Plug in and Play

I have a three drawer metal filing cabinet in the corner of my work room.

It is not what you would in anyway describe as furniture; it is more like a monolithic structure, pre-existing on the site and  around which the whole house was built.

It is certainly useful.

For a long time what is now contained within was squirrelled away in the backs of drawers, behind cupboard stored items, in the garage, on high shelving and even for a short time in the downstairs toilet.

I accept that as soon as the filing cabinet arrived I just filled up the deep drawers with the paperwork that has accumulated over the years. Old bank statements, mortgage documents, bills and demands, school reports from our childrens' education, cards from Christmases and birthdays long past, bits of writing, employment records and much more were just thrown in with my intention being to return at some time when a slack few hours allowed and create some semblance of chronological, logical and prioritisation.

I have owned the cabinet for three years or so and that opportunity to file things away in an appropriate manner has still not materialised.

On occasion I wrestle open the heavy laden drawers, mindful not to extend all of them beyond a balancing point at which the whole thing becomes critically unstable, and risk a peep in.

No, the clerical fairies or administrative elves have not visited in the wee small hours and brought order and calm to a paper based chaos.

One section of the middle drawer is taken up by a large collection of manuals for various domestic and other products and appliances that have been acquired, worn out, discarded and replaced in recent years.

It is a sad but inevitable fact of modern consumer goods that the majority are not designed or indeed intended for longevity of service. We are definitely in a throw away society for just about everything.

I am not sure why I have kept the manuals for items that have long since departed the house.

I have inherited from my late Father the philosophy that things should not be discarded for any reason for the simple fact that they may be needed at any time in the future. I believe this to be somewhat true for most of the male gender which is why women serve such an important role in overseeing and managing what could otherwise develop into a severe escalation in the home of surplus tat and rubbish.

In leafing casually through a selection of the product manuals I cannot actually recall having owned or operated some of them.

The list is extensive from Mp3 player, personal stereo, VCR, cameras, oven, dishwasher, slo-cooker, toaster, computers, PDA and tablet, TV and DVD player, mobile phones, modem, family car, washing machine, tumble dryer, vacuum cleaner, sandwich maker, smoothie blender, cordless drill and many, many other things.

Even more damning than not remembering a number of these appliances is the startling confession that I never read the manuals with any conviction in the first place.

I am not alone in this flaw of character.

How many of you can honestly say that they have read an instruction manual from cover to cover before attempting to remove the product from its delivery box or connecting it up ready for use?

In a definitive study attributed to  Blackler, Gomez, Popovic and Thompson in 2014 from the School of Design at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia this very human trait of not reading the field manual or the rather more rude version of RTFM as in failing to "read the f****** manual"was given a scientific interpretation.

The findings included;

People claim to read the manual and use all of the features of many common domestic and personal products only 25% of the time. I can vouch for that bit of slackness or reluctance in that I can often be overheard exclaiming "well, we've had it for a couple of years and I never even knew it could do that".

Not surprisingly men are significantly more likely than women to claim reading of manuals and to understand the use of all the features of an appliance or product. I admit here that I ran the new washing machine without releasing the restraining bolts that secure the drum during transit and delivery.

It appears that the younger members of the population are less likely to claim to have read a manual. This I attribute in most cases to the natural intuitive skills of youths who have been brought up from the cradle on electronic and mechanical equipment. They just have a feeling for how things work and what they can do.

The senior generations seem to get a bit overwhelmed by the additional features of a product beyond their core purpose and use. "A toaster is just a toaster and there is no real need for a defrost, reheat or a setting that just browns the cut side of a bagel" I hear from a deep inner voice.

Unfortunately for the rest of us the School of Design study revealed that those of a better education attainment are amongst the least likely to access a manual. That sounds quite dangerous to me. No wonder the casualty ward at the local hospital on a weekend is overflowing with academics with injuries from newly acquired strimmers, blenders and George Foreman grills.

I can vouch for being a bit afraid of a large, weighty manual which tends to be the normal accompaniment for any product nowadays.

Even allowing for the multiple language sections in the telephone book sized publication there is a lot of jargon, a poor pathway through the different stages of set-up and commissioning and little by way of helpful guidance in even the most fundamental operational procedures.

The Aussie Survey recorded an astounding 60% of users finding a manual unhelpful. My approach follows that of 46% of participants in the study, that being to speed read and scan through the instructions or failing that just plug in and do the best that I can to get the thing running.

Lets face it. A manual is just an anachronistic item.

Those quizzed in the survey expressed preferences for a bit more by way of practical guidance such as a You Tube Tutorial (15.44%), a smaller percentage, 7.5, found help from friends as a better way but a whopping 66.37% advocated a more exploratory approach to get the best out of their new appliances and products.

Perhaps "RTFM" will also become outdated and obsolete as both a exclamation of frustration and a bit of a profanity.