Be forewarned, this is nothing new or special. It's a typical management WTF, and it happens a thousand times a day. I did not cite any sources for that statistic, I'm just talking about my own company. If I include your company, it may increase this number.
I was tasked to write some software, as managers tend to do to programmers from time to time. I sent out periodic demo versions of the tool for the manager to play with, sending only the executable each time as all functionality was contained within it, accessing only native Windows APIs.
Or so I thought.
At this one government location, they've apparently disabled comdlg32.ocx on their Windows XP machines, which renders my software useless. Below is the following email exchange between my manager and I:
Manager: "We're getting an error message about comdlg32.ocx being missing. I don't have admin rights on this computer, is that what it's saying?"
Me: "No. I always assumed the file would be there since it's supposedly part of the default Windows installation. We have two options:
Option A - I'll make an installation package and include the file you need. You find out how to get someone to install software to your computer. Or...
Option B - I'll recreate that interface myself in about three hours"
Manager: "How long will option A take?"
Me: "Well, it will take me about 60 seconds. The bulk of the work is on you to find out how to get someone to install it, and being on a government site means it could take weeks."
Manager: "OK we'll go with option A"
I groaned at this point, knowing he'd have a nifty little setup.exe that was completely useless to him as he did not have privileges to install it. Just another case where management hears "3 hours" vs "1 minute", and of course the shorter time makes more sense.
The WTFs with this guy continue daily. He told me that there's an error on one screen where he can't edit the fields. It took me awhile to get him to admit that the background color of the fields was gray. This means the fields are currently read-only, as seen in basically every application created in the last couple decades. I asked if he saw an "Edit" button at the bottom of the window. Yes? Well click that.
I told him this was how the software would work when I sent him the demo version, and I asked if he wanted to remove the read-only functionality. He said no, he liked it this way. And if I had this conversation with him only once, that would be bad enough. Nope...three times now, about three different forms. I call it form consistency, making them all look and act similarly.
Maybe I'm taking crazy pills.