Rename In Your Membrane

(I am new to the office that I am working in, but I have quickly gained a reputation as the go-to guy for helping out with technical issues. This means that I’ll often get coworkers calling me over to help when the programs they are working in have bugs or unexpected errors. One particular coworker has an annoying tendency to try and “predict” my advice while I’m trying to help her, which means she’ll end up charging ahead, pressing buttons, and making selections, without actually paying attention to what I am saying that she should be doing. The following is an example of a fairly typical interaction.)

Me: “Your old lock is still active, which is preventing you from getting into the program. However, we can bypass that by renaming this file, refreshing the folder, and then changing the name back, so go ahead and change the name.”

Coworker: *make a copy of the file instead*

Me: “No, you don’t need to copy the file; you just need to rename the original.”

Coworker: *tries to rename the copy, gets an error, cancels, and then quickly deletes the original*

Me: “No, no… All right, well, renaming the copy should work now, so go ahead and change the name back.”

Coworker: *goes back into the program again without renaming the file and tries hitting the update, which crashes the program because it can’t find the file*

Me: “No! You need to rename the file, or the program won’t be able to find it.”

Coworker: *starts paging through the program, opening a few menus*

Me: “No. Rename the file, rename the file, rename the file.”

Coworker: “Okay, okay, you don’t need to shout. I can hear you.”

Me: *thinking* “You really don’t do a great job of showing it.”