Playing Dumb

Derek always annoyed me when he would play dumb when doing non-programming tasks. So if he was helping Testers by running test cases – they would tell him to open a test case, and he would be like “what software do I use?”, “what do I click now?”, “do I click the Pass button when I’ve finished?”

It just wastes time and frustrates people. I always thought he was being as awkward as possible so they would just tell him not to bother. If he asks all those questions, then it’s just gonna waste a tester’s time. If they are answering questions, then it means they aren’t running test cases. The idea of a developer helping out means there are two people running test cases. But an awkward developer just means there is a developer slowly running test cases whilst supervised by a tester who could have just done the job quickly.

I’m introducing a new character, Beavis; because he always acts dumb, or at least appears oblivious. Also, he has a very Beavis-like laugh.

Beavis was doing the exact same technique. I heard him ask many dumb questions like that. Later, he calls me over to help set something up. I tell him his account doesn’t have enough permissions.

So he logs in with the admin user, goes to the configuration module and then says:

“how do I find my user?”

“click the Find button”

“where is that?”

“In the menu, first button”

he clicks it. A dialog appears. “How do I then find my user? Do I just type in my name?”

“No, you have to type Pi to 10 decimal places!”

I didn’t really say that, but it was hard to keep calm with the questions that are just wasting my time.

He then says “sorry, I’ve never used this program before”. Even though that was clearly a lie.

I know he hasn’t used it much because he used to work on a completely different software product, but he has used it and was helping a Junior set it up the very next day. But when you have 20+ years of experience in the software industry, how can you not be comfortable using basic features? Many features are intuitive. If you wanted to find some text, it doesn’t matter if it is Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, Notepad, OneNote, Visual Studio; you would always press Ctrl+F. Want to Save? Look for a “Floppy Disk” icon, or the word “Save”.