• Edward Royce (unregistered) in reply to DazP
    DazP:
    snoofle:
    Bill Quick:
    Within a week, an EBS “integration engineer” was flown out to Simon’s company to “monitor the development of and certify their solution.” (...) He set up a Windows server and modified the invoice exporter to create a file in their fixed-width format and then send it to the Windows server, which would allow the “real” QuikBill to convert the file to EDIFACT and send it to their server.
    If they were running the "real" QuikBill on a "real" Windows machine, then why was there any need to monitor and certify their solution? I mean, they just used QuikBill as it was meant to be used, they didn't run their own replacement for QuikBill any longer, did they? ...
    That depends on the existing environment. An all *nix shop isn't likely to have many PC's (at least not in test, qa, prod and dr (depending upon the size of the shop). ...

    Wouldn't he still have had to integrate it with their systems on unix anyway?!

    Erm, yeah, your solution sounds great.

    Well. They could've gotten a Windows PC, installed QuickBill on it and had someone manually enter the information.

    Now isn't that a prime example of modern automation?

  • Xenophon (unregistered) in reply to Human Machine-To-Machine Interface

    Of course! That's how they archive the printed form.

  • Edward Royce (unregistered) in reply to Jean Naimard
    Jean Naimard:
    Pol:
    This comment has been sent down a modem to a printer and personally re-typed in by Alex Papadimoulis
    You forgot the part where the printed sheet was faxed, then OCRed into a Word document of which a screenshot was taken, then e-mailed to Alex’s mother who then phoned him and dictated the actual message to him…

    In Klingon.

  • Rhywden (unregistered) in reply to MIrko

    That's why the company I'm jobbing in does earn money a lot of money - if EDIFACT was easy to implement, no one would need special converter software :)

  • (cs)

    Well, UN/EDIFACT...(getting goose bumps) I am SURE there is a message type for exchanging wtf-stories... or announcing that youll be in the john, or, whatever...

  • Wodin (unregistered) in reply to Wodin
    Wodin:
    sewiv:
    I hate IDOCs.
    Novell Identity Manager!

    My sympathies.

    Wait, I remember now. SAP.

    I was involved in helping the "Electronic Directory Services" project talk to SAP (amongst other things) with Novell Identity Manager.

    Fortunately I wasn't involved enough to immediately remember which part the IDOCs belonged to :)

  • (cs)

    The vendor has the right to unilaterally discount some invoices by 2% and sit on them for 60-90 days? Just because the bills aren't submitted electronically?

    I wonder if I could discount my electric bill by 2% and wait for 60-90 days to pay it... Just because the electric company doesn't use my own electronic billing system.

    If the people to whom the money is owned, didn't agree to that up front, I doubt that the company can, legally, discount the invoices by 2%.

  • LH (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    If the people to whom the money is owned, didn't agree to that up front, I doubt that the company can, legally, discount the invoices by 2%.

    Haven't you realised that it's quite easy for the company in question not to order services anymore from instances refusing to accept this policy.

  • Anonymous Cowardly Lion (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    The vendor has the right to unilaterally discount some invoices by 2% and sit on them for 60-90 days? Just because the bills aren't submitted electronically?

    I wonder if I could discount my electric bill by 2% and wait for 60-90 days to pay it... Just because the electric company doesn't use my own electronic billing system.

    If the people to whom the money is owned, didn't agree to that up front, I doubt that the company can, legally, discount the invoices by 2%.

    Legality has nothing to do with it when the vendor makes up that much of your income. Sure you could sue them, but that would lose you 30% of your income. Basically, they have to take it or go out of business.

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    That depends on the existing environment. An all *nix shop isn't likely to have many PC's [snip]

    Of course, if Simon was the only programmer, none of this is likely to apply. More likely, he just worked with the resources he had available (his *nix box).

    Plus this story is set in the beginning of 1993, so there would have been lots of DOS and Windows 3.0/3.1. Windows NT 3.1 wasn't released until the middle of 1993 so EBS couldn't have been using Windows itself. So I guess that is TRWTF?

  • greg (unregistered) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    Everything worked great for a long time. The pages were using his DB and schema so everything was updating okay. The guy didn't seem to notice the comptroller wasn't asking him for reports any more, that he wasn't getting requests for this or that improvement to the UI, or even the timesheet pages people would have up on their screens every Friday.

    I currently work with three of these (yes that is a real WTF). Some observations:

    First of all, these are the type of people that never think "there must be a better way". In their mind whatever annoyances they go through are effectively just part of the job - in fact it may very well validate their jobs. Yours is a counter example, but if enough time went by without complaints, they'd think something was horribly wrong.

    Basically they are more likely to say (with varying levels of profanity) "F*cking user, WTF did they do this time?!" than try to fix things. They are generally so busy putting out fires that they wouldn't even realize if half of them suddenly vanished, they'd just find some new toy to inflict on users and begin the cycle anew.

    While I'm sure everyone has had moments where they cursed their users, these people never really think "hey, I should add better validations on that form", or "I should add some more robust error handling". They simply cannot imagine that their own code or process could ever be wrong, and often they haven't gotten exposure to other systems or languages that might inspire them to fix up their code.

    Thankfully two of these have been Dilbert Principled out of my hair, but they still have no idea that there was anything wrong with their coding style.

  • kimbo305 (unregistered)

    That was very very sad :(. It's too bad Simon didn't switch back on the Unix solution after the certification engineer left.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    I once worked with a company that did things a bit like this. Their clients were set up with fax MODEMs connected to computers which they used to fax orders in to the company's processing center. At the other end another fax MODEM connected to a computer would receive the faxed order and send it to a printer. Then the same manual re-entry process occurred.

    It's a good thing they had all those fax MODEMs hooked up to computers at both ends of the line for faxing their orders in.

  • zobrou (unregistered) in reply to Survey User 2338
    Survey User 2338:
    How do I get the job where I sit in the chair and read magazines for $200 per hour? The fact that I don't have that job is the RWTF...

    Sorry mate .. it's standard bs, but their company paid EBS $200/h for the consultant. EBS pays the actual worker nowhere near that rate.

    It's called overhead (i.e. champagne and ho's on the french riviera for the ceo's)

  • Cpt (unregistered) in reply to cptz
    cptz:
    Well, UN/EDIFACT...(getting goose bumps) I am SURE there is a message type for exchanging wtf-stories... or announcing that youll be in the john, or, whatever...

    Your point being? I'm sure that you find that not only does X12 have similar but also a couple of very superfluous messages. Of course this will be disputed by the Americans, since the standard is American it has to be superiour by default. Jeez... come of it. Fact is that EDI will beat the living daylight out of any XML implementation because of the fact that it has eliminated (or I should say omitted them from the start) all information about the type, length and sourcing of the fields because that has been documented once. What is the use of saying that field a is numeric over and over and over and over again like you do with XML? If I send an INVOIC message you know what I will send, I don't need to tell you.... well on the other hand: most WTF stories have made clear that you can't over explain when talking to Americans....

  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    I got a laugh out of "...just happened to mention...". You become so familiar with a deception you forget about it.

    We had an internal timesheet application written by a real ass (henceforth known as the guy). VB exe - very complex - unbelievably hard to use - faggy as can be. He baasically built it to fit his high resolution jumbo monitor. Most of the forms were too large on our wimpy systems to see everything. You had to count tabs to get to the right part of the form. Our comptroller had a hard time getting weekly and monthly reports, apparently each one was custom-made by the guy, who would prepare them when he had the time.

    After a few months, we got fed up with it and decided to write our own timesheet solution on our intranet using HTML and a server side scripting language. To do that I needed the server name, username and password to gain access to the DB. Repeatedly asked the guy, told him what I wanted to do, that it would save him time, help everyone out, etc. He told me he had to ask the supervisor, or didn't have them at hand, or was doing some updates, or various other stalling tactics. Escalated to our super, same stalling tactics from the guy. We got tired of waiting, so the super told me in private do what it takes, get it done.

    On a hunch I opened the VB exe in Notepad and searched, saw what I needed right there in glorious plaintext. After getting access to the DB and figured out his retarded schema, I wrote up a few pages in a day or so. Much simplified and intuitive interface, worked with any screen resolution, large fonts, etc. The comptroller could get his reports as often as he wanted and get them instantly. Was a big hit in the office.

    Not wanting to upset the guy, we dispersed the timesheet links privately, and gave explicit instructions that if asked by the guy, to disavow any knowledge of the links, how they got them, why they have them, etc.

    Everything worked great for a long time. The pages were using his DB and schema so everything was updating okay. The guy didn't seem to notice the comptroller wasn't asking him for reports any more, that he wasn't getting requests for this or that improvement to the UI, or even the timesheet pages people would have up on their screens every Friday.

    To this day he likely wouldn't have known had I not opened my big mouth during an update and mentioned some revisions I was doing to the timesheet pages that week. To be fair, we were sitting in a configuration where I couldn't see him, and so it slipped out. It was funny when everyone else tried to look shocked, too. Really? A new timesheet! Wow, you have to show me it sometime.

    Eventually he realized at least some of the extent of the deception. He felt pretty crappy. We let him go a few months later.

    So you're saying your company kept a useless employee to keep from 'upsetting him'? THAT'S the real WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    I got a laugh out of "...just happened to mention...". You become so familiar with a deception you forget about it.

    We had an internal timesheet application written by a real ass ....

    He felt pretty crappy. We let him go a few months later.

    Funny, in a "guy slips and falls" kinda way! You don't wanna laugh, but you can't help it!

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    SomeCoder:
    JDeepBeep:
    I once made the mistake of telling a Cox sales rep I would be using Linux and wouldn't need their installation-setup CD they were trying to tell me how to use. I was promptly informed that only Windows comps can access the internet and she would now cancel the appointment to have the techs come to my house to establish online service. She said nobody is online with Linux, you need Windows or Mac.

    That reminds me of the Comcast tech who insisted that my computer had to be installed with their ad-ware or I couldn't access the internet.

    Finally he said "ok well you'll have to go online to download this software before you can access the internet".

    Yes, he actually said that.

    "Ok, I'm at google, what do I search for so I can download the ad-ware program? Ah crap, these IM's keep popping up."

    But in all seriousness, I think it's possible to access your ISPs local network while not being able to access everything (either by design or a network failure).

    I know they do this by design with some services when setting up your connection for the first time; you have to log in with a special username and password on your modem which will let you access their website (but nothing else), which will in turn tell you the CORRECT password (given a special number they give you on paper) so you can access everything.

  • (cs) in reply to zobrou
    zobrou:
    Survey User 2338:
    How do I get the job where I sit in the chair and read magazines for $200 per hour? The fact that I don't have that job is the RWTF...

    Sorry mate .. it's standard bs, but their company paid EBS $200/h for the consultant. EBS pays the actual worker nowhere near that rate.

    It's called overhead (i.e. champagne and ho's on the french riviera for the ceo's)

    Virtually all agencies are like that. My time is apparently worth about $140 an hour to clients, but I get on the order of $25 an hour (directly). The difference also has to pay for office bills (electricity, computers, rent, coffee machine, etc) as well as having money in the business's bank account for other uses, plus all the french riviera gardening implements...

  • Duckie (unregistered) in reply to cptz

    For Sure! I't s called RSS!

    <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="The Daily WTF RSS Feed" href="http://syndication.thedailywtf.com/TheDailyWtf" />

  • yossi (unregistered)

    they're == they are

    not the intended meaning over here.

    if this was mentioned b/4, sorry I didnt read any of the comments

    captcha: nulla

  • (cs)

    Good idea. Make it so hard for the people to submit their invoices to you so that they just don't ;)

  • Jobsworth (unregistered) in reply to seditious
    seditious:
    We had a guy that was going to install a swipe-card controlled lock system which would need to be controlled by a DOS machine. That's right, I was going to have to pull a 486 (more likely a P-100) out of the closet and install an illegitimate copy of MS-DOS (more likely Win98 set to run in DOS mode) on a several hundred MB HDD just for this... it might have needed its own monitor, perhaps even a desk if not for KVMs. UGLY UGLY UGLY. All it needed was access to a serial port but he assured me that it had to be the real thing-- No Win4Lin, no WINE, no Dosemu, no FreeDOS, or the delightful little control program would freak out (robust, eh?). It actually never got installed... I guess it was to be donated but the company never accumulated enough spare parts.

    I'm happy that someone got to avoid all that, and it worked well enough that nobody found out on their own. I was eager to see how I might satisfy the app in some other way on principle, and disprove the claims of absolutely requiring a real DOS environment.

    Plus at the time I was a rabid Linux zealot.

    TRWTF is that up to dec 2006 I was working for that swipe-card access control company. I guess the software was written in FoxPro? Which is a WTF on its own. Your story must have been from before '98 because by that time they were moving to a 'doze version of FoxPro. Another WTF is that I currently work for a customer of that swipe card company. Thank $deity that the admin who is responsible for the local installation doesn't bug me with it. Probably because here too they have written their own interface for the card readers. At the time when I was at software support, I had a pretty good idea what my current employer had done and I was pretty sure they did a good job, but we had instructions from our PHB about not helping customers who didn't use the foxpro client.

    Captcha: usitas

  • Jobsworth (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    But in all seriousness, I think it's possible to access your ISPs local network while not being able to access everything (either by design or a network failure).
    You think correct. My former cable ISP restricts access to the local network for cable modems that aren't registered and activated in their backend. That means you can't buy your own cable modem, you have to use theirs. They use a transparant proxy to restrict access. (AFAICT)
  • (cs)

    Is it just me or is it a WTF that the company thinks they can just decide not to pay 2% of the bill and that they're going to delay payment for up to 3 months?

    I'm surprised nobody decided to nail the company's executives' testicles to the legal wall for that one.

  • (cs) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    Someone You Know:
    Alex:
    They’re Unix-based client was up and running several months before the deadline.

    What?

    OMG! How brillant you are to have caught that! Wow!

    Granted, easy to spot. But it would be just as easy to correct, and therefore truly deserves

    [image]
  • (cs) in reply to Leak
    Leak:
    merreborn:
    it was up to Simon to ensure that that the two company’s systems could talk.
    two companies'
    Two's Company.
    Two's Complement.
  • tragomaskhalos (unregistered)

    I love the way people parrot all this bullsh*t about EDI, SOA etc without any understanding of what it's actually supposed to achieve. The fact that Simon's company were running on a different OS but the comms still worked fine without any proprietary software is like, er, the WHOLE FUGGIN' POINT !! Some consultants had clearly done a major number on the dunderheads at EBS ...

  • Rhywden (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59

    The point is that companies which implement punitive taxes like these are usually quite large - Metro in Germany, for example, does it the same way.

    Now, if they don't get a standard INVOIC or DESADV or ORDRSP or whatever from their suppliers but a non-standard document or even something handwritten, this means that they'll have to process the document manually. And since they have several thousand suppliers, I'm sure you'll see why this poses a problem.

    Because it costs money, time and is error-prone to a certain degree. And if you don't agree to these terms, you'll find yourself out of business with this particular company.

  • (cs) in reply to Jobsworth
    Jobsworth:
    TRWTF is that up to dec 2006 I was working for that swipe-card access control company. I guess the software was written in FoxPro? Which is a WTF on its own. Your story must have been from before '98 because by that time they were moving to a 'doze version of FoxPro.

    Hmmm... this was all around 2004-5 or pretty close. Still, I could believe you worked for the same company if you say the magic words "Northeast Ohio" ;) There also may be some specific detail I forgot like a Windows client for remotely adding and removing IDs, but I seem to remember being told "No network, no other drivers, no fancy hardware or it freaks out" etc., etc... all difficult to swallow.

  • (cs) in reply to Smash King
    Smash King:
    Leak:
    merreborn:
    it was up to Simon to ensure that that the two company’s systems could talk.
    two companies'
    Two's Company.
    Two's Complement.
    S'ign and Magnitude?
  • octo (unregistered) in reply to JDeepBeep

    She would have loved trying to talk to me :-) Thankfully, when I last moved, I signed up with "RoadRunner Virtual Office" through Brighthouse. They send over the business-class service techs, who tend not to care so much.

    At the time I was still moving in, and my "test system" was a SPARCstation 5 running OpenBSD and connected to a serial terminal. (Which was to be my initial firewall, of course.) Didn't bother them one bit.

    Of course a few years later they sent some average tech over when I needed a replacement modem, and I thoroughly confused him by writing my assigned network address (and netmask) on my whiteboard, before writing the IP of the modem and and the IPs I'd been assigned.

  • clvrmnky (unregistered)

    Nits:

    s/They're Unix-based client/their UNIX-based client/

  • dube (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the app name QuikBill? a hybrid of Quick and Quirk? Ingenious!

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    The vendor has the right to unilaterally discount some invoices by 2% and sit on them for 60-90 days? Just because the bills aren't submitted electronically?

    I wonder if I could discount my electric bill by 2% and wait for 60-90 days to pay it... Just because the electric company doesn't use my own electronic billing system.

    If the people to whom the money is owned, didn't agree to that up front, I doubt that the company can, legally, discount the invoices by 2%.

    Here we go again with the IANAL crap. This isn't a legal matter. It's a contractual matter between 2 companies. However they decide on this is between them.

    There are as many pretend lawyers on this site as there are pretend programmers using Access VBA.

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    The vendor has the right to unilaterally discount some invoices by 2% and sit on them for 60-90 days? Just because the bills aren't submitted electronically?

    I wonder if I could discount my electric bill by 2% and wait for 60-90 days to pay it... Just because the electric company doesn't use my own electronic billing system.

    If the people to whom the money is owned, didn't agree to that up front, I doubt that the company can, legally, discount the invoices by 2%.

    Walmart does this kind of thing all the time. You go along if you want to do business with them. They have this "Our way or the highway" mentality, and mean it.

    It may not be legal, but when the company is one of your biggest customers and means lots of revenue to your business, you'd be amazed at what that big company can demand (and you'll comply with).

  • (cs) in reply to Cpt
    Cpt:
    Of course this will be disputed by the Americans
    Cpt:
    you can't over explain when talking to Americans....

    Oh, boy. Another one of those people who is really jealous of Americans.

    You know, we allow almost everyone into this country; it's part of the reason it's so great. If you have anything to offer, you can apply and we might even let you live here. If you ask nicely, of course.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to seamustheseagull
    seamustheseagull:
    I'm surprised nobody decided to nail the company's executives' testicles to the legal wall for that one.

    Yet another legal "expert" blesses us with his knowledge. What laws exactly does that break? Aside from contractual obligations that is.

  • Marc B (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    Years ago, I was a consultant for a company, hired to implement their EDI. I used to love how often the standards changed, lots of extra billing. Thank your expert-friend for me!

  • far9999 (unregistered) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    Oh, boy. Another one of those people who is really jealous of Americans.

    You know, we allow almost everyone into this country; it's part of the reason it's so great. If you have anything to offer, you can apply and we might even let you live here. If you ask nicely, of course.

    Almost everyone? To get a green card you either need to go through the extensive H1B > green card process which takes years, be randomly selected in the diversity lottery, or have "immediate" family members who will sponsor you. That system is a giant WTF in itself.

    As long as ratbrain is at the USA helm, I'd stay where I was...

  • (cs)

    Enterprise Business Systems? Oh, I've seen this one. Kirk secretly transmits the access code which enables them to remotely drop the shields on Khan's ship. They used Edifact, too.

  • ThreeIfByAir (unregistered) in reply to far9999
    As long as ratbrain is at the USA helm, I'd stay where I was...

    There are lots of things to blame ratbrain for, but this actually isn't one of them -- it's one of the few things he actually gets. Blame Congress in this case. (McCain also gets this, not sure about Obama. The question is whether they have the chutzpah to ram it down Congress's throat and/or whether the new Congress will contain few enough xenophobes to get something sensible passed.)

    But yes, TRWTF is indeed the US immigration system. You could write thousands of WTFs on the subject.

  • John Gietzen (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Smash King:
    Leak:
    merreborn:
    it was up to Simon to ensure that that the two company’s systems could talk.
    two companies'
    Two's Company.
    Two's Complement.
    S'ign and Magnitude?
    Sign and Magnitude (remember, proper punctuation.)
  • James (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    So if I understand this correctly, after the changes we have: 
    Unix client application communicates with ->
  Windows app which ->
  translates to fixed width and calls -> 
  library to convert to EDIFACT, then uses -> 
  modem to send to remote server which -> 
  converts back to fixed width format, and -> 
  writes to flat file, then  -> 
  file monitor scans for file and -> 
  sends to printer -> 
  paper -> 
  manual reentry

    gasp

    That sounds exactly like how my organization does timecards. No EDIFACT, but otherwise pretty much the same. Every two weeks, for tens of thousands of people.

  • (cs) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    seamustheseagull:
    I'm surprised nobody decided to nail the company's executives' testicles to the legal wall for that one.

    Yet another legal "expert" blesses us with his knowledge. What laws exactly does that break? Aside from contractual obligations that is.

    You're kidding right? You just answered your own question.

  • Wizard Stan (unregistered) in reply to Survey User 2338
    Survey User 2338:
    How do I get the job where I sit in the chair and read magazines for $200 per hour? The fact that I don't have that job is the RWTF...
    To be fair, the guy sitting there probably didn't make $200 an hour, just that he was billing $200 an hour. I'm a "contract consultant" for a company, and my billing is around $200 an hour. That means company that I work for gets the job, charges $200 an hour for the service, sends the work to me, where I do it for much, much less than $200 an hour. To the tune of 90% less. I about lost my will to live when I found out just how much overhead they were taking and am now looking for a new job. Thank you very much.
  • foo (unregistered) in reply to John Gietzen
    John Gietzen:
    Someone You Know:
    Smash King:
    Leak:
    merreborn:
    it was up to Simon to ensure that that the two company’s systems could talk.
    two companies'
    Two's Company.
    Two's Complement.
    S'ign and Magnitude?
    Sign and Magnitude (remember, proper punctuation.)

    I guess they need two "that"s because of the two companies.

  • Mr. (unregistered) in reply to sewiv
    sewiv:
    The stupidity of running an entire server with failover for one Windows program when everything else in your shop is on unix.

    Vmware...

  • Jason McMullan (unregistered) in reply to Mr.
    Mr.:
    sewiv:
    The stupidity of running an entire server with failover for one Windows program when everything else in your shop is on unix.

    Vmware...

    ... didn't exist in 1993.

  • ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered) in reply to Survey User 2338
    Survey User 2338:
    How do I get the job where I sit in the chair and read magazines for $200 per hour? The fact that I don't have that job is the RWTF...

    No, the REAL WTF is that his company gets $200/hr for his time, but the guy reading magazines probably only sees $40/hr of that.

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