Damn Engineers

I spent this morning at the mall, babysitting about ten team projects. I had the early shift, where only the mall-walkers and some bored cowboys were wandering around. Some of the men would stare at the projects like they really knew what was going on, and the women would just sigh and pull them away. I had to stare down the cowboys when they tried to lift the 700 lb snowmobile. Are you kidding me?

The other teams started to show and I could go back to babysitting my own project: the human-powered vehicle. Next to mini-baja, aero design, unmanned aerial vehicle, formula car, and even the snowmobile, our vehicle didn’t draw a lot of attention. Most of my questions were something like:

“Is that some kind of bicycle?”

Until...

There was a man looking at the vehicle like he wanted to take it apart. I advised him against it. He then began asking all sorts of questions, which, having been on the team for a grand total of a week, I couldn’t answer. Then the dreaded words:

“Is that carbon fiber? They didn’t have stuff like that when I was in school.”

Crap! An engineer! An alumni, no less. For some reason, older engineers looking at student projects always seem to think it’s necessary to prove their knowledge. My father is the same way, a pain in the ass.

To make matters worse, also a bicycling enthusiast. He also wanted to know how much the parts cost. Excuse me, that wasn’t in the pamphlet either. After a good half-hour of admiring the vehicle and asking questions which I’d already explained that I was unable to answer, he moved on.

My shift had been up for awhile, but no one else from my team was coming in for another hour or so. I asked the team next to me if they’d make sure he didn’t take anything apart, since I was leaving.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll tackle him.”

Alright, bases covered. Exit stage left.