[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 7: Assumptions Make....]

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 01:02:54PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> So this week's assignment is what assumptions do you encounter, and what do 
> you do about them? Is it worth correcting people when they assume wrong 
> things about you, or is it akin to teaching pigs to sing? Does it benefit you 
> it ways other than you're not kicking yourself later for not responding?

Heh, I had a "wrong assumption" problem only yesterday.  I was buying a
DVD recorder (it was on sale) and the salesman started interrogating me
about my TV.  I asked him "Why?" and he said that if the TV didn't have
certain inputs, I wouldn't be able to connect up the DVD recorder.  He
was assuming that I was a dumb woman who couldn't deal with tech!  I
said to him "No worries, I *have* connected up stuff like this before."
and he dropped it.  Heh.  He'd probably go cross-eyed at the setup I
have, what with cascading connections between multiple machines (VCR and
DVD) all working perfectly fine.

In that case, I corrected him mainly because I wanted him to stop going
on about it; I just wanted my DVD recorder.  (And yes, I hooked it up
last night without any problems)

Other assumptions people have made...
- "You're a Christian, therefore you're a rednecked Fundamentalist bigot."
That one can only be corrected by day-by-day interaction with me,
it can't be corrected by an irritated "No, I'm not," because
they won't believe such an assertion.  So it isn't even worth trying,
most of the time.
- "You know all about computers, can you fix my PC for me?"
I've managed to train my family out of that by repeated "No, I don't use
MS-Windows, I can't help you."

Kathryn Andersen
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