This Troper has a subversion. A friend and I were trying to build a model out of a metal construction set, and I was having troubles figuring out how some gears were aligned. He told me to {{Read the Freaking Manual}}, so I did. Aloud. Fifteen seconds of utter gibberish later, he realized the manual ''wasn't in English'' (it was in Czech).

That must have been hilarious.

Dad had a VCR from something and he tried to call tech support, which said ReadTheFreakingManual only to be shut right up when Dad said, "I can't understand Japanese". (Note that we are not in Japan and we did not order the VCR from Japan - This came ''right'' out of Sears.)

The head of the history department in this troper's highschool had one of these moments; the main office had gotten a new photocopier, and the department head was trying to get at some feature of it, this troper doesn't remember which... after a while of staring at the machine jabbing buttons and getting nowhere, in between snarling at people who pointed out the manual, he left. This troper picked up the manual and found the instructions for that feature in less than half a minute. If only that guy had Read the Freakin' Manual.

This troper works in IT. Not only do most users not ReadTheFreakingManual, neither does most of the IT staff.

This IT troper agrees, and extends it to users being unable to read out of order signs.

That very issue has lead to the IT supervisor at my college removing the power cord from a pay-to-use scanner - "out of order" are apparently too complicated for some people. Extreme nerd rage ensued when some dimwit not only ignored the sign ''but borrowed a cord from a nearby computer''.

To be fair, he/she probably thought it was out of order ''beacuse'' the power cord was missing.

Nobody reads signs in general. I put a sign on my door that said "knock before entering" because my dad believes he's an RPG hero and can just barge right on in, not minding that he gives us a freaking heart attack or that it's ''really'' irritating when he does this ''when people are in the freaking bathroom''. Dad naturally ignored the sign and kept barging in anyways. Surprisingly, he doesn't comprehend locked doors - I once locked the door to the bathroom and instead of knocking, he spent five minutes trying to turn the knob.

This troper has actually been on several unjustified uses of it. A few times, I did neglect to read the manual and I admit it. However, several instances pop out in my mind:

Some of the FanDumb of PC games sneered at me and told me to ReadTheFreakingManual about ''Oblivion'' and called me a "Dumb console". For starters, '''1)''' I was not asking about something that was defined in the manual. Read my freaking post next time. I was asking what kinds of spells would be useful if I was leveling up a mage in Oblivion - not "how do I mine for fish?" '''2)''' I actually got the ''one'' game out of maybe a couple thousand copies that, for some reason, did not have the manual. Brand new out of the box...everything on my desk and nothing on the floor. No manual.

I was told to "Read the freaking manual" at a FireEmblem board because I asked how to recruit Jaffar in Fire Emblem 7. ''Absolutely nowhere in the manual'' does it say anything along the lines of "In chapter 26 (Eliwood), if you have one of the lords talk to Nino, then have her talk to Jaffar, you will unlock a Gaiden chapter in which Jaffar will join you".

My friend told me to read the freaking manual for my Honda Civic. I told him that the manual wouldn't really be of any help because '''1)''' It was covered in coffee stains from the previous owner (At least I think they were - it ''smelled'' like coffee) '''2)''' Pages were either unreadable due to the amount of coffee on them or ripped.

The local college uses a web system that hosts class websites and some online classes. When we first got it, it was ''really'' unstable and the teacher apparently didn't know in one class, because we were surprised to find that we were having a quiz and the teacher said "I announced it online - doesn't ''anyone'' check the web page?" and someone shouted, "How ''could'' we check? It was ''down all weekend''!"

Another example of a ReadTheFreakingManual that was unjustified. (Same troper) This ''stupid STUPID'' project for Agricultural Law. I had inadequate information, and when I emailed the professor my concerns because nobody had any idea how to do it, he told me to ReadTheFreakingManual - Problem? There ''is'' no Textbook for this class, you ''said so yourself''. The chapters ''don't have anything to say about this particular topic'' and he told me to download a chapter that ''was not uploaded onto the website''. Also I was told to "Remember what we talked about in class" - Uhm, problem. Not ''every'' student can go to ''every'' lecture, and when you talk about something for only ''one'' lecture, if we miss it because we're sick, it's LostForever.

Different Troper (Whatever Lemons) with the same damn story. The Sociology professor told me to read the book for once when I pointed out something she wanted us to write about wasn't in the book. I got angry enough to ask her what page it was on. After flipping through it, she realized that her assignments were still written for the old textbook, not the new one. Apparently I was just supposed to know this shit from latent psychic powers or something.

A funny thing where someone asked for games on their iPod touch. Someone said "What, no android games?".They were responded with someone saying "They asked for '''iPod''' games because they don't ''have'' an Android."

And then there is the reason why you ''don't'' read the manual. I am only person in my family who reads manuals before doing things and consequently, only person who knows how stuff works. So, what happens when computer crashes for then nth time? "Hey, let's call the guy who lives 200km from us and propably is busy with lecture! He knows!". *headdesk*

This troper usually averts this when getting a new game. Usually, I don't have my game system with me in the car, so the first thing I do is ReadTheFreakingManual so I don't get bored on the way home.

Deconstructed in an original work of this Troper. The main RealRobot pilot of the story (There's a SuperRobot side too) DOES read the manual...But only the part that says how to purge the outer armor MightyGlacier default form into the LightningBruiser SuperMode, unfortunately the Super Mode uses a completely different control scheme, and thus the cockpit transforms along with it, making it almost impossible for him to pilot at the time, along with the fact that the core of the mech uses a MadeOfExplodium Minovsky Particle generator, which can only be in use for five minutes otherwise it will create an explosion enough to take out a small country and unfortunately by the time of it's first deployment the mechanism for powering down the mech to FragileSpeedster levels had yet to be implemented as an automatic function, so it had to be activated manually. Due to all of this, the mech was totally trashed during it's first battle. He gets better the second time around.

Someone casually mentioned that his XBox was crashing during a videogame because he wanted to adjust the console during play. Of course the manual says picking up the concole results in the disc getting scratched.