Re: Another question to ponder

[Norm Dancy <norm -at- navix -dot- jp>]

A little different aspect of this. I got my position just because I was 
older. The company that hired me was purposely looking for an older 
writer. Why? Because they had a client that was producing manuals for 
home audio/video components that were really bad. Both are Japanese 
companies. I'm in Japan. The client had their manuals translated in the 
beginning but then decided that if only a small portion was different 
they could make the changes and get the manual out all by themselves. 
Besides producing an increasingly bad product they were very happy with 
their efforts. The company that sought out and hired me was doing the 
translations but they were good enough to realize that the manuals were 
quickly going downhill.

Why were they looking for an older person? The capable writers they had 
on their staff were below 30 and just not old enough to be able to tell 
the client that their product was bad and getting worse and that they 
had to change. The company that hired me felt that someone that was, at 
the time, close to 50 would have the seniority to be able to tell the 
client what was wrong, how to fix it  and to stress the importance of 
it all.

It worked. After I was hired I went to the client's factory. Worked for 
over a year rewriting their manuals and getting rid of boiler-plate 
passages such as, "Press  the Stop button for 0.2 seconds."

I'm not in management but when I do go back out to their factory from 
time to time they have two workers come to the gate in suit and tie to  
greet me, they usually wear factory work clothes, and treat me very 
nice because as they say when they introduce me, "This is  Mr. Dancy. 
He fixed our manuals."

Norm Dancy


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