i love the look on people's faces at work when they realize that I don't know everything.

here's the scenario that happens occasionally.
user: "Chris, how do we do such and such?" or, "why doesn't such and such work?"

Chris: "I don't know."

a blank expression appears on their face and they don't know what to say next.

in most professions, you just do the work you are given. if it's a report that must be created, you create the report and put it on someone's desk. or if you work in accounting, you figure out what was spent and why or where. in IT, we are problem solvers. not all problems have one reason why something does or does not work. and just because we have training in computers, doesn't mean we know everything about them.

today i was asked why something didn't work. i told this person that it was a problem that i had worked on getting resolved in the past, but I could not find an answer for it. this person continued to ask me questions about the problem, and tried to make her own theories of why it didn't work....and then she tried to compare it to something at another company..."well...this is how it worked at so and so." well, i'm not sure how everything is set up there and we are using different equipment, so I can't tell you why it worked there and not here. I just don't have an answer why it doesn't work. she finally gave up and let me go back to my work.

The thing is...i can probably give a better answer than that...i know why some things don't work, but that would mean giving a brief tutorial on what I know and getting them to understand it. it ain't gonna happen.

i usually don't say, "i don't know" if i don't have an answer......i'll usually tell the person, "i'm not sure, but i'll find out." but sometimes, i'll say "i don't know" just because i know it will blow their mind...