The Elfin Blog

(Revised February 19, 2003)

Like many of my peers, I am technically capable in quite a few areas. By that I mean I can successfully operate a computer and make it do everything I want or need it to do. It means I can use my VCR, my CD player, I can operate a video camera, a regular camera, and a slide projector. I can use just about any gadget there is with a fairly minimal learning curve.

Now, many technological gadgets cost a fair amount of money. Many of them cost a lot more than a fair amount. To me, anything more than $150 or $200 is definitely not chump change. As such, if I were to actually purchase one of these items I would, at the very least, peruse the manual as I played with my new toy to learn the finer ins and outs. If it was a more complicated device I would even sit down and read whole sections of the user manual. Imagine that - reading the manual. And can you believe it? I always know how to successfully operate the device I have spent no small sum of money on. Why, then, doesn’t everyone else just read the manual? Because I think the average American “Joe Consumer” is lazy, pampered, impatient, and expects everything to be easy. “Well I spent $500 on this thing! It ought to just work,” seems to a common phrase heard at the customer service desks in electronics stores across the country. But this is a serious misconception.

Think about it this way: generally speaking the more technology in a device, the more thought and planning went into building it. The more features a device has, it stands to reason the more the user needs to know in order to successfully use them. Why then would someone buy a digital video camera, for instance, loaded with features and benefits, and then expect to immediately be able to successfully use and navigate the device without reading anything more than perhaps the quick start card? Because Americans are lazy, that’s why!

You might be reading this thinking, well I always read the manuals. Or maybe, I don’t need the manual because I can figure it out on my own. If either of these cases is in fact true, then good for you. But consider this: When was the last time you even looked at the user manual for your car? Have you ever? Now unless you’re from an Amish Paradise, you’ve probably ridden in a car at least a couple of times in your life, and that means you have a pretty good idea of the general workings of a motor vehicle, and so why read the manual, right? Hell, a car’s pretty self-explanatory right? Maybe so, but I decided one day to actually look at the manual for my truck and I was amazed at all the guidelines and fine points contained in there. I turns out I was doing a whole bunch of stuff that I wasn’t really supposed to do to my truck. I also saved gained myself some big-time extra gas mileage because I started shifting when according to the recommended RPM’s given guess where - IN THE MANUAL!

My girlfriend recently bought a new car, a new 2003 Honda Civic. It’s a nice little car, and given the quality of most Honda products, it’s a good bet this little car could last her ten years. Except for one thing. She has yet to even look at the manual (to my knowledge) and she does stuff to that car that the manufacturers actually went out of their way to tell her not to do to that car. Where did they write this important information? That’s right - IN THE MANUAL!

Now I could go on, but I won’t so as to spare the three or four of you out there who have actually read this far. I will simply say that I have never had a serious problem with a device when I follow the directions. All I’m saying is that I am annoyed with Americans because we want everything perfect, and we want everything now. But the world does not work that way, and I’m willing to bet it never will. And even if the world could be perfect if we followed all the rules, most of us wouldn’t even read them.