onions
recently me and carl have been frustrated by the layers of crap people insist on piling in your way throughout life. more specifically, carl has been annoyed at people blagging their way through puter things without actually knowing what they are going on about. this happens quite a lot to him and i really sympathise with his frustration. there is nothing worse than being told you are wrong about something you know inside out, by someone who was told about it from their mate jeff down the pub (or something). carl puts this much more articulately than me (is that a word) here.
i used to get this a lot when i was doing my psychology degree. people who had done a nightschool psychology class to meet more people, or those who had read the latest pop psychology article in the daily mail. and there were those who assumed that psychology was all common sense anyway, or wishy-washy mumbo jumbo (which i think some of it is, just a relatively small section of it). i remember telling my parents i wanted to do a degree in psychology rather than english lit and them saying “where will a psychology degree get you?”. they don’t ask that question anymore. now it’s fine. i have entered a field so specialised that the only people involved in it are the people who /really/ know. you can’t blag it, you either know or don’t.
Sadly, this isn’t the case in carl’s work. his industry is being hijacked by the people who don’t know/care enough to do things right. they just want to do /enough/ to get by with and often they fall short of that. these people tend to be the business suits who mumble about profits whilst overruling their technical staff. it seems to be happening all over business at the moment. companies not doing their best for customers, just doing enough to keep enough customers to get enough profits. there is a gaping chasm in the market for a company that actually cares about what they do and who they do it for, and will actually take pride in their product. striving to make all customers /happy/, rather than simply appeasing the target percentage and failing the rest.
anyway, that was my sanctimonious cow rant.
