Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Way Men Are

(Photo credit tanbob)

I have permission from hubs to share this; you all gotta know I do whatever I can to keep my hubs happy including asking his permission to post his business. I love to see my hubs happy!
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Hubs set up a Google document for a guy at work we'll call Tim. The document was empty so that Tim could populate it when he got a chance. A few minutes later hubs sent the link to the document to several people so they'd have access to the work sheet when Tim finished with it. Within a few minutes a guy, we'll call him Michael, called hubs.
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Michael: Hey man

Hubs: Hey, what's up

Michael: Hey, that document you sent is empty.

Hubs: ...did you read the email? I said the document is blank until Tim populates it.

Michael: Oh...yeah, ok, I see that now. Thanks man


A few minutes later hubs heads to a meeting and when he gets to the room another guy we'll call Dan says:


I looked at that document you sent; it was empty

Hubs: Did you read the email?

Dan: I never read the email!

Hubs: In the email I said the document is blank until Tim populates it.

Dan: Oh! Well that makes sense then.


Haaaaaa! Michael and Dan both opened a document entitled "Tim's document" with absolutely no knowledge as to what could be in Tim's document, but they were not concerned by this. They felt pretty confident they could look over Tim's document and figure out what they needed to know.
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If we called hub's email "instructions" and Tim's document "something complicated" then it all becomes clear, doesn't it. How many men do we know who would rather eat dirt than look at the instructions? On the other hand, I let the big new camera hubs gave me for Christmas a few years ago sit in the box for weeks because I was intimidated by it and thought I needed to read through the instruction booklet first which I just never got around to doing. Finally hubs took the camera out and fiddled with it for a few minutes and showed me a couple things, and I got over myself long enough to play with it a little bit and get comfortable with it. There's a happy medium between "ignoring the instructions" and "death grip on the instructions", but that's a sermon for another day.

Here's to Michael and Dan, fearless conquerors of blank documents belonging to Tim!