Most People Don't Understand Machines/Electronics

I was on the top floor of the hospital today and ready to get in the elevator. The elevator opens and there is an elderly woman inside. She does not get out at the top story, and instead rides it down (logic explains that she just rode the elevator to the top story before going down to the level she wanted to go to). She starts telling me that the elevator did not do what she told it to do. She told me that she pressed a lower level button, but that the elevator decided not to listen to her and went up instead of down.

I did not have the heart to tell this woman that she never pressed the first floor button, but I know she didn't. For one, the light on the first floor button wasn't on. Secondly, it is possible that she stepped on the elevator that was on its way up and wasn't going to come back down until it picked me up on the top floor, but really she never pressed the button.

Normally I would not start a post about one old lady who is baffled by elevators, but this kind of logic is more widespread than I can deal with.

All the time people tell me that the vending machines gave them the wrong soda. They tell me they pressed the button for the sierra mist, and it gave them a water, or something along those lines. Those people are also wrong. Those people also pushed the wrong button.

A lot of people just do not understand the way electronic equipment works.

Imagine a calculator. Calculators never mess up and tell you that 1 + 1 = 3. They just are not programmed that way. They also can not disobey, they don't choose to give you the wrong number, they don't accidentally count wrong. They are programmed in such a way that they will always give you 2 when you press 1+1 enter.

That is, unless the battery dies, or an LED display dies, or so on.

It is user error. These people do not understand how electronics work.

When Steinberg programs a computer, he might try to blame the computer for messing up his program, but the computer is doing what Steinberg programed it to do and the real reason it isn't working is because he can't type. Therefore, Steinberg has a speeling error in his code that he needs to find. The computer is not disobeying him. Computers cannot disobey. Vending machines don't randombly vend the wrong soda, you pushed the wrong buttons.