Know Your Foe

The most dangerous users are the creative ones.

You may have your fair share of mouthbreathers who sit at their desks and only ever use IE, Word, and FreeCell. Your only real job with these users is to guarantee that they can, without trouble, continue to use IE, Word, and FreeCell.

But every so often, you get a thinker. This person has a complex and far-reaching understanding of the world — or what they consider the world to be — and they see all manner of problems and chores inside. Whereas a mouthbreather is content just to have attachments in their e-mail, the thinker will stew long and hard and, for reasons that make sense to him and him alone, will conclude that that PDF file in his e-mail needs to be turned into an Excel spreadsheet, translated into Klingon, and burned onto a CD.

Naturally, the thinker has no clue how to do any of this, but he knows that it needs to be done, knows it like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow. You will have very little luck in asking the thinker to elaborate on his thoughts, since the problem to him is as obvious as an untied shoelace. That PDF must become a Klingon .XLS file! It's like an order brought down from the hand of God, and the thinker, never one to actually trifle with any of the numerous details he dreams up for himself, assumes it to be doable even if his understanding of PDFs and spreadsheets is as abstract and intangible as his understanding of Kant's categorical imperative. The question is not "should it be done", but rather "when can you have that finished?"

Beware the thinker, for he is both clever and ignorant.