Why is it that Americans don't read the manuals that come with their products?

Question

They are too illiterate to read? By the way, I am an American and I am appalled at the ignorance here! COME ON PEOPLE! READ THE FRIGGIN BOOK BEFORE YOU ASK HERE!

It seems that they fail to read the box when they buy too and then find out the product is incompatible with their system, lol!

Well miss lan! Look at the technical questions posted in here!

Okay let me reiterate here, computer products for instance! They would rather buy the product without reading the requirements, plug it in without reading the installation guide, then, scratch their bum and wonder why it didnt work!

Answer 1

the Americans (mostly men) who don't read the manuals are too proud to do the intelligent thing.

Answer 2

I believe most people expect a product to just "work." After all, they are buying something technologically superior to what they had before or never had. They may also be unaware of the technical details involved when it is an addition to an existing product. Even I have made the mistake of buying the wrong type of graphics card because it had been so long since I was into hardware, that I was unaware that pci-express and PCI were NOT the same thing.

I also get the feeling that when we buy something, we are so eager to make it work that we just take the most obvious route -- take it out of the box, slap it on, and press the ON button. If that doesn't work, go to Yahoo and whine LOL

Answer 3

Well RTFM always was a last resort. And it creates jobs for the juniors on the helpless desk.

But On the rare occassion I bother to read the manual (I rarely buy a product if it's not intuitive), I find the manual to be a real waste of time - technical authoring for the masses has a way to go yet. Maybe their all written in an obscure Serbian dialect, translated into Latin & then into English " :-)

Answer 4

Manuals? We don't need no stinkin' manuals!

Frankly, the last few manuals I've read seemed like they were originally written in Chinese, and then machine-translated into English. Talk about hard to read!

That's why most of the people toss out the "Friggin book" and ask questions here.

Answer 5

What a sweeping generalization.

I read manuals, but evidently your mind is already made up.

And incidentally, manuals are often difficult to wade through, inapplicable, and/or unhelpful. The manual that came with my car, for example, applies to a non-digital dashboard. I have a digital dashboard. So imagine my surprise when I looked through the manual to see what an abnormal digital readout was indicating, only to find that the manual didn't even cover the right model of car that I have. It happens.

Answer 6

because manuals are written for the lowest common denominator. it's too painful to read through the absolute basic stuff (insert the plug into your electrical wall socket. push the power button.) to get to the advanced stuff.

plus, manuals are usually a CYA measure by companies to cram a whole bunch of product warnings in there so that if the product injures you later by your using it in a warned-against manner, the company can escape liability. in other words, they're not really meant to be all that useful.

Answer 7

America did not come with a manual, so we had to figured things out for ourselves. The tradition continues.

By the way, what kind of batteries does my solar powered calculator take?

Answer 8

So what the fog U asking here for if U give the right friggin answer, dude?

Answer 9

Real men don't read manuals, They also don't stop and ask for directions. My motto is......when all else fails, read the manual ( usually after I've really screwed it up!)

Answer 10

I consider it CHEATING if you read the manual first. It's more fun to guess.