Why my wife got pissed at me last night
“Why does this system have to be so complicated?” Can’t you just fix this already?”
Sound familiar?
That’s what I heard last night from my beloved wife when our home theatre system didn’t respond to her iPod-based remote control the way she was accustomed.
I’ll spare you the details of our home theatre setup but suffice it to say as a techie and someone who enjoys movies and music, we’ve got it all. Tivo, BlueRay, Roku, Apple TV all HDMI connected to the Onkyo network amp and controlled by a third party IOS remote control app over WIFI. It’s slick—when it’s working. And last night there was a little glitch.
When the remote didn’t respond, my wife became frustrated and irritated … with me. Even though the problem had absolutely nothing to do with me (or the tech as it turned out). In her mind, it was me and my complex “stuff” that was to blame for her missing her show.
My wife is very tuned into my work and is empathic to the plight of the IT professional—heck, she hears about it from me all the time. She is very aware of the pain our community endures at the hands of tech users who make unreasonable demands and blame the technology folks for all things technology related. That’s why it was so interesting to see her reacting in nearly the same way towards me.
It didn’t take long for her to calm down and realize that it wasn’t my fault or the TV’s fault or the system’s fault but a slight human error that was easily corrected. But I was still left with the question – why is this the case? Why is this the default reaction even from our most beloved family members, let alone from our business companions and colleagues? Why is the first reaction to be upset with the IT people when the technology isn’t working for them?
I put this question to a psychologist friend of mine and she explained to me that there’s really one basic issue at play. It’s human nature to want to blame someone. It’s hard to blame a machine but when there’s a person supposedly in charge of the machine they take on the persona and all of the defects of the machine and system. It’s just the way we are as human beings.
My takeaway from this little incident is that no matter how close you are with a particular user, no matter how much they respect or even love you, at the end of the day when something isn’t quite right in their technology world, they are likely to default to the human reaction which is to blame you. When this happens it’s up to you to recognize that it really is nothing to do with you. It’s just the person acting out the most basic human instincts.
You can and should try to explain things to them so they can more clearly see the distinction between you and the systems you are there to help them with. But don’t have too high an expectation of things changing drastically. The challenge for us is to maintain our composure and awareness in the face of this inevitable human encounter. Which is a fancy way of saying, keep your cool, smile and remember … they’re reacting like all people do, just like my wife.
