Facing forward
As we progress into a new 21st Century decade [or do we? – on Boxing Day a family member told me that some are still arguing whether the Millennium should have been celebrated on 1st January 2000, or rather a year later] some readers may have been turning their minds recently towards measures or schemes designed to better enable them to survive the one now at hand.
Over the course of my business career, whenever confronted by a tricky situation, I often found it best to stick to some pretty basic principles in either making decisions or devising a strategy for going forward.
For example, I often found it fruitful to spend a preliminary period ‘thinking it through in the round’ – i.e.
(1)
trying to dissect the issue concerned, work out its essence and e.g. perhaps whether in reality the ultimate goals of those to be facing you across the table or court room were ‘as they appeared to be on the surface’, or were in fact actually aimed at one day achieving something quite different (and if so, what?);
and
(2)
what their various arguments and tactics were most likely to be – i.e. that hardy annual of the legal professional “Next after your own case, the most important thing you need to master going into a legal action is that of your opponent(s)”.
Sometimes I also found it helpful – in the cause of narrowing down my decision options – to begin by working out those that, by any yardstick, were short-sighted, illogical, foolhardy or just plain crackers, if only on the basis that that, with these eliminated from consideration, (as it were) by default one would – hopefully – be left with a shorter list of the ‘sensible’ options from which to make one’s choice!
With this in mind, I thought that perhaps today I would assist Rusters by mentioning my own personal ‘greatest ‘pet hate’ of the 21st Century, just in case – by agreeing with me – or perhaps by prompting others to identify their own equivalents – this would help them progress their forward planning.
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
Yes, I know it’s an obvious target – but let me simply start by citing public car park ticket machines, their railway equivalents and all UK supermarket ‘self-checkout’ stations.
I don’t know why this always happens to me, but modern ‘techno-savvy’ machines generally seem to “have it in” for me.
For example, I have never yet managed to navigate myself through the process of checking myself out of a supermarket without at some point having to press the on-screen ‘tit’ … and then have to stand at the machine and wait like a dork for up to ten minutes until a member of staff comes along to help me.
To cut to the essence of this whole subject: in my day, every piece of office or other kit one ever came across not only did exactly what it said on the tin, but also only whatever you asked it to do.
No more, no less.
However, with modern technology – even take say something as mundane as drafting a letter as a Word document – the software is so deliberately sophisticated and/or difficult that it won’t let you design your own page layout.
Should you ever try to do so, it immediately make its own decisions as to how it thinks you wanted to lay it out – and then applies them, leaving you with a document that (in the “old school terms” within which I operate) resembles nothing more than a dog’s breaksfast.
Inevitably, of course, it comes with the territory that an oldie like me will always struggle to ever get to grips with the latest fad.
Here’s a recent ‘for instance’ to finish with:
Over Christmas, having received a cheery festive WhatsApp family message – possibly by mistake – from a girlfriend of the Memsahib whom I don’t know that well, I tried to ‘get with it’ (and/or show off?) by attaching my first ever emoji at the end of my reply.
I later proudly showed Her Indoors the product of my endeavours, only to be torn off a strip and treated like a simpleton.
How was I to know that the emoji I had chosen to add to my message to this lady was – in WhatsApp-speak – in fact an obscene ‘signal’, inviting its recipient to engage in a sexual practice of which I must admit I have heard, but never yet seen, taken part in or even hitherto contemplated?!?!?!
