8 ms·

Letters about Soap (1997)

164 points by pxeger1 4y ago

bennyp101 4y ago
I enjoyed that!
- acqbu 4y ago
  Likewise, I like it nice and soapy ;-)
billpg 4y ago
Why do I feel the urge to find this guy's address and arrange for an industrial crate of tiny soap bars delivered to him?
- dylan604 4y ago
  But they have to be in stacks no more than 4 high due to their tendency to tip over, so it might be more than one crate required.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    And some of them have to be very moist.
  - billpg 4y ago
    "Welcome to the Soap-of-the-Week Club! Every week we'll send you some tiny bars of soap in a little stack. You may not revoke your membership."
    - zhte415 4y ago
      3.. 2.. 1.. Someone starts a subscription service for small bars of hotel style soap, perhaps themes of hotel, room type, region, season regional or other soap minutiae, shipped once a month. Like Candy Japan, but for tiny bars of hotel soap.
      - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        I'm thinking a millennial lifestyle brand promising to bring world peace and eliminate CO2 emissions one mini bar of soap at a time.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    If you create enough stacks around each other, that stops being a problem.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      maybe, but that lessens the level of asshattery since by sticking to 4 bars high you are still complying with the customer's preference.
ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
reminds me of a lot of "support" these days: figure out which script contains words which sound like the problem being described, then follow it, without actually taking the time to understand the problem
- acqbu 4y ago
  Did anyone else click on the link expecting a rant about the soap protocol?
  - purplerabbit 4y ago
    Yes. Only tangentially related: does anyone else have the sense that GraphQL is fancy, modern SOAP?
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      Oh no, I love me some graphql, soap on the other hand was like my worst interop nightmare.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - UglyToad 4y ago
    I clicked on it expecting effusive praise of SOAP. Disappointed to find it's still only me, there must be tens of us who like it.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      Poor dear. I think they have medication for that... I have done ONVIF programming, and I actually licensed a dependency for the SOAP part.
    - InCityDreams 4y ago
      Are you talking about 'soap' the tv series? That fucker took me years to understand, but when i finally did get it, Barney Miller suddenly made a lot more sense. Especially that one-eyed green guy.
flint 4y ago
How can my 1 tiny customisation request be so dificult - afterall, you serve millions of customers everyday?
b112 4y ago
Part of me thinks this was faked/exaggerated at the time, except... Once on Amazon, I ordered an open tent. Basically, it is just an aluminum frame, 12 feet×12, 8 feet high, with canvas, to keep the sun off when presenting things at outdoor events. The one I received took 5 weeks to arrive, and was supposed to be new. But it was used, with scruff marks on the posts. I sent pics, and said "Hey, this is supposed to be new! What gives!!" An immediate "Sorry" with a "We have shipped a replacement." was the response. Really, all I wanted was a discount, mostly to compensate me for the paint I needed to buy. But OK, I said thanks. And waited. 8 weeks later, I again contacted them. "Where is my replacement? Do you have a tracking number? It has not arrived yet." Another immediate response, "We have shipped you a replacement..." Whatever, I think. Scam, I think. 1 week later, it arrives. I notice the ship date, and realise it was the original replacement. Worried, I contact them, and explain that the first replacement had arrived, all is good, it was just late, can they cancel the replacement's replacement? I received a response "We have shipped a replacement." And yes, I now have 4 of the things. I did not try to contact them again, for fear of ending up with more. They got 5 stars though.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I had a similar issue. I really think that it is cheaper for them to write things off, than to receive replacements. I had an item shipped from China, and it arrived a day past when it was due (actually, it arrived in the late evening of the due date, so I guess you could say it "arrived as scheduled"). In any case, on arrival day, it had not arrived, so I sent in a complaint, and it was refunded immediately (Amazon is actually really good for that). The problem was, it arrived, and I wanted to rescind the refund. That's where things got complicated. After trying various things, Amazon finally just told me to keep the item (and the refund). In point of fact, I felt bad, because I know it was a low-margin mom and pop store (albeit Chinese mom and pop). I don't think it was one of those massive "fraud factories." But it was actually impossible to return the money.
  - radlad 4y ago
    I have always assumed that for items which are shipped from Amazon fulfillment centers, if stolen or lost during shipment, Amazon is covering the cost not the vendor. But I don't know if that's actually true.
joshspankit 4y ago
This is an excellent addition to HN and I hope that devs and product managers alike see what happens when everyone tries to do as little as possible without taking the time to understand the bigger picture or even the underlying problem. This could have been solved so simply at any step of the journey.
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  Hiliariously, my PM brain that can never be at-rest was thinking about how this whole interaction could be improved. Hampered, of course, that this was dated in 1997–now hotels have magical things like in-room tablets.
  - fsniper 4y ago
    That's a huge problem. This situation is not something that requires "improvement". It's a well defined, easy to implement, no frills request. And which is particularly tried hard not to be delivered. Any of the parties which are to provide the solution do not use one modicum of brain to solve this. They ignore clear and concise communications and try to play dumb and by the book. Which was the all ask. “Don't play by the book, ignore this part which I particularly don't need“.
  - juancb 4y ago
    Which means that this can now play out with tablets instead of bars of soap.
joshstrange 4y ago
Flashbacks of most long support threads I've been on... > Hi I'm $insertNewName and I'll be taking over your case. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Despite 10 other interactions suggesting the same thing :facepalm: That and just finding whatever support article comes up when they stuff a few keywords into their search, no matter that the same document has been linked multiple times before in the thread.
- fsniper 4y ago
  exactly what I thought reading this .
zaszrespawned 4y ago
xen2xen1 4y ago
I would 100% start collecting these in a bag somewhere and not bother contacting anyone. Things like this are why. Only contact the front desk for immediate, large problems which can be taken care of by immediate personnel.
opwieurposiu 4y ago
I assume this guy did not want to bin the unused superfluous soap because that would be wasteful. I would feel the same way. Nowadays there is a no-pro that recycles the hotel soaps: https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-soap/ https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-...
- smashah 4y ago
  Great read! thanks for sharing but I have to ask, what is a "no-pro"?
  - youainti 4y ago
    I presume it means non profit.
- realslimjd 4y ago
  This is great, but they're solving the wrong problem. Using soap and shampoo dispensers is a lot easier and more environmentally friendly, but there's still a bit of a stigma around liquid soap coming from a box stuck on the wall.
pliuchkin 4y ago
> In just 5 days here I have accumulated 24 little bars of soap. Why are you doing this to me? Laughed so much here, but such a kafkaesque nightmare.
- sharken 4y ago
  Came here to say the same, that was when the story went from interesting to hilarious.
raesene9 4y ago
I thought I recognized this story, then I noticed the date in the headers 1997... yep this used to get forwarded round in e-mail in the 90's.
prmph 4y ago
Sounds like stateless customer service, the ultimate result of applying functional programming principles to running a hotel.
- teachrdan 4y ago
  Room service is a lambda
- yaodong 4y ago
  haha, this comment made my day! functional programming customer service!
tristor 4y ago
I've taken to the habit of just taking all the toiletries and dropping them in my bag because I bring my own. It's not worth arguing with them, and incidents like this are unfortunately commonplace (as a regular traveler, I attest). The hotel toiletries I end up using for future travels, it's not that I have any issue with them, but rather that I don't always stay in hotels so I always keep my own toiletries.
datalopers 4y ago
This reads like a dev happy with their single server when the kubernetes toting new devops hire shows up.
teh_klev 4y ago
At least things didn't completely escalate. Tangentially, these exchanges reminded me of "Computers Don't Argue": https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133 https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133
JJMcJ 4y ago
Ha, I expected it to be about SOAP the protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP but this seems to be more interesting. I suppose if you have a Galactic Empire sized business, maybe something like SOAP (or EDI) to really nail things down makes some sense. Otherwise I'm not so sure.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  Not a year goes by where I’m not convinced that things would be easier if as a community we used a modern version of the soap protocol, maybe with JSON instead of XML. RPC is such a clean design compared to REST, and it we had auto-generated client code 15 years ago, something the likes of swagger are still catching up with.
  - Deadron 4y ago
    Auto generated client code is nice in theory. In practice I find it only really useful as a starting point. There are enough choices to be made in writing even a simple HTTP api that its unlikely that a generic tool will generate useful code for a given application. This could include library usage (http client, serialization, logging, DI integration), async vs sync, logging requirements, tooling support for generated code. If you are in a language which has established std libraries and patterns this is less of a problem, but in something like Java that has evolved in all these areas over the years it can be a real problem.
    - charles_kaw 4y ago
      Thrift seems to have a really nice solution of providing only types that eventually break down into scalars. And only for exchanging data - it doesn't dare prescribe the rest of that. I liked working with it.
  - brianm 4y ago
    Thrift and GRPC fill that niche nicely.
  - tzs 4y ago
nokita 4y ago
I think I saw a comment, perhaps 20 years ago, saying that this is an adaptation of a stand up comedy routine. A quick search has failed to confirm or refute this, and regardless of the origin it is (a) very funny, and (b) instructive. But I suspect it shouldn't be taken as real, even if the lessons one can learn from it certainly are real, and it is all too plausible.
- SaintGhurka 4y ago
  The comedian was Shelley Berman. Edit: notice he signed each note "S. Berman"
  - citelao 4y ago
    Thanks to your comment, I was able to find a Snopes article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hotel-soap/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hotel-soap/ It stated that this story is a work of fiction. Funny story, though! (And another instance of “this is so easy to verify, it couldn’t possibly be false!” which I think I need to be more wary of).
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Yeah it has all the beats of one of those old email humor chains that would get forwarded back in the day.
acuozzo 4y ago
I did some research on newspapers.com. The original story was published by The Guardian over four issues in March 1996 on the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 18th under the following respective titles: 1. "Soap Opera": http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Tue__Mar_12__1996_.jpg http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Tue__Mar_12__1996_.jpg 2. "Slippery Tale": https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Wed__Mar_13__1996_.jpg https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Wed__Mar_13__1996_.jpg 3. "Late Bar": https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Fri__Mar_15__1996_.jpg https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Fri__Mar_15__1996_.jpg 4. "Soap Flakes": http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Mon__Mar_18__1996_.jpg http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Mon__Mar_18__1996_.jpg
staticassertion 4y ago
God some people are so whiny. I bring my own soap to the hotel and I just ignore the soap that's there. I realize that's not the point, but damn.
- notananthem 4y ago
  This is the correct response
iamcrazyyounus 4y ago
Most of the time, I believe resource orientation works extremely well.
watersb 4y ago
A classic. In the same spirit, I'm still looking for the epic, "Dogs in Elk" from about the same era. I think it was an America Online (AOL) question forum: a hunter brought home a large elk, but before she could butcher it, her dogs got into it, and ate so much they basically passed out, inside the erstwhile ungulate. "Dogs in Elk" -- you need to know.

164 points by pxeger1 4y ago

bennyp101 4y ago

I enjoyed that!

acqbu 4y ago
Likewise, I like it nice and soapy ;-)

billpg 4y ago

Why do I feel the urge to find this guy's address and arrange for an industrial crate of tiny soap bars delivered to him?

dylan604 4y ago
But they have to be in stacks no more than 4 high due to their tendency to tip over, so it might be more than one crate required.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  And some of them have to be very moist.
- billpg 4y ago
  "Welcome to the Soap-of-the-Week Club! Every week we'll send you some tiny bars of soap in a little stack. You may not revoke your membership."
  - zhte415 4y ago
    3.. 2.. 1.. Someone starts a subscription service for small bars of hotel style soap, perhaps themes of hotel, room type, region, season regional or other soap minutiae, shipped once a month. Like Candy Japan, but for tiny bars of hotel soap.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      I'm thinking a millennial lifestyle brand promising to bring world peace and eliminate CO2 emissions one mini bar of soap at a time.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  If you create enough stacks around each other, that stops being a problem.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    maybe, but that lessens the level of asshattery since by sticking to 4 bars high you are still complying with the customer's preference.

ImPostingOnHN 4y ago

reminds me of a lot of "support" these days: figure out which script contains words which sound like the problem being described, then follow it, without actually taking the time to understand the problem

acqbu 4y ago
Did anyone else click on the link expecting a rant about the soap protocol?
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  Yes. Only tangentially related: does anyone else have the sense that GraphQL is fancy, modern SOAP?
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    Oh no, I love me some graphql, soap on the other hand was like my worst interop nightmare.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- UglyToad 4y ago
  I clicked on it expecting effusive praise of SOAP. Disappointed to find it's still only me, there must be tens of us who like it.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    Poor dear. I think they have medication for that... I have done ONVIF programming, and I actually licensed a dependency for the SOAP part.
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    Are you talking about 'soap' the tv series? That fucker took me years to understand, but when i finally did get it, Barney Miller suddenly made a lot more sense. Especially that one-eyed green guy.

flint 4y ago

How can my 1 tiny customisation request be so dificult - afterall, you serve millions of customers everyday?

b112 4y ago

Part of me thinks this was faked/exaggerated at the time, except... Once on Amazon, I ordered an open tent. Basically, it is just an aluminum frame, 12 feet×12, 8 feet high, with canvas, to keep the sun off when presenting things at outdoor events. The one I received took 5 weeks to arrive, and was supposed to be new. But it was used, with scruff marks on the posts. I sent pics, and said "Hey, this is supposed to be new! What gives!!" An immediate "Sorry" with a "We have shipped a replacement." was the response. Really, all I wanted was a discount, mostly to compensate me for the paint I needed to buy. But OK, I said thanks. And waited. 8 weeks later, I again contacted them. "Where is my replacement? Do you have a tracking number? It has not arrived yet." Another immediate response, "We have shipped you a replacement..." Whatever, I think. Scam, I think. 1 week later, it arrives. I notice the ship date, and realise it was the original replacement. Worried, I contact them, and explain that the first replacement had arrived, all is good, it was just late, can they cancel the replacement's replacement? I received a response "We have shipped a replacement." And yes, I now have 4 of the things. I did not try to contact them again, for fear of ending up with more. They got 5 stars though.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I had a similar issue. I really think that it is cheaper for them to write things off, than to receive replacements. I had an item shipped from China, and it arrived a day past when it was due (actually, it arrived in the late evening of the due date, so I guess you could say it "arrived as scheduled"). In any case, on arrival day, it had not arrived, so I sent in a complaint, and it was refunded immediately (Amazon is actually really good for that). The problem was, it arrived, and I wanted to rescind the refund. That's where things got complicated. After trying various things, Amazon finally just told me to keep the item (and the refund). In point of fact, I felt bad, because I know it was a low-margin mom and pop store (albeit Chinese mom and pop). I don't think it was one of those massive "fraud factories." But it was actually impossible to return the money.
- radlad 4y ago
  I have always assumed that for items which are shipped from Amazon fulfillment centers, if stolen or lost during shipment, Amazon is covering the cost not the vendor. But I don't know if that's actually true.

joshspankit 4y ago

This is an excellent addition to HN and I hope that devs and product managers alike see what happens when everyone tries to do as little as possible without taking the time to understand the bigger picture or even the underlying problem. This could have been solved so simply at any step of the journey.

cptcobalt 4y ago
Hiliariously, my PM brain that can never be at-rest was thinking about how this whole interaction could be improved. Hampered, of course, that this was dated in 1997–now hotels have magical things like in-room tablets.
- fsniper 4y ago
  That's a huge problem. This situation is not something that requires "improvement". It's a well defined, easy to implement, no frills request. And which is particularly tried hard not to be delivered. Any of the parties which are to provide the solution do not use one modicum of brain to solve this. They ignore clear and concise communications and try to play dumb and by the book. Which was the all ask. “Don't play by the book, ignore this part which I particularly don't need“.
- juancb 4y ago
  Which means that this can now play out with tablets instead of bars of soap.

joshstrange 4y ago

Flashbacks of most long support threads I've been on... > Hi I'm $insertNewName and I'll be taking over your case. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Despite 10 other interactions suggesting the same thing :facepalm: That and just finding whatever support article comes up when they stuff a few keywords into their search, no matter that the same document has been linked multiple times before in the thread.

fsniper 4y ago
exactly what I thought reading this .

zaszrespawned 4y ago

xen2xen1 4y ago

I would 100% start collecting these in a bag somewhere and not bother contacting anyone. Things like this are why. Only contact the front desk for immediate, large problems which can be taken care of by immediate personnel.

opwieurposiu 4y ago

I assume this guy did not want to bin the unused superfluous soap because that would be wasteful. I would feel the same way. Nowadays there is a no-pro that recycles the hotel soaps: https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-soap/ https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-...

smashah 4y ago
Great read! thanks for sharing but I have to ask, what is a "no-pro"?
- youainti 4y ago
  I presume it means non profit.
realslimjd 4y ago
This is great, but they're solving the wrong problem. Using soap and shampoo dispensers is a lot easier and more environmentally friendly, but there's still a bit of a stigma around liquid soap coming from a box stuck on the wall.

pliuchkin 4y ago

> In just 5 days here I have accumulated 24 little bars of soap. Why are you doing this to me? Laughed so much here, but such a kafkaesque nightmare.

sharken 4y ago
Came here to say the same, that was when the story went from interesting to hilarious.

raesene9 4y ago

I thought I recognized this story, then I noticed the date in the headers 1997... yep this used to get forwarded round in e-mail in the 90's.

prmph 4y ago

Sounds like stateless customer service, the ultimate result of applying functional programming principles to running a hotel.

teachrdan 4y ago
Room service is a lambda
yaodong 4y ago
haha, this comment made my day! functional programming customer service!

tristor 4y ago

I've taken to the habit of just taking all the toiletries and dropping them in my bag because I bring my own. It's not worth arguing with them, and incidents like this are unfortunately commonplace (as a regular traveler, I attest). The hotel toiletries I end up using for future travels, it's not that I have any issue with them, but rather that I don't always stay in hotels so I always keep my own toiletries.

datalopers 4y ago

This reads like a dev happy with their single server when the kubernetes toting new devops hire shows up.

teh_klev 4y ago

At least things didn't completely escalate. Tangentially, these exchanges reminded me of "Computers Don't Argue": https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133 https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133

JJMcJ 4y ago

Ha, I expected it to be about SOAP the protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP but this seems to be more interesting. I suppose if you have a Galactic Empire sized business, maybe something like SOAP (or EDI) to really nail things down makes some sense. Otherwise I'm not so sure.

zwkrt 4y ago
Not a year goes by where I’m not convinced that things would be easier if as a community we used a modern version of the soap protocol, maybe with JSON instead of XML. RPC is such a clean design compared to REST, and it we had auto-generated client code 15 years ago, something the likes of swagger are still catching up with.
- Deadron 4y ago
  Auto generated client code is nice in theory. In practice I find it only really useful as a starting point. There are enough choices to be made in writing even a simple HTTP api that its unlikely that a generic tool will generate useful code for a given application. This could include library usage (http client, serialization, logging, DI integration), async vs sync, logging requirements, tooling support for generated code. If you are in a language which has established std libraries and patterns this is less of a problem, but in something like Java that has evolved in all these areas over the years it can be a real problem.
  - charles_kaw 4y ago
    Thrift seems to have a really nice solution of providing only types that eventually break down into scalars. And only for exchanging data - it doesn't dare prescribe the rest of that. I liked working with it.
- brianm 4y ago
  Thrift and GRPC fill that niche nicely.
- tzs 4y ago

nokita 4y ago

I think I saw a comment, perhaps 20 years ago, saying that this is an adaptation of a stand up comedy routine. A quick search has failed to confirm or refute this, and regardless of the origin it is (a) very funny, and (b) instructive. But I suspect it shouldn't be taken as real, even if the lessons one can learn from it certainly are real, and it is all too plausible.

SaintGhurka 4y ago
The comedian was Shelley Berman. Edit: notice he signed each note "S. Berman"
- citelao 4y ago
  Thanks to your comment, I was able to find a Snopes article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hotel-soap/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hotel-soap/ It stated that this story is a work of fiction. Funny story, though! (And another instance of “this is so easy to verify, it couldn’t possibly be false!” which I think I need to be more wary of).
TremendousJudge 4y ago
Yeah it has all the beats of one of those old email humor chains that would get forwarded back in the day.

acuozzo 4y ago

I did some research on newspapers.com. The original story was published by The Guardian over four issues in March 1996 on the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 18th under the following respective titles: 1. "Soap Opera": http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Tue__Mar_12__1996_.jpg http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Tue__Mar_12__1996_.jpg 2. "Slippery Tale": https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Wed__Mar_13__1996_.jpg https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Wed__Mar_13__1996_.jpg 3. "Late Bar": https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Fri__Mar_15__1996_.jpg https://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Fri__Mar_15__1996_.jpg 4. "Soap Flakes": http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Mon__Mar_18__1996_.jpg http://acuozzo.sdf.org/The_Guardian_Mon__Mar_18__1996_.jpg

staticassertion 4y ago

God some people are so whiny. I bring my own soap to the hotel and I just ignore the soap that's there. I realize that's not the point, but damn.

notananthem 4y ago
This is the correct response

iamcrazyyounus 4y ago

Most of the time, I believe resource orientation works extremely well.

watersb 4y ago

A classic. In the same spirit, I'm still looking for the epic, "Dogs in Elk" from about the same era. I think it was an America Online (AOL) question forum: a hunter brought home a large elk, but before she could butcher it, her dogs got into it, and ate so much they basically passed out, inside the erstwhile ungulate. "Dogs in Elk" -- you need to know.