Job: cashier
Item doesn’t scan
Customer: “That means it’s free, right?”
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Only about 4 weeks in as a cashier and I’ve heard this enough to last me a lifetime.
Whenever you raise a problem with a process or setup the general answer is “It is what it is”. No! Your laziness can jump, you can fix the damn problem you are not going to get away with inaction with a platitude.
“This is a business!”
“X is down/broke.” No, Kelly, the internet isn’t “down.” You typed the URL wrong in your browser.
People will state it like the entire company has lost internet connectivity, or an entire department cannot access files or run a certain program, when actually, only a single user is having a problem.
Also people not knowing the difference between log out, restart, and shutdown. Even after explaining it to them.
Yes but you see if I close the lid, then it’s off. And that’s why my system has an up time of 208 hours.
208 hours.
Those are rookie numbers. I’ve had users that didn’t ever shut down. A power outage was the only relief that poor system got.
Ive already said it on another comment here, and i no long work support so im a user myself now but, FUCK USERS!
It’s frustrating when you know there’s a huge gap between your comprehension and theirs, but they think you’re the idiot.
At one point, I had to explain to my dad that we’re paying for internet access, not for all servers to be available and sufficiently fast. He was not happy about that.
I can’t really sympathise with you here. You’re clearly an IT guy, so the difference between log out, restart and shut down is as natural to you as breathing. For the average person is not that intuitive. For many people the computer is “on” when they press the power button and enter their username and password. And the blurring of the distinction is increased by most people having a smartphone where just lifting it up to your face wakes it up and logs you in (technically) at the same time.
I know you’re explaining it to them, but if that’s not something that they live and breathe, they’re just going to forget the explanation. I’m a molecular biologist, so to me the differences between genome, transcriptome and proteome are bleeding obvious, but I have a colleague who’s not a scientist but needs to become familiar with these terms. I explained them to her last week in an meeting that lasted an hour, but this week I had to do that again. She’s not stupid, it’s just all very abstract to her.
People should know basic concepts about tools without which they can’t do any part of their job.
Your colleague will learn this terminology at some point. I’m sure her job isn’t litterally juggling these three terms all day every day, otherwise I’d expect her to already have come in with that knowledge too.
Honestly, even though I use computers for work all the time, I don’t think I ever talk about logging in or out or switching it off or restarting, other than when I’m getting some help from IT.
Chances are you were clothes with aglets a lot, and aglets keep the integrity of your clothes, but there is also a good chance that you don’t know what aglets are because the average person doesn’t talk about them until they lodge somewhere in their washing machine.
I’m mean, it’s literally in the name. These are not concepts that require a degree to understand, much less an hour long meeting.
Logout means ending your user session, restart means your computer turns off and then comes back on, and shutdown means it turns off and stays off.
The buttons are all in the start menu, they are clearly marked, and these concepts have existed for 30 years at least.
It’s like driving a car for decades and not knowing what the difference between reverse, drive, and neutral are.
I still think your promoting the view of “this is obvious to me so it should be obvious to everyone”. Even your explanation would be confusing for someone who’s not an IT guy - what does it mean “end my user session?” People rarely go to the start menu to deal with their computers’ “on-ness”, they just press the hardware button that has an incomplete circle with a line on top or often no marking or label at all. Or they close the lid and that makes them think of their laptop as “off”.
It’s not about being “obvious.” It’s about understanding the most basic concepts involved with using a piece of equipment that is central to their job and has been that way for decades.
I wouldn’t want ride in a car with somebody that couldn’t remember what the difference between red, yellow, and green traffic lights are, or couldn’t remember how to activate their turn signals or windshield wipers. And I certainly wouldn’t want them operating a vehicle as a core part of their everyday job.
Now I’ll grant that in general, a car is far more dangerous than a computer. But the principle still holds, these are not tough concepts to understand, takes literally 5 minutes to explain at most. Plus, they haven’t changed in at least 30 years, so it’s not some new fangled techno-babble.
If people too stupid to use computer, their computer license should be revoked, because they clearly cheated on the test
I was working at a tool checkout in my shop for a while, and the sheer amount of ignorance and repetition blew me away.
People would come in, see signs stating things like “Don’t throw your hazardous waste in this trash can!”, and people would straight up ignore it. Things got so bad that we had to stop offering a trash can in our part of the shop.
A lot of people would also just repeat the same statements, day after day, week after week. For example, we have iPads that contain maintenance manuals. We have to update those manuals every week, on the same day. Without fail, the same people always forget which day Update Day is, and have to ask.
The worst ones happen when people come to turn in their gear before end of shift. Most people are fine, but every toolbox has to be thoroughly inspected before being scanned back in. Often, somebody misplaced a tool, left garbage in the box somewhere, or there’s some other undocumented discrepancy.
Most people are cool about it, and willing to make things right. But, some people act like you’ve purposely screwed them over, or react with total apathy and disrespect. I don’t make the rules, man, I’m just trying to do my job.
I don’t make the rules, man, I’m just trying to do my job.
I feel this so much.
deleted by creator
“I’m trying to identify a source of truth”
It’s supposed to be a good practice … in theory. In practice nobody knows what exists and who’s in charge of what and there’s exceptions and exceptions to exceptions.
Speaking for software engineering perspective. I see in other comment you’re doing process engineering, I assume the term is used in a similar way
Wait, do you work at my company?
I think that’s better than one department (with the clout to do so) going “this is going to be our source of truth” while completely unprepared for what it means.
They literally spent over a year in talks with the whole rest of the damn company about what that would mean and what level of responsibility that would entail, delayed the go live multiple months multiple times… and they still can’t do fucking basic data validation.
Leading and trailing spaces. Names randomly in all caps.
Oh, there’s a shit ton built off the requirement that this field is one of these options? Surprise, we silently added another option without telling anyone, after we agreed in planning that option was invalid. Not our fault, your fault for building shit based off the idea this was a source of truth and we actually took requirements seriously.
Why is everyone coming to us to correct this data? Why can’t you just correct it downstream like you used to? What do you mean we were warned? I wasn’t paying attention during that meeting that you held specifically to warn me about this in advance because I was too busy ignoring all the other warnings people were telling me!
What do you mean that the thing you warned us would be consistently be delayed until next day because of how our source of truth works can’t be done on demand on the same day? Huh, we signed off on it being okay, along with every other relevant department?
As someone who had to work on syncing multiple databases of customer and order data this was actually very important for me to know. Turned out that it could vary on a field by field basis and could also depend on the type of customer and where they came from.
To sync up our new and shiny SAP CRM with several Access databases and our customer-facing software I ended up writing a script that would collect all data field by field with varying hierarchies and writing it back out to everything. Worked surprisingly well.
Is Access still in use?
Access will probably be the last thing to die before the heat death of the universe.
Even after things inappropriately hosted in Excel? Lol
Oh, yeah, forgot that.
I’m certain the access database living in a broom closet that someone setup 20 years ago is still going strong at my last job. It was also fed by mainframe dumps, I’m super glad I never had to go anywhere near the thing personally, different department and it was explicit that they owned it.
What’s your job?
Process Manager
I googled “identify a source of truth” and was treated to a plethora of buzzwordy tweets and articles worthy of Deepak Chopra.
I’m so sorry.
Let’s put a pin in it, and we can circle back when we have more bandwidth. Hopefully it’s not too heavy a lift.
I used to work with enterprise customers at a SaaS company, and still have a lot of anger in how corporate types use this fluffy language. I think my “favorite” example of this jargon is “Please Advise.”, which basically just means “What the fuck?!”
Hopefully it’s not too heavy a lift.
Well, that’s a new one (assuming it’s not referring to a physical object) to me
First we gotta TOUCH BASE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8HnJHiu9d8
(warning: RCR, audio probably NSFW)
Oh Ffs kill me I hate this nonsense.
When someone doesn’t understand a process and asks “can’t you just do XYZ?” Usually management. “Just” is actually a 2 week project and tons of hours and trouble shooting
I’m currently in a software development project which was handed over to a different department with little software development expertise, and fucking hell, I hear this so often.
Can’t you just run the tests against against a database like normal? Why do you need to automate the setup of this database? (I do not know what “normal” means, they did not elaborate.)
Can’t you just switch over all the code to go directly against the database rather than also supporting in-memory.
And then five minutes later: Can’t you just hook up the database connection where we need it and use in-memory for the rest?Like, I’m trying to appreciate the critical questions, because hey, maybe there is something I’m missing. But always this “just”, and them being dissatisfied when you tell them it doesn’t make sense or would be more work, that’s what kills me.
Developer I used to work with had a policy where if anyone said “just do something”, they were now the sole person responsible for implementing it.
“Just redo the front end in react”. “Cool. Thanks for volunteering”
Can’t you automate around this edge case that we told you during planning could never happen due to controls on our end?
That’s easier for us than sticking to our word.
What do you mean that it was a key requirement of your design, like you told us in advance?
Job: car detailer
Customer has left their animal in the car at some point, and it is completely trashed
The animal? Or the car?
I was going to ask too. Also, is the car trashed because the animal had been left there at some point, or is the car trashed and the animal is still in it?
The animal has been left there at some point, and the car is trashed
Yes
“It must be the network”
– Webdev who doesn’t even understand DNS
“its probably the front end node”
- Sysadmin who doesn’t get React
The duality of Man
“I come to work to get stuff done!”
Yes mate, but you’re not getting paid enough to hurt yourself cutting corners.
I hear this all the fucking time from people who want to rush ahead and show off how productive they can be for a boss who has no idea they exist. Drives me mad.
Job: Cook
Person: Manager
“No one wants to work anymore”
No one ever wanted to work motherfucker. That’s why we’re fucking paid to be here. If you weren’t paying us we wouldn’t fucking be here. But you pay us the bare fucking minimum and expect us to work like we’re paid immense luxury wages.
Take a sandy brick and insert it as a suppository.
I kinda want to work. (Developer) Or, at least, if I wasn’t working for money, I would be developing stuff in my free time for myself or something.
I feel there’s some dots and squiggles missing from that title.
“Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later” —> code that is hackish and will never be replaced.
“We need you to do this one time because of someBullshit” —> congratulations, your team had to do this thing outside of your specialty, even though there exists a team dedicated to it, and now we’re just going to make you do it over and over again (despite, again, a whole team dedicated to that existing).
Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later
I’m always blown away whenever someone says that they like some language or framework because it’s “great for prototyping.”
Like, what magical fairyland software company do you work at where your prototypes are not immediately put into production as soon as they kind of start to work?
You should tell them this is not 'Nam. There are rules.
These are older lessons and I’m generally pretty effective at pushing back on those now. I’m not a manager, though, so I can be overruled.
In Australia, if it scans higher than the price on the shelf, it is free.
Maybe that’s the policy at some stores, but according to the ACCC, it has to be sold at the cheaper price, or not sold at all.
Correct. However, Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, and some IGA stores are signatories to the voluntary code of practice for computerised checkout systems in supermarkets.
Generally, this means that if an item is scanned at the checkout at a higher price than it says on the shelf or as advertised, a customer is entitled to receive the first item free and all multiples of the same item at the lower price.
So not all stores, but generally speaking it’s a thing. I’ve seen it in action with a cocky teenager demand his coke free, and got it.
Huh. That actually sounds familiar now that you write it out in full. I guess we’re both right.
As a software dev.
Client: we need feature by end of quarter.
Me: cool, what do you expect it to do, do you have any requirements?
Client: …I haven’t gotten a requirements doc for a feature in 15 years.
I’d settle for a paragraph of description.
But guys, if we use agile then we don’t need requirements! We just make something and then the customers tell us if we are on the right track, we just get to iTeRaTe
