Don't mess with UI or workflow...


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    ...because users are lemmings.

    Yesterday, I was on-site at a client location. Very frequently, people completely forget that I am there. Myself and my employees and contractors are frequently just faceless nerd drones that people ignore, so we get to hear juicy little tidbits of information.

    Yesterday, an accountant entered an ACH payment for about ~$2,000. Let's call it $1,997.23. The problem was, their ACH website took out the automatic decimal point that had been placed there before. Instead of an ACH for $1,997.23, they paid $199,723.

    It is absolutely the accountants fault. But it just shows how users are lemmings. If you change subtle parts of the UI or workflow, it can lead to major errors like this because people do not pay attention.





  • Eek.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    A simple confirmation dialog would be in order, "You are about to crash the stock market. Are you sure? Y/N"



  • Why is businessinsider whitelisted.



  • This reminds me of another WTF from the mortgage monster but that was a series of compounded and insane WTFs that were I to explain it, you'd probably be horrified (but not surprised) by it, assuming you read it in full since it needs the full thing to understand why it's such a WTF.


  • BINNED

    @Intercourse said:

    ...because users are lemmings.

    Wellll... Yes and No...

    @Intercourse said:

    website took out the automatic decimal point that had been placed there before.

    I get to work ~ 0600, by the time others roll in at 0830-0900, I've:

    • Pulled CC batch receipts for ~ 20 CC terminals, ~10 GC terminals and ~10 WFFINA & GECAF terminals. All via websites.
    • Initiated 3-6 ACH transfers via websites.
    • Entered the transactions and verified the totals for the WFFINA & GECAF batches, and verified the CC and GC sales journal postings.
    • Entered 5-10 journal entries for various transactions including the ACH ones.
    • Dove into the DB 3-10 times to fix shit caused by our ERMS's Oracle Forms front end not being able to keep up with the average salesperson's typing speed — how hard is that? ( and also ones caused by "normal forms? what are those?")
    • Walked around the block/warehouse/HQ and had a smoke and primal scream session.

    I don't have time for having the rug pulled out from under my routine. It's all dominoes man! All The Way Down!

    "Functionality has changed, see changelog" type notices keep that from happening, allowing me to adjust my workflow. However what usually happens is, one morning, shit just stops working the way it did yesterday, no warning. And now you've borked my entire day, especially if it's subtle.


  • BINNED

    @M_Adams said:

    And now you've borked my entire day, especially if it's subtle.

    And then coworkers wonder why I get a bit "bitchy" .


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