Hi Len,

>I usually work on the assumption that the customer is stupid, but as he's the one paying my wages, then I have to do it very politely. I talk them through what I would do - "First check the power, has the plug accidently been removed, has a fuse blown, tell me what happens when you switch the printer off & on" - slightly better than asking is it plugged in & switched on. Similar techniques for making sure he's got paper & ink.

Well, you have put it very succinctly. I would also dot my "i's" and cross my "t's" in a real situation ... in future.

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>Only experience can really give you an idea of how dim-witted people can be. Like the operator who stuck her fingers into a moving fan when told to clean the air-filter, the safety guard told her to turn the fan off before removing the guard, but as it didn't say so in the instructions she'd been given, she thought it wasn't necessary.
>

I always maintain that the phrase 'common sense' is an oxymoron. IMO there's no such thing. In fact what we usually look for in our customers, or others, is an uncommon ability to comprehend the written word, or understand a concept. Very few people really read a document completely, let alone understand it. How many times have you met a customer who really knew what he wanted; or read a floppy manual which clearly stated that 5.25" into 3.5" won't go?

Sanjay