A man charges $10,000 to hit a computer with a hammer. When asked why his service was so expensive, he gave a valuable lesson.
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STORY: Man charges $10,000 to hit a computer with a hammer
I heard this story when I was younger about a guy able to charge a premium fee for his services because of his unique knowledge and skill.
Story Synopsis:
- Many years ago when computers were large enough to fill a room, a big university had such a large computer. It was top of the line and very expensive.
- But one day something went wrong.
- After working on the problem for hours and hours, none of the university’s engineers could figure out how to fix this extremely large and expensive machine.
- At length, the university reached out to a specialist in another state and asked him to come help them repair the machine.
- This expert had spent many years going to school, studying, and working on such machines. He was the best and most knowledgeable there was.
- The expert showed up, and the engineers at the university explained the problem to him.
- After just a minute of looking over the large computer, the expert took out a hammer and went over to one of the racks holding parts of the equipment and gave it a good hit with the hammer.
- The machine roared back to life and began running the program it had been working on.
- The university engineers thanked the expert and congratulated him.
- Then the university administrator asked the expert how much the university owed him.
- The expert computed his fee and handed the administrator his invoice. $10,000 for repair services rendered.
- “What? This is an outrage. You are charging us $10,000? All you did was hit the machine with your hammer. It took less than five minutes.”
- “Yes,” said the expert. I charged $20 for hitting the machine with a hammer and $9,980 to know where to hit it.”
I’ve also seen this story told about a mechanic who fixes a large ship, a generator, or some other machine in a similar way. (See here for examples and references of those stories: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/06/tap/) The lesson learned is the same.
5 Lessons Learned from this story.
- Knowledge is powerful
- Knowledge is worth more than labor
- Knowledge and skill make your work more productive and useful
- You make yourself more valuable when you obtain knowledge and skill
- Some problems are not solvable without specific knowledge and skill
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