I read everything, what's wrong with everyone else?
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Truth.
I've been in software development for 25 year at this point, and this is my #1 takeaway. No matter what it is, people won't read it.
"Trevor" is not a valid integer. This will erase your database. This will share your porn habits with our 1832 trusted data partners. Click click click, get out of my way!
And yet, the documentation must be written
There's this one guy in the office who were so adamantly anti writing documentation, he basically pored through the contract to find loopholes to state that doing documentation is not actually part of his job description.
I love it when uppity kids think they have a "job description" the allows them to not do things.
Your job is what the manager says it is, or you find a new one.
This guy either believes his code is god level (and has a huge ego), or just a crappy coder who can't explain what he wrote.
You forgot the most probable option the documentation they want is dog shit. Internal documents are almost universally garbage that is out of date and doesn't cover the important decisions, it just reiterates what is obvious from reading the code.
Also people always only answer one question. Don't ask two things at once. This is so infuriating.
Yep.
I have a habit of sending out a list of questions, even when I number it, and only get a basic response to 1-2 questions.
The consequence of that is if you do read it you effectively have superpowers over the non-readers.
Writing is a passive system for conveying information. It requires active effort by the target. If the target does not want to engage with the information, there is nothing forcing them to unless you add additional systems external to the information.
This is why I follow every single text or email with a, "Hey, did you just see my message?" phone call.
I have always had the opposite problem. You put written words in front of me, and I am compelled to read them. I only stopped reading TOS/EULAs because they're always the same! You read 10 of em, you start to see they're all exactly the same, with just names being changed.
What's the tl;dr for most TOS?
You agree to not break the law using their product, you agree to arbitration instead of going to a real court (which the company would pay for, not you, so please actually take them up on this en mass), you agree to not reverse engineer the code, reproduce the code or redistribute the code, etc. Long ass lists of what you can and can not use it for. Sometimes there's funny shit in there like the tos for iTunes disallows you to use the software to create nuclear weapons. Idk how you would use iTunes for that but I guess they wanted all their bases covered.
Tl;Dr - "You agree to be raped in the asshole by capitalism."
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Signs and stuff I can kind of understand. Our world is chock full of things (ads) that try to get our attention at any point. At some point you develop an internal adblock and since 98% is irrelevant it is a reasonable drawback that the remaining 2% gets filtered out as well.
Exactly this. Imagine the gall of people to complain I don't interact more with their ads. Pricks.
Perfectly fair point. But in business you're supposed to read emails to know what you're supposed to do. But no one does. (too many emails)
Menus have the descriptions of what you want to eat but no one reads them (too vain to wear glasses?)
Forget the creative writing work you've been doing. I mean. Y'know. That's a given.
Sign, Sign, Everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery, Breaking my mind
But in business you’re supposed to read emails to know what you’re supposed to do.
So often I get a set of instructions that's missing information, out of date, or deliberately misleading.
I'm often on the line with support walking through the steps and saying "How did you get from D to E?" and then finding out there's a second secret set of instructions only tech support has - possibly even a different website or application - that they don't want to tell you about unless you're talking to an agent for some reason.
Menus have the descriptions of what you want to eat but no one reads them
Sometimes. Often they do not. They also regularly use shorthand or code.
My favorite is a series of red chili peppers next to a menu item. If I order the 1 pepper meal, am I going to be shitting blood for a weak? If I order the 5 pepper meal, are you going to White Guy Spicy it for the table because not everyone looks like they can handle it? It's anyone's guess. If I don't explicitly see the words "peanut" or "shellfish", am I confident it won't have allergens?
Why even have a waiter if you're not allowed to ask these questions, anyway? Just make everything a vending machine.
TL;DR?
/s
Ah yes.
Also: instead of googling for the opening times better waste everyone's time by sending a text or an email to the shop and making them spell it out for you!
Also: if you see the shop is clearly closed, lights aren't on and you can see the opening times on the door and they say it's not open but someone is inside better start knocking because surely they wish to serve you.
Also: never read the instructions of a product. Instead complain that it's broken and demand a new product. Repeat.
Also: if you see a price list/menu/price tag or similar and you accidentally read it, better double check the price by asking "does this item cost what it says here"
Also: "employees only" actually means "for adventurous customers"
Also: if it says push, pull, if it says pull, push.
sending a text or an email to the shop and making them spell it out for you!
That’s because the shops know that no-one reads the website and doesn’t bother to update the opening hours when they change.
When I worked retail, people would always call asking about hours, especially around holidays. I started answering the phone "[Name of Store], we're open until 9."
The amount of people that didn't process this because they were too focused on what they were about to ask was amazing. The best were the people that realized right after they asked , and you could hear the hamster fall of the wheel.
Not only do people not read, they don't listen either.
Not only do people not read, they don’t listen either.
Wrong. They don’t listen in the specific circumstance you expected them to listen. The beginning of a conversation isn’t meant to carry information. It only sets up the communication channel. The thing people are “listening” to are: Is the other person loud enough? Are they speaking my language? Do they have an accent that requires special attention from me to understand?
When people call a store, they expect the first few seconds of dialogue to be a greeting, which can be ignored; the name of the store, which they know; some phrase to indicate politeness, which they don’t care about; and then either silence or some other indication that the other end is now ready to process their request.
These expectations have been hammered into their brains for years by every store they have ever called. You are the odd one out. By trying to be extra helpful and give them what they want, you throw them off. Of course they need to recover, because the plan they had for how the conversation was to be going needs readjustment.
This also assumes that the callers had a chance to understand what you were saying in the first seconds. The first syllable or so of a conversation might be cut off because the line isn’t established quickly enough (which throws off the processing of the rest of the sentence). Their phones might not be set loud enough for the volume you’re transmitting. You might have fallen victim to the disease every person who regularly says the same things on the phone suffers from: You rattle off your script so quickly (and mumblingly) that the other person doesn’t understand.
All this is based on my experience and theory on how communication works. Don’t take it for granted. I’m no expert.
You realize you just elaborated on my point, right?
I said people don't listen, you explained why they don't listen, but the point of not listening remains.
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I worked gate security at a baseball stadium. Right next to where I stood there were two huge signs reading "No Smoking" and "No Re-entry". Guess what questions I got asked all day.
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I dont wanna say the average person is stupid but they make it really difficult to not think so.
Call it illiterate tunnel vision or whatever else youd like, but come one.
Heres some personal examples from work:
- big neonsign at the door at eyeheight telling people when the store opens, 1 out of 6 people looks at it the rest doesnt even see it, one once was even mad and blew out the doorglass with a kick.
- registers, big neon signs to say "hey douchenozzle, next one this is closed) and even when another worker is waiting and lookin at the person, they still dont get until you loudly talk to them to come to the other one.
- god forbid someone needs something in another part of the store, unless you use children level semantics (go to blue line for example) they never find what they looking for.
those are just my personal examples but outside of that you see it seemingly everywhere.
big neonsign at the door at eyeheight telling people when the store opens, 1 out of 6 people looks at it the rest doesnt even see it, one once was even mad and blew out the doorglass with a kick.
This sounds like real-world banner blindness. Almost all neon signs are ads or usless bling-bling to catch your attention. It’s no wonder people don’t look at them anymore.
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A significant fraction of America is illiterate. 21% or 1/5. Yeah.
It's even worse than that:
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
So 1/5 can't read at all, and over HALF can't read better than an 11 year old.
Which is wild.
I need to write to a 3rd grade level, and don't think it is possible.
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When what's written is in a language you can read, what's up with that? Reading is free, so to speak, and it enables laziness by not having to find and ask people stuff
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Weird, I read anything my eyes set upon without even thinking about it. Why wouldn't you, unless you're illiterate?
I could not believe that this is not a normal experience. If you put a poster in front of me, the words just get beamed into my brain the moment I'm see it.
But having chatted with people, there was a lot of folks who literally have to switch their brain to reading mode to actually start reading.
In my previous job i had to do a lot of coordination via email. I learned very quickly you can only ask a single question per email because very very few people would ever answer more than that. God forbid there was some semi complex task that needs done.
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Work retail and you'll see how little people read. There can be a sign in giant huge letters when walking in the door saying "Sale things aisle 7" and they'll stop en employee right by the sign and ask where the sales things are
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