Which Kind Are You?

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who ask for help and those who research and tinker until they figure it out for themselves. Which one are you?

I am a the latter. I read instructions. I fiddle. I try it the other way around. If I still can't figure it out, I search the Internet for further instruction. To date, someone has always been there before me and left detailed footprints to follow. The Internet: Inquisitive Person Paradise.

I wasn't always this way. Growing up as a latch-key kid forced me to be resourceful. Especially since I developed an early penchant for rearranging my bedroom furniture every month or so...along with the rest of the house, much to my mother's dismay.

Since I rarely had anyone to help me move big heavy things, I devised ways to do it by myself. I discovered concepts like leverage and momentum and the amazing versatility of thigh muscles. Momentum came in handy not so much for furniture-moving but for getting heavy garbage bags into tall dumpsters. Swing, don't lift remains my spring cleaning mantra to this day.

Though my physical self-sufficiency was well-developed by adulthood, I severely lacked intellectual initiative. Not that I couldn't figure things out for myself, just that it rarely occurred to me to do so. Why take the time to look it up when you can ask someone who has already gone down that road and knows the answer?

I learned that answer pretty quickly: because you don't retain it when someone just hands it to you. At least I didn't. And the people I kept bugging for answers began to find me annoying. I didn't like that At All. So I over-corrected. Ask for help? Oh NO, don't be ridiculous! I can do this All. By. My. Self.

Alas, mistakes were made and time was wasted. In public accounting, time is indeed money so it wasn't pretty. Not quite a Career Limiting Move, but not a lot of fun, either.

I am happy to report I have mastered the happy medium at work. In my personal life, however, I still have a hard time asking for help. Which is weird because I LOVE helping other people.

Wait, let me qualify: I LOVE helping other people with things they cannot do themselves. Why do I qualify? Because people who ask me to do things they are perfectly capable of doing themselves if they'd just show a little initiative ANNOY ME.

There, I said it.

Now before anybody gets their panties in a bunch, I am not talking about YOU. I know what you're thinking: "Holy crap! She helped me with XYZ. Is she talking about me?" The answer is no. No, no, no, no, no. The fact that I did it, whatever it was, is your real answer. I am not one for doing things I don't wanna. And I don't have any problem saying, "Uh...no."

Here are some of the people I am talking about:

Techno-Rube:  I am all excited to show Techno-Rube the new software and walk her through how it works. Three weeks later, when she comes to me with the same tired questions that clearly indicate she has not bothered with the tutorial much less utilized the Help button, I am less enthusiastic.

Change-O-Phobe: He hates the idea. He fights me tooth a nail the whole way but I forge head knowing everyone's job/life will function more smoothly when the project is done. At implementation, he grudgingly admits it will probably be a good thing but complains that he has to learn a new procedure/software/system and has neither the time nor the patience for that. Two weeks later, he raves about the New Thing and just cannot imagine how any of us lived/worked without it before.

Lackus-Followthroughus: She wants to be organized. She needs to be organized but it's too overwhelming to do herself. All I have to do is provide her with a clean slate and a simple system so she can start living her Brand New Life. Two months later, her kitchen/office/garage is the same disaster it was before I cleaned her slate and she has not filed a single piece of paper in the simple filing system I so painstakingly set up for her.

Fork. In the eye. All of them.

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So which one are you: a questioner or a tinker?

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