Marketing demanded IT add website feature that was already working

ON CALL Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column in which you share your stories of absurd tech support situations. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Hamish," who told us that a couple of years ago he worked at a British retailer where the company's website manager – a …

[Korev]

Sounds like there's hell to Apple Pay

[DS999]

They definitely would have caught hell

If they'd done like Hamish suggested they could have and waited and claimed they were already done. Because the same people who identified the need for Apple Pay would have told him "you need to fix it, it isn't working for me!" after testing again with their Android phone!

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: They definitely would have caught hell

Once the "need" is identified there's no coming back. The main application I support is multi-user by design but for a new user the "need" to be multiuser was identified. That was about 18 month ago, and I am still dragged into meetings to report on how our push to multi-user is going. It's funny the first few times but it gets old after a few month of weekly repetitions.

[Mishak]

Maybe...

They meant to ask for Google Pay to be supported as well?

Edited to fix a typo.

[Mishak]

BTW

Any chance of bringing back the "On Call" tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BTW

Any chance of bringing back the "On Call" tag?

Doubt it.

Manglement will stay the course with the on-going enshittification, despite the blowback.

They have done it before, with the same results.

.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: BTW

I'm over 60 years old and started playing with computers when I was the ripe old age of 14 on a TRS-80 Model I, Level I (4K RAM, 4MHz Z-80 8-bit CPU), enjoyed it, had fun making a career out of computers, and am retired but still programming because I still enjoy it! But one thing I've learned is that things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but no matter how much bitching, whining, or complaining I might do, things don't go back to the way I like them.

For example, if it were up to me, the Mate desktop for Linux would be the official version of Gnome, because nothing they have done since Gnome 2 has been worth the effort of spitting on!

[Giles C]

Re: BTW

It is tagged as on call, front the front page choose the On Call button and it shows all the on call stories including this one.

[Robin]

Re: BTW

It is, but my "Friday workflow" for El Reg was to look at the home page for interesting articles and Cmd+Click them into new tabs, as well as looking for the "On Call" tag and clicking that into a new tab as well. Then read and close them one by one.

This new On Call category is all well and good and is "only a click" but there are so many UIs which have recently changed to add things behind "only a click", it's frustrating.

[Dan 55]

Re: BTW

www.theregister.com/archive - your new front page.

[TheFifth]

Re: BTW

OMG, thank you!

[Jamie Jones]

Re: BTW

or:

https://www.theregister.com/Week/

This page honours the "don't display stock image icons" option in the user profile

[4d3fect]

Re: BTW

Late to the article, and the comments, for reasons elaborated here and elsewhere, But: Thank you, kind sir, madam, robot, or what have you!

[Martin Howe]

Re: BTW

Awesome, thank you! Nice neat layout with none of the modern web 3.0 rubbish, banners, standout boxes, just good neatly laid out content.

[TheFifth]

Re: BTW

It's my workflow too. I find the new column layout really difficult to scan for articles. Way too noisy and requires way too much active concentration to scan for what I want to read.

One bonus I guess is that I've been reading far less of El Reg since the change, so perhaps my productivity has gone up. Thanks El Reg!

[Albert Coates]

Re: BTW

"I've been reading far less of El Reg since the change"

So has everyone else, judging by the lack of comments - often just 2 or 3 or even 0. Well done, El Reg, how to shoot yourself in both feet and call it a triumph for modern web design although all your readers know it's a abysmal load of old bollox.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: BTW

""I've been reading far less of El Reg since the change"

So has everyone else, judging by the lack of comments"

Possibly because the Comments button has vanished. I've onyl managed this by using somebody else's computer.

[Dan 55]

Re: BTW

It looks like the time between the article being published and the associated comments page being generated has gone up from minutes to often hours. Perhaps something backend isn't working quite right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: time between the article being published and the associated comments page being generated

I find myself utterly befuddled by this even being a thing that's a thing.

[phy445]

Re: BTW

Struggling to spot the On Call button on my phone. Some of us don’t get to interact with El Reg on a work screen

[The commentard formerly known as Mister_C]

Re: BTW

Try dragging the whole page to the left.

The small and old tablet I browse El Reg on whilst having my breakfast shows the final "r" of "Datacenter" at the left end of the title banner and hides the "On Call" as an off-screen orphan beyond the banner to the right.

I've also noticed that the story age and number of comments line for each story don't render for several moments after the rest of the page. This happens on my PC too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BTW

You click on on call, and see that the various on call stories have been shuttled into different departments slightly related to the story. They're not marked on the front page at all any more.

[KarMann]

Re: BTW

The On Call tag?!? Inconceivable!

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: BTW

If they are like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, namely any really big US IT-something company now: They won't.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

"... opportunity to show how unaware senior people were of their own pet projects"

This is a strategy that can carry a risk. Quite a few senior people bear grudges against those who (even tactfully) point out their mistakes. The fact that Hamish didn't suffer any such consequences suggests the senior people may have been partially clueless, but at least weren't complete planks.

Simon and the PFY no doubt would have gone for a bonus for doing nothing at all. They would probably state they used advanced AI tools to detect the user's phone, haircut, and sundry preferences to specifically tailor the user's payment experience.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: "... opportunity to show how unaware senior people were of their own pet projects"

Simon and the PFY no doubt would have gone for a bonus for doing nothing at all.

No doubt the website manager recieved a bonus (and promotion) for submitting the request.

[blu3b3rry]

I'm more amazed that the marketing drone didn't have an apple device to show off with for "creative" purposes as is often required by their job. Lack of awareness about the difference between android and iOS isn't a surprise, though.

Or maybe I'm just a little bitter after $~FORMER-WORKPLACE had the IT budget decimated to pay for high end iPads and MacBooks for the marketing teams, causing requests from the ops side to replace failing or dead production kit to be cancelled. The cherry on the cake was none of the apple kit could interface with the products the company made for demonstration purposes....

[GlenP]

I've generally been fortunate but I've had a few people who wanted the latest shiny-shiny.

We had one manager who insisted his laptop had to be upgraded when we'd just replaced the ageing devices used by his subordinates as he couldn't possibly have something lower power than they had. This was despite the fact the location was closing and he was under notice of potential redundancy (he wanted a brand new laptop he could keep when he left). We made it clear there was a policy on retention of equipment based on book value* and that his existing laptop would be OK but a new one would have to be returned to the company if he was made redundant.

Role on a few months, the redundancy was confirmed and despite several requests he still hadn't returned the laptop so we asked HR to formally write to him stating that he would be reported to the police for theft if he failed to comply within 3 days. We knew full well the police would just say it was a civil matter but it worked so instead of getting to keep a perfectly good under two year old laptop he got nothing.

*Strangely the book value was set at just very slightly more than the projected value of my laptop, docking station, monitor, etc!

[Andy A]

At one place I worked, the site manager had the fanciest laptop around, complete with docking station. This had been decreed from On High. He never used it, because he had Margaret for that sort of thing. Commonly I would visit to apply some major update and find that mine was also the last previous login from months ago.

We made certain that Margaret's desktop had the fanciest possible internals, despite looking like everyone else's.

[MattieD]

Been there, done that

We've got directors who demanded that they be given iPads, supposedly so that they could 'refer to documents' while in meetings. When queried why they couldn't use the very expensive Microsoft Surfaces they'd recently been given (again after a stroppy demand) we were told that it was 'easier to read them on a tablet'.

We're predominately a Microsoft house and all our documents are in O365 so we suggested they get Android tablets instead - cheaper, easier to onboard and equally suited for the job at hand. From their response you would think that we'd just murdered their children, burned their house down and placed billboard adverts proclaiming them to be members of the third reich.

It had had had to be an iPad. And it had to have that pencil-thing too. Oh, and a Apple-branded case.

We ended up having to spend all the budget we'd allocated for training within the IT team on buying idiots shiny toys so they could show off to other idiots.

Two years later we had to buy them all new iPads because there's 'were old and slow'. Of course they were. Nothing at all to do with Apple releasing new models that were ever so shiny.

[vulture65537]

Re: Been there, done that

I worked at a place where users would fairly often claim a device was broken as a reason for needing the new model. But return the old device - certainly not as they need it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Been there, done that

very strange choice of prompt perhaps? i would judge.

[Shred]

Re: Been there, done that

The directors demanding shiny new iPads sounds familiar.

The next thing is that when the iPads are barely run in, there will be complaints that they have poor battery life, are slow etc… until you buy them the latest shiny iDevice.

The old units will never be seen again, although they will demand that the mobile device management software is removed so that they can be used by their kids.

[RobDog]

Re: Been there, done that

Theft by any other name.

[KarMann]

Off on a tangent, what's the tilde doing in '$~FORMER-WORKPLACE'? It's no syntax I can place, maybe close to something in Ruby, unless maybe you had a user named FORMER-WORKPLACE and '$/home/FORMER-WORKPLACE' somehow made sense.

[Woza]

Maybe $~FORMER_WORKPLACE means they used to work from home?

[blu3b3rry]

That would be called me typing quickly and not paying attention!

[Giles C]

All too familiar

Sometimes the best approach is to ask them to create a ticket, and then sit on it for a week before telling them it is done.

On the other hand there is the time when you confidently state it is working only to discover it didn’t so you need to rush a fast fix in to avoid looking an idiot…

[Already?]

Re: All too familiar

And when manglement check that the change is now implemented and there’s still no sign of it on their Android devices…?

That opens up a whole new interesting conversation.

Edit: I see Pete2 has made the same point below.

[FeRDNYC]

Re: All too familiar

I don't begrudge the "clever" [citation needed] play on management's name, but I am perplexed at the preference of "manglement" over "damagement".

[A.P. Veening]

Re: All too familiar

Because it pops up when looking for "man" (not sexist, both "management" and "manglement" start with those three characters).

[Pete 2]

If I don't understand, it can't be important

> Maybe the IT team should have waited a week, said the work was done

I suspect that would just have landed Hamish in deeper trouble. When the Android totin' PHB then whipped out her device to "test" the function and still couldn't access it, the criticism and upwards escalation would be substantial.

Worse, is with this degree of cluelessness in the corporate stratosphere, no amount of explaining that the feature only works with Apple devices would suffice - or even be understood.

[ttlanhil]

Re: If I don't understand, it can't be important

Depends how they announce it

"We've added apple pay as a payment method. If you load our site on an iPhone or iPad from today, you'll be able to see the option to use Apple Pay"

[collinsl]

Re: If I don't understand, it can't be important

Problem is if they chuck that out as a press release to their customers they'll look totally clueless since it's been there all along and some of their customers use that to pay already, and something like that is ripe for being released as marketing twaddle.

[vulture65537]

I was at a job where a customer TLS certificate needed to be replaced as the old one was close to expiry. I was aware of this task coming up but it got handled by someone else. Then the customer complained the site had the self-signed-cert warning and it wasn't good .

Viewing in both IE and Firefox showed one had a working cert chain (what the other employee had seen) but the other browser used by the customer did not have it.

Investigation with the openssl s_client connect host whatever showed the cert chain was incomplete and one browser had fixed it up from another cert it had that fit.

I searched the web for this missing cert and added it to the file on the web server and the job was completed.

[disgruntled yank]

certificates

I find that curl is a useful tool here: it is fussier about certificates than some browsers are.

[Uncle Slacky]

"Hamish"

...ah, you'll have had your tea!

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: "Hamish"

For anyone wondering:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_and_Dougal

[PB90210]

Re: "Hamish"

One of their best episode is where the Laird (an Englishman) asks H&D to set up a Burns Night Supper for his friends. Hamish (or possibly Dougal) declares it "a tradition invented by the English and celebrated the World over... except in Scotland".

Mrs Naughtie can't get hold of a real haggis but managed to create a substitute... from a tin of dog food in a ribbed condom

(looks like Radio4extra are starting a rerun)

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

This has happened to me a few times , people ask for stuff to be set up , never use it , and a year later ask for it again .

[KittenHuffer]

I remember working at garage that had a HUGE glass fronted showroom. Used to get quite warm on sunny days in that greenhouse.

The boss discovered a 'reflective' coating (on a roll) that would reflect the sun in the Summer, cooling the showroom. And reflect heat back into the showroom in Winter, reducing heating bills.

This was going the be a significant win for the boss ..... until the accountant actually read the glossy brochure. Only to find that our company name was listed as one of their customers! Yes, turns out we already had the reflective foil in place!

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

And it is not about coffee, toast or a birthday party...

[Boris the Cockroach]

Cant be any worse

that the boss in a panic going "wheres those 3000 XXYYZ castings?" because the customer has phoned up and said that tooo....... along with dire threats if the assembly line stops with various mutterings about JIT and kanban.

And I'm like "we delivered them yesterday and got the paperwork to prove it"

Lets call said customer................ and it seems no one at their end booked them on the computer... but did deliver them to the line and the lines nots going to stop.

And I've lost 1/2 an hour of surfing el-reg time(among other things that dont relate to doing my job) to chase up a non existant problem.

Icon.... for how I feel most of the day.... if only el-reg had an icon for banging your head against a wall, that would cover the rest of my day too

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Cant be any worse

"if only el-reg had an icon for banging your head against a wall"

Sounds like a good idea. Anyone got a suitable icon they can hyperlink to? We could have a little straw poll.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

DAMMIT I nearly missed this On Call

@TheReg: Come on, add the main tag at the articles on https://www.theregister.com/Week/ , if I had not checked at https://www.theregister.com/tag/on%20call/ I REALLY would have missed it!

/rant mode off, reading it...

[Henry Wertz 1]

Remove device check?

I would have considered just removing the device check. It's clever and a good idea to have one, bur then the executives checking on their Androd tablets will see the Apple Pay choice and be inpressed at how quickly it was implemented.

Don't put the change up like an hour later, this would make one wonder if the work was rushed (since they don't know you're just making the button visible on their device...) but maybe a few days (or a week or two if your company culture or development cycle or whatever makes it so changes take a while to make it to the live site.)

[munnoch]

Priceless...

[Bill Gray]

On the other hand...

I've occasionally been asked if I could add feature X to my software, started looking into it, and only then realized that I'd added X a decade or two ago.

Some of this is due to having worked on the same software for a few decades. So (a) there's more for me to attempt to keep in my brain and (b) said brain is now a few decades older. As Dan Quayle famously pointed out,

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind. How true that is.

[MrReynolds2U]

Unusual...

What doesn't make sense is anyone from the coloured-pencil department using an Android phone.

In my experience, they are all iPhone users.

[Gomez Adams]

This is obviously a gap in my understanding: Can you not use Apple Pay on a non Apple device then? Can you use Google Pay on an Apple device? What do people do if they use a mix of Apple and non-Apple devices?

[Jamie Jones]

I wondered that too - apparently Apple pay is ONLY available for apple products.

You can use Google Pay on an iPhone, but with limitations. You cannot use it for tap-to-pay in stores, as Apple restricts the iPhone's NFC chip to Apple Pay, (which seems like yet another abusive anti-consumer lockdown to me)

[TSM]

Nothing quite like this, but I've had a couple of cases of "can you make it handle x?" "It already handles x, we considered that possibility when we were designing it and built it in."