Family Life

I had a break today from the usual humdrum at work. Customers called for assistance on machines that I had nothing to do with. Nobody else in the department was available to help, not even the people who had originally created those machines, so it was up to me.

There I was, having never seen these machines before, pretending to appear knowledgeable, be the expert, while discretely trying to figure out what the machines did, how they worked, what was wrong with them, and how to fix it. I waited until the supervisor left and then struck up a conversation with the operators. The operators can be counted on to complain. This isn’t right, or that is a pain, or why don’t you speed it up here. In short order I was told how things ought to be, and the many ways in which they weren’t. Perfect. A five-minute impromptu lesson on how the machines worked and what I needed to fix, focused with laser precision on what really mattered. As far as they were concerned, they were just griping and had found a listening ear.

In fifteen minutes I’d found and fixed the problem. I watched for an hour, just to make sure, and left. Another satisfied customer, and an interesting afternoon for a change. The moral of the story? When you know nothing, the complainers are your most useful allies.

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