Does anybody here have an exceptional memory?

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Chris142

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My boss does and it drives me nuts! He knows every car, customer name etc from years back.

Case in point.

Yesterday we had a guy come in with an AC problem. He said it had not worked in years and was ready to get it fixed.

Immediatly my boss knew the guys name, the date we diagnosed the problem, how much it was etc. The diagnosis was from 2006!

He looked it up since he remembered the date and there it was big as life! He also remembered that I diagnosed the problem in the parking lot because the shop bays were full and "Bill Smith's" Lincoln was blocking the main door.

I don't have anywhere near this memory capacity. I may remember a car if I see it and I do remember that I went to Santa Paula, Ca the day the planes hit the twin towers.

But I don't know how he does it. Plus he gets frustrated at me when I can't remember what I did to a car 6 weeks ago.... But he can remember the customers name, the date we worked on it as well as what supplier we ordered the parts from.

His paperwork is in shambles. I can never find the repair order. He will tell me that it's in the stack below the stapler, 3rd work order down and the left top corner has a tear in it!

Maybe he's normal and I have a very bad memory and I'm the problem?
 
I do the same thing as your boss. Well not always the name. But if I've not seen a customer in a while, I can usually remember when I saw them last and what we were working on.

I ran into a guy a few years back and I'd not seen him for about 5 years. I said the last time I was here we were working on a networking issue with your system and ATM networking cards you were using. (Not Automated Teller..)

Did the same thing two weeks ago. Saw a customer I'd not seen since 2000 (on call and it was another engineer's account) and told him about the call I did for him in late April early May 2000.

He didn't remember me, but I remembered him.

I don't think I'm normal
wink.gif
 
I can't even remember my middle name.....but if you asked me what song was on which Rush album, I could tell you....
 
Chris, what you are observing is in the realm of normal psychological and physiological differences. Some people see the big picture and don't note details, except to the extent that they affect the big picture, and then they forget them. Some people look mainly at details, and a subset of those people sort of "absorb" those details into a "body memory" (this seems to describe your boss). Some build a relational system where they think "this happened in some sort of relationship to something else, which is in turn related to other things".

The answer is that you are not "deficient". You don't remember information that is not all that relevant, and he doesn't see the benefit of ordering A/C oil in bulk. We all have our relative strengths and weaknesses.
 
My college room mate went on to get a PhD in Astrophysics from Harvard...he has a truly phenomenal memory...unfortunately, my memory is full of airplane trivia, automotive trivia and, of course, oil trivia...
 
I use to have an exception memory. I could remember what one of my friends said 30 years ago, what they were wearing, and what they did before and after they said it. Now I can't remember as much. Too much psychological noise. I never could remember peoples names. It took me almost 18 weeks to remember 50 guys names in my platoon in basic training. I can still remember each and every face though.

I could also remember what I read in an automotive, science, or gun book word for word, what page it was one, and where on the page it was written. This was only for those types of books. In English class I couldn't remember the last sentence I just read. It was boring,s o I forgot it.
 
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I just now (finally) remembered a term I was looking for when I posted earlier - Eidectic Memory. This wiki entry on exceptional memory is relevant.

The info in that link on hyperthymesia is probably more relevant to the original post than eidectic memory. I have known people on internet forums who can recall what happened on what lap of an auto race on a particular date decades ago, down to the smallest detail, and it doesn't seem to be "made up".
 
I remember numbers well through patterns and how they feel.

Good with job no's at work.

Takes about aweek to lock someones name in though.
 
Originally Posted By: Loobed

I use to have an exception memory.


Same here. Mine used to be borderline photographic in high school. When taking tests if I didn't immediately recall the answer, I could often times quite literally read it off an image of the page in my head. Even got accused of cheating a couple of times because the answer was word for word straight out of the textbook.
 
Your boss has exceptional abilities.
I wonder what else his good memory applies to?
Sometimes, people with exceptional gifts are severely lacking in other areas.

BTW, the term is eidetic, not eidectic.
A good read is, "Brains That Work a Little Differently".
All sorts of thinking diversities are explained.
 
Can't remember much before I was about 8 months old, but a lot since then, floor plans of houses we moved out of when I was 3, drawings, technical stuff. Mostly visual images and pages stored in head.

Names, and place names...blech.

Now that I'm "management", struggling with remembering appointments, but get the content and tech stuff word for word.
 
I guess I can remember stuff thats important to me. 18436572 is the firing order for my pickup, point dwell is 28-32, and Fram oil filter numbers. ph8a,ph43,ph16,ph3600, ph3614, ph3569 will all replace each other if theres enough room.

Don't ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday or what cars I worked on last week.
 
Originally Posted By: mechtech2

BTW, the term is eidetic, not eidectic.
A good read is, "Brains That Work a Little Differently".


I thought one thing and typed something else. Twice. An interesting question in itself, at least to me.
 
I can remember the most inane and insignificant information.

My wife had 3 older brothers who played baseball, football, and basketball and golf in high school and college and her father held a Big10 track and field record so she's actually better at sports than I am. She grew up with the TV in the family room constantly on one sport or another. Teamed up, we pretty much ruled the "Trivia for Bar Dollars" contests. A friend of our's has two bachelor's degrees and will not play trivial pursuit against me or her.
lol.gif


But I cannot remember the names of my new clients today.
33.gif
 
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