Well we’re living here in A;;entown
Customers. Is there anyone dumber on the planet? Dunno. Doubtful. Maybe WWF and/or MMA. That actually turns out to be a damn close call.
Anyway, an eCommerce web site allows customers to create their own orders. Some of them don’t seem to realize that the information they enter might be just a wee bit critical to satisfactory order fulfillment.
Take “Mivjael Smoyj” in “A;;entown,” for example.
Oops. I mean “Michael Smith” in “Allentown,” of course. (Not the customer’s real name.) Poor, poor Michael. He doesn’t seem to be able to grok that the location of his fingers on his keyboard actually make a difference to what shows up on his computer screen. Of course, if he happened to look up once in a while…
Apparently he couldn’t be bothered to verify what his fingers typed. Nor could Mivjael be bothered to review his order before clicking the “SUBMIT” button. Nor could he be bother to read, bookmark and/or print the order confirmation page after he submitted his order. Nor could he be bothered to read the order confirmation email we sent. Of course, that email bounced because he had a typo in his email address!
Poor, poor Michael. Somehow he ended up confused. He didn’t even know if our system had accepted his order or charged his credit card. (FYI, biatch. It did both.)
So a few days later he called one of our customer service representatives to double check about his order. She diligently looked for “Michael Smith” but due to his typos, she mistakenly assumed he hadn’t ordered or his order hadn’t gone through. That lined up nicely with his paranoid delusions so together they happily created yet another order for exactly the same shit and charged his credit card again.
Our production department didn’t notice anything wrong and made two sets of the same shit.
Our shipping department didn’t notice anything wrong and shipped two separate boxes of the same shit.
Fast-forward a few days…
Poor, poor Michael. He received his first box and was happy as a clam. Then, a few days later, something rather untoward and not completely pleasant happened. He received a second box from us. This confused his already overloaded brain. What could this possibly mean? I wonder if placing one order on the web site and another by phone might possibly have anything to do with it? What are the odds?
This is where yours truly enters the story…
I received a call from Mivjael today as I was being pimped out as a 50 cent phone whore by my boss. Mivjael was extremely worried that he might have been charged twice. Extremely worried indeed. I checked our credit card processing software and found out, yeah, as a matter of fact, he did get charged twice. I found that rather odd since he only had one order in our system.
Undaunted, I accepted the challenge of yet another Holmesian logic puzzle at work served up courtesy of our blubbering idiot customers. It didn’t take long to unravel the mystery once the game was afoot.
I’m considering a rather dramatic change for my long-planned book. I may have to dump the working title “Society of Assholes.” Now, instead, I’m thinking about going with “The Low-Functioning Society.” What do you think? Which do you think describes us better?
Pulling a computer training
An Itty Bitty Machines (IBM) computer processing some Social Security data in the 1950s.
Image source: Social Security Online.
We here at AFAIK (the Abyss Facility for Advanced Information Knowledge) have decided to publish “online” to the interwebs some of the courses offered in our Information Technology with Specialization in Input Devices doctoral program. Enroll today and take advantage of offerings from our syllabus including:
- Left mouse button and right mouse button – What’s the difference?
- Single-click and double-click – Understanding situational context
- Upgrading – Why things no worky after five years of refusing to install software updates
- Task switching – An introduction to the concept that applications don’t have to be completely shut down in order to do something else
- Lateral Hand Movement Minimization – A focus on keyboard shortcuts to prevent “tennis elbow” caused by an excess of user hand movements between the keyboard and mouse
- Folders and Directories – An overview of file saving techniques with an emphasis on locations other than the Desktop
- ALT and CTRL – Extending their power with the knowledge that they do different things
- Webcam 101 – With new online services such as Chatroulette gaining in popularity, this class covers essentials like plugging in the webcam, starting the browser, entering the web address, and targeting the camera at the crotch area (men only)
- One-Handed Typing Proficiency – This class provides real-world skills that are essential in a myriad of real-world situations with a specific focus on those wishing to move on to government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
AFAIK graduates are highly sought after in all walks of life. Major accomplishments by our alumni are documented in IT and scientific journals and include feats such as calculating a sum from a column of numbers, drawing a happy face in Microsoft Paint, typing up to 10 different and hilarious “emoticons” and successfully locating a picture of a grandchild that was saved to disk more than seven days in the past.
A psychology break
Two videos today with a psychological bent. Sorry I was was too busy spending the day trying to balance on my tummy to write anything of real substance.
The first video was actually make by Volkswagon but it is still pretty neat. They call it “The Fun Theory.”
The second video takes a look at our behavior conforming to gender expectations and is even more thought provoking.
I hope you’ll find these short videos worthy of consideration. They are certainly something to think about next time you walk into a retail store or select a product from a shelf. Just how mindful are we of what influences our behavior and choices?
Shouts from the Abyss 
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