I'll get that changed just for you.

[Trixie]

So we're 1/4 way through the holiday season, more or less and I've already noticed something. Customers think we have way more power than we do. I mean sure we all get the random customer telling us "we" need to change "that". But just today I had two people tell me that I need to tell "them" they need to fix "that". At least one of those things I'm pretty sure it was something the customer was doing when making Christmas cards. The other one was about something that we don't carry anymore.

Yesterday my coworker was on the phone with a customer who was having trouble with the photo website (not our department, get help from them) and the woman wanted to talk to the person who wrote the program to fix her problem. Say what now??

I would think by now that people would understand how corporations work. The people you see have no power at all. Nor do we care. I mean I can try to help you as best I can but all I can do is change the price of something. I can't make something magically appear to fulfill all your hopes and dreams. Believe me, if I could I'd be the first person I'd help.

[Food Lady]

You should ask her what color the sky is in her world.

[Mental_Mouse]

Yesterday my coworker was on the phone with a customer who was having trouble with the photo website (not our department, get help from them) and the woman wanted to talk to the person who wrote the program to fix her problem. Say what now??

Well, back in the early years of the PC revolution, you often could do that!

Device manufacturers commonly did their software in-house ("Hey Fred, someone wants to know if they can put their own background on the main menu"). And many software companies had no problem letting customers talk directly to the programmers (often to the ire of the programmers).

[gerund]

When I was writing programs in the '90s my job was to talk to the customers, design the program, run it past the end users and managers, write the program, test it, install it on their computers, train the end users how to use the program, fix any bugs the users reported to me, train the manual writer how to use the finished program, proof read the manual, fix more bugs if the end users or managers told me about them and maintain our source code store with the latest code.

I answered to the end users, managers, and my manager in the company I worked for. Sometimes I did system administration for our company or for the customers company.

The end users could talk to me any time I was there. (and frequently did at 8 or 9 PM some nights)

Of course we all worked for a very large company in a remote location. I was a contractor paid by the hour to do whatever the company wanted me to do. I was very happy doing that, as the money was good, the conditions were excellent and the time off made me very happy.

[Trixie]

Believe me, if I could pass some of these people over to someone else I would! I mean sure we all get the stray person who thinks we can change the world but it just seems that this year there's been more than normal.

Just counting down until the holidays are over.

[earl colby pottinger]

Some people are never happy

In the 1980's and early 1990's I worked in computer store as the repair tech, but sometimes as the programmer for a customer who needed extra work. We also sold programs that were sometimes written by a single individual.

However, people would still complain.

1) Complaint was simple, the program did exactly what they told the salesman and even later the programmer that the program did EXACTLY what they describe, suddenly after using the program they want the features to operate differently. Or they wanted extra features they never mentioned before. We got burnt only the first time with this, every time after we made is clear the contract was the contract and extra changes costs money.

2) Complaint was wrong, we wrote a program for their business and then the program showed that the business was not operating the way they thought it was. That was not our fault, if you don't understand your business you go bankrupt as is what happened.

3) Complaint the programmer is too young, sorry just because you are a 40-60 years old businessman does not mean the programmer who wrote the program you use has to be so old. I thought one of our customers was going to have a heart attack after he found out the program used all over his company was written by a child so young he could not legally drive the sports car he bought.

4) Complaint we will not break the law. I wrote a program to handle the accounts for a property management company. All rights to the program were sold to said people. Clue another P.M. company wanting the same type of program but tried to demand we just copy the other program and sell it to them cheap. They did not like the idea that they would have to pay for their own development. While in the long run they paid for a new program, the previous program had all sort of optimizations which were paid for in time I spent on the first program. The new version went a lot faster in development but because they did not pay for the extra time to optimize to their hardware the program was about three time slower than the first one I wrote.

[earl colby pottinger]

Pills

You should ask her what color the sky is in her world.

And don't forget to ask how many pills she has to take to turn back to blue.

[dalesys]

And don't forget to ask how many pills she has to take to turn back to blue.

"Nice paisley horsie!"

[Trixie]

I think one day that I may just slip and say "You're living in the land of unicorns and rainbows." I could try it with someone on the phone because even coworkers don't know it's me when they call.

If I do it, I'll let you know how it goes...probably along with job recommendations.