• (cs) in reply to Corey
    Corey:
    Off-topic mail-addressing story:

    Where I grew up, we had a Logan, OH mailing address, but a Bremen, OH phone number (Gee, no, GTE!). A child relative once sent my dad a card, having gotten the city off of his parents' phone bill, and then misspelled it. The complete address on the card was my dad's name and "Breman, Ohio".

    The card got to our mailbox (though it did take a while).

    I was in awe.

    My friend once sent a postcard from some remote-ish country to another friend of mine. The written address was something like (translating/paraphrasing): "<name>, Katarina valley -ghetto, arse-end of the country, Finland".

    It actually made it to its destination.

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Dude who's gonna bang Brenda
    Dude who's gonna bang Brenda:
    Brenda sounds hot, I want to bang her

    Jason sounds hotter, I wanna bang him!

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Zan
    Zan:
    How would I love to have users who actually try to solve problems. It's easy to find you might help them when they don't mind you knowing something doesn't work.

    My users can't be fired. There's no legal way of doing so. Even if they stop working.

    If I release an app with a minor problem, they don't tell me. They don't do bag-o-labels things either. They simply stop working very quietly hoping no one will notice ever. Then they can retire ten years later and tell the next one not to ever mention the label error to anyone who knows what a computer is.

    I know you - you work^H^H^H^H have a job as a California state employee!

  • (cs) in reply to fbjon
    fbjon:
    Corey:
    Off-topic mail-addressing story:

    Where I grew up, we had a Logan, OH mailing address, but a Bremen, OH phone number (Gee, no, GTE!). A child relative once sent my dad a card, having gotten the city off of his parents' phone bill, and then misspelled it. The complete address on the card was my dad's name and "Breman, Ohio".

    The card got to our mailbox (though it did take a while).

    I was in awe.

    My friend once sent a postcard from some remote-ish country to another friend of mine. The written address was something like (translating/paraphrasing): "<name>, Katarina valley -ghetto, arse-end of the country, Finland".

    It actually made it to its destination.

    LOL Apparently he's not the only one who knows where the ghetto, arse-end of the country is.

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Jim Bob
    Jim Bob:
    Dude who's gonna bang Brenda:
    Brenda sounds hot, I want to bang her

    Dude I already did her, she let me put it in her butt, she's a hoe

    Dude, a "hoe" is what you use to chop weeds - a "ho" is like yo mamma...

  • LKM (unregistered)

    This is something I see regularly. People don't report issues. They just find a workaround since they need to find a workaround until it's fixed anyway. Often, they also don't realize that something is a bug, they think they did something wrong...

  • (cs)
  • Elmo Allén (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    fbjon:
    The written address was something like (translating/paraphrasing): "<name>, Katarina valley -ghetto, arse-end of the country, Finland".

    LOL Apparently he's not the only one who knows where the ghetto, arse-end of the country is.

    Bah, everybody knows that it is here

  • (cs)

    Here is an article about postal service and directions in Managua, Nicaragua: http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/592.cfm

    Basically they don't have street numbers. Everything is in relation to landmarks. One of the more endearing landmarks is the "yellow car that is always there".

  • snoofle (unregistered) in reply to bif
    bif:
    I "wrote" (in Access '95 or whatever year it was) a small system for, coincidentally, managing what amounts to a glorified mailing list. After using it for a year, my customer's data entry person directly asked me if there was any way to "carry-over" a field. I wasn't sure what she meant, so I sat down with her. It turned out all she wanted was a default value in a certain data-entry box. I made the change literally in 10 seconds while sitting at her desk. She physically gasped when she saw how it worked, and got very angry. She then snippily dragged me from screen to screen, having me put in default values on about 20 different fields. After that, she scolded both me and her boss (who had designed the program) for not consulting her earlier. "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TIME I'VE WASTED OVER THE PAST YEAR?" (Her 'boss' also happened to be her husband.)

    No good deed goes unpunished, right? I think the moral of these kinds of stories is that users are never happy.

    I feel for her husband...

  • Dana (unregistered) in reply to linepro

    The lesson here is to maintain good relationships with your users. Sometimes just walking down the hall or past someone's desk will elicit a complaint or comment about the software that you can easily fix.

    I constantly encourage my users to remember that when they're doing things by hand they should stop and think "I should ask the programmer if this can be automated in some way." After a while the brighter ones actually begin to think outside the box once they realize you actually will help them fix some of the low hanging fruit.

    Captcha: gotcha

  • Richard Asscock III (unregistered) in reply to Darien H

    "I'd say that means you've got a few pretty dumb customers (as people, even, not just a computer users), and anyone who asks you to make an "Exception table" for them has too much time on their hands and should be sent to the support telephone farm if they really want to improve customer satisfaction that much."

    True, I had some pretty dumb customers and managers that were used to things in the old cobal systems. My only hope is that these moron baby boomer managers (flame war!) will soon retire and people that have seen 1980s technology will be put in charge.

    Dick Asscock, III

    The real WTF is that I've never replied to a comment and don't have faith in this system to quote the source.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Dana
    Dana:
    After a while the brighter ones actually begin to think outside the box once they realize you actually will help them fix some of the low hanging fruit.

    But then you'll have to fix the higher hanging fruit!

  • (cs) in reply to Elmo Allén
    Elmo Allén:
    DOA:
    fbjon:
    The written address was something like (translating/paraphrasing): "<name>, Katarina valley -ghetto, arse-end of the country, Finland".

    LOL Apparently he's not the only one who knows where the ghetto, arse-end of the country is.

    Bah, everybody knows that it is here

    Has google removed that hack that let you get across the Atlantic with the driving directions? It couldn't find directions from Georgia (USA) to Finland. Or did that only work if you were going to the UK or France?

  • (cs) in reply to Richard Asscock III
    Richard Asscock III:
    His fix sounds all well and good until you get complaints from in country customers that don't understand why USA appears on their invoice.

    Your customers are broken.

  • MG Driver (unregistered) in reply to Elmo Allén
    Elmo Allén:
    DOA:
    fbjon:
    The written address was something like (translating/paraphrasing): "<name>, Katarina valley -ghetto, arse-end of the country, Finland".

    LOL Apparently he's not the only one who knows where the ghetto, arse-end of the country is.

    Bah, everybody knows that it is here

    Nothing wrong with Turku - it's full of pretty girls that are looking for fun.

  • (cs)

    How is this a WTF? Because she didn't mention the missing country (meaning she shock didn't know how crystal reports worked)?

    Very very very lame/weak excuse for a WTF. Even under the new WTF definitions.

    Next week: Secretary's keyboard color doesn't match her monitor bezel!

    SUCKAGE

  • (cs)

    Had virtually the same revelation.

    Walked into the control centre about 5pm. All the reports for the next day's schedule were printing off on the big line printer. I noticed they were carefully using a ruler to tear some reports down to A4 size - I asked why?

    Answer: some users don't have a local printer so the schedules are printed at HQ and then faxed.

    "Would it be useful to print those at the A4 printer?" I asked, pointing at the virtually unused laser printer in the middle of the office.

    The looks I got, now I know how Jesus felt.

    Took me half a day, including writing a form to specify which printer specific schedules should go to, and writing an A4 version of the report (open report, change destination type, save report).

    I asked in passing why they didn't use a guillotine to chop the reports down, rather than folding and tearing. The old hand I was talking to waved to the other users and asked, "Would you trust these people with a guillotine?"

    I had to agree.

  • Fred (unregistered)

    Checking in without full regression testing. Way to go !

    I expect this story to end up by discovering that the "internal comment" field was mapped to the country column, and a bunch of enveloppes are mailed to "John Smith, Asshole"

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Why not?
    Why not?:
    Raymond:
    Is it acceptable to put the country name on domestic mail?
    If you can address mail to: Paula Bean, 42 WTFU, Anytown, USA, why not all other domestic mail too?

    It's all sorted by zip code anyway...

    The country code still matters. Codigo Postales de Mexico are 5-digit codes that overlap the USA ZIP code set. I imagine that Canada Post codes equal some UK postal codes also.

  • Chad (unregistered)

    At my old company I used to have to twist users arms to get them to report something out of the ordinary.

    Me: "So what's wrong?"

    New Employee: "Yea, I hit submit, then it went and did some and gave me an error"

    Old Employee: (turns around from desk) "Yea that happens every time, just Ctrl+Atl+Del and relaunch the application, the request goes through and the record will be updated"

    Me: "ummmm why didn't you report this to anyone?"

    Old Employee: "I dunno..."

  • Danielle (unregistered)

    Oh yes, definitely. You won't believe the kind of bugs users might tolerate, and it won't occur to them to report it!

    I just had on of those: my users supervise a production line, manufacturing several dozen units per day.

    Now, we implemented a feature for printing "cummulative daily report": at the end of every day, you print a report of all units produced thas day (several detail pages per unit). Unfortunately we got it wrong: it turns out that they must print a separate report per individual unit, which must be sent to printer immediately after each unit (you can't wait for the end of the day, because you must immediately hand a hard copy to a person who does some further processing).

    Obviously, sane people would have asked to fix the report and print one unit at a time... but not my users, no sir... My users just tolerated it for 6 months (!). After each and every unit, they'd print out a "cummulative daily report", cut out the required unit and throw away the rest of the papers. They used a large pair of scissors, which they had chained nicely so that it won't get lost... Naturally, as the day goes on, you get an quadrically-growing amount of gargabe paper, piling into several big boxes... Being nice gentlemen, they even arranged to take turns, helping the cleaning lady to carry the junk paper at the end of the shift (it really was too heavy for the average woman to lift - I couldn't, and I'm quite strong for a girl).

    And this went on for 6 months... until I accidently (and literallly) stumbled upon those boxes. It just never occured to them to call support and have it fixed. The surreal part is, since I know my users, I even called them up several times just to ask "is everything okay, do you need anything"... and all I got was "no problem"...

    Arrrgh! Users.

  • Someone (unregistered) in reply to Jubbly
    Jubbly:
    Had virtually the same revelation.

    Walked into the control centre about 5pm. All the reports for the next day's schedule were printing off on the big line printer. I noticed they were carefully using a ruler to tear some reports down to A4 size - I asked why?

    Answer: some users don't have a local printer so the schedules are printed at HQ and then faxed.

    "Would it be useful to print those at the A4 printer?" I asked, pointing at the virtually unused laser printer in the middle of the office.

    The looks I got, now I know how Jesus felt.

    "Would it be useful to have the system fax them without printing them first?" I asked.

  • (cs) in reply to Someone
    Someone:
    Jubbly:
    Had virtually the same revelation.

    Walked into the control centre about 5pm. All the reports for the next day's schedule were printing off on the big line printer. I noticed they were carefully using a ruler to tear some reports down to A4 size - I asked why?

    Answer: some users don't have a local printer so the schedules are printed at HQ and then faxed.

    "Would it be useful to print those at the A4 printer?" I asked, pointing at the virtually unused laser printer in the middle of the office.

    The looks I got, now I know how Jesus felt.

    "Would it be useful to have the system fax them without printing them first?" I asked.

    Yes, I did that too, although that turned into an actual project. In fact, we did "Print/Email/Fax".

    Someday I expect to see the "Email" part on here, using as it did a 60K freeware mail server downloaded from the internet.

  • david (unregistered)

    I worked with a product that shut down on unhandled exceptions. Other developers critised that feature: I loved it. Every time there was an unhandled exception (caused by an unexpected data import variation), the appliction crashed and had to be restarted. Every failure was automatically escalated to second-level support, because the users understood that it was a software failure. A later editon of the tool removed that feature. Now they just get a message box to click on and ignore. That's what you do with message boxes, right?

  • jeti (unregistered) in reply to 0x15e

    One thing I've learned in the years I've been coding is that, oddly enough, customers just don't report issues sometimes. They complain amongst themselves for weeks, months, and even years on end but they won't report the problem to someone who can fix it.

    Look up the term "learned helplessness".

  • KM (unregistered)

    OK, so when he first wrote the app, they didn't send any invoices overseas?

    The time to walk around and see what the users are doing is BEFORE you start coding.

    And I guess there is no user acceptance testing going on either.

    No, of course not. Just code, compile and implement...

    There is the WFT, I believe.

  • Paul Abraham (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    The country code still matters. Codigo Postales de Mexico are 5-digit codes that overlap the USA ZIP code set. I imagine that Canada Post codes equal some UK postal codes also.

    All UK post codes end in number letter letter and Canadian post codes end (I think) in number letter number, so there should be no codes that are the same. The letter O is not used in the second part of a UK post code.

  • Publius (unregistered) in reply to skx

    I'm glad I'm not the only one...

  • PotatoEngineer (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    Here is an article about postal service and directions in Managua, Nicaragua: http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/592.cfm

    Basically they don't have street numbers. Everything is in relation to landmarks. One of the more endearing landmarks is the "yellow car that is always there".

    Costa Rica has a similar system, but it's even more awkward there: a block is assumed to be 100 meters long. So your directions to walk 3 blocks north and 4 blocks east tell you to "walk 300 meters north and 400 meters east," regardless of the possibility that each block might be a mere 20 meters long.

  • Stinky (unregistered)

    You guys are lucky that the users just do nothing when they come across a problem. I've worked for a company where they don't report problems, they create an Access database, three spreadsheets with embedded VBA, and a DOS batch file. This limps along sight unseen by IT until the guy who made it is on holiday and it goes down. Then you're called and asked to fix the TCP script. "TCP script?" you ask hopefully, "Don't you mean the TCP report?" It then takes 3 days to work out what problem their little system was created to fix, and you make it redundant with 2 lines of code in the original app...

  • Xeno (unregistered) in reply to Richard Asscock III
    Richard Asscock III:
    His fix sounds all well and good until you get complaints from in country customers that don't understand why USA appears on their invoice...
    Why do the customers hate America?

    Captcha: "howdy"

  • (cs) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    I imagine that Canada Post codes equal some UK postal codes also.

    I'm pretty sure it can't--I've never seen a UK code that ended with a digit, which all Canadian postcodes do.

  • Mr Steve (unregistered) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    Jim Bob:
    Dude who's gonna bang Brenda:
    Brenda sounds hot, I want to bang her

    Dude I already did her, she let me put it in her butt, she's a hoe

    Dude, a "hoe" is what you use to chop weeds - a "ho" is like yo mamma...

    I want to bang the cleaner who comes in to my office at night - she's hot!!!!!

  • bAssMaster (unregistered)

    Th real WTF is some of you newbies still try to be heroes when none in the organization really gives a rat's ass. Wake up!

  • Matt G (unregistered)

    If a user can "work" with the system, either by inventive means or whatever, they will. We're in the process of fixing something like this at my job. They want to do "x", but they can't. But doing "y" and "z" will get the same "results" to them, so they do it. Forget everything else that happens, and when people come to IT because of a problem, we're like, well, you know the sitename.

  • :) (unregistered) in reply to bAssMaster
    bAssMaster:
    Th real WTF is some of you newbies still try to be heroes when none in the organization really gives a rat's ass. Wake up!

    Took me 5 years to wake up

  • Brenda (unregistered) in reply to Danielle
    Danielle:
    Oh yes, definitely. You won't believe the kind of bugs users might tolerate, and it won't occur to them to report it!

    I just had on of those: my users supervise a production line, manufacturing several dozen units per day.

    Now, we implemented a feature for printing "cummulative daily report": at the end of every day, you print a report of all units produced thas day (several detail pages per unit). Unfortunately we got it wrong: it turns out that they must print a separate report per individual unit, which must be sent to printer immediately after each unit (you can't wait for the end of the day, because you must immediately hand a hard copy to a person who does some further processing).

    Obviously, sane people would have asked to fix the report and print one unit at a time... but not my users, no sir... My users just tolerated it for 6 months (!). After each and every unit, they'd print out a "cummulative daily report", cut out the required unit and throw away the rest of the papers. They used a large pair of scissors, which they had chained nicely so that it won't get lost... Naturally, as the day goes on, you get an quadrically-growing amount of gargabe paper, piling into several big boxes... Being nice gentlemen, they even arranged to take turns, helping the cleaning lady to carry the junk paper at the end of the shift (it really was too heavy for the average woman to lift - I couldn't, and I'm quite strong for a girl).

    And this went on for 6 months... until I accidently (and literallly) stumbled upon those boxes. It just never occured to them to call support and have it fixed. The surreal part is, since I know my users, I even called them up several times just to ask "is everything okay, do you need anything"... and all I got was "no problem"...

    Arrrgh! Users.

    ...and you just left out the part where you talked to the users FIRST, to find out how their real-world process worked, and what they needed, BEFORE you designed the new feature, right?

    Arrrgh! Developers.

    Design tip #1: Good application design - or enhancement - begins with good process analysis.

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to 0x15e

    I've been so frustrated with users not reporting problems that I've gone to creating a bug report credit of $50/real bug. It's only partly worked!

    Next year I'm going to mail (US Postal Mail) personally written thank-you cards - I bet this will work better.

  • Ducky (unregistered) in reply to LKM

    I'd love to have a job where reporting the day-to-day errors actually meant something. I've got lists of errors with my workplace tools, stuff that SOMEONE should be able to go fix, but I might as well be shouting them off into the void. Nothing's ever going to happen.

    I think a lot of people just assume that no one's ever going to do anything to actually fix any problems. And if there's someone who actually cares to get the job done? Yeah. Workarounds. I can come up with some damn spiffy workarounds, I can. I'm the human element that takes over when the system screws up.

    I want me my own Jason S. I'd bake him cookies and bring him coffee and give him nice presents on holidays and his birthday.

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to 0x15e
    Why? Probably for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is possible bad past experiences with their support personnel. HOWEVER, lot of it actually turns out to be a good old-fashioned bad attitude problem. You see, if the users didn't have something to complain / waste time about, they'd actually have to do real, actual work.
    Bad experiences.. like for instance having a IT person say that his users are just lazy and stupid rather than try to understand the problem.

    Remind me never to hire you. This is the kind of crappy attitude that is the reason that so many business users hate dealing with IT.

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to bAssMaster
    Th real WTF is some of you newbies still try to be heroes when none in the organization really gives a rat's ass. Wake up!
    I have been doing it 20 years. I get cookies, i get cake, I get "thanks rob".

    Maybe you just need to work for better people.

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to PyroTyger
    I'm constantly checking to see how users are using the system, what they'd like to be different, and building simple solutions to those problems. In my experience it's the ONLY way to improve the relationship between users and IT - and the only real joy I get from programming.
    Follow-up... what a concept.

    I have moved from a traditional IT environment to one where I am "embedded" in a Finance group and it is astonishing how much good will you can see when you treat users like people with real problems and not like they are the problem. It is also amazing how much support you will get from them when you feel free to say things like "damn, I was wrong. Sorry about that" rather than bluff, bluster and blame someone else. Of course , you better be right a lot more than you are wrong ...

  • GrouchyAdmin (unregistered)

    Now's my turn to feel like an ass. "All tolled" makes so much more sense than "All told.."

  • ELIZA (unregistered) in reply to jeti
    jeti:
    One thing I've learned in the years I've been coding is that, oddly enough, customers just don't report issues sometimes. They complain amongst themselves for weeks, months, and even years on end but they won't report the problem to someone who can fix it.

    Look up the term "learned helplessness".

    Look up the book "The Design of Everyday Things" I am not sure exactly how everyday an IT department is, but the same principles should apply: If you keep the ITfolk secluded in their monasterial coding chambers so that users can only interact with their finished product, the users will not understand that they can ask the developers to change it, just like they cannot ask a painter to add a chibi rabbit to their artistic watercolour now in a museum under lock and key; If, on the other hand, you send forth some IT representatives into the rest of the company to see how their programs work, the users will start to talk about their problems because the program is being maintained, at least visibly and why visibly look like maintaining it at programmer-wage costs if not to actually maintain it?

  • J (unregistered) in reply to Dude who's gonna bang Brenda
    Dude who's gonna bang Brenda:
    Brenda sounds hot, I want to bang her

    Jason here, she's not hot. She is fat with funny voice. And her face is so ugly than even ton of make up she's using doesn't cover it.

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