• (cs)

    On a related note: I know of at least one banking-site that's closed after business hours.

    Whyohwhyohwhy

  • (cs)

    Sounds like one of those "passed down by tradition" things that nobody ever questions. Reminds me of a story I heard:

    A young girl was helping her mother prepare a roast for a holiday dinner. Before putting the roast in the oven, the mother cut off both ends of the roast and threw them out.

    "Why do we cut off the ends of the roast, Mom?" the girl asked.

    "I don't know, that's how my mother taught me." the mom replied.

    Later the girl was able to ask her grandmother about the strange practice. "Well, when your mother was little, our roasting pan was too short for the full-sized roasts that were sold at the butcher, so we always had to cut the ends off to fit in the pan!"

     

  • (cs) in reply to joodie

    joodie:
    On a related note: I know of at least one banking-site that's closed after business hours.

    Whyohwhyohwhy

    I tried to buy a replacement remote for my Panasonic DVD player, but I couldn't because their website was "closed" for the night.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Better still, if you didn't have an order for that week, they made the client log in (on their assigned day, of course) and click a button that says "No order this week". And the clients all did this!



    The "No order this week" button might actually make sense as an option, if you have clients who place orders almost every week - it would let you tell the difference between "client specifically said they have no order this week" and "client did nothing; they may have forgotten", and selectively place follow-up calls accordingly.

    Actually, phone orders have pretty much the same WTF as web orders, and the same fix.  Why force the client to call on a certain day, when you can just as easily take the order ahead of time and then let it sit in a to-do pile until the client's day rolls around?  And offer expedited production for an extra fee.

  • Top Cod3r (unregistered)

    If you let any customer order on any day, how will you be able to tell the orders apart?  Customer X orders on Monday so on monday your code can just simply bill Customer X and ship the product to Customer X.  This makes the system alot simpler.

    This also helps with scalability of your web site.  By only letting a customer order on a certain day, you dont have to worry about your web site getting swamped on any given day, and you might even be able to save money by going with a smaller server.

    As for the customer having to log in to let you know they have no orders, I dont think you need to make them do that.  if you dont get any orders from them on their day to order, you could just have one of your customer service reps give them a call and ask them if they meant not to place any orders or if they forgot.

  • Jonas Salk (unregistered)

    Nice try on the title, but it should have been "B2B or Not to Be"

  • (cs) in reply to Top Cod3r
    Anonymous:

    If you let any customer order on any day, how will you be able to tell the orders apart?  Customer X orders on Monday so on monday your code can just simply bill Customer X and ship the product to Customer X.  This makes the system alot simpler.

    This also helps with scalability of your web site.  By only letting a customer order on a certain day, you dont have to worry about your web site getting swamped on any given day, and you might even be able to save money by going with a smaller server.

    As for the customer having to log in to let you know they have no orders, I dont think you need to make them do that.  if you dont get any orders from them on their day to order, you could just have one of your customer service reps give them a call and ask them if they meant not to place any orders or if they forgot.

    Uh?  This is a joke, right?

  • Arghhh not another green screen mainframe app.. (unregistered) in reply to joodie

    joodie:
    On a related note: I know of at least one banking-site that's closed after business hours.

    Whyohwhyohwhy

     

    Working on a banking system at the moment, various systems go down at various bizare times of the day... quite wierd, they have specified that the service layer we are developing must have 24 hour availability... but various payment systems go of-line at 17:30 to the next working day.... Most of the mainframes shut down at 1am untill 4-5am.... Bearing in mind this is one of the worlds largest banks..

    This would be fine, we could stash the message into a queue untill the releveant system comes back up on-line (giving the illusion of 24 hour service availability),, but they won't let us have a local store, all messages must be translated to the underlying native system and passed straight through...

    hmmmm, I think the messages we will be returning will also be on the lines of 'please transfer your money when we've finished batch processing',

    but hey, some of the underling  systems return back messages like 'Invalid Command please press Enter to continue" (there are quite a few green screen mainframe systems hiding behind layers and layers of systems, which have service wrappers like last weeks 'Vintage WTF' reading data from them.) 

    In short, I'm never going to trust a bank with my money ever again.

  • anon (unregistered)

    Even better would be to install a bho on the customers browser the first time they log on.  Then it would hide bookmarks to the site on non allowed days, and prevent them from doing anything else on their computer until they make an order or reject the order on their assigned day.  Oh, also it needs to infect install itself on all clients computers in case their order person is out that day.  Just to make sure it is as user friendly as possible.

  • (cs)

    Sigh.

    Whats that business process reingineering catch-phrase again?

    Don't automate, obliterate.

  • (cs) in reply to mugs

    mugs:
    I tried to buy a replacement remote for my Panasonic DVD player, but I couldn't because their website was "closed" for the night.

    Blatant commercial plug for my day-job (but I got it pass the CAPTCHA, so it must be OK, right?  [:D]  )

    http://www.partstore.com

    We're open 24x7 and we sell Panasonic remotes....

     

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to evnafets

    This kind of reminds me of a task I was assigned.  I was supposed to automate a process that a client normally did on a spread sheet.  He gave us four simple steps we could repeat until the a certain condition was true.  It was basically an optimization.

    I looked at the steps and said, "this isn't going to work."  My senior coworker assured me that the client wanted the steps to be implemented literally.  So I implemented the process literally.  When we showed it to the client he said "this doesn't work."

  • (cs) in reply to Top Cod3r

    Anonymous:
    If you let any customer order on any day, how will you be able to tell the orders apart?  Customer X orders on Monday so on monday your code can just simply bill Customer X and ship the product to Customer X.  This makes the system alot simpler.

    This also helps with scalability of your web site.  By only letting a customer order on a certain day, you dont have to worry about your web site getting swamped on any given day, and you might even be able to save money by going with a smaller server.

    As for the customer having to log in to let you know they have no orders, I dont think you need to make them do that.  if you dont get any orders from them on their day to order, you could just have one of your customer service reps give them a call and ask them if they meant not to place any orders or if they forgot.

    Bwahaha! Good one.

    "Uh oh, boss, we got a 6th customer. We'll have to work on Saturdays from now on."
    ...
    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."

  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:


    Bwahaha! Good one.

    "Uh oh, boss, we got a 6th customer. We'll have to work on Saturdays from now on."
    ...
    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."



    I wonder if they were supplying hospital equipment.

    Caller: This is RIP Hospital. We need to immediately replace the airpump for our respirator.
    Supplier: Sorry, it's not your day of the week to order.
    Caller: But our patient is dying...
    Supplier: Can't you tell your patient to stay alive until Tuesday? Oh no, scratch that. Next Tuesday is Christmas. Tell your patient to stay alive until Tuesday the week after next...


  • AndrewB (unregistered) in reply to dubwai
    dubwai:

    Uh?  This is a joke, right?

    YES it is a joke.
  • (cs)

    What if the people meant to make the calls were off sick on holiday etc. and you missed the day by one day (as you couldn't phone up before or after)? Sounds like trouble [:S]

    Good MS link there, cheers!

  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:
    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."
    For scalability, form a tree among the customers. That way, you only have to process one order per day. You have 7 top level customers, and divide up your customer base and tell each group to call one of the top level customers. If they get overloaded with calls, have them divide up their sub-customers in the same way. Then the top level customers submit the aggregate orders to the website.

    Maybe you could have web pages for each customer to tell them who they should call, and when.

  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:

    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."

    Take two . . .

    For scalability, form a tree among the customers. That way, you only have to process one order per day. You have 7 top level customers, and divide up your customer base and tell each group to call one of the top level customers. If they get overloaded with calls, have them divide up their sub-customers in the same way. Then the top level customers submit the aggregate orders to the website.

    Maybe you could have web pages for each customer to tell them who they should call, and when.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    Better still, if you didn't have an order for that week, they made the client log in (on their assigned day, of course) and click a button that says "No order this week". And the clients all did this!
    I am sure they could have inserted a PayPal donate link and instructed their customers to make a donation while at it, and they would've followed suit.
  • ammoQ (unregistered)

    This is probably not such a big WTF as it looks like.
    The logistics of production and delivery may demand to receive the orders from certain customers at a certain day, or else have it produced and delivered one week later. In such an ecosystem, customers do care whether or not they receive it this week. By forcing production and customers into a strict routine, both sides can be sure that the whole supply chain is running like a clockwork.
    <font color="Red">
    </font>

  • Delirium (unregistered) in reply to Jon Limjap

    Hopefully they'll have all that resolved by 2007, when Christmas next falls on a Tuesday.  If not, the patient will need to stay alive for at least one more additional week, as the following Tuesday would be Jan 1, another holiday.

    In addition, years of watching medical dramas has taught me that most ER docs, along with being handsome, will be easily able to patch together a working pump out of some duct tape, copper tubing, and a hand-crank.

  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:
    A young girl was helping her mother prepare a roast for a holiday dinner. Before putting the roast in the oven, the mother cut off both ends of the roast and threw them out.

    "Why do we cut off the ends of the roast, Mom?" the girl asked.

    "I don't know, that's how my mother taught me." the mom replied.

    Later the girl was able to ask her grandmother about the strange practice. "Well, when your mother was little, our roasting pan was too short for the full-sized roasts that were sold at the butcher, so we always had to cut the ends off to fit in the pan!"


    :D:D:D:D:D
    I really loved that story... But the weird thing is that the grandmother cuts off parts from both sides to make it fit. Why not just cut it off one side? And what would they do with the parts they cut off? Throw away or what???

  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:

    Bwahaha! Good one.

    "Uh oh, boss, we got a 6th customer. We'll have to work on Saturdays from now on."
    ...
    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."



    Actually that depends on the job in question. I cut my chops in the embedded work of high-speed manufacturing and it could very well take their full workday to accomplish one customer's order. Thus there is an upper limit to the number of customers you can service without greatly expanding.

    This could also be an industry that requires a great deal of setup or teardown between runs. Thus they might have a second crew that does all of the swap work and the production crew only does the run. Plus raw materials might have to be acquired and on-hand for the run - these could be expensive enough not to keep in large quanties, but still require planning to keep just enough on-hand. JIT Manufacturing just means pushing your inventory into someone else's backyard.

    With expansion comes risk. Is it worth it to add capability because you picked up just one extra customer - knowing that those expensive machines will be sitting idle.

    Now of course the inability to pre-schedule is very silly even when doing the work over the phone.

    This is a strong WTF, but I have seen far worse in "always done it that way" processes.
  • (cs) in reply to Katja Bergman
    Katja Bergman:

    :D:D:D:D:D
    I really loved that story... But the weird thing is that the grandmother cuts off parts from both sides to make it fit. Why not just cut it off one side? And what would they do with the parts they cut off? Throw away or what???



    That one is easy as someone that enjoys cooking (my speciality is sauces). You cut off both ends because the center is more likely to be the best parts of the roast.

    You throw them away because we are in a disposable society. :)

    Personally I learned from my mother and grandmother, but I would make stew out of the ends - just braise them and throw it in. But then I can be a bit of a packrat about certain things. My wife swears our basement is becoming a home for old and unwanted computers.
  • (cs) in reply to BradC
    BradC:

    "Somebody called and wanted to become a customer, but I told them thanks, but 7 is our limit."

    It's all part of our Sales Reduction Program which is coming along quite swimmingly.  I can't tell you how strongly I feel about each team members individual contribution to this effort.  As a special thank-you, we'll be hosting a Coffee and Pastry "getting to know you" session down at the Department of Unemployment.   You're all invited.

  • drook (unregistered) in reply to BradC

    Supposedly this experiment was tried at a university.  If not, it's still a good story.

    Put four monkeys in a cage.  In the center is a ladder, and above that a bunch of bananas hung from the ceiling.  Every time one of the monkeys starts to climb the ladder, spray the other three with a fire hose.  Eventually they all learn, and won't let each other climb the ladder.

    Now replace one of the monkeys with a new one.  He'll immediately climb the ladder, and the other three will pull him down and beat him senseless.  Pretty soon, he learns not to climb the ladder.

    Now replace another of the originals with a new monkey.  When he heads for the ladder, your first replacement will be there right alongside the two originals pulling the newest down and beating him.  He won't know why, but that's what you do.

    Keep up the pattern, and eventually you've got a cage full of monkeys who'll beat each other for doing the thing they all want to do, and none of them knowing why.

  • (cs) in reply to drook

    Paul Graham, in the web page describing his design goals for Arc (a new Lisp dialect he is designing), speaks avoiding 'onions in the varnish'. This prhase comes froma story which he recounts:

    <font face="arial, helvetica" size="2">In The Periodic Table, Primo Levi tells a story that happened when he was working in a varnish factory. He was a chemist, and he was fascinated by the fact that the varnish recipe included a raw onion. What could it be for? No one knew; it was just part of the recipe. So he investigated, and eventually discovered that they had started throwing the onion in years ago to test the temperature of the varnish: if it was hot enough, the onion would fry.

    </font>
    Thus, Graham was saying that he was willing to throw away certain traditional, but now outdated or unnecessary, parts of Lisp which he felt were hold back current dialects such as Common Lisp and Scheme and making it harder for them to gain acceptance among programmers. Among the changes he's already revealed is the replacement of the keyword 'lambda' with the shorter and more conventional 'fn' (an abbreviation of 'function'). It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference, and I am hoping the language catches on (though I'm betting that his ego will get in the way somehow).
  • (cs) in reply to Schol-R-LEA
    Schol-R-LEA:
    Paul Graham, in the web page describing his design goals for Arc (a new Lisp dialect he is designing), speaks avoiding 'onions in the varnish'. This prhase comes froma story which he recounts:

    <font face="arial, helvetica" size="2">In The Periodic Table, Primo Levi tells a story that happened when he was working in a varnish factory. He was a chemist, and he was fascinated by the fact that the varnish recipe included a raw onion. What could it be for? No one knew; it was just part of the recipe. So he investigated, and eventually discovered that they had started throwing the onion in years ago to test the temperature of the varnish: if it was hot enough, the onion would fry.

    </font>
    Thus, Graham was saying that he was willing to throw away certain traditional, but now outdated or unnecessary, parts of Lisp which he felt were hold back current dialects such as Common Lisp and Scheme and making it harder for them to gain acceptance among programmers. Among the changes he's already revealed is the replacement of the keyword 'lambda' with the shorter and more conventional 'fn' (an abbreviation of 'function'). It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference, and I am hoping the language catches on (though I'm betting that his ego will get in the way somehow).


    Perl's in the slow process of being reinvented the same way, with Perl 6, the biggest changes being that regular expression grammar is remade whole for much clearer and more powerful code, as well as new threading power. I hope it catches on, though I'm sure there's going to be 5.x and 6.x branches forever; I'm somewhat despairing because it's been moving along since 2001 without even making it to a full draft spec.
  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Ouch. That's a really bad pun.



    A related pun goes:

    2B OR NOT 2B = FF

  • (cs) in reply to Katja Bergman

    Katja Bergman:
    I really loved that story... But the weird thing is that the grandmother cuts off parts from both sides to make it fit. Why not just cut it off one side? And what would they do with the parts they cut off? Throw away or what???

    Grandmother couldn't see all that well, and wasn't very mechanically oriented, to boot.  So she would eyeball the roast and the pan, and whack off a chunk of the roast.  Well, she miscalculated, and didn't take enough off.  But when she remeasured the roast against the pan, she put the cut end in first, so she had to cut off the other end, because that was the one that wouldn't fit into the pan.  Did I mention that grandmother wasn't very mechanical . . . ?

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to joodie

    Some religions state that the Sunday is a resting day and that working on a Sunday is your ticket to damnation.

    Newspapers related to these religions actually take their site off-line so that you can't read the newspaper on-line. (At least in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Holland</st1:City></st1:place> that's the case for some of 'm)

    Apparently reading news-online counts as work while reading news from paper is considered resting... or maybe that too is work and these people stare out of the window like lobotomy patients for one day per week.

    I don't know, but that couldn't be what their god intended?

  • neminem (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Apparently reading news-online counts as work while reading news from paper is considered resting...
    I know this is also an extremely old comment, but for the benefit of other late-comers hypothetically reading this: I have a feeling it's not so much that reading the news online is work, but that serving the news is work (for the webserver). It's funny, but it's not a joke - I know there are ultra-ultraconservative Jewish enclaves that actually think this way. Religions are strange things.

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