That kind of thing drives you around the Ben-d

... it drives one to ABEND, one way or another.

I think anybody who ever worked a helldesk has seen that fairly often, pretty much every time one of the company's commonly used bits of software gets a major revision. Sometimes even minor revisions will raise the hackles of the user-base. Ive seen users spend much longer trying to make it crash on command than it would take them to properly learn to use the new version to do their jobs.

People hate change. Office workers doubly so.

I've frequently said that as far as users are concerned the best system, or version, is the last one*!

I've been at meetings where one person has said, "xxx is rubbish" and another has, independently, commented, "xxx was great, I wish we had it back instead of yyy!"

*Windows is the exception of course, depending on the release - MS typically have only ever got each alternate version right so the best one may be the last-but-one.

People hate change when imposed for no reason

In the case in TFA the change actually made things much worse. A tethered PC would require the engineer to remember all the details on what might have been a complex drawing while what was needed was something that could be carried by hand. The PCs needed to be able to provide some sort of paper output.

This was a crap system design because the designer failed to understand how it would be used.

I would have thought that on a construction site it would be all too easy for the computers to have an accident...

Once did a round trip of 700 miles to turn a printer on, because our helpdesk staff couldn't figure out why a printer might not be working if the power light is off.

Apparently that's what I was paid for so what was I moaning about?

I always tried to avoid the wasteful trips.

Once worked at a site where, as a side contract, we occasionally went across town to a railway depot and sorted out some unusual kit.

Because we had some experience of fixing it, we were the first call if a problem arose at a different railway depot.

The co-ordinators for the job queues were in Spain. Nice people, with a better standard of English than many UK dwellers, but UK geography was not their strong point. It doesn't help that railway depots commonly don't share the name of the big place they are in. Plymouth (found on a tourist map) contains Laira Depot (only seen on detailed maps).

Having to explain that a site with a problem was over 500 km away, and would require management to pre-approve the trip, caused consternation. We usually did a diagnosis on the balance of probabilities to allow the co-ordinators to pass the job to another queue so as not to fail their SLA. "We think it's the ADSL line. Pass it on to Comms."

geography was not their strong point

It's a common enough problem, especially with large call centres, but my vote would go to the US for lack of geographical knowledge.

Corporate HR in the US, to UK HR...

US: "Can you visit another site for us to sort an issue>"

UK: "Of course, where is it?"

US: "Australia!"

UK: "You do realise that it's a 24 hour journey from the UK?"

US: "But aren't all you guys British?"

Needless to say she didn't go.

US: "But aren't all you guys British?"

UK: "You mean with both speak English?"

US; "Yes."

UK: "So do you, near enough. You go, you're closer."

Over many months I kept getting phone calls from a company that installed spray foam loft insulation. My land line was registered with the TPS and not listed in the directory, so such calls were pure spam. One day I'd had enough and faked interest in their product. Someone phoned me back extolling the virtues of the (much maligned) insulation and I agreed to a no-obligation visit by their technical sales guy to survey our property for a quote. On the day of the visit I got a frustrated and angry telephone call which went to voice mail from their agent who was on my road but apparently my house number didn't exist. Oops.

Many many many years ago I worked on a typesetting system running on a Data Genal mini computer (yes before the appearance of DTP systems) and the staff at one customer were ex hot-lead typesetters and regarded the computer system as de-skilling their job.

We would often get a mysterious crash on a Friday afternoon, always from the same terminal, and because of the time take to reboot and verify etc. the staff would be sent home early. We never did get to the root cause because any enquires of the user as to "what were you doing when it crashed?" were met with a "just normal stuff". They weren't giving up their leave early card.

Not IT, nor my call-out, but I'm reminded of a time (back in the 1990's) when a company I did some work for had a phone call from an irate customer. The company had designed (and had made) a pipe spool to be fitted to a North Sea oil platform. It was an awkward bend shape and the company had got the job because they were rather good at this sort of problem. However, this time the customer was complaining that the spool didn't fit, so get one of the design engineer on the next helicopter out (and under warranty so no costs would be reimbursed). The guy who had designed the piece was duly dispatched to the heliport; he phoned in the next morning to say job fixed and to send the client a hefty invoice. The spool piece had a standard flange at one end with a clamp connector at the other end (one commonly used in the industry to allow for piping misalignment). The crew installing the piece had clamped the adjustment end first and then complained that the flange wouldn't seat properly - obviously a design or manufacturing error. The engineer, on arriving at the site, simply slackened off a bolt on the clamp, tapped the flange into alignment, tightened the bolts on that, and then retightened the flange. He next advised the OIM (the Offshore Installation Manager) of the solution, got his visit report signed (and approval to charge the full call-out cost), and got a seat on the next flight back to the beach. The company got several good contracts after that, probably based on the client's embarrassment...

*With apologies to Jim Hensen - his muppets were far more accomplished.