. I’m sure that every profession has similar stories.

The real thing is that this sort of thing is only funny to a select few. It’s pointless me trying to explain a techie joke to a non-IT person because I will need to explain the punch line too and that will spoil the joke.

The fact is that these jokes occur because of what some people glibly call a lack of common sense; but as I’ve often pointed out, common sense is anything but common.

What is obvious to me is only obvious because of the knowledge that I have. I work with computers and so it is obvious to me that if you try to plug a USB cable into the RJ-45 socket at the back of your laptop, the damn thing won’t work. I look at this sort of thing and snigger. A non-techie will wonder what I’m on about and calmly point out to me that “Well, the cable fit, so isn’t that where it should be?” (This actually happened, by the way)

Similarly, I can make an honest mistake because of a lack of knowledge of banking/insurance/librarianship/professional chain-saw juggling etiquette and while I can argue that I didn’t know any better, a seasoned professional will still snigger at my ineptitude.

The thing is, you’d expect that therefore, an IT guy would not make an IT mistake of this sort.  You’d expect that a doctor might laugh if you told him that you took aspirin to cure yourself of your leg falling off. But if the doctor made a mistake of his own when prescribing you medicine, you’d question whether he should be wearing a padded, rather than white, coat.

So, when it comes to the sign writers and sign installers who work for the London Underground, I can only wonder what was happening at this point:

Okay, so which way do I go?

Is the signage a cause of you getting lost? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!

Related Unexpected Traveller Posts:

• Honesty Is The Best Policy
• French Showers
• We Spell “Belgium” “S-U-R-R-E-A-L”
• Gorillas In The Missed
• Going Down

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~ by unexpectedtraveller on April 11, 2011.