tincar87:

I think the amount of stress people experience all throughout their lifetimes is also the same amount of stress Chief Engineer Scotty experiences on a singular day aboard the Enterprise while Captain Kirk is in command

i have often thought about Scotty’s claim (in the TOS movies and that TNG episode) that he gets his “miracle worker” reputation by overestimating how long his repairs will take

which, personally, I hope was a joke on his part

and I hope that his “miracles” are actually unplanned and just come from some technology-genius version of the adrenaline rush that can cause superhuman feats of strength in moments of life-and-death danger

because the “overestimating” tactic is, in my experience, a terrible idea.

if you ever actually do the part of it that makes you look like a miracle-worker, you train everyone around you to expect that.

You train them to disbelieve you when you say you can’t do something.

and this sets up your life so that every order you ever follow goes like: “Do this!” “Ok, I’m doing it as much as I possibly can!” “No I need you to do it more!” “Ok now I am doing it more!” (and if this ends up being enough, all well and good for now. If not, cycle repeats until catastrophe.)

so the only way padding your estimates ever works, is if you never do more or faster work than you said you could. the moment you do, you give away the game.

and in his line of work, it’s gonna be a choice between give away the game and die in an exploding starship.

and then once you do give away the game, no one will ever believe you again about just how close the starship is to exploding.

which of course is a recipe for you spending the rest of your career in horrible danger.

so. I hope he didn’t get himself into that.