Sometimes the real glitch isn’t in the computer, it’s in the conversation.

So, what would you do if a user called, insisting a program wasn’t working, but tried to shorten the error message so much that you didn’t know what was going on?

Would you try to ask questions? Or would you make them read the entire message?

In the following story, one IT worker encounters this scenario and tells the reader to try reading that again.

Here’s how it all played out.

Blah, blah, blah…

A few years ago, this user calls me early in the morning with a problem.

User: “Good morning, ThatBrozillianGuy. I’m trying to use this program, but it’s giving me an error message, no matter what I do.”

Me: “Good morning, User. Ok, I need you to please read me what the error message says.”

He makes the user back up.

User: “The operation you’re trying to execute is currently unavailable. There is a blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah… please contact the account administrator.”

Me: “User, I need you to read me the entirety of the message, so I can diagnose what the problem is. I’m sure it doesn’t read ‘blah, blah, blah.'”

User: proceeds to read the message as written.

Wow! This person tried to skip right to the end.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

Apparently, many people think “blah, blah, blah” is technical jargon.

This person couldn’t be more general.

Here’s someone who used to comb through lines of code.

Here’s this person’s similar conversation.

Way to take charge!

There’s nothing worse than someone trying to waste your time.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.