> They ask me WHY I want the alternator replaced. I tell them my vehicle isn't running and I need it to transport me from A to B. They then start asking me questions. Turns out it was the solenoid, they replace it, my vehicle successfully transports me from A to B
Thank you for this link! I finally understand why one of my former coworkers' answers always frustrated me as much as they did.
I would always ask my Slack questions in XY format, but lead with the actual question, followed by a full paragraph explaining exactly why I believed X to be the solution for Y, and what other letters I had tried before concluding that X was the next likeliest solution for Y.
Something in her brain was programmed to see an XY question and immediately assume the asker was wrong about X. Not once did she read the following paragraph. I would have to reiterate it sentence by sentence as she asked as many "what abouts" to try to challenge my X as I had sentences in the paragraph. It drove me BONKERS.
But I never understood how there was such a disconnect between my frustration and how much customers actually apparently liked dealing with her. Her default approach to XY questions was probably very effective with people who actually did not know the product in-depth, but was profoundly aggravating to those of us whose job it was to be familiar with all the other letters, who really, truly only wanted the answer about X and did not need someone to rethink our entire process.
I have such little patience for that kind of person. In slack (well mattermost, but it's essentially the same thing) you can copy the direct link to a message and it'll re-embed it if you link to it in a subsequent message. I'll do that if someone is asking questions I just answered, because really what's the point of a conversation if you're ignoring my half of it.
An XY problem[0] about A-B!
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem