Last week I put in a requisition at work using our online ordering system for five items; two off of each.
I received four items; three had two items and one had four items.
Looking at my requisition I had defiantly ordered the correct items but checking the order which is raised by the administrator I see there were only four items on it.
So I start chasing back and have to talk to three people and I find that: If the part description is the same the parts will be combined; EVEN if the part numbers are different. I am also told it has been like this for years and the programmers will not change it!
Also the requisition is not updated to show the change.
Programmers are from Mars and Designers are from Venus… I thought that everybody knew that
Now, seriously, sometimes is really hard to understand why someone was done in a particular way… I’m sure there’s some logic behind but I don’t think I will ever understand it
You see… engineers think differently. I recently read this and it’s very true.
Wife told husband (software engineer) “Please get a milk on the way home. If they have eggs, get six.” The husband came home with 6 milk and 0 eggs. Wife asks “Why did you buy 6 milk?”. The Engineer replied, “they had eggs”
To be fair that doesn’t sound like something that the engineers are responsible for. Sounds like one of those dumb request from a client or project manager. Customers always want to make things more complex and convoluted than they need to be. Some battles are worth fighting others are not.
Slightly OT, but good if you’ve not come across it before.
A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted,
“Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The woman below replied,
“You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”
I am not sure if other people are using but it has been a nightmare from day one.
We often get warnings not to update JavaScript and for a long time it would not run on Firefox.
When we first had it we were asked for comments and I got together with other users and we put together an A4 sheet of problems - none were ever changed and nobody even got back to me to comment.
The people maintaining it told us that on the last update we would not see anything different but there are. In fact some things have gone back to the version previous to the last update!
It also took them two weeks to install the last update.
