How well do you pay attention to instructions? How aware are you of the "little things"? We have noticed that there are a lot of people out there who seem to not only stumble over details, but over blatant, in-your-face messages as well. Most of you probably have experienced this many times with other people and we see it from our visitors quite a bit as well. Below are some examples that we hope you will enjoy.
When members join our newsletter, they receive an email message with a link to click to confirm registration. At the very beginning of the email, it states, "Please do not reply to this message and read the important confirmation instructions below". A good percentage will immediately reply, "Can you please add me to the newsletter" or "Its really me" and then we click the link for them. There have been so many that we had to hire a "Link Clicking Specialist".
We run a banner exchange program for webmasters called IT Showcase. On the sign-up form it states, "Please do not sign up unless you own a computer related website and intend to participate in the banner exchange". And yet, the typical submission that we get is an individual with no website that only fills out the name and email fields. I guess they are hoping that we will rotate their name and email in our banner exchange. That's actually not a bad idea.
My personal favorite - On our contact form it states, "If you have found a problem on our site please be sure to include the specific URL where you encountered the error as well as the browser and Operating System you are using." Instead, we get "Your website is broken". I usually reply, "OK, I'll get right on that. It should be fixed in about a month"
OK.. We've had a little fun at your expense, but there is an important point to all of this. Reading instructions is important! We don't particularly care whether or not you read the messages and instructions that we post for you, but you will care when you fail an exam because you didn't read the questions or instructions properly. I recently heard a story about a person who did not read the instructions at the beginning of an exam and thought that they could go back and change their answers at the end. I think you can figure out the rest from here.
If you have ever watched the television show "E.R.", you will notice the incredible amount of detail that the doctors pay attention to while simultaneously enduring a great deal of pressure. Think of yourself as a doctor of computers and approach your exams in the same fashion.
In the computer biz, you have to pay attention to details and you have to learn to read instructions. Your equipment's life and maybe your job depend on it.
How well do you pay attention to instructions? How aware are you of the "little things"? We have noticed that there are a lot of people out there who seem to not only stumble over details, but over blatant, in-your-face messages as well. Most of you probably have experienced this many times with other people and we see it from our visitors quite a bit as well. Below are some examples that we hope you will enjoy.
