Annoying Things People Say To Engineers – Being An Engineer

As promised, here we are again with yet another take on ‘Being an Engineer’. Here’s a fun (and sad) fact for you all, did you know that most of the engineers don’t use the prefix ‘engineer’ because they are afraid of someone asking them questions? Yeah, ha ha ha moment for you all non-engineers, right? How about understanding the mental torture that you all make us go through?

We completed four long and hell-ish years of an engineering degree and NO that doesn’t mean we are capable of fixing every darn broken thing! There are specialized people for that purpose. A lot of engineers would resonate with the scenario where a family member or a friend comes up to you and is like, “Hey, you did engineering right?” – First, of all, BAD choice of words. We mean if anyone did anything that would be the University doing us over and over and not in a good way at all!!!The engineer tries to break into an awkward smile and responds with a nod *secretly hoping don’t ask me a question, DO NOT ask me a question*, however, the other person does the inevitable “Hey, then you know how to fix this right?” *Long Pause* “No, I do not”‘ *Disappointment and disgust* “What kind of an engineer are you? Pfft.” Before you can respond with a detailed description about HOW your engineering degree doesn’t deal with a broken refrigerator but is about construction, the other person is already walking away shaking their head.

Seriously, software engineers do NOT know how to take care of that crack in the wall and a civil engineer, for the love of God, can’t help you with a broken TV. Just because some poor soul went ahead and did a degree in engineering does not mean that he has been granted super powers to deal with all the stuff you have and whatever needs repairing. Try being careful with your stuff instead of snapping at engineers for being unable to help you out. Too much ranting? Let us tell you why this particular scenario gets us all hyper. Sure we decided to, literally, give up on our life and happiness and friends and social life to become engineers. We spent the four (or as many years as it took) to complete the degree and become certified engineers, the only thing that we are actually certain of after receiving that certification is how poor the university or institution is that granted us a degree! Honestly, our set of friends used to bet every semester that this would be the semester that the university will throw them out because of how ‘awesome’ they were at engineering! Imagine the shock and surprise when the managed to graduate as engineers. Coming back to the point, the only thing that we’ve actually learned during those years is to never trust our intuition or our guesses. Chances are we are en-route to crash and burn and that’s exactly why it scares us to death when someone comes up to us and asks our advice. You need advice on life? Sure thing pal, fire away! You need advice on an engineering matter? Stay the hell away from us!

Do we get better at analyzing stuff? Are we more logical in our approach now that we are engineers? No sir, we are so not! We still like to go with the haphazard and guess work till we find the right answer, however, that particular skill-set of ours won’t help you fix anything at all. In a nutshell, we are humans too and prone to errors. Don’t expect engineers to be able to magically solve your issues related to engineering related tasks. Sure, we studied about this particular issue somewhere in the degree, but hey, do you remember what you studied before the night of final exam during your 5th Semester? Exactly, neither do we.

We need to realize, as a community, that expecting engineers to come up with solution and to carry out tasks such as hammering nails on a wall in precise pattern is just plain wrong. The act should be condemned on a national level and engineers should be granted certain privileges so as to compensate for the hardships that they have gone through their academic life and are going through in the practical life. Now, before we drift off into something totally off, we better sign out. But do check out our next post that will be about where engineers go wrong in their life as compared to non-engineers.

P.S. This shouldn’t be necessary, however, this series is only supposed to act as comic relief and no offense is intended at any profession or personnel.