I Told You So!

[eltf177]

In my thread on mall-walkers (http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...d.php?t=110457) I mentioned my friend who tried to warn mall management that allowing mall-walkers in was not a good idea. Then Sapphire Silk posted her thread (http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...d.php?t=110482) on warning her boss that Rocky Horror Picture Show fans were rowdy and would wreck their brand-new screen.

So these gave me an idea for another thread, stories where your and/or co-workers tried to warn management that their idea was unsound and were ignored. Later you and they got to say "I/we told you so!", not always a best revenge but sometimes just enough...

My example is the town where I work. The town code does not allow new construction on any lot less than 10,000 square feet. But a developer wanted to buy some land and construct on lots of only some 8,000 square feet so they could cram in more houses (and more profit). Despite town citizens, members of public works and even the town attorney saying this was a bad idea the Town Council approved the subdivision, saying it was a "one-time exemption."

There's no such thing. Since then two more planned subdivsions have been redesigned to shove in more houses by making the lots less than 10,000 square feet. And there are several lots in town that have always wanted to subdivide and sell off the empty plot but never could because either the new lot or the existing lot would be less than 10,000 square feet. They are now all up for sale, and the owners have made it clear any attempt to block sale or new construction will be met with a lawsuit.

One member of the Council was overheard to say, "Geez, I think we made a mistake." NO KIDDING! This is going to be haunting the town for years to come...

I felt this would be better in SIGHTINGS, please add your tales of woe for the enlightenment (and entertainment) of others...

[An Haddock]

Once had a client who had badly infected a laptop. We tested the HD as per our usual routine. HD was fine. We backed up the data, reloaded Windows, and put the data back on. I warned the owner to back up their data just in case, since apparently they had never done so before. Because apparently computers are just supposed to last forever.

We flush customer data from our network once a month. That's usually long enough for any sane person to contact us and let us know if something didn't get copied back. Well, two months later the laptop owner calls us. Laptop is screwed up, what's wrong with it?

Well, the hard drive finally decided to shit the bed. I asked where his backup was, only to be told he never backed it up. It had only been two months! He shouldn't have to back it up!!!11!eleventy!

So I explain:

1. Your drive tested okay 2 months ago. We have no way to know it's going to die 2 months later.

2. We don't know how you treat your equipment. You could have dropped it as soon as you got it home. And we DO know your daughter uses the thing to illegally download music, so who's to say what other damage she could have caused?

3. You were told to back up your data when you picked up the computer. You never asked for help on how to do it. You just took it and went on your merry way.


I could probably post a hundred stories about people who lost stuff because they didn't back it up like we suggested, or folks who got infections because they didn't listen to me when I gave my laundry list of suggestions on what to avoid and what to do.

[Android Kaeli]

Middle of the way through my time at Random Craft Store I worked with one of many Store Managers and he hired a woman to be a part time FES (Front End Supervisor) when the company still had them. I'll call her Becky for simplicities sake.

Nice enough lady for the first few months then things started to get a bit shady. Things randomly started to get stolen, like the kind of things even our usual thieves wouldn't take, and we couldn't pin-point who was taking them. We'd watch the area, see who was buying these things, but as soon as we'd do that the thefts would stop until our SM of the day told us to knock it off. Then another random thing would start flying off the shelf without being paid for and the cycle continued for a while.

It didn't take long for some of us, including my direct manager at the time, to start to suspect something was wrong with Becky and that the thefts and her were somehow connected. I learned directly from the horse's mouth that Becky had done several stints in jails, one of which was for possession. How she managed to get AND retain a key holder position with her convections I don't know, she shouldn't have been allowed to even LOOK at those keys! I was not the only person who told the SM of the day that something was going to go down with Becky and it did.

I think I might have mentioned before that I had a co-worker who disappeared for two weeks and still had her job, I may have had her under a different name. Well Becky and that person is the same, she also stole a Christmas tree and a few other things. Hell she was brazen enough to walk out the front door with it, didn't come back for two weeks, actually was allowed to return the damned thing, and STILL HAD A JOB! We, again, told the SM of the day that she was not good news and she probably would only quit/be fired when she got thrown in jail again.

Becky eventually left for good because, as we said, she was thrown in jail for something or the other. Yea, that was one of the things we said directly to the SM's face that was a "I told you".

[paxillated]

Warning - this doesn't really have an ending, because I don't know how it ended.

I was working in the training department of an Air Traffic Control Center - the folks who handle the airliners between the towers.

They had the old IBM 9020 running the place. The problems used in training were run by loading a bunch of punchcards. Those wear out, and need to be copied, which means using a card puncher. It's a big machine, and is not intuitive; one has to be taught. It's also boring boring boring!

My job (besides sitting at a radar scope and acting as all the different aircraft on the screen, which was fun) was copying the problems when needed.

Then the training department was contracted out. The new guys were a bunch of dickheads, who thought that women maybe had between one to three brain cells. They managed to make the fun part boring. Luckily, I finally got my promotion to Pilot Weather Briefer, and was soon going to leave for the school.

I volunteered to train one of them on the punch machine, since I was the only one in the whole darn facility (400+ people) who knew how to do it. No, they were so smart that they would be able to figure it out, and besides, Congress had finally approved the replacement of the old 9020s!! And I left.

I wish I knew what happened. I do know that the first 9020 to be replaced was around 3 years later. They would have had to cut new cards quite a few times before then. I like to think about those stupid male chauvinists sitting at that machine, ruining card after card... (Bronx cheer!)

[HawaiianShirts]

Computer sales. Way too often than I would like.

Me: Now, if you're using this on the internet, you will need virus and spyware protection.
Customer: Nah, I don't need any of that.
Me: I strongly recommend it. You can have our guys install it, you can buy it here and install it yourself, you can get it from your ISP, or you can download one of the free options online; just get it.
Customer: Nah. I'll be fine. [Manufacturer] makes a good computer, so I'm not worried.

A few weeks later, customer comes back with an infected computer. Mad. Claiming nobody said anything about needing security software. Disparaging whatever company made the computer. Yelling at me for all of the above and more. I never could say "I told you so" to this kind of customer, but it would have fit the situation.

[wolfie]

They would have had to cut new cards quite a few times before then. I like to think about those stupid male chauvinists sitting at that machine, ruining card after card... (Bronx cheer!)

Even better - was there some way that an untrained person could accidentally ruin the ORIGINAL cards, rather than the new blanks they were trying to copy the originals onto? If there was, did these macho types who wouldn't take instruction from a woman manage to find it?

[paxillated]

Well, no. The card stacks were kept under lock and key.

I wouldn't do it myself, because I cared about the new controllers getting their training, especially under those dipwads. And because I'm pretty nice.

And I'm even nicer since I started reading CS!

[ComputerNecromancer]

They had the old IBM 9020 running the place. The problems used in training were run by loading a bunch of punchcards. Those wear out, and need to be copied, which means using a card puncher. It's a big machine, and is not intuitive; one has to be taught. It's also boring boring boring!

My job (besides sitting at a radar scope and acting as all the different aircraft on the screen, which was fun) was copying the problems when needed.

It's been 40 years since I used a keypunch, but as I recall, there were special machines intended for jobs like copying card decks.

"Manually" copying decks is just asking for trouble. Which is why I completely believe that that's the way they were doing it.

*sigh*

[Soulstealer]

My job (besides sitting at a radar scope and acting as all the different aircraft on the screen, which was fun) was copying the problems when needed.

During training did you get to make the air plane noises?

[AccountingDrone]

I could probably post a hundred stories about people who lost stuff because they didn't back it up like we suggested, or folks who got infections because they didn't listen to me when I gave my laundry list of suggestions on what to avoid and what to do.

<sitting here looking at my back up drive - networked in so it will autoupdate once a week, and my second back up drive that I manually hook up and back up once a month just in case. I also burn my books and music to dvd and thumb drive, and to SD chips for plugging into my tablet.

[Monterey Jack]

Reminds me of the time I politely asked a customer to remove their child from underneath her carriage. The kid's knee gets wedged between two of the metal slats, and while the kids starts understandably freaking out that he's trapped, the customer looked at me and said, "So, this is where you say 'I told you so', right?"

[paxillated]

During training did you get to make the air plane noises?

LOL! No, because it would have been unrealistic. But (under the non-sexist regime) I was allowed to occasionally throw in something unexpected. My favorite one was when I pushed the button that allowed me to change an altitude, the button flew across the room! The trainee was absolutely brilliant, so I just said to him, "I just lost my altitude button - can't change altitude on anybody! Cope!" and he did. We all laughed about it afterwards.

But the thought of sitting there going "Vroom Vroom" cracks me up.

[raudf]

I had a long time customer at MW call in doing his usually, "I need a new product, which ones are duds?" Well, this time he wanted a new stereo, which in the late 90s, meant multi-disk CD players. I warned him away from one specific one, a Sharp with a five disk top tray that was coming back to us on such a regular basis that corporate was seriously considering a "If they have a service contract, replace the whole damn unit," on it. It was that bad. Sharp screwed the pooch, because the laser assembly wouldn't rise to the occasion, so couldn't see to read the CDs. (Sharp later did a recall on them.)

Well, a week later, in comes our regular.. he'd gotten suckered by my least favorite sales person into buying this piece of high priced techno paper weight. I told him so. Repeatedly. At least he got the service contract and two weeks later we were sending the owners to the store to get a new one. I called the store and asked my favorite sales guy, O.B. Ware (his real name) and told him to beat my least favorite for me, because "we told you guys to knock it off with the Sharps." O.B. said he'd been chewed too many times recently to ever want to sell that one. The commission wasn't worth it. It was really, really, really, that bad.

[Aragarthiel]

Hubs and all of his coworkers are having an "I told you so" moment now. The store owner, who owns several other stores, took the advice of one of his managers at another store and ordered five times the amount of meat they normally use for their three-day sale. The manager of this store works in an urban area, so he may actually be selling all of this, but the rest of the stores are pretty rural, and they all have the same amount of meat as the urban store. Last night, day 2 of the sale, Hubs said that when he left, there was still two thirds of the meat store owner had ordered sitting in the back, unsold.

Apparently, store owner bought more than enough for every department, so despite the various department managers and their employees telling him, "We won't sell all of this, we're going to lose money," he did it anyway. At least Hubs is getting loads of overtime for this.