God Help Me, I'm Reading the Instructions

I go through a general process whenever I buy something that requires installation or assembly. It goes like this:
1. Return home excited at the prospect of the new product and rip it open five nanoseconds after I get home in spite of any other plans I may otherwise have.
2. Read the directions.
3. Curse loudly.
4. Spend the next five hours trying to decipher the directions, periodically taking time to spew a long list of swear words.
5. Give up.
6. Briefly consider hari-kari.
7. Take 10 minutes to finish the project without directions.

In a word, product instructions suck. They're frequently written in 49 different languages, including several that are known to only a handful of linguistic scholars. And those that are written in English are written in Engineer, meaning that they're totally useless, anyway.

Particularly frustrating is that these writers tend to make up their own words for things. So you get phrases like “loop the fosset wire (A) through the tribolt (B) and tighten using the baring driver.” What the hell are you guys talking about? Engineers may know what a tribolt or a fosset wire is but nobody else does. Try using the word "thingy" or "that hooked deal" alongside big, full-color pictures. Then I'll know what you're talking about.

Each of the last several projects I've tried were only successful once I canned the instructions and did it myself. This included projects I'd done before, like installing a ceiling fan or a new dead-bolt on our front door, and projects I had no clue about, like installing a microwave over my stove. And it's not like I'm Bob Vila, either. I'm a writer, for crying out loud. Mechanical things scare me naked. I need instructions.

So I shall end this post with a request – NO, forget that. I'm going to get myself down on my knees and I'm going to BEG any reader who owns a company that sells products of any kind that require instructions: Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, appoint a Vice President of Obviousness. This person can be anything but an engineer or a technogeek, preferably a grandmother who has no qualifications other than she can't program a DVD player. That person should be required to read and fully understand any directions written by the company before they are put out for public consumption. And if she can understand them then maybe, as God is my witness, I may get it, too.

And while she's at it, the VP of Obviousness can do something about customer service. But that's another post.