A few months back my car’s flaky ignition switch gave out and literally fell out of the steering column. The replacement works great, but it has a quirk that you have to turn to exactly the right spot to take the key out without leaving the radio on. A few days ago, while traveling for work, I did this part of the procedure wrong and left the radio playing all night. When I came out the next morning to go to the office, my keychain buttons didn’t respond and I could hear the radio playing from ten feet away. My immediate assumption is that the battery would be too dead to start the big engine. I sat down, put the key in, turned, and the car just wheezed without turning at all. Clearly my initial assumption was correct, so I dialed up roadside assistance and waited.

How many times have you picked up your VoIP phone and not had a dialtone and said, “damnit, service is out again.” I can’t count the number of tech calls I have been a part of or heard about where a piece of equipment suddenly stopped working and the user declared, with passion generally reserved for Samuel L. Jackson and Al Paccino at the climax of a movie, that they were positive it was plugged in and it just stopped working. After a long line of troubleshooting, unplugging and replugging it in miraculously cures the ailment, clearly a function of some latent factory problem.

Since purchasing my 1994 car some three years ago, I have on three different occasions forgotten that it has a kill switch on the ignition. If it sits for some small period of time, the kill switch engages and the engine won’t turn over. Lights work, radio works, but trying to start it results in a non-response. If the ignition is not fully disengaged, for instance if it is slightly on and leaves the radio playing, pushing the unlock will not disengage the kill switch. After forty-five minutes of non-response from Verizon’s roadside assistance, I walked out to the car, pressed the unlock button, heard the familiar “BEEP BEEP”, started the car and drove to the office. Even the pros sometimes forget to follow the basic troubleshooting steps and end up falling into the assumption ravine.

Two minutes of stepping back, forgetting that I know everything, and following a basic checklist would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment.