I read an article about a year ago in a management magazine (I was bored in a Dr's office) about how difficult it was to get decent help in the world of fast food and other basic retail counter work. The general hassles the management had to deal with when it came to people not showing up for work, or being idiotic were painful to read about - but their excuse was simple - they were usually at the point of hiring ANY warm body because they didn't have the luxury of being choosy with applicants. Of course, ya have to think about the kind of people who would consider fast food as a great career choice - while many of us used it on the way to better things, there are more in that boat because its all they can do...and that they can't do it well is really sad.

 Another experience I had the other day at a fast food restaurant - I had GREAT service from a guy who was wonderfully friendly and who even ended up bringing the meal to our table when things were a bit slow. I thought - wow...that was unusual and very pleasant...then realized that this guy was made for working a fast-food cashier station, and probably nothing else. As a manager - what the heck do you do with that knowledge - that moving this guy up would not be a benefit to your organization because he is great at what he is currently doing.

I'm so happy to not be in management.
 

When this happened, I actually said, "WTF." I immediately zipped over here to file a report! 

So I had the new application that I was supposed to test. The owners of the app zipped me my user name and password and I attempted to log in. No joy. Now, I've been around the block before when it comes to logging into new apps, and my user name is based on my actual name that has some WTF spelling involved, so I went through all the possible permutations they might have accidentally typed for my user name.

Still no joy.

Of course, I tried every option I could think of regarding their password by changing the case of different parts of it. Nothing. 

One thing I hate is having to talk to some help-desky person about logging into an app since they automatically assume you're an idiot - I mean, how hard is it to log in anyway? Geez!

But I call the folks and patiently jump through all the hoops they offer (i.e. Is caps lock off, type it slowly, etc.). We determine that yes, I am definitely not able to log in.

Eventually, the folks figure out what happened. When the user enters their user name, the form automatically forces the text to upper case. However, on the admin console when creating the user name, the form allows lower-case data entry - yes, they entered my user name in lower case. And as an extra WTF, for some reason, this app cared about case in a user name. Mind you, this functionality is out of the box behavior for a gigantic enterprise system known the world-over for its HR functions.