WebDesign Responds to "The Expert"

The short film titled, “The Expert” is a very frustrating video for the main character. The video consists of five major people working on the advertisement aspect of a company. Two ladies representing one company requested seven red lines, two being red, two being green, and all seven being perpendicular. The other three workers designing the logo had an expert present to draw the lines. Anderson, the expert, was listening to the instructions but could not understand or even perform the task at hand. He stated multiple times that the task was impossible because a red line could not be green, while it is labeled as a red line. Anderson’s employers kept speaking for him saying, “He is an expert…he can draw the lines.” Anderson was frustrated and couldn’t understand the stupidity from the four high company executives. He tried convincing them that the task was impossible but they could not comprehend what Anderson was trying to explain. To really show the ignorance of the four executives, they also requested Anderson to blow a red balloon up. After trying to explain himself, Anderson finally just agreed to the task after a meaningless conversation.

While you were watching the skit, you were probably thinking “Oh this is just another humorous skit.” But really this skit brings up a problem. People do not know everything, but some people know a lot about a certain subject. These people are known as the experts of that subject. When people don’t know something about a subject, they go to the expert. But sometimes these people mistake the expert and think they know and or can do absolutely everything when this is clearly just not true. For example, a family might want to breed their dogs a certain way so they go to the expert. Everything seems easy for the expert until the family says they want the new breed to have exactly 9 black spots on his belly. That is just impossible for the expert and the family needs to realize that just because he is the expert, doesn’t mean he can do absolutely everything. And to the expert, try and seem happy and not want to hurt your unknowing customer.

 What do I think? Well I think that the saying “The customer is always right” is not always true. In the video the customers were asking for something that was clearly impossible and the producer was telling them it was impossible. The producer was saying that the task was impossible, but the customer kept saying it would work. The producer tried to show the customer the reason that it wouldn’t work, so then they say “Can you draw a line in the form of a cat”, which is also impossible. In the end the customer asks for the producer to blow up a balloon, the producer said “What does blowing up a balloon have to do with me?” Finally when the customer says “When you blow up the balloon can you make it in the form of a cat?” and the producer says “Well of course I am an expert.” Over all I don’t think that the customer is always right.