Would you do me a favor?
I’m writing a book. I’m thinking of including the following story.
Since you may have read some of my blog already, would you read this condensed version of the story?
Tell me whether it’s up to par with my better writing. Or below it?
Of course, you’re free to not share your opinion. But if you do choose to do me this favor, I’ll be grateful to you.
So this story happened some time in the 1970s, before the PC was invented, and it has to do with a computer repair tech named Keith. (Yes, I know that’s a riveting beginning. But bear with me for a second. It gets better.)
One of Keith’s customers was a financial brokerage. They used a number of expensive computer terminals.
Each day at 1:30pm, one of these terminals would lock up. The trader who was using this specific terminal was furious. He would need to wait a bit, then reach around the machine, and restart it for it to work again.
Each day, the trader would call up Keith’s company and yell. The company would send out a tech to investigate. But the tech could never reproduce the problem that the trader was having.
What was happening was this:
Before lunch, the trader would read his newspaper. A phone call would come.
The trader would toss his newspaper on top of the computer terminal, covering the heat vent.
The beast would overheat and lock up. The trader would start cursing… restart the machine… and call Keith’s company and threaten to cancel the support contract because the stupid thing crashed yet again, at the worst possible moment.
And then one day, Keith was at the brokerage dealing with another issue.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the trader tossing the newspaper on the heat vent… the terminal overheating and locking up… the trader getting furious, restarting the computer, and beating it with the newspaper.
Keith could have gone over and said, “Problem solved! It’s because of your newspaper! Don’t ever put it onto the heat vent like that! The machine can’t work when you make it overheat!”
No, Keith was more subtle. He walked over to the trader’s desk and said it was great he could see finally the problem for himself.
As the machine was restarting, Keith surreptitiously put the newspaper over the vent again.
Sure enough, in a couple of moments, the terminal locked up again.
“You see!” the trader said triumphantly. “There it goes again, the piece of…”
Keith shook his head and scratched his chin. He looked at the terminal screen. “It makes no sense,” he said. “You see how it flickered just then? That usually means it’s overheating. But your office is so cool… what could it be?”
Keith started fumbling with the back of the terminal. And he waited.
“Oh no,” the trader said. “Could it maybe be the newspaper?” He picked it up off the vent and a volcanic heat rose from underneath it.
In a few moments, the computer cooled off and started working again.
The trader started apologizing. But Keith would have none of it. He just thanked the trader for finding the root cause of the bug. And the support contract, instead of being canceled, ended up being extended.
So what do you think? Is this an interesting story? I’m thinking to use it to illustrate this golden insight by Robert Collier:
“As to the motives to appeal to when you have won the reader’s attention, by far the strongest, in our experience, is Vanity. Not the vanity that buys a cosmetic or whatnot to look a little better, but that unconscious vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally. This appeal needs to be subtly used, but when properly used, it is the strongest we know.”
Do you think this illustration is worthwhile? Should I toss it out? Keep it in? Write in and let me know. I appreciate your opinion and advice. And if you ever want to comment directly on anything I write, sign up for my daily email newsletter.