Why would the clerk need to know that, and why would the reader need to know that? Do you need a justification for buying something from a store? I think that's the lesson here. If you think he needed to give justification, you may still consider him stupid in a way.
Because most average users ask for one thing, but actually need something else and it is the job of a service person to get down to what the customer actually wants. Disclosing intent of unusual requests helps to find a solution in a faster way. It's also respectful to the clerk. Furthermore, people are more willing to cooperate if they know a reason.
> why would the reader need to know that?
Because it stands out as an odd story and it is quite important to establish context if the reader wants to evaluate if OP asks objectively stupid questions, has a way of phrasing questions in a stupid way, or if the person asked truly thinks OP is stupid.
That's what this post is about with a strong tendency that OP wants the reader to think that everybody judging him is stupid. In a way, the post is a humble-brag.
> Do you need a justification for buying something from a store?
No, but if I make people run around for me, I'd rather give them a reason.
> I think that's the lesson here. If you think he needed to give justification, you may still consider him stupid in a way.
I don't think he's stupid, but I think if someone is being judged as stupid all the time, it might not always be the other people (what OP makes us want to believe), but the way how OP interacts with his environment.
> Because most average users ask for one thing, but actually need something else and it is the job of a service person to get down to what the customer actually wants. Disclosing intent of unusual requests helps to find a solution in a faster way. It's also respectful to the clerk. Furthermore, people are more willing to cooperate if they know a reason.
Which is hilarious because as software developers, we run into this all the time. People who request things or ask how to do things and it turns out what they needed was something else entirely.
> Because most average users ask for one thing, but actually need something else and it is the job of a service person to get down to what the customer actually wants. Disclosing intent of unusual requests helps to find a solution in a faster way.
As I said elsewhere, I think it's an instance of the XY problem and we agree here, but I think the response of the clerk could have been something like "I have a lot of clients that ask for X when they need Y. If I give them X, they may come back and complain, and it will be a mistake on my part. So I'm sorry if I'm being too insistent with it, but I really need to be sure that you want X and not Y, especially since your request sounds a lot like what people say when they want Y", to which you could reply "Oh I perfectly understand, I work in software and we have this all the time with clients, I would do the same thing in your place. I assure you, I really need X and not Y." or something.
> It's also respectful to the clerk.
It may be more respectful than what happened the way the thing was narrated, but I think there is nothing "respectful" about disclosing information you may not want to disclose, which seem to be the case here (or the author is being obtuse).
> That's what this post is about with a strong tendency that OP wants the reader to think that everybody judging him is stupid.
I don't agree about the intentions of the author here. My interpretation is that he found something cool, efficient, somewhat counterintuive and want to share it. That seems to be in line with his other posts.
> I don't think he's stupid, but I think if someone is being judged as stupid all the time, it might not always be the other people (what OP makes us want to believe), but the way how OP interacts with his environment.
That's very true too. We only have his version so that's a possibility.
We don’t but we think we might learn something or be entertained. Withholding a piece of information that lots of readers are naturally curious about is odd. I like the post & Dan Luu’s writing in general but I’m dying to know the why behind the computer in the smallest box request.
