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The New Job (Part 1)


	Posted By: Spoonman 8/13/2003 5:20:04 PM (3 comments) Last Comment at 12/30/2003 2:22:58 PM

As promised, my children, I'm going to be describing the joys of my new job as I've encountered them. Here I am, three weeks into it, and I've already got so much to tell.

Now, before my former employers (who still read this site daily, HI GUYS!) point at this and say, "See, he's never satisfied", let me remind you: you didn't invent stupidity, you just excelled at it!

Okay, my first gripe: Lotus Notes

I would like the person who designed this piece of yak shit to stand up so that I can have my pet elephant "Bay-bay" rectally molest you.

I found out during my interview for this place that they used it here, and having used it in the past, almost didn't take the job because of it. It was that bad. Fortunately, it hasn't improved in the 4 years since I was last subjected to its retard-inspired fucked-upedness, and thus I have plenty to tell you about! :)

Okay, first, the interface. For anyone who has ever used any mail program anywhere, the joys of learning Notes are as fullfilling as the joys you experienced the first time you ever took mouse to hand. Nothing is where it should be, and things that should be there are not.

For example, in every mail program I've ever seen, to reply to a mail, you hit "Ctrl-R". Not in Notes. No, for Notes you have to hit "Alt-2", then down arrow and select "Reply with History". Brilliant. One keypress becomes 3. I supposed that's more efficient. Yeah, in Bizzaro-fucking-world! Wanna send a mail? Everywhere else, you hit "Alt-S". Note how the designers understand that keyboard shortcuts are difficult to remember, so...Send...S....Reply...R. Easy. Notes? "Alt-3". Ah. Of course, how could I have been so silly as to not know that??

Now, I've replied to that mail, let me delete it. In every other mail program, you hit...oh, I dunno...DELETE? Well, so too in Notes, but there's a catch. If you hit Delete, the message stays in your Inbox, it just has a little trash can icon next to it. Oh, that's helpful. I always find myself asking, "Now, where did I put that mail that I deleted because I no longer wanted to fucking see it?" I'm so glad they made it easier for me to find it. Instead of going to that pesky Deleted folder to look for deleted items, they live in my Inbox where, while it clutters it up, does make my life so much better.

But, I lie a little. You can force Notes to delete the messages by "refreshing" your mailbox. Now, for anyone who has ever used Windows before, F5 is the key to refresh things. Refresh a page in IE? F5. Refresh the contents of a folder in Explorer? F5! Refresh the contents of Notes? F9. Ah. Then, what does F5 do? Well, that one logs you off the system. Ohhhh....that's convenient. Instead of refreshing the screen, log me off. Well, that'll keep me from getting frustrated with the fucking interface, now won't it!?!? Oh, and when I hit refresh, it asks if I'm really sure I'd like to delete those messages that I deleted earlier that are still in my inbox despite the fucking fact that I already fucking deleted them!

And, it's ever so smart a program. Today I came back to my desk to find my "You've got new mail" box up on the screen. I clicked "Open Mail" and it took me to the inbox where I was shown all the mail in there was unread. That would be all the mails that I've read over the last few days, that I didn't delete, and two mails that I'd not only read, but DELETED using the simplistic delete method described above. Fucking stupid fucking stupid.

So, I highlighted those two messages, hit delete, then hit F9 to refresh, then selected Yes on the "Are you sure you want to delete these 3 messages" message.

"Wait a minute? I thought you said, TWO messages." Well, as a matter of fact, I did. I have no idea what the fuck it was talking about, and since when I delete messages, THEY'RE TOTALLY FUCKING GONE!, I can't go into the Trash folder to see what it was. So, if you sent me a message I didn't reply to, now you know why.

I haven't met the Notes admin yet, but right after I punch him right in the mouth I'm going to ask...How the FUCK could you have ever used this piece of shit and said, "Gee, this'll be a great choice for our users!"???

Since this is already a novel, I'll save the joys of creating a new folder for tomorrow...

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LN and the fuckers who support it
Posted by: SlackerPrince on 12/30/2003 2:22:58 PM

I'm with you on punching the notes support operators in the mouth. We have two of them at my location and their answer to everything is to refresh and replace the database design from the server.

Never mind that the shitty roll out and implementation caused half of these problems in the first place, or that the other half of the problems are caused because LN agents don't get installed properly. Oh no, refresh and replace will solve everything.

They are also the kind of support pricks who never call the user back about an issue assigned to them. So instead the user calls back 1st level support (me), and starts bitching about how they didn't get any more info on the issue. 75% of the time the fix didn't even work and we have to send a new ticket.

Plus they won't take tickets unless they are documented to a "t" with all of the user's info. Like it would break their fucking back to look up their info in the address book.

But the piece de resistance is the LN unread mail bug. That's right folks, LN sometimes has a "hiccup" on a domino server and all of your mail from the last week/month/year becomes unread! Whee!

But the best part? Lotus Notes Developer Domain lists the problem as a known issue currently under investigation, and has said this for the past 6 months I've been here. Translation: we know about the problem but we could give a shit less about the bug in the software, so we're labelling it as a "known issue." Fan-fucking-tastic.

How funny that you'd mention Apple...
Posted by: SpoonMan on 8/14/2003 3:05:56 PM

As they're the ones who pioneered the concept of a "Consistent User Interface". :) Of course, Apple products follow those standards about as well as Lotus does, but hey, whatcha gonna do?

As to standards making it more likely that people will use MS products, I would disagree. In fact, I would argue that it has the opposite effect. If I can do the exact same task in the exact same manner with a different program, then it doesn't matter what I use to do it, now does it?

It comes down to this: users are stupid. They don't take the time to learn the software that they're supposed to use everyday (worse are the ones who don't even bother to learn the software that they INSIST on having, despite it being outside corporate standards). Having to learn how to create a file in 15 different programs is made easier on their poor, small little minds if it's done the same way on each. It also decreases the learning curve. Once you learned how to use Word, it was easier for you to learn Excel, PowerPoint, etc becuase they all worked the same. The basics follow from app to app, only the stuff that's specific to that app differs.

hmmmm ...
Posted by: annatorious on 8/14/2003 10:26:09 AM

I used LotusNotes 4.6 back at Pee Spray boats (I think having mentioned that I worked at Sea Ray at least a cupla times, I'll move on to a better moniker). I really didn't mind using it. When I came here, and I heard several folks bitching about it, I wondered if they had used an earlier version, or if it had become fucked over in a later version ...
But with this story, I remember all those things you just mentioned. I guess it didn't bother me at the time because, although I'm addicted to using hotkeys, I wasn't acclimated to another e-mail program before this. I've also worked in several applications that had completely archane hotkey menus, so this was just one more language to learn.
See, it's awful nice that MegalomaniacalSoft standardizes a lot of their hotkeys (such as F5 = refresh), but other software co.s have no real obligation to conform to them. In fact, by subserviating themselves to the MS order, they lessen user's perceptions that there's any point to using something non-MS anyway.
Don't get me wrong - I use Windows, I'm a certified MOS in Word, Excel and Powerpoint (whoopty-doo), I almost got certified in Outlook and Access (and I may rant about it someday, except it's not worth it), and I surf using IE. But I don't like the thought of competition being strangled into emulating MS. We need our alternatives, if only for the sake of our free market.
I guess I'm also just trying to make myself feel better because I'm supposed to be learning to use a Mac PowerBook G4, and so the "fn," "option" and apple keys are totally fuckin' with me. Yeah, it'll be a filbert on my resume to learn graphics programs, but is it worth it? I dunno ...