does ambiguosity upset you also?

[Kamel]

i really am not an anal grammar kinda guy. i could care less if words are spelled right or are capitalized right etc. buuut i get so mad when people are ambiguous with me. i wonder if this is just me or if others' hate it too.

for those who aren't sure of what i mean, i have a few examples of ambiguous statements that drive me mad.

1: i am the sound guy at my church. notice i did not say light guy, nor video guy (that's important). i help a service called celebrate recovery, it's basically a youth service for adults with addictions hurts habits hangups all those other horribly repetitive cliche's. now i've set the scene for what happens:

i walk into celebrate recovery to begin setting up, sound checks, etc. the only other person there is tonya, the woman who runs it. when i was standing next to the door, she instructed me from downstage (possibly even off of the stage, don't remember) this exact dialog "turn on the lights". so, what did i do? i flipped up the light switches. was it not what she wanted me to do? of course not. she laughed at my response and said you're so funny etc brushing it off as if i were joking with her. she actually meant for me to go into the tech booth and turn on the light mixing board and put some lights on the stage. not only is this not my obligation (nor something i am trained to do, therefore i shouldn't be doing it), but she did not instruct me to turn on the stage lights. she merely ask me to "turn on the lights". in a setting such as this, it would be assumed that "the lights" would mean the house lights, especially since they were off and we generally have them on during setup etc.


alright, here's another one my dad did to a guy at mcdonalds. he placed his order, and his exact dialog (though not all inclusive) was: "i would like a number 1 with chocolate milk, two of them". this leaves the statement up to interpretation by the receiving person, this should never happen, because it sucks being the receiving person. did he mean 2 chocolate milks, 2 sandwiches, or two value meals of the same contents? i personally did not know myself, then my dad got upset when the guy interpreted it as 2 sandwiches and 2 chocolate milks. my dad had intended to get 2 chocolate milks only.


i never speak in ambiguosity, i really don't see how you can't notice that what you're saying does not clarify what you intend to do? this is a common problem with programs from passing information between functions. if you do not send enough information to the function, later on you are doomed to a recode to include passing of "assumed" parameters. if you've ever programmed enough, you will know what i mean. for example, a function GetUserName without anything passed to it will assume that it means that you want the username of the person currently being used. later on if you need to use that for another user other than the active one, you have to recode....

so tell me, why the heck do people use ambiguous sentances/instructions? does this upset anyone else or am i just a strange individual? lol.

sorry for my rant, i'll get off of my soap box now. i bet no one will reply because no one wants to read all that crap anyway, hah. oh well =\.



*calmly steps off of soap box*

[CaptNKILL]

I know exactly what you mean. I hate when people do that, and Im the kind of person that would rather just do something once rather than screw up and try again, so I always end up asking people for more details. Its irritating when they think Im just stupid, because its actually just their lack of instruction thats causing me to do it.

Also, I think the word is Ambiguity

[saturnotaku]

Originally Posted by CaptNKILL

I know exactly what you mean. I hate when people do that, and Im the kind of person that would rather just do something once rather than screw up and try again, so I always end up asking people for more details. Its irritating when they think Im just stupid, because its actually just their lack of instruction thats causing me to do it

I'm constantly asking questions about my assignments at work. A lot of times we get very vague when talking about the stories we'd like to see done. Though I sometimes feel like I'm annoying, it's all part of the job, to make sure that what I'm getting done is the right thing.

[Kamel]

Originally Posted by CaptNKILL

Also, I think the word is Ambiguity

lol, like i said i don't really care much about spelling/grammar :P tnx for pointing that out though.

[Gaz]

The kings of ambiguity
....Someone had to do it