Author Topic: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?  (Read 8186 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline MMMarco

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 69
  • Country: ch
  • Hobbyist. ⚠️ Opinionated
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #50 on: June 15, 2023, 09:02:33 pm »
Nope. I always see the engineerng angle in everything I see and do.

yesterday I was offered a NOS Campy BioTherm water bottle for cheap, and ... instead of looking at its cool 90s design which perfectly fits my titanium 90s road bicycle frame, I immediately took my smartphone to find a "datasheet" ...

The man looked at me, without saying a word but he had the face of wondering "hey buddy, do you seriously need to look at the datasheet to buy my water bottle?" - while, in my corner, I just didn't even think that it could make him embarrassed.

Instead, in my head, I was just wondering why it was so light with the suspect that didn't use steel and glass, and when I found out it was completely plastic, I started thinking that thermal insulation with polyurethane foam is less efficient than a glass vessel with double walls where the space between the walls is a vacuum which reduces the heat loss due to conduction and convection.

As a result, the guy changed his mind about the possible discount and even asked me for more money.

Moral of the story is, reasoning like an engineer with a trader can be counterproductive  :-//

You should've asked him instead of pulling out your smartphone.

You most likely gave an impression of distrust and got "punished" by it so to speak.
27 year old Software Engineer (mostly JavaScript) from Switzerland with a taste for low level stuff like electronics 😊

 
The following users thanked this post: DiTBho

Offline tszaboo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8218
  • Country: nl
  • Current job: ATEX product design
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #51 on: June 15, 2023, 09:14:20 pm »
Personally I love to play simulator based games, RPGs, team-PvP or PvE, or creative-style games (Tycoons, builders, etc.). The latter can be dangerous though, as there are many games that speak for the engineering analytical mind.

Oh yes, I've so far avoided the likes of Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio, etc.  I have too strong a suspicion I would spend altogether far too much time in them! :-DD

Also for those highly technical / code golfing / nerd sniping types, there's the genre of "Zach-likes" which involve programming [virtual] computers directly, or creating clever mechanisms or such.  Also kinda along that line but also related to older puzzle-sim games like The Incredible Machine (ah, I remember playing that on a friend's Macintosh..!), Opus Magnum comes to mind.

Or if you want a just damned clever reimagining of ye olde Sokoban block pushing game: try Baba Is You.  Not so much a game to unwind, it's very clever at times; this is no accident as the credits is a whos-who of top puzzle crafters today, pretty much all of them had a hand in one level or another.

But yeah, indeed not so much for physical health, but the mental health value of gaming is not at all to be neglected!

Tim
All these are great. I've sank 420 hours into Kerbal space program this year, learned orbital mechanics.
2 years ago I was playing this game called Bitburner, which is a javascript programming game, similar to Uplink, with some idle game mechanics. According to Steam I ran that for 1200 hours, though probably more than half of that I was AFK. I went in not knowing any javascript (and kinda loathing the language).
And earlier, Minecraft with mods can get pretty crazy. There are mods for automation, you can build nuclear reactors with temperature control, automatic processing machines with electricity network and automatic sorting and mining. There was a programmable "turle" that you could program in LUA which you could use to make world devouring Neumann machines. I know the game looks silly, but it has a lot of depth with mods.
 

Offline DiTBho

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4367
  • Country: gb
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #52 on: June 16, 2023, 09:03:47 am »
Pulling up your cellphone instantly doomed you to failure, I'm afraid. :(

After the previous failure, as a compromise, I told the trader "I specifically want one of these" - showing a couple of pic of the Bianchi Champion bicycle water bottle -  "find it, and make your price"

That's what he is very happy to hear
- the product name/product and vendor id, instead of the product specs
- a pic of the product, instead of the product datasheet
- have a generous margin of gain to make his price (maybe that's what widens his smile the most)

The Bianchi Champion bicycle water bottle is less aesthetically cool than the Campagnolo BioTherm because it is not aerodynamic, and it's also more fragile because it is made of glass and steel, almost like a common camping thermos, so if it falls it breaks up, also 100g heavier, but better for me because it's able to supply fresh water for many more hours!

Problem solved :D
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow
 

Offline Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9336
  • Country: fi
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #53 on: June 16, 2023, 10:14:04 am »
Can't shut down, and don't want either. It's a valuable skill, not a bad thing. You are concentrated on the project. If you are not getting stressed about it, there's no problem and nothing to fix. Changing yourself into someone else, who is able to let go of work, could be more stressful.

Your paycheck should really reflect that skill, though. Working as freelancer consultant/designer could work for you better; else, if you self-report working hours, you should be accounting for these mental work hours, too. If bureaucracy prevents this, then circumvent the system, misreport the status so that you are actually further ahead than you tell anyone, finish your work early and work on your own projects or whatever you want for the rest of the time.
 
The following users thanked this post: NiHaoMike

Offline Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9336
  • Country: fi
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #54 on: June 16, 2023, 10:16:36 am »
Never take work home. Learn to draw the line. At my current workplace we have official "Right to disconnect" policy. It explicitly  disallows work related calls and emails after hours unless you are in an overtime paid support role.

Disconnecting from the workplace, workplace rules, communication, emails, calls etc. is extremely important, I agree with that. But do let your mind work on the technical details. When it happens outside office hours, your mind is free to explore all the ideas, and this reduces stress and ultimately benefits the workplace, too.
 

Offline Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9336
  • Country: fi
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #55 on: June 16, 2023, 10:24:04 am »
I am really talking about being "present" in other aspects of life. You know, I shouldn't be doing a tolerance stack-up in my head at my nephew's 2nd birthday party. That's just crazy. But sometimes that's what the brain wants to do!

It's not crazy, and you definitely should be doing tolerance stack-up if that is what you want to do. You are full-grown adult who can make your own decisions. Your nephew will have his 3rd and 4th birthday party anyway, and you are just one random old guy there, but that tolerance stack-up is a unique and important problem right now and right here, way more important than some made-up social constructs.

And I'm serious. It's different if we are talking about your own son, then you are responsible to teaching him too how to do the tolerance stack-up, which is a win-win. See the difference? Would others let you explain your stack-up to your nephew in detail? If not, your presence is not valued as that important, and no one can demand you change yourself into some kind of statue who just sits there acting as a non-playable character.
 

Offline Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9336
  • Country: fi
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #56 on: June 16, 2023, 10:34:08 am »
For me, woodworking and other tactile and olfactory creative stuff (like cooking) does "relax" the analytical part of my mind.

I find walking in the forests, mushroom/blueberry hunting etc. extremely valuable, not because they would "shut down" that analytical side of mind, not at all, quite the opposite; but such activities have the tendency of shutting the arbitrary limits down. Such limits are,
* How long does it take to implement?
* How about the deadline?
* Do we have a budget for this?
* What would customers say?
* Do we need this at all?
* Does this conform to MISRA, TISAX or whatever BS
* Could you please not write this in C?

and similar bullcrap everyone has to deal with their work at some point, usually during office hours... But when picking blueberries, your mind is allowed to store an angle in 256/360 degree units to remove all wrapping logic, and the next minute, if that leads your mind into calculating how much thermal energy can you store if you excavate a 10x10x10 meter hole in your backyard and store water in it, then so be it, this is important right now. After letting your engineering mind flow freely for 5 hours straight, usually it results some significantly important idea which is useful and also happens to tick those stupid limit checkboxes. Of course not always, and that's fine too, because you are not responsible to anyone about your own mind.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2023, 10:36:34 am by Siwastaja »
 
The following users thanked this post: Nominal Animal, DiTBho

Offline MT

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1687
  • Country: aq
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #57 on: June 16, 2023, 12:07:22 pm »
I just wonder: Are there those of you out there in “intense” design lead positions who can turn your brains off when you’re not on the clock? Is that something you learned or is that just who you are?

There is not a work related mental issue a "after work beer" cant fix.
 

Offline TimNJTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1720
  • Country: us
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #58 on: June 17, 2023, 10:21:17 pm »
I am really talking about being "present" in other aspects of life. You know, I shouldn't be doing a tolerance stack-up in my head at my nephew's 2nd birthday party. That's just crazy. But sometimes that's what the brain wants to do!

It's not crazy, and you definitely should be doing tolerance stack-up if that is what you want to do. You are full-grown adult who can make your own decisions. Your nephew will have his 3rd and 4th birthday party anyway, and you are just one random old guy there, but that tolerance stack-up is a unique and important problem right now and right here, way more important than some made-up social constructs.

And I'm serious. It's different if we are talking about your own son, then you are responsible to teaching him too how to do the tolerance stack-up, which is a win-win. See the difference? Would others let you explain your stack-up to your nephew in detail? If not, your presence is not valued as that important, and no one can demand you change yourself into some kind of statue who just sits there acting as a non-playable character.

Haha. I get your general sentiment. I guess my point is: It’s not that these thought experiments/musings are not important to me. They are, after all, what the brain seeks for some sort of mental satisfaction. But, it can be sort of selfish in certain circumstances. Letting my brain do the things it wants to is easy. Just saying, I *want* to be present for these other moments, and to make sure I am there for family and friends during their important and difficult moments. Not that you were implying the opposite of that..
 

Offline dietert1

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2473
  • Country: br
    • CADT Homepage
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #59 on: June 18, 2023, 06:18:43 am »
What did you try to make your life during non-work hours a little more interesting? Can't you find another adult who forces you to be present by talking to each other?

Regards, Dieter
 

Offline Nominal Animal

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7198
  • Country: fi
    • My home page and email address
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #60 on: June 18, 2023, 07:21:07 am »
There is not a work related mental issue a "after work beer" cant fix.
You are so wrong it is not even funny.

Granted, you have to have an unhealthy attitude towards work and work-related issues first; but then, the end result can be a burned out husk of a man.  Take a guess why I know that for a fact.
 
The following users thanked this post: Ed.Kloonk, hans, m k

Offline RoGeorge

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7012
  • Country: ro
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #61 on: June 18, 2023, 07:55:47 am »
For the OP, maybe try getting a vacation, or a new hobby, something different than the profession.  :-//

Offline m k

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2651
  • Country: fi
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #62 on: June 18, 2023, 10:56:54 am »
There can also be things that one must do but can't.
Real outside of one's head or not is irrelevant.
Advance-Aneng-Appa-AVO-Beckman-Danbridge-Data Tech-Fluke-General Radio-H. W. Sullivan-Heathkit-HP-Kaise-Kyoritsu-Leeds & Northrup-Mastech-OR-X-REO-Simpson-Sinclair-Tektronix-Tokyo Rikosha-Topward-Triplett-Tritron-YFE
(plus lesser brands from the work shop of the world)
 

Offline TimNJTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1720
  • Country: us
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #63 on: June 18, 2023, 04:31:46 pm »
By the way, thanks for sharing all your ideas and advice. It is good to hear similar stories and experiences. Don’t have many people in my life who I can relate to on this. Not planning on running away from engineering either; I think that would lead to intellectual death on some level. I also have lots of hobbies, some technical, some more artistic, many a blend of the two. Maybe I need to be more purposeful about working on those. And it is up to me to decide what balance of work related stress and intellectual stimulation/nourishment works for me.
 

Offline helius

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3688
  • Country: us
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #64 on: June 18, 2023, 04:38:38 pm »
Physical exercise is necessary to supply adequate oxygen and neurotrophic factors to the brain. The more strenuous (heart rate maximizing) the better.
Around 90% of frontal cortex neurons are inhibitory: it's precisely the experience of racing thoughts and inability to "shut off" that signal cerebral degeneration.
 
The following users thanked this post: karpouzi9

Offline dietert1

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2473
  • Country: br
    • CADT Homepage
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #65 on: June 18, 2023, 06:12:48 pm »
I remember reading a report 20 or 30 years ago about a high fraction of unmarried men at HP. They hired unmarried men intentionally. For somebody affected by such situations: It's not a personal disposition but a disposition of commerce in general. It's not enough to say: I am feeling uncomfortable but it's my problem. We need a little bit of resistance to protect our private lives.
Last year one of my neighbours started inviting me to walk an hour or two in the nearby forest. I thought maybe he wanted some advice. It turned into a habit and we went maybe once a week. Meanwhile he left and moved somewhere else.

Regards, Dieter
 

Offline MT

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1687
  • Country: aq
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #66 on: June 19, 2023, 12:15:13 am »
There is not a work related mental issue a "after work beer" cant fix.
You are so wrong it is not even funny.
Granted, you have to have an unhealthy attitude towards work and work-related issues first; but then, the end result can be a burned out husk of a man.  Take a guess why I know that for a fact.

Good grief! Ok so you obviously had to many beers and didnt understand the concept of it all and your work place was a hell hole to begin with as you are not supsed to have a bottle every day.
No wonder you become a husk of a man.
 

Offline Nominal Animal

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7198
  • Country: fi
    • My home page and email address
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #67 on: June 19, 2023, 12:47:35 am »
Ok so you obviously had to many beers and didnt understand the concept of it all
Nope, didn't drink then or now at all.  Then, just because.  Now, I don't use anything stronger than sugar and caffeine, just to help keep my brain chemistry working the best it can.

and your work place was a hell hole to begin with
Yes, yes it was, for me.  For a different type of person, perhaps not.

For someone else, this kind of environment would have posed no problems at all.  Me, I am a problem solver, not a salesperson or contract negotiatior.  One university lecturer / artist I worked with commented that they "loved working with me, because nothing is impossible".  Combine that with an upbringing that required oneself to belittle the amount of work achieved, and utter rejection of properly marketing oneself and one's skills, and I was like a square peg in a triangular hole.  A silent peg that nobody ever noticed even being there.

Yes, you can say that it was all my own fault.  The problem, really, is that I did not recognize the imbalance (of how I did not fit in that kind of a work culture) nor the need for rebalancing myself.

Switching gears, doing something else that lets these aspects of ones own mind refocus and concentrate on something different but equally interesting and meaningful –– again, for me, tactile and olfactory information makes a huge difference ––, is the first step.  It also makes it easier to recognize whole-life imbalances.  A major error for me was to redouble my work efforts without stacking stock of the situation first, and reject all hobbies –– life –– outside work.
 

Offline hans

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1698
  • Country: nl
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #68 on: June 19, 2023, 10:11:14 am »
I don't get the joke about after work beers. Or was it actually serious advice? Can't tell. Because if it is, then it sounds quite cynical to me (e.g. as far from the truth as one could be).

Physical exercise is necessary to supply adequate oxygen and neurotrophic factors to the brain. The more strenuous (heart rate maximizing) the better.
Around 90% of frontal cortex neurons are inhibitory: it's precisely the experience of racing thoughts and inability to "shut off" that signal cerebral degeneration.
But those symptoms also are signals for a great number of other diseases. Like bipolar disorder (mania) or autism and ADHD (hyperfixation) to name a few.
I agree with you that staying physically fit is essential to keep the brain fit. But marrying 1 symptom directly with a severe disease doesn't sound right. Otherwise the headache I have now could also be a symptom of a far progressed brain tumor.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 22436
  • Country: us
  • Expert, Analog Electronics, PCB Layout, EMC
    • Seven Transistor Labs
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #69 on: June 19, 2023, 11:27:00 am »
I don't get the joke about after work beers. Or was it actually serious advice? Can't tell. Because if it is, then it sounds quite cynical to me (e.g. as far from the truth as one could be).

I mean, self-medication is a thing.  Ethanol is one of the worst medicines you can take, but, it's legal, and socially permitted [in the western world, largely], or even encouraged, so, there it is.

Self-abuse is often a response to external abuse, whether from a personal relationship, or the ennui (and worse) of this capitalist hellscape we live in.  Or specific conditions (depression), which is basically the same thing but done to oneself biochemically (give or take exacerbation by outside forces too).  Tons of people (and media especially, and the former, I suspect, largely because of the latter) stigmatize drug use, thinking it's a failing of a person's moral fiber to give in to such addictive products, and therefore they don't deserve of compassion, they've brought it on themselves.  A very old fashioned, Victorian interpretation.

Whereas if you actually looked at the history of these people, you'd largely see they fell into drug use, whether by peer pressure (particularly when younger, more susceptible to it) or by stress or abuse.  And social stress will be a strong factor in peer pressure itself taking that dark turn, so it almost seems redundant to mention.  (Indeed on a system level, it's irrelevant; we can assume some level of peer pressure exists in a population regardless, and simply consider overall stress of the population and its response to it.  Maybe it has individual effects, but individuals on the whole will have better outcomes more often if that stress is addressed first.)

So it's no accident that many drug users are in poverty, homeless, abused, mentally unwell.  Many may become unemployable as a result of such circumstances, making it a positive feedback loop that therefore needs additional force to break (rehab programs), in addition to dealing with the underlying causes.

Anyway, not to get overly serious here...  Just to say that, the seemingly casual response of "drinking away the work day" is indeed a normal response; a dark one, but a human one.  The severity of that response can range anywhere from "out with the mates", to, eventually shivved in a dark alley over a dimebag of meth or whatever.  The same force that might tempt you to have something "just to unwind", is the same force that tempts others to much darker fates.

And, not to say that a little ethanol here or there is necessarily a self-abusive thing, not to the most severe degree the term brings to mind.  But when we have a conscious understanding that it's incrementally bad for overall health, and continue to do it anyway, that's still a very slight but definite harm we do to ourselves.  And that's just the easiest case, you know, you have a couple drinks, you feel fun for a couple hours, no hangover, no consequences, other than the nebulous idea that you've been told it's bad.  Which sounds more like other people trying to guilt-trip you, you don't feel any worse from it personally, right?  But there's also the level of, maybe you do drink enough to get a hangover, and now the physical after-effects are manifest, and you still do it on an irregular or greater basis, despite knowing it's bad, and now the abuse is clearly both physical and mental.  When I say "abuse" here, I mean anything from a sliding scale of "knowing it's bad but it doesn't feel bad overall" to "constant state of drunken fog mixed with cirrhosis".

So; it's largely a response.  It might not be a healthy one, but it can happen.  And if it gets really bad, it's a gateway to other and worse kinds; it's a sliding scale.  I would suggest monitoring your alcohol consumption, and using that as a hint that, maybe you should start looking for a new job.  Or family or "friends", or place to live; whatever the stressors may be.

(For my part, can confirm: my alcohol budget shrank notably when I quit my first job.  Haven't been [externally] employed since.)

Tim
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electronic design, from concept to prototype.
Bringing a project to life?  Send me a message!
 
The following users thanked this post: TimNJ, karpouzi9

Online abeyer

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 435
  • Country: us
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #70 on: June 19, 2023, 08:08:18 pm »
I think I'm echoing what a number of others have said, in that I think that this can be a good thing, to the degree that it's 'natural' where you aren't feeling pressured or expected to do it as part of the job, and it doesn't otherwise interfere with your life. There are plenty of times where you don't really otherwise benefit from attending to something you need to do (washing the dishes, in the shower, taking the garbage out...) and there's quite a bit of anecdotal evidence, as well as some more formal study, that points to this kind of "letting things simmer in your mind" as a positive part of creative problem solving.

That said, there's one thing I find important: If in the course of doing this I have an idea or solution or any kind of thing I need to come back to and isn't just idle contemplating, or when I'm in the middle of thought and need to set it aside to pay attention to something else, I capture it in writing someplace that:

  • Doesn't mix/overlap with personal life stuff, so it stays out of my way until I'm ready.
  • I know I will come back to 'on the clock' when I am ready to follow up.

My go-to is just sending myself a quick email from my phone to my work email so I'll see it next time I log in to do work stuff. But a note taking app, a dedicated notebook, or even just a pile of stickies or something, could work just as well.

If I don't do this I find that my mind knows there's something it needs to remember, and will kind of keep coming back to that to keep it fresh... leading me to dwell on it longer than necessary or to feel like I need to sit down and actually "do it" now. Getting it written down in a system where I know I'll come back to it when I need to helps me get the benefit of this kind of thought without it becoming a burden.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 15800
  • Country: fr
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #71 on: June 19, 2023, 08:37:24 pm »
Self-abuse is often a response to external abuse,

Yes, and there are a number of reasons why. One of them, and maybe the most common, is that it allows us to regain control over the pain we feel.
Essentially, we "cover" (mask) the pain inflicted to us by external factors with a pain that we inflict to ourselves, which we feel we have control over and which is more predictable, and thus usually more bearable.

Note that the fact we have more control over self-inflicted pain/abuse is usually only temporary. Just consider how much control you have over your drinking habits once they have become an addiction.
But at least in theory, we're still potentially in control. Feels less desperate.

Pain masking with another kind of pain is a very common behavior, and it works to a degree, until the masking stuff gets worse than the original source of pain.
 
The following users thanked this post: T3sl4co1l, helius

Offline helius

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3688
  • Country: us
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #72 on: June 20, 2023, 02:49:35 am »
Thanks, that's a trenchant observation.
On a less morbid note, it is similar to how an itch can be relieved by a counterirritant.
 

Offline PlainName

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7509
  • Country: va
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #73 on: June 20, 2023, 06:21:48 am »
That said, there's one thing I find important: If in the course of doing this I have an idea or solution or any kind of thing I need to come back to and isn't just idle contemplating, or when I'm in the middle of thought and need to set it aside to pay attention to something else, I capture it in writing someplace that:

  • Doesn't mix/overlap with personal life stuff, so it stays out of my way until I'm ready.
  • I know I will come back to 'on the clock' when I am ready to follow up.

Excellent advice.
 

Offline DiTBho

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4367
  • Country: gb
Re: Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
« Reply #74 on: June 22, 2023, 02:57:48 pm »
Pulling up your cellphone instantly doomed you to failure, I'm afraid. :(

After the previous failure, as a compromise, I told the trader "I specifically want one of these" - showing a couple of pic of the Bianchi Champion bicycle water bottle -  "find it, and make your price"

That's what he is very happy to hear
- the product name/product and vendor id, instead of the product specs
- a pic of the product, instead of the product datasheet
- have a generous margin of gain to make his price (maybe that's what widens his smile the most)

The Bianchi Champion bicycle water bottle is less aesthetically cool than the Campagnolo BioTherm because it is not aerodynamic, and it's also more fragile because it is made of glass and steel, almost like a common camping thermos, so if it falls it breaks up, also 100g heavier, but better for me because it's able to supply fresh water for many more hours!

Problem solved :D

strategic success, it worked!!!
not one, but two items got -20% off!!

 ;D ;D ;D
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow
 
The following users thanked this post: Nominal Animal


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf