Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You wait for the owner to return.
This is the real-life decision of Rod Quig, a repair technician.
The owner breezes in after about 15 minutes. "Sorry, just went out for a coffee,"
he says. "You haven't started yet, have you?"
You tell him you haven't. "Good, I was wondering if you might have
to save the guest list data or if it would matter that this computer system
controls all the electronic locks in the hotel."
Thank goodness you waited! If you had shut down the system you might have
lost the guest list, or worse, locked the guests in their rooms!
"The moral of the story is to never be afraid to ask a question," says
Quig. "If a customer points to a machine and says, 'Fix it,' and
you know you'll have to turn it off to do that, it doesn't necessarily
mean you can go ahead and shut it down."
It's never a good idea to wipe out a customer's data without
warning them first!
Overall, you have to have excellent decision-making skills if you want
to go into this field.
Denis Desfosses is a computer service and repair technician. He says decisiveness
is key.
"So many things...with a computer can go wrong, you gotta make the decision
what is wrong," he says. "And then you gotta back it up." The consequences
of a wrong decision are lost time, and often, money.
"A customer is not going to pay for something that you don't fix,"
he says.