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Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

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Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#141

Post by bonzini »

michannne wrote: post #97
nkrisc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway. Recently I had a corporate ins…

I do support along with my usual dev work and interface with users daily. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "I'm pretty sure it's because of..." followed by something completely unrelated, along with a stubborn resolve to not try the professional's recommended solution

Well, that goes both ways. My wife is a social media editor and former web editor, so she is not a technician but she knows browsers more than her average colleague. Whenever some internal application has issues, she has to go through the same 10 minutes of explanations that it must be Firefox's fault, every time she calls tech support, after which they agree that it is usually what she suspected the issue to be; or if she had no clue and all she could tell them is "I have tried both Firefox and Chrome" guess what, it's not Firefox vs. Chrome.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#142

Post by braindeath »

This is not always fair but saying “500mg of acetaminophen” is more likely to get you labeled a kook or someone with illness anxiety disorder, at best someone trying too hard, rather than a pro. Doctors in the US say Tylenol.. like most brand names it’s easier to say than the generic.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#143

Post by Girlang »

crazygringo wrote: post #117
fortran77 wrote: post #111

Today, Jews who attend synagogue know the bible, because it's read, chapter by chapter, out loud, every Shabbat, Monday, and Thursday, and continuously studied in yearly and multi-year cycles. Yesterday, Jews everywhere heard the story of Esau and Jacob, read in Hebrew. I don't think any Christian denomination does this, so unless you attend a specfic religious school you'll never learn the Christian bible (which inc…

Sorry, but this is a completely inaccurate generalization of both Jews and Christians, both of which are incredibly diverse populations with practices that vary incredibly widely by denomination, country/region and social group. Bible study groups are a common Christian thing in many, many churches, for one. Also, it's fairly loaded to suggest that Christians "appropriated" the Old Testament. Perhaps you could choose…

You claim it wasn't "appropriated" then you dismiss it as an "old testament." I think the OP's point was proved.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#144

Post by sneak »

typhonic wrote: post #89
notacoward wrote: post #67

I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technic…

About 30 years ago I was being asked by some guy I barely knew to do something over the weekend. I didn't know how to tell him that I would rather just be at home with my family. Eventually and without thinking it through, I just said "It's my weekend with the kids." He instantly became apologetic and said he understood completely. And I instantly felt like a heel for pretending to be someone I'm not. I had accidenta…

It’s not your fault that the listener assumed you were divorced; you implied it (accidentally) but did not state it. You were not untruthful-what you said was literally and exactly correct.

The assumptions made by a listener as a result of intentionally limited data are not your responsibility in any way, indeed even if you were able to predict them with any reasonable level of accuracy, which you are not.

I have an essay pending on this exact topic.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#145

Post by sbarre »

sneak wrote: post #144
typhonic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 30 years ago I was being asked by some guy I barely knew to do something over the weekend. I didn't know how to tell him that I would rather just be at home with my family. Eventually and without thinking it through, I just said "It's my weekend with the kids." He instantly became apologetic and said he understood completely. And I instantly felt like a heel for pretending to be someone I'm not. I had accidenta…

It’s not your fault that the listener assumed you were divorced; you implied it (accidentally) but did not state it. You were not untruthful-what you said was literally and exactly correct. The assumptions made by a listener as a result of intentionally limited data are not your responsibility in any way, indeed even if you were able to predict them with any reasonable level of accuracy, which you are not. I have an…

Being deceptive might not mean being "untruthful" as you put it, but it's still deception.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#146

Post by sneak »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #81

Many of these are equivalent to demanding to speak to the manager in order to get what you want. That can backfire quickly if you’re not careful. > Present as if you are collecting a paper trail. Prominent indicia of this include notebooks, organized files, and repeatedly asking for specific names, dates, and citations for authority “for my notes.” I worked at a smaller company where any semi-threatening support requ…

> Before you try these “Dangerous Professional” tricks, please just try to be a decent human with the front-line support staff.

- they aren’t tricks.

- making documentation and taking notes is something decent humans do.

- only less-than-decent people are threatened by documentation.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#147

Post by whatshisface »

rdl wrote: post #25

Interesting USG shibboleths are using the correct acronyms, especially for insider stuff (TDY, "allowances", "authorities", and referring to NSA as NSA and not "the NSA", CIA as CIA and not "the CIA", State for "the State Department", etc.)

Is that good grammar? If you expand out the acronym you get "I work at National Security Administration," and if you remove the adjectives you get "I work at administration." Administration isn't a proper noun so that's why you would want to use "the."

In electrical engineering you are supposed to say "DIP" which stands for dual inline package, but laymen tend to say "DIP Package" which expands out to "Dual inline package package." In that case, having the wrong words adjacent to the acronym means you don't know what it stands for. That's in contrast to "the NSA" vs. "NSA," where the public (might?) have it right.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#148

Post by tyoma »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #56

>A bank: a) Do it only on paper. b) Address to any of Office of the President, Chief Compliance Pfficer, General Counsel, or Investor Relations. My dad speaks English as a second language and asks my family to proofread things. I have no idea where he got this from, but there was a period of time when he'd write letters addressed to the President of JP Morgan, or, The Comptroller of Maryland, etc. At first we all tho…

This is my dad too. I thought he was nuts, but it was very effective.

Looking at your name I am going to assume that like me you are from the former USSR.

The explanation my dad said is the following: a lifetime of dealing with soviet bureaucracy informed him that orders always flow down, and each worker tries to prevent complaints from flowing up. Therefore, to get a problem resolved, your request has to come from up high in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

The easiest way to do it? Write to the very top and hope they forward it down with a note saying “fix it”. Then it will get fixed.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#149

Post by ptaipale »

afarrell wrote: post #28
EliRivers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word itself was the original shibboleth; used to identify fleeing Ephraimites. It did not go well for those Ephraimites thus identifed.

The word "lollapalooza" was used similarly in night-fighting against the Japanese in WWII.

My father was a veteran of WWII, in the Finnish army fighting the Soviets.

In (I think) 1972, I was a 6-year-old kid, and we went to the town 60 km away (we did not go there very often).

Suddenly, my father exclaimed "Hei yks!" (Finnish for "hello one!") to a man on the street. Then they greeted and spoke quietly for quite a while. I didn't understand it at all.

Only much later I realized that the other man was a brother-in-arms of my father, and "Hei yks!" was the shibboleth of their unit; it had been devised for a night-time attack in very extreme conditions in February 1942, and the men in the brigade then used it throughout the war to identify each other whenever there was no mission-specific one defined. Russians cannot very well pronounce the y in "yks" the way Finns do. (This was of course no strong guarantee because the Soviet army had some native Finnish-speakers, but most were not.)

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#150

Post by fhars »

aasasd wrote: post #61
netcan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Terms become terms and we can't change it. I just meant that idioms tend to be richer when the source is material. Point taken on finding an example that everyone understands. Any political context creates shibboleths by the dozen. The UK is good for making ones that stick around. "Nationist" and "National" political movements, for example, are apposite (and opposing).

Yeah no, don't do that. After reading about the Derry thing, I realized I better forget all about it and never mention it in the presence of an Irishman, a Northern-Irishman or anyone else from GB, and especially not botch my reference to any one side. ‘Shibboleth’ has the nice quality that no Ephraimites recently had, or are likely to soon have, misfortunes because of the phenomenon, and the whole affair was three t…

Well, that is sort of the point of a shibboleth: those who say it wrong get killed.
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