I live in a tower block. It's not an especially big tower block, only 12 stories. There are two lifts servicing it. The main one is a large lift that can be used for moving furniture, and it stops on every floor. The other lift is small, 5 people maximum and squashed in at that, and it only stops on even numbered floors. The tower block was built back in the 60s and the lifts have never been replaced.

Back in August 2016 the housing association informed us of a plan to replace the lifts in all the tower blocks they own. There are 6, and we were last on the list, meaning that our lifts were due to be replaced starting in March 2020. Part of the replacement plan is to knock through the shaft, and make it so that the second lift will stop on every floor.

Back at the end of last summer we had an exceptional amount of rain in a short space of time, and the whole area was flooded out. Not us though. Despite being close to the river we are on top of a hill, so it didn't flood around here. It did however fill up the bottom of the lift shaft with water. This managed to get into the electronics of the smaller lift, and it's not been the same since. They fix it maybe 5 times a week, and it stays fixed for an average of 5 hours before breaking down again. The only proper fix would be to replace all the electronics, which clearly isn't worth it if the lift is getting replaced soon anyway. This didn't overly bother me. I live on an odd numbered floor so never used that lift. At worst, it caused slightly longer wait times for the other lift. It did however cost the housing association a fortune fixing it nearly every day, so they brought forward our lift replacement to this March.

I think a lot of you will have spotted the WTF by now. Given all the information I've provided above, which lift do you think they decided to replace first? Yes, that's correct. They are replacing the main lift, which has only broken down a couple of times in the ten years I've lived here, leaving us to rely on the other lift. The one that doesn't stop on odd-numbered floors, so that half the building has to go up or down a flight of stairs to access a lift for three months, including several people who can't walk. And that's on the rare (increasingly so by the day) occasions that the other lift isn't broken.

Even the engineers replacing the lift know this is stupid, and they are as annoyed as us. Ever tried carrying a lift mechanism up 12 flights of stairs because there's no lift?

@Jaloopa said in WTF Bites:

Universal law of nature: all utility companies will find a way to fuck up every part of anything they do. The simpler it is, the more ridiculous the fuck up will be

Not universally true. My energy supplier is owned by Nottingham Council, over here in the UK. I've been with them several years now. There have been 2 fuck-ups involving them, neither of which were their fault. Both of those fuck-ups were linked, and constitute a minor WTF so I'll go ahead and describe it here.

When I first moved into this flat 10 years ago gas and electricity was supplied through pre-payment meters. This was provided by Scottish Power at the time. Anyone who has come into contact with them will be aware of their propensity for fucking things up. When I first got the power switched on, they had left a £270 debt from the previous occupant on the meter. This meant that £6.50 of every £10 I topped up with went toward that debt instead of my account. I argued with them for several weeks over this and they flat out denied that any such thing was going on. After arguing for a few weeks, I just switched supplier.

I informed my new supplier (nPower) of what was occurring, and they arranged for an engineer to come out and reset the meter. This was not before a further £20 or so had gone toward this fictitious debt rather than my gas supply and the first bill they sent me reflected this, showing a £23 discrepancy between my payments and the amount of gas used. I was £23 in credit on this account. I requested that this be given to me as a refund, as there is no other way to recover it on a pre-payment account. nPower suddenly mysteriously lost all records of the problems with my meter, and refused to give a refund. Cue changing supplier again, but not before writing to the CEO of nPower directly and rasing my complaint. This lead to me getting the £23 refunded, and £15 extra as an apology. I still changed supplier again.

Third time lucky. I changed to RobinHood Energy. Not only were they significantly cheaper than other options (state owned and not for profit, so less overheads) they show competence as well. The new gas and electric cards arrived 3 days before the switch was due with instructions on how to set activate them for the new supplier. The switch went fine, and a couple years passed without incident. I check now and then if they are still the cheapest, and they still are by a considerable margin.

So, toward the beginning of last summer I decided that it was time to change away from pre-payment meters. Using these cost me just under £1 per week in higher standing charges so switching made sense. The only reason I hadn't done it earlier was because I expected to have to pay for the new meter, or at least it's installation. So I contacted RobinHood and asked if they would make this change, and if so how much it would cost me. Turns out they would make the switch and it wouldn't cost me a penny. Great. Lets get this done then.

A couple weeks later the day arrives for the meters to be swapped over. I work mid-afternoon to evening so a morning appointment was arranged. Engineer turns up at 9am. So far so good. Engineer removes the old electric meter and starts to install the new smart meter.

First problem arises. The electric meter is contained in a small metal cupboard, just large enough to fix the meter. The new smart meter is bigger and is not going to fit in this cupboard. Engineer replaces the original meter and says I need to discuss it with my supplier and rearrange the appointment. I discuss it with RobinHood, and we establish that the actual meter belongs to the electric grid people, who are the actual people who sent out the engineer to replace it (paid by RobinHood), while the cupboard it sits in belongs to my landlord, a large housing association.

So I contact my landlord, inform them of the problem, and ask for a discussion on how to resolve this problem. They initially don't want to now. Not their problem. I then suggest that I just rip out the cupboard while there's no meter in it, then the smart meter can just be connected to the wall. Nope, they won't allow this but they also won't get involved in removing or replacing the cupboard. After trying to argue reasonably for a while, I give up and take the nuclear option.

I inform them that their intransigence is costing me money (the just under £1 per week mentioned earlier) and that I will be deducting it from my rent payments until this problem is resolved. I also point out that there is a UK law requiring all landlords to provide smart meters by 2020, so they are going to have to deal with this problem sooner or later anyway. Why not now? It took several weeks, but they finally agreed that it was their responsibility to fix this. Great. I then suggest that they liaise with my energy supplier, because their maintenance guy has to be on site at the same time as the meter engineer. Process is: turn off power. Remove current Electricity meter from cupboard. Remove and replace the offending cupboard with one that will fit a smart meter. Then, fit new smart meter into the new cupboard and switch the power back on.

They flat out refuse to deal with the energy supplier, citing data protection legislation. No amount of pointing out that I will provide them with all necessary information will change their minds. I have to arrange the appointment then inform them of it's time so they can attend. They also demand an exact time, not the 4 hour slots the Grid people provide. I point out to them that their scheduled repairs are in 10 hour slots not exact times, so complaining about a 4 hour slot is rather hypocritical. They object to their maintenance guy having to wait around. I object to the times I've had to wait around for their maintenance guy. I remind them that I'm deducting £1 per week from the rent until this is resolved.

Finally they come up with a 'solution'. It's one hell of an unnecessary bodge, designed to work around problems entirely caused by themselves, but it is what it is. Basically, I'm supposed to wait until the meter engineer turns up, then immediately phone them and they will send the maintenance guy out within 15 minutes. (Yeah. I didn't think this would work either).

So, rearranged appointment. Morning again because of my schedule. I'm waiting around from 8am until 12pm. No engineer. Brilliant. All that strife and hassle completely wasted. So I contact the energy company and my landlord to inform them of the new problem. Turns out the engineer was stuck on another, unexpectedly tricky, job and so I got missed out. Energy supplier, even though it wasn't their fault, gave me £25 credit as an apology and another appointment is arranged.

The day before this new appointment I make doubly sure everything is organised. The housing trust know there's an appointment the next day and their repair team will be waiting for my call. I make a point of telling them that, since the last appointment was missed I will probably be first on the list this time so they need to be ready for the call at 8am. I'm assured this isn't a problem.

Next day arrives. 8am (8:02am to be precise) the meter engineer rings my doorbell. I let him in, and while he's on his way up in the lift I phone the number the housing association gave me. I get an answerphone with a message telling me they don't open until 9am and I should phone back later. How wonderfully fucking useful. When the engineer arrives I explain what's happening. He has a look at the cupboard and establishes that the smart meter is definitely not going to fit. Meanwhile I'm frantically trying to get in tough with the housing association. I manage to get through to their head office, which is open at that time, but they have no idea what I'm talking about, there's nothing on my account details about it, and until the local office wakes up at 9am there is nothing they can (or will) do about it.

I'm having a chat with the engineer at this point, the two of us agreeing that these people are fucking useless. Then he has a brain wave. He actually has a set of non-smart meters in his van that may fit and may do the job, as long as I'm not bothered by the lack of smart capability. I'm not, as all I care about is the lower standing charge for the supply. Switching from pre-payment to credit fixes that, the smart meter bit was irrelevant. So the job gets done, I get my new credit meters saving me £1 a week and most everybody is happy. The housing trust eventually paid me £25 as an apology for messing me around.

The power supplier wasn't entirely happy, they wanted the smart-meter bits, but they are happy as long as they still get paid for the energy I use. Once a month they send me an email reminding me to send them meter readings and I do so. They produce a bill based on those readings and I pay it. All good. Today is actually the first time I forgot to send them a reading. It was due yesterday but I forgot to do it. I was going to do it first thing today, but when I turned on my computer the bill had already been made based on an estimation. This estimation sets it at £2 cheaper than last month, because it's getting into summer so my gas usage is decreasing. The estimated values they've used is almost precisely the actual readings, taken by me right after I saw the bill.

I guess the real WTF here is an energy supplier who are competent, reasonable and helpful, and don't try to gouge their customers.

@Bulb In my first software development job, back in 1996, we didn't have any of this high-tech source control. The company did actually care about it, just didn't have any technical solution. The code was written in COBOL, and was over 20 years old at that point (25 years IIRC). Instead, we were required to print out a diff for every change we made and a date-stamp written in the comments. These print-outs were kept in a stack in our development office (only 2 developers, so not as bad as it sounds). Once a year, this stack was 'archived' into a long-term storage cupboard, along with a full copy of the current source code on removable media.

This caused an amusing afternoon at one time. The boss considered it important to discover precisely when a bug was introduced. I was working on a ticket one afternoon, and when I tracked down the bug the code in question had no time-stamp on the comments. I went back through the records for 20 years, the offending code was still there. We actually had to dig out an ancient 8-inch floppy and get the hardware guys to build us a machine out of ancient parts that could actually read the damned thing. Ultimate conclusion was that the bug had existed right from the start, it just took such an unusual set of circumstances to invoke it that nobody had reported it in 25 years.

@Gąska It was a good place to work right up until the founder and CEO decided to retire. Our first intimation of this was when he brought in a 'business analyst' to analyse our working practices. As this guy knew absolutely nothing about IT the whole process was a complete wast of time. Then, 6 months later, the founder retired and this 'business analyst' became the new CEO. Things went rapidly downhill from there, and I quit within 6 months. It was getting impossible to actually do my job with all the crap this guy was introducing. The last straw was when I was stuck with a really complicated bit of code. As per my usual practice, I stood up from my desk and paced a little. I'd have gone for a cigarette while I thought, but I'd done that 10 minutes earlier so I just paced a small area around my desk while I thought. The new CEO came into the office, saw this, and dragged me into his office for a 'bollocking'. He completely refused to contemplate the idea that my actions were designed to improve my work rate, instead insisting that I sit at my desk at all times except for officially designated break periods. The next morning I reported him to the H&S authorities (this requirement was against H&S rules at the time) and handed in my notice. The CEO tried to get me to work out my notice, rather than using my owed holiday period. I flat out refused, informed him that I had already reported him to the H&S authorities, and told him straight out that if he forced me to work my month's notice I would make life impossible for him by reporting every single breach of regulations (making me stay at my desk was the least of it). He backed down very quickly.

Was once a brilliant place to work. I don't think it even exists any more.

@Tsaukpaetra A friend of mine works for an architects office, turning architectural drawings into 3-D CAD images. They have an IT guy like this guy. Completely clueless but thinks he isn't. A couple years ago, all the CAD staff there had been complaining for a while that their machines were way too slow for their jobs, so he was tasked with updating them all. Now, seeing as the computers are used almost entirely for 3-D rendering, the obvious solution for anybody with an ounce of knowledge would be to buy half-way decent GFX cards to replace the built-in graphics they were currently using. Yes, an office where almost the whole work is complicated 3-D rendering is using on-board graphics chips. This clueless idiot went and sourced a whole load of brand-new computers with quad-core, state of the art CPUs and replaced all the machines in the office. Only he still relied on the on-board GFX which meant that the improvement in actual performance for their purposes was undetectable.

@Tsaukpaetra They should swap with these guys, sounds like they each have the computers the other needs.

@PJH It's actually difficult to tell what floor it's stopped at, the electronics are so fucked up. At it's best it thinks the ground floor is the 8th, the 2nd floor is the zeroth, and the 10th floor is the 6th, and announces as such when it either stops at or passes them. When it breaks down what usually happens is it stops at some random (though obviously even numbered) floor instead of the one you're stood on. It also every now and then stops at an odd numbered floor and refuses to move again. This is usually with someone in it at the time.

@loopback0 said in Lift Replacepent WTF:

@Seppen said in Lift Replacepent WTF:

Even the engineers replacing the lift know this is stupid, and they are as annoyed as us. Ever tried carrying a lift mechanism up 12 flights of stairs because there's no lift?

They should call for a lift engin... oh.

That's a bit of a WTF in itself. Until 2 or 3 years ago the lifts were maintained by the company that made them, but to save money the Housing Association signed up with a third party to maintain the lifts. Coincidentally, that's about when the broken lift started breaking more often. Because of this, the engineers installing the lifts can't fix the other one. They are from the company that made it, but they aren't from the company with the contract to maintain it. So if it breaks down when they need it they have to call the maintenance company to come out and fix it. If they did it themselves they might even be able to fix it properly rather than having it break down again a few hours later.

@Gurth Anybody who relies on 'common language sense' with respect to the English language is a fool. It's a hybrid of so many other languages that there is no common language rules. There are general cases, but they are all filled with so many caveats that relying on them is stupid.

@Cursorkeys That is indeed the main reason. He often gets called 'Jeremy Rhyming Slang'

@CodeJunkie said in Apple stand:

Graphics artists use Macs because other graphics artists use Macs. Same for audio recording.

This isn't much different to why offices used Windows. Other offices used Windows, and MS Office, so to transfer files easily between them they all used Windows and Office.

@Tsaukpaetra They should swap with these guys, sounds like they each have the computers the other needs.

@mott555 I was deliberately putting it mildly. This is one of those English sense of humour things. We deliberately understate something, and leave the observer or reader to fill in the blanks. Done well it can be very funny, but non-English people often don't even notice it.

@Polygeekery They don't use AutoCAD, they use more specialized architectural software. Can't remember what it's called off the top of my head.

@jinpa Boeing, if I'm not mistaken, are currently in the dog house a bit for not properly testing their shit. You'd think they would be increasing the level of testing, if only to allay recent fears, rather than pulling a stunt like this. Regardless of whether it's better or worse in actual terms, it certainly doesn't give the right impression.

@Tsaukpaetra A friend of mine works for an architects office, turning architectural drawings into 3-D CAD images. They have an IT guy like this guy. Completely clueless but thinks he isn't. A couple years ago, all the CAD staff there had been complaining for a while that their machines were way too slow for their jobs, so he was tasked with updating them all. Now, seeing as the computers are used almost entirely for 3-D rendering, the obvious solution for anybody with an ounce of knowledge would be to buy half-way decent GFX cards to replace the built-in graphics they were currently using. Yes, an office where almost the whole work is complicated 3-D rendering is using on-board graphics chips. This clueless idiot went and sourced a whole load of brand-new computers with quad-core, state of the art CPUs and replaced all the machines in the office. Only he still relied on the on-board GFX which meant that the improvement in actual performance for their purposes was undetectable.