Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"
I only had one instructor do this. But, I had heard it was a thing that sometimes happened in the world and, when I saw that first line, I was suspicious and did as I was instructed. When I got up to turn in my paper 5 minutes into class and was told I could leave early since I was done, everyone else in the class look up and glared at me. I smiled, waved and said "I'll see you in the cafeteria when you get done."
They were all pretty disgusted when they showed up.
When we went back to that class, he was grinning. He said "Do you know why I gave you that test?" There was some general no, not really kind of mumbling.
He said, "You are learning how to do lab work that is going to be critical for the lives of your patients. You need to remember this and ALWAYS read the whole SOP before you start an assay. And you should to read along with it when you are running the assay. Our memories aren't always as good as we think they are. Reading and following the instructions for this work is vital."
I don't think he was wrong about that.
