Stupid User Story

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people come to me and ask for help, but don't want to take my advice. Usually, these people have already devised what they think is a solution and just want me to reaffirm what they have already decided. I see my job as to know what the best way to use which technologies to solve which problems. It can get really funny when a non-techie will then argue with me about what the best solution is.

Last week one of my user's came to my office and said she wasn't feeling well, so, she was going to go home. Unfortunately, she has a large project due in two days that she had been working on and needs to take her work home with her. The problem, she continues, is that her laptop does not have a floppy drive and she needs to get the file off of our network drive. She requests one of our thumb drives to use.

I explain that all of our thumb drives are already checked out and being used and we don't have one available for her (I've since ordered 6 more), however, I remind her, your laptop has a CD-burner on it and you can just save the file to it. Meanwhile, I reach under my desk and grab the spindle of CDs that I keep there and hand her one.

She looks at me with deflated eyes, much like a teeny-bopper who has heard that she can't go to the party with all the cool people, and says, "A CD is not big enough."

"Yes, it will be. A CD holds about 650 Megs of data." I respond.

"This will not be big enough to hold my file. I either need a floppy drive for my laptop or I need one of those thumb drives." she retorts.

"A floppy drive holds a little over 1 meg of data. That means that a single CD will hold the same amount as about 600 floppies. The largest thumb drive we have right now is only 512 megs...meaning a CD will hold about 125 more megs than a thumb drive. I am sure the CD is big enough." I calmly explain.

Not wanting facts to get in the way of her true mission, she begins to get agitated and says, "I know this CD will not hold my file. I need something else."

"I'm sure the CD will hold it. Besides, a CD is the biggest thing we have to transport files," I answer, becoming increasingly annoyed, after all, I am supposed to be the expert. Why won't people listen to me?

"I said it will not fit. I want a thumb drive." she demands. Now, this gets right under my skin. If you come to me for help, don't get all uppity and start demanding solutions your way.

"As I've already explained, a CD is bigger than thumb drives we have and they are all already checked out to other people. There are none available. That means you are not going to get one today." I patronizingly explain. It's like talking to a three-year old. My tone then changes to teacher mode, "When you are ready to transfer your file, I will help you burn it to the CD if you haven't done that before. It is really easy and you will pick it up real quickly."

"Well, that's not good enough!" (Temper Tantrum appears to be starting), "It won't fit on a CD. I know it won't."

I know that I need to check the file size myself, so I ask her where the file is on the network and what its name is. I browse to the file and it is all of 17 MB. I also notice that it a Quark file. I look to her and say, "Your file is only 17 megs, it will easily fit on a 650 meg CD. However, I'm little concerned. Did you get Quark Express for your home machine?" She asked me about installing Quark on her home machine a couple months ago and I said we didn't have enough licenses and had not given her the CD. That is one of the reasons we had purchased the laptop for her.

"No," she says, "I'm taking my laptop home."

At this point I want to jump over my desk, grab her by the shoulders and shake her while screaming, "You are an idiot, wrapped in a moron and then deep-fried in stupidity."

Instead, I advise her to just save the file to her 40 gig hard drive on the laptop. To which she replies, "Yeah, that will be big enough. I should have thought of that. I guess I don't need you after all." And off she went, back to her own little world, oblivious to the fact that she knows nothing, and still thinking a thumb drive is bigger than a CD.

Yes, she is a blonde.