Overheard a guy at the hardware store say he never reads assembly instructions

I was at Lowe's last Saturday grabbing some PVC glue and this older dude was telling his buddy he just throws instructions straight in the trash. Said he's been building stuff for 40 years and 'you either know it or you don't.' That got me thinking - am I wasting time reading every step when I build furniture kits or should I just wing it like him? Anyone else skip the manual or am I just overthinking this?

3 comments

3 Comments

butler.finley17d ago

Oh boy, another confident guy who's never had to call his wife from the garage at 10 PM asking where the cam lock dowels go. I've been there. I winged a bookshelf once and ended up with a three-legged trapezoid that doubled as a cat bed. Instructions are there for a reason, usually because the engineers who designed the thing know you'll curse their names if you skip ahead. That 40-year veteran probably also thinks flat-pack furniture is a scam and that "some assembly required" means hire a guy with a concrete saw.

emery_lopez17d ago

Laughing because that three-legged trapezoid cat bed is honestly a more creative outcome than my first attempt at a shelf that just silently collapsed three days later while I was at work. Came home to a pile of boards and my cat giving me the judgmental stare like I was the failure of the family. I swear the engineers who write those manuals have never actually met a real person holding a screwdriver, they just assume everyone has a workshop with perfectly calibrated tools and infinite patience. But you know what, I still read the instructions every single time now because one bad experience with a missing cam lock taught me humility. The 40-year veteran probably has a garage full of "custom" furniture that looks like abstract art and calls it "character.

tara_jones946d ago

See I actually gotta push back a little on the veteran part. The guy with 40 years of experience probably doesn't have a garage full of abstract art, he's got a garage full of furniture that's been holding up for decades because he learned the hard way what happens when you rush. Those flat-pack engineers are designing for the lowest common denominator, not for someone who knows how to countersink a screw. Instructions are there to keep people from stripping out holes or putting weight on particle board that was never meant to hold it. A three-legged cat bed is a funny story but it's also proof that skipping steps creates junk you just gotta throw away later.