Nobody likes to see how the sausage is made.
That doesn’t just apply to the cylinder of Jimmy Dean that’s been sitting in the fridge for months, either. Seems most people don’t want to know the nitty gritty of how things are done. They just want the final product. At least that’s my experience. For instance – if most people really knew the entire process of turning a cow into the hamburger patties wrapped in plastic that are sitting in your local supermarket right now, I would bet more than a few would think twice about buying them. Better to not even acknowledge the cow ever existed, and be on your way. (If you do want to know, read ‘Fast Food Nation’ – there’s a chapter called “What’s in the Meat”. Yum.)
I’ve been receiving a little typewriter adjustment advice from a gentleman I met at my collector’s meetup last month. He was in the business for over 20 years and knows a thing or two. Let’s just say the process involves needlenose pliers and a hammer. The good news is I’ve discovered just how durable my 1950’s Silent Super actually is (I’ll leave it at that).
He was telling me about how he’d be in an office somewhere doing a repair call, and would wait until the secretary turned her back before he made one of these “adjustments” to a very expensive desktop machine. Sometimes he would get a “what the hell are you doing?” look after they heard the noise. He told me, “People usually don’t want to know how the sausage is made, I guess.”
SEMI-Automatic 