You must log in or register to comment.
Bikeshedding - where people feel the need to give feedback even when none is needed, resulting in inane comments about things that don’t matter.
Pro tip, if you’re a software engineer, especially working on UIs - leave something annoying on your UI in the demo. Something small enough to not be a huge deal but big enough so that an exec or director would notice it. Make a button slightly too big, or the width of a divider too large. They’ll call that out, feel like they contributed, and likely the entire demo will be spent talking about the inane thing on the page. Then go fix the 2-ish lines of code and move on with your day.
Your tip is also known as The Queen’s Duck.
Illustrators know this as the “hairy arm”: adding an undesirable minor detail to give the art director something with whose removal they can put their stamp on the project, without wrecking the rest of it or making too much work for the artist.
I used to do a similar thing when I was in middle/high school. I do not consider myself to be a great writer, but when I was in school, I did very well for what my teachers expected at my grade level (I liked to read a lot). Most teachers I had wanted us to write essays or stories and then spend the next few classes fixing up our rough drafts into a final draft. I knew my first rough drafts were better than most other students’ final drafts so I would purposely put in spelling and grammar issues and maybe spend a few sentences off topic. Those would be the things I fixed to create my final draft. Doing that gave me more time to focus on subjects I had a harder time with.
When I was a software pm I loved being able to tell someone “you nailed it that’s awesome can’t wait to show this to [person relevant to their review packet]!”
That’s the value that the engineers wanted me to add.
My mom used to do faux decorative wall painting for rich clients. They would pick a sample and she would paint the walls to match but she found that they often complained after the work was done, even when it was exactly what they wanted.
She ended up getting a spray bottle with water that had a bit of food coloring and called it a “toning layer” that she would spray on the wall. It didn’t change anything but it made the clients think their feedback mattered, she said it almost always worked and they’d be elated afterwards.
In the same idea, artist will give the clients multiple samples with one being terrible to help them select the better options.
This doesn’t always work. Sometimes clients pick the terrible option. T_T
That’s why you always hide a duck in it
Hide-a-Duck sounds like a lawn ornament you put your spare key in.
Except sometimes they selected it and thus hilarious examples of modern art and corporate identity were brought to light
Or worse, they select it, but want some changes and end up blowing the budget, timeline, and good taste out of the water all at once.
That is how the actual talented people at Apple treated Steve Jobs. He was a fucking moron.
I have a feeling that’s how his oncologist treated him, too. “Well, you could just eat a lot of fruit instead.”
Okay, thank you for that one.
It’s not often that a post on the internet makes me laugh out loud like that.
I heard in the film industry back before drones that directors would get the scripts to how they want them and then add in a shot from a helicopter. Then the execs whose job it was to cut unnecessary expenses from the film would obviously nix the shot and the director was left with their original vision intact.
producers and engineers do this to musicians too, pretending to turn up the monitor mix on the console while looking at the artist until they signal “ok”
As a writer, I wish I could do this. But they’ll notice if the text is still exactly the same.
Have you considered trying italics ?
Maybe I should try submitting the same text, but in a different font…
I work as an appliance repair technician, servicing household appliances such as refrigerators, dryers, and washing machines. Most of my work comes through home warranty companies, so the homeowner isn’t paying me directly. My responsibility is to diagnose the problem and perform the necessary repairs.
Every so often, you encounter a customer who has convinced themselves that a particular part needs replacing, and no amount of professional explanation will persuade them otherwise. As a technician, I have a few options. I can simply refuse to replace a part that isn’t defective and justify my decision to my supervisor, or I can replace the part the customer insists on having replaced without actually changing anything. I can bring in a component, make it look as though I’ve performed the replacement, and call it a day.
Sometimes, people just want to feel vindicated. They want confirmation that they were right all along, regardless of whether they actually were. And occasionally, it seems easier to give them that satisfaction than to spend an hour arguing with someone who has already made up their mind.
As someone that has sent the literal exact same robot-vacuum-cleaner about 10 times for repair (because they just keep sending it back without doing anything): sometimes the customer is actually right.
The customer is always right in matters of taste.
Is the full saying.
If a customer wants to buy an ugly sweater, for example, they should be able to do so.
There is no saying. I didn’t say “always right”. Notice how I said “sometimes right”.
Customers are human beings. If I know I’m right (because I can see with my own eyes that the vacuum doesn’t work), and you treat me like that because “whether the vacuum works or not is not a matter of taste” I’m just never going to do business with you again.
I was working at a company, where many employees at the office whined about temperature of their rooms, so I finally decided to put every room a controller and tucked the cable away somewhere under the skirting board or something. The controller wasn’t working, but everyone was able to set it to their preferred temperature, and the complaints stopped.
How did you provide the necessary 24V power to these?
E: Oh nvm, you made this up
E2: you also did not run any cables under a skirting board or “something” because if this actually happened it was you who attached the wires… because thermostats only come with bare terminals as the signaling wires and power wires are snaked through the walls and connected to the furnace or controller. If your story is to be believed, you went out and bought a bunch of thermostats, then went out and bought a bunch of random wires to connect to them. (This should also cover your anticipated lie that they were not digital).
E3: the notion that you would have an adjustable temperature setting, while the thermostat ALSO displays the present room temperature, and you just glossing past the idea that nobody’s going to notice. Additionally, the idea that some busybody is going to allow them to sit there with nothing said is sheer madness. It’s almost like you’ve never had a job in a real office.
I fucking cannot stand people like you. Stop making up BS because you’re lonely.
That’s ok. You can believe whatever you like. This happened over ten years ago. Shit, almost twenty years ago. I have 43 years of experience in this field. If you don’t believe me, that’s ok for me, I can live with that. I hope you enjoy your life and have a nice day.
You’re full of shit, I did maintenance for a decade.
I don’t know why people like you are so sad that you need to make shit up.
You obviously don’t know anything, because you could have cooked up a much better story, I explained in full why you cannot be telling the truth.
Sure sure. Relax and take a deep breath, we all know you’re the only one knowing everything. You’re the chief, I can’t compete with your wisdom. Peace.
Just playing devil’s advocate, but if the story is old enough then they could’ve been rotary style, and they pulled a wire to sell the effect (I’ve done the same thing with fake surveillance cameras).
This is the thing. I have also made same with fake surveillance cameras too. I didn’t think there’s some so young person who didn’t know rotary style regulators.
Exactly…you don’t need to supply 24vdc if there’s no display to power, just a dial that does nothing but satisfies the user.
I covered that possible lie in my expansive bullshit call out. You either did not read or you do not understand.
Go check it out, you might come to believe that I’ve installed maybe a hundred of these and actually know what I’m talking about.
How old are you?
In the 80s and 90s, thermostats had physical dials and mechanical temperature metres that did not require power. They only had two terminals for sending a signal to the controller of the furnace.
This is one. They were everywhere until the mid to late 2000s.
I already covered that bullshit possibility in my calling out
while the thermostat ALSO displays the present room temperature, and you just glossing past the idea that nobody’s going to notice.
Thing is, that idea only pops up in your post. @Krudler@lemmy.world doesn’t say anywhere in their post that people could see the current temperature, just that they stopped complaining once they had a control they could set to the temperature they wanted. That’s how most thermostats worked back in the day. There was no “It’s currently 62.5°F” display in action. If you felt hot, you set the thermostat to a lower temp. If you felt cold, you did the opposite.
My father would tell a story about an IBM tech from back in the pre-PC days. She had one of those Dick Trickle kind of names, where the name parses as a phrase? To not outright dox her I’ll call her Robin Banks.
Robin would be at a customer’s site working on an IBM minicomputer or unit record equipment, when a secretary would flag her down and ask her to adjust the “tension” or “weight” or something on a Selectric typewriter. IBM Selectric typewriters don’t have any kind of adjustment on the key travel or typing feel. What she would do is walk up to it, type a little, agree that it felt off, take a small flathead screwdriver, stick it through an opening in the side or back of the case, pretend to adjust something, she’d take a cloth, damp it with some of the light oil they used on all the intricate little mechanisms in old computer hardware, wipe the key caps with it. Then say “Okay, try that” and inevitably they were happy with it.
Another story from Robin, in an office with a good size secretary pool, one of the secretaries kept bitching about her typewriter. It doesn’t type right, it doesn’t work right. Robin noticed that this particular secretary had been issued a blue Selectric, all the other secretaries had red ones. She swapped out the case with one of the other typewriters, just the shell, same machine, and wouldn’t you know it typed much better!
What she would do is walk up to it, type a little, agree that it felt off, take a small flathead screwdriver, stick it through an opening in the side or back of the case, pretend to adjust something, she’d take a cloth, damp it with some of the light oil they used on all the intricate little mechanisms in old computer hardware, wipe the key caps with it. Then say “Okay, try that” and inevitably they were happy with it.
50% chance that this actually changed something, namely the smell of the device. the machine would have an unpleasant smell and people would complain about it without knowing what it is. she goes over it once and now it smells nice, and people are happy. doesn’t need any screwdriver for that, that’s just for show.
She wasn’t cleaning it, she was applying a thin sheen of oil to the keycaps, to slightly alter their texture. That would make the act of touching and removing your fingers from them feel slightly different. Most of what it did was satisfy their need for attention.
