Unfiltered Story #145994

Customer: We’ve got a problem, our delivery bags are not being marked as “delivered” any more and we’re getting an error message.

Me: By any chance have you recently updated [our prescription tracking software]?

Customer: Yes we have, just the other day.

Me: We fixed a bug recently where one porter could collect a bag and then a different porter could scan that they’d delivered it. Obviously that doesn’t make any sense so the latest version now forces the same porter to scan both jobs. Can you check whether different porters tried to collect and deliver the same bag?

Customer: Yes, they have. Why can’t two different people deliver the bag? You could in the last version. We’ve always just scanned the “collected” barcode randomly as it saves time.

Me: *grimace* Well that was actually a bug in the previous version which is now fixed. If you think about it you collect a bag because you are about to go and deliver it, that way if a bag goes missing during delivery you know who has it because they collected it. If somebody just scans “collected” and then hands the bag to somebody else you no longer have an audit trail for that bag.

Customer: But you did in the previous version? Even when deliveries went missing, we could check on the system who collected the bag. Can you add an audit trail to this new version?

Me: …the problem isn’t with the system, the problem is with your procedures. If one person scans that they have collected the bag, then they hand the bag to another porter with no instruction to the system, and then that second porter loses the bag, you won’t have a full audit trail of what happened to that bag. Sorry did you say you scan barcodes at random?

Customer: Yes and it was never a problem in the previous version. If something went missing we could still see who collected it.

Me: Well actually no, you would just see the name of the person who randomly scanned collected that time. From the sound of it you’ve never had a valid audit trail…

Customer: Now listen to me. This worked before the upgrade, and now you guys have come here and broken it. I want you to make this work like the last version that had a valid audit trail.

Me: So basically you want the system to correctly record who collected the bag, in spite of you KNOWINGLY scanning the wrong barcode?

Customer: Listen to me you stupid f*cking idiot. You clearly don’t understand what I’m saying. THIS WORKED IN THE PREVIOUS VERSION. I want to speak to your supervisor NOW!

(We literally dealt with this guy for an entire day and he simply could not grasp the problem. In the end we just reverted his software to the buggy version. The kicker was he complained about me for being stupid!)