Lately my mind has been in a wandering sort of Auto Pilot.  When a woman approached me with a Camera today, still in its box, I had already picked up my big stamp ready to authorise a refund. She only wanted to know how to put the batteries in.

“Did you at least try reading the manual?” I asked, since the technology of batteries hasn’t changed much in the last twenty years.

Flustered, confused with age, and tired, she waved some paper in the air and replied, “I didn’t know there was a manual. What would I need that for?”

And this is how I broke it down for her, maintaining eye contact with her, while my mouth spoke and my hands installed batteries and memory cards into her camera without looking, as a subtle indicator of how easy it really is.

“The manual is that piece of paper you are waiving in the air, and its only one page long, its sole purpose is to show you how to put the batteries in the camera and switch the camera on, did you try reading it?”

“It’s in different languages”

“Thats right it is! So there is no excuse for you to have not read it!”