• sztupy (unregistered)

    This is Jenny's frist comment

  • (cs)

    Titleist makes golf stuff, so of course she'd have problems using it to make subtitles...

    EDIT: It's entirely possible I missed something somewhere, but so did Goggle and Wikipoodia.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    That was pretty boring, and why is it on tales of the interview?

  • Toadworld (unregistered) in reply to Mike

    What, too realistic now? Oyy.

  • (cs)

    That would be only possible with laptop configured to login without password (for a work laptop???).

  • Andy (unregistered) in reply to jnareb

    Users would be auth'd on some kind of domain, but software is still only installed locally, or deployed to machines, not users in a normal setup.

  • Miriam (unregistered)

    Oh look, an alright Story (even if miscategorized and slightly boring).

    Everything beats Sergio hunting down the President's daughter in medieval Spain, though.

  • schpeelah (unregistered) in reply to Andy

    Nonetheless, we're talking about a situation where anyone's work laptop can be used by anyone else who has a work laptop. That's pretty WTF.

  • Employ15 (unregistered) in reply to schpeelah

    That's entirely normal. I can log onto any laptop in the company with my login - I just can't be sure that any of the programs I'm using will be installed.

  • v (unregistered)

    Ok, so TRWTF is commenters that never heard of domain login. Did they use a stamp to post their comments?

  • -.- (unregistered)

    Can someone humor me and tell me why this is listed in "Tales from the interview"?

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Titleist makes golf stuff, so of course she'd have problems using it to make subtitles...

    EDIT: It's entirely possible I missed something somewhere, but so did Goggle and Wikipoodia.

    You might indeed - "Titleist" might also be a shortend form of "Titelleiste", german for title bar.

    Which, in the context, is entirely plausible.

  • faoileag (unregistered)
    the article said:
    Sometimes, the answer is emphatically the former

    Always. The answer is always the former.

    Take your software to a large enough sample of people, whose technical abillity is roughly on the same level.

    Give them a couple of tasks to accomplish.

    Some will fail, even if the tasks are not impossible.

    But others will succeed.

    So it can't be your software that is defective, because then nobody would have succeeded.

    Conclusion: those users that did not succeed must be somehow "defective".

    Or how come, when you fail in tests at school, you are blamed and not your teacher?

  • faoileag (unregistered)

    So, a PEBKAC wtf today.

    But am I the only one who thinks that someone not capable of picking the right workplace/laptop should perhaps not be entering subtitles that seem to go out live?

  • Rodnas (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    That was pretty boring, and why is it on tales of the interview?

    Because Mary will soon be looking for a new job.

  • laoreet (unregistered)

    Oh if I had a dollar for every time a user screwed up...

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    But am I the only one who thinks that someone not capable of picking the right workplace/laptop should perhaps not be entering subtitles that seem to go out live?

    Hopefully, yes. But probably, no.

    People who are proficient in their own field can have a blind spot in some other field. In this case it sounds like the user picked up a laptop where she expected to find her own, had no trouble logging in, and when things looked different instead of thinking "oh, wrong laptop" she thought "oh, someone's changed everything". It's perfectly possible that this person can type 100wpm with no errors.

    In other news, a lot of people (not just in IT) find it hard to understand that something which is easy for them can be very difficult for others.

  • cyborg (unregistered) in reply to Jim
    Jim:
    But am I the only one who thinks that someone not capable of picking the right workplace/laptop should perhaps not be entering subtitles that seem to go out live?
    ... In other news, a lot of people (not just in IT) find it hard to understand that something which is easy for them can be very difficult for others.

    Agreed - this isn't so much a WTF it's just so easy to miss something when you're just not expecting that to happen. Why else is it that we train ourselves when troubleshooting anything to check the basics? Is it plugged in? Does power-cycling resolve it, etc... If it was obviously intuitive to the human mind we wouldn't have these checklists of the "obvious".

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Jim
    Jim:
    In other news, a lot of people (not just in IT) find it hard to understand that something which is easy for them can be very difficult for others.
    I once heard that the ability to think like another person, i.e. to get into the skin of that person and think as that person does and not as oneself would, is hard wired, meaning either you can do it or you can't.

    Which probably means they must be excused.

  • Pock Suppet (unregistered) in reply to Rodnas
    Rodnas:
    Mike:
    That was pretty boring, and why is it on tales of the interview?

    Because Mary will soon be looking for a new job.

    What universe do you come from? If anyone's going to be fired, it's someone in IT for not making the "right" software appear no matter who's logged in.

  • sol (unregistered)

    and another no wtf day... what is the world coming to

  • C-Derb (unregistered) in reply to -.-
    Mike:
    That was pretty boring, and why is it on tales of the interview?
    -.-:
    Can someone humor me and tell me why this is listed in "Tales from the interview"?
    Pray tell, which category do you think it should go in?

    Don't bring us problems. Bring us solutions!

  • (cs)

    Great troubleshooting effort to even think to check for that possibility.

    Tales From the Interview are my favorite, so it was a little disappointing to see that this was mislabeled.

  • Valhar2000 (unregistered) in reply to Pock Suppet
    Pock Suppet:
    If anyone's going to be fired, it's someone in IT for not making the "right" software appear no matter who's logged in.

    For not spending money, time and resources on setting up a system that will provide no additional benefit to any user capable of identifying their own desk in their own office?

  • murmur (unregistered)

    How is this a tale from the interview?

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to C-Derb
    C-Derb:
    Don't bring us problems. Bring us solutions!

    God, no! Never ask users for solutions. Ever.

  • Mughi (unregistered)

    Story was meh, but sometimes they are.. at least it wasn't embellished beyond recognition like some of them. And if the biggest issue is misfiling, then we should probably be thankful. Hey, it was free and good for a quick chuckle.

  • np (unregistered)

    Ooo, Jenny's laptop. That is mine, just someone renamed it. They also changed the wallpaper to someone else's family. All the apps are different. Wait, it is windows when my laptop is a flavour of linux.

    Wow, who would make so many changes to my laptop. Hmm, it is a dell and not an IBM. They changed so much.

  • Mary-am (unregistered)

    Why does this youtube have no videos? And why is my username so different? And this new site design is just hideously ugly! I like the new domain name, though. But where is Grumpy Cat?!

  • (cs)

    I'm pretty sure this demands a car analogy.

    Hey, someone changed a bunch of stuff in my car. The interior is leather instead of cloth, and it's a different color. Oh yeah, and now it's a Ford instead of a Honda. They changed so much.

  • geopsychic (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    the article said:
    Sometimes, the answer is emphatically the former

    Or how come, when you fail in tests at school, you are blamed and not your teacher?

    Where have you been the last 30 years or so?

  • Blah (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    So, a PEBKAC wtf today.

    But am I the only one who thinks that someone not capable of picking the right workplace/laptop should perhaps not be entering subtitles that seem to go out live?

    I'd go with an ID-10-T error. She was apparently capable of doing her job; just not finding the right work space to do it in.

    I must say though. This story would've been much funnier if it had been Jenny calling support to find out why her computer had been reconfigured and a bunch of new software installed.

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    tl;dr: company buys identical laptops for all employees, hasn't heard of Labelmate. Confusion ensues.

  • Hannes (unregistered)

    I love to read some "Tales from the Interview". But this isn't an "interview". Well, it is in some way, but not an "interview" you would expect to be featured on "Tales from the Interview".

    And yes, I tried hard to include the word "interview" (together with the quotation marks!) as many times as possible. But I bet someone can do better.

  • -.- (unregistered) in reply to C-Derb

    We are programmers! Not "solution engineers". But I'd say this would be a perfect fit for "Feature Articles"

    captcha: conventio, why-a dontcha follow tha established conventio?

  • (cs) in reply to laoreet
    laoreet:
    Oh if I had a dollar for every time a user screwed up...
    Well, if you do any kind of support, and your employer sends you a paycheck... you do.
  • me (unregistered) in reply to operagost

    And they even parked it in a different lot!

    nobis: some pepl have nobis using computers.

  • (cs)

    If I needed a pen to jot down a note, I would grab one and not even think about whether it was actually my pen, or my co-workers pen which happened to look exactly like my pen. A pen is a commodity item.

    This story is not a WTF so much as it is a comment about how much computers have become commodity items -- just a tool to get a job done. She picked up a laptop, which looked exactly like hers -- because all laptops in the company look exactly the same -- and logged in, like she's done every single day for a year.

    How would she possibly know that she'd grabbed the wrong one? Only because the installed programs were different. There is no outward physical difference to indicate it, just like two pens are outwardly identical.

  • (cs) in reply to -.-
    -.-:
    We are programmers! Not "solution engineers".

    Wrong. You are not being paid to write code -- you're being paid to solve a problem; and the solution just happens to be code. You ARE a solution engineer. Unless, of course, you can't be bothered to think for yourself, and just do what others tell you to do. In that case, you're not a programmer, you're a monkey.

  • OldCoder (unregistered) in reply to Valhar2000
    Valhar2000:
    Pock Suppet:
    If anyone's going to be fired, it's someone in IT for not making the "right" software appear no matter who's logged in.

    For not spending money, time and resources on setting up a system that will provide no additional benefit to any user capable of identifying their own desk in their own office?

    If you watch the BBC news you'll know that the journalists (and everybody else) are hot-desked in a battery farm right behind the newsreader. Nobody owns a desk. God help you if you put down a coat or a bag anywhere.

    Captcha: usitas. Usitas we provided it for you.

  • OldCoder (unregistered) in reply to Pock Suppet
    Pock Suppet:
    What universe do you come from? If anyone's going to be fired, it's someone in IT for not making the "right" software appear no matter who's logged in.
    Maybe Mary is someone who comes from a thin client environment, where anyone can log into any terminal and make the right software appear for them.
  • Josh (unregistered) in reply to C-Derb
    C-Derb:
    Mike:
    That was pretty boring, and why is it on tales of the interview?
    -.-:
    Can someone humor me and tell me why this is listed in "Tales from the interview"?
    Pray tell, which category do you think it should go in?

    Don't bring us problems. Bring us solutions!

    Featured Articles

    Tales from the Interview is quite rare, so when I see that purple banner, I expect some interview shenanigans.

  • Eric Gem (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Titleist makes golf stuff, so of course she'd have problems using it to make subtitles...

    EDIT: It's entirely possible I missed something somewhere, but so did Goggle and Wikipoodia.

    Google and Wikipedia. FTFY.

    CAPTCHA: frist

  • Could you dumb it down a shade, please? (unregistered) in reply to Josh
    Josh:
    Tales from the Interview is quite rare, so when I see that purple banner, I expect some interview shenanigans.

    Welcome to The Daily Incremental Reduction Of Expectations.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    [...]Give them a couple of tasks to accomplish.

    Some will fail, even if the tasks are not impossible.

    But others will succeed.[...]

    And what is your analysis of the users whom succeed on the impossible tasks?

  • (cs)

    I am feeling much piety for Mary, who has to deal with snobs like Tazza and her Alzheimer's at the same time.

  • (cs) in reply to Jim
    Jim:
    People who are proficient in their own field can have a blind spot in some other field. In this case it sounds like the user picked up a laptop where she expected to find her own, had no trouble logging in, and when things looked different instead of thinking "oh, wrong laptop" she thought "oh, someone's changed everything". It's perfectly possible that this person can type 100wpm with no errors.
    And who knows, they might be using roaming profiles, so the desktop will look the same because it will have the same wallpaper etc settings. Then the only difference between the machines will be the software load, in which case "someone removed my golf software" is a reasonable response.
  • emaN ruoY (unregistered)

    I gotta give Mary some credit. Have you ever tried to instruct someone, not in IT, over the phone to open the command prompt and type in a command without it being a 5 minute ordeal?

  • (cs) in reply to OldCoder
    OldCoder:
    If you watch the BBC news you'll know that the journalists (and everybody else) are hot-desked in a battery farm right behind the newsreader. Nobody owns a desk. God help you if you put down a coat or a bag anywhere.
    "Hot-desking"! TRWTF!

    If your employer thinks your workplace is something that you should be able to swap every single day, in reality that means he thinks you are a person that he can swap every single day.

    Now let's check if your boss is fine with swapping his workbench every single day!

  • Could you dumb it down a shade, please? (unregistered) in reply to no laughing matter
    no laughing matter:
    If your employer thinks your workplace is something that you should be able to swap every single day, in reality that means he thinks you are a person that he can swap every single day.

    Now let's check if your boss is fine with swapping his workbench every single day!

    "Due to the combination of your hot desking policy, and apparent inabilty to turn up before 11 even though you demand 8 o'clock starts from your employees, I have hot desked myself in this lovely spacious office; you can go and sit next to smelly susan."

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