“If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.” – Martin Blank
One of my favorite websites on the Intergoogles is lmgtfy.com, otherwise known as “Let me Google that for you”. It is, in essence, a smart-ass, passive-aggressive way to tell someone that they basically asked you a simple question that Googling would have solved…
“When was the Declaration of Independence signed?”
“Quick, let me Google that for you!”
You see, we have been running networking events since 2001. We have successfully run 17 job fairs (aka Pink Slip Parties). We have been running a weekly podcast for close to two years.
If you ever read Dave’s weekly update blogs, they are insanely detailed. Dave writes a lot. So much to the point where he mocks me regularly that I don’t read his stuff. But it never fails. Practically every week we get an email in our inbox or a note on LinkedIn.
“When is the next event?”
I mean, on our homepage, there is an “Upcoming Events” section.
If you hit the “Meet” tab, there is a full-blown calendar.
But no, that’s not enough, then we get something like “So…where do I park?”. It has gotten to the point where instead of emailing back a simple answer, this goes out:
Classy, right?
Well, it doesn’t stop there. I have found myself to ask Dave questions myself, such as “Who is the guest this week on the podcast?” and I get something like this back…
So I am not immune to blame either.
I have very young children, they are like sponges, and I am trying to teach them the ways of the force. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t say, “You know, Google knows everything, it’s crazy!”. Is that a smartass answer, maybe, but am I am wrong? Absolutely not. It is impossible for me to retain any more information, as my brain is clogged with movie quotes and 80’s rap lyrics. So Google is my lazy way of finding out anything I could possibly ever want to know.
So before you ask someone a question, quickly ask yourself, “Wait, can I find this on the Googles?”. If your answer is “yes”, then you know what to do, and you avoided being “that guy” for just one more day.
Now go read something else.