Most ridiculous client request
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Every time you try a quick story on here someone demands a back story. I work for a company. We write some software for a number of companies that are owned by the same company as own us. We also provide all other IT functions. One of the companies has bought a large 'off the shelf' package. One written and sold by IBM. They have engaged another company to configure, customise, and install it. A number of other systems, some written by us, some by other companies, raise Work Orders in this system. There are standard interfaces into it. The project is years behind schedule and hundreds of thousands above budget. All through no fault of ours. The interfaces into and out of this bought system all depend on a queue on a cron. There is a time lag each way of up to a minute. There is also no guaranteed connectivity between any of the systems at any given time. They all work independently of each other, for a time at least. When the 'bug' of the WO Number not being available came in from a user in UAT I gave a detailed explanation as to why. Because of the problems in the relationship between our customer and the other provider they have decided no more work will be requested of them other than getting the damn thing in and live. The call was closed on the strength of my explanation by the project manager adding a comment that the issue was not one that would be addressed. It was then reopened and put back to me by the user with the unacceptable comment. But you're probably right, I was out of order and I'll start to work out how to fix the problem now.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
Oh, that makes it easy. You just change the assignment to the project manager. It's a management problem at that point, not a development one.
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
In a login box we'd made for system X, the client complained that the password label didn't start with an uppercased P. My bosses snapped! haha.. oh the memories ;) There were of course much more important tasks to be concerned of :D
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I have a subset of clients who don't seem to be happy unless there is something to complain about. In one case, out of hundreds of screens, one had a single word typo. You would have thought the world was going to end. I recall it was a finger fumble of "too" instead of "to".
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
BrainiacV wrote:
I have a subset of clients who don't seem to be happy unless there is something to complain about.
Agreed. It's like they do it just to show they are in charge.
BrainiacV wrote:
In one case, out of hundreds of screens, one had a single word typo.
You would have thought the world was going to end.
I recall it was a finger fumble of "too" instead of "to".And that one type-o probably kept them from seing the rest of the product.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
Early in my career, I did an Emergency Medical System Mobile Intensive Care Unit Database Management System (EMS MICU DBMS). It automated the reporting of ambulance runs. Turned a month long (manual) project into 6 hours. But that was not fast enough for them. The reason was that if the operator flubbed an operation (this was the days of floppy disks for data handling), they did not have time to re-run it again that day and would have to wait until the next day to retry. (I had trouble seeing the problem, it was still taking less than a month.) OK, fine, I had them buy a 128K RAM card for the Apple II it was based on and then loaded the data from the floppies into the RAM card and got the execution down to 3 hours. (Now they could screw up twice a day) But the request for the reporting statistics was when it fell off the rails. There would be multiple ambulance companies, with multiple ambulances per company, and multiple emergencies (heart attack, fire, accident, etc). Per ambulance company, they wanted down one side of the sheet, the percentage of runs each ambulance made. Down another side of the page they wanted the percentages of the types of the emergencies the company had dealt with as a whole. So going down one side gave you a total of 100% and going across the bottom, met in the corner giving 100%. All fine and dandy up to that point. But then they wanted those percentages from one page to another (one page per ambulance company) to then add up to 100% for the whole system. I tried to sell them on there being a summary page, but their desire was to take the number from any column/row and from page to page, have the total come out to be 100%. It took forever trying to explain that math did not work that way... Speaking of math, (I'm tempted to put this in another page, but I'm on a roll), I had one situation where I was doing a conveyor system and we needed to indicate where to cleave a list so we could generate a shipping manifest. Just because we had flagged that we had diverted a carton down a lane, did not mean all of them got loaded onto a truck. The idea was that they would hand wand the label of the last carton loaded onto the truck and then upload the label. We had a 14 digit (NUMERIC, this will be important later) label, with 12 digits already in use. The problem was that if you had say, 12 cartons going to the same destination, they ALL had the SAME label (per spec). Would you believe it was a 20 minute conversation every time we had to describe the problem to
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Welcome to the real world. In over 20 years I've yet to be in a demo meeting at which at least one user was more concerned with a font size/color than they were about the functionality and fitness for purpose of whatever was being shown. If it wasn't for users this would be the greatest job ever.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
Yep and that's quite frustrating, specially when you get that from client's QA team. Sometimes instead of testing the important stuff they complain about how an image looks or a font. It makes me: :doh: The worse problem is when you have a target date and these silly stuff gets in the way of the important stuff.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
I don't see these things as ridiculous. I don't think they come from stupidity or even ignorance. I think the vast majority are about who's in charge, and not necessarily in a bad way. I'll bet most don't realize they are doing it. Look, they have no idea how you do what you do. They see you as something of a wizard, a wild card (and honestly don't we all kind of think of ourselves that way? Really.). It's probably a bit unnerving to the person who commits company (or program) funds to the whim of someone who, in their perception, is practiced in the arcane arts. I think that most don't even realize (certainly some do) that what they are doing is saying "Ok, but I'm still in charge. I'm not baring teeth and I'm backing away slowly". When the only criticism you receive is to you so ridiculous, take that as the highest form of praise. It says that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with your solution.
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
I am a freelance Windows Phone 7 App developer. A few months back I developed an app for small sales firm.
A few weeks after delivery a STUPID HR from the company called me. She spoke with the usual vain-HR tone we all are familiar with.
She said (Stupid HR), "The number of female sales agents of our company is quite high and is expected to grow further in the coming months. Keeping that in mind, we would like a small modification in the application that you have developed."
Me: "Yes, I'll be glad to help."
Stupid HR: "We want a new theme for women. It won't be much trouble for you, I'm sure. Just add a theme that matches with long hair and colored nails."
Me: "Wha... <Rendered speechless by HR(do not read woman, I ain't no sexist!) stupidity, again!>"
I QUIT!! -
Hey! I have that request right now! We have tablets in the field and we need them to query back and get information from the servers. Plus they need to have access to Google and Bing maps just incase MapPoint has the wrong location for an address (this happens more than I would like to admit). The tablet has no data connection, they aren't part of the domain so can't VPN in even if you had a wifi connection. Did you ever figure out how to get your PoS client working? If so, send code plz! Urgent! Best I have had so far is to send people with USB sticks and carrier pigeons. I can't figure out how to get the data back though since the person is on the move.
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
I have two, first from an internal client (one of the companies within Sun Microsystems) and the second from a company that fortunately didn't become a client. 1. We did a demo of the new product management system which finally took the entire product registration process from 15 minutes per part down to 30 per second. An executive from one of the operating companies didn't comment about the massive time savings, but rather argued that the "dummy data" were not the right product numbers for those type of parts. Really? Seriously?! come on... that is why it is "dummy data" 2. We had an Australian prospective client that spent $15,000 on a demo of the next generation of real estate management software for us to integrate some of their requirements into the product. The demo went brilliant and they were very impressed at which point they turned around and said "We want to be the first in the world to use this, can you ensure you haven't built this for anyone else?" it was followed immediately by the following sentence "Can you show us others in our industry already successfully using this software?" I thought they were joking, they were actually dead serious!!! They didn't go forward because they wanted to be first, but they didn't want to go forward unless others were already using it.
James Wallis Martin JB Metrics Ltd, Director www.jbmetrics.com www.erpthree.com
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
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Don't go for the time api... it's energy use is very intensive... What you need is a good "Prophecy" api... People have been asking for one them for years
OMG, I bout fell out of my chair on this one. A Prophecy api... Brilliant!
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
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...complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough.
I had that exact same "issue". I made a checkbox from scratch as a result. :sigh: To be fair the final thing did turn out nicer as a result so I shouldn't complain. :)
In the beginning there was nothing. Then the lord spoke, and he said, "Let there be light!" and behold! There was still nothing but you could see it better.
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
As a rookie programmer in the 80s, my very first "big" implementation (a stock control system for all London Transport's bus garages) was nerve-wracking enough. The new system had got through the (independent, very rigorous) QA with flying colours and the user reps were delighted. We implemented the system (running on dumb terminals connected to the mainframe, running CICS) but within an hour we had senior management phoning us in a rage saying half of LT's mechanics were about to go on strike. The new system differentiated between field labels and input fields by using the "bright" attribute on the field, to give contrast (not my design, btw). The strike-happy mechanics were complaining the screens were too bright and giving them headaches. (Within an hour, with green text on black background?) Some of the garages, though, were perfectly happy with it, and loved the new highlighting. In those days the concept of "customised user experience" didn't exist, so we had a problem; how to deliver bright fields to some users, and not to others. The answer was obvious; turn the little "contrast" wheel on the back of the screen. This had EXACTLY the right effect, dimming down the bright fields to the same brightness as the labels. We advised the garages to rotate the contrast wheel counter-clockwise.... Now we had a MUCH bigger problem. The VDUs were under the control of the IT department, and because the control was on the BACK of the screen, not the FRONT, it was deemed to not be a "user-adjustable control". Under health'n'safety, the trained electricians and mechanics in the bus garage were not permitted to touch this control. In any case it wasn't their job as the equipment wasn't from their department. In the end, a technician from IT department had to physically make a visit to every single bus garage to rotate the contrast control a quarter-turn. :doh: [The system paid for itself within two months through reduced stockholding and improved vehicle availability]
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
I'm sure everyone has a long list of these. My favorite is the zero-balance report. In our financial system, one of the accountant wanted to be advised of funds being fully expensed. Easy enough, but she didn't like the prototype, she wanted me to add a column for 'balance'.
LucM
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
There are no ridiculous client requests. There may only be ridiculous ideas about the effort and cost to implement them. Don't bother whether or not a request sounds silly: make a cost estimate, and maybe the customer will accept it. In my experience there doesn't seem to be any correlation between sillyness of request and willingness to pay through the nose for it. Note also that a SW developer doesn't or cannot always fully understand the client's working environment. A request that sounds totally silly to you may, e. g., be detrimental to user acceptance. If a couple of thousand of your clients employees are going to use that software, you damn better make sure they'll *want* to use it! If you think that feature is going to negatively affect other functionality, make sure to mention that. If need be, put it down in your contract. tl;dr Be professional!