Just remember to automate the manual process at some point. from https://allenpike.com/2023/dialup-world-isp https://allenpike.com/2023/dialup-world-isp: "1.

Just remember to automate the manual process at some point. from https://allenpike.com/2023/dialup-world-isp https://allenpike.com/2023/dialup-world-isp: "1. When a customer submitted their signup form to Dialup World, they would add a row for that new customer to their 20,000-row Excel spreadsheet. 2.Then, they would put that signup form in a pile with all the other signup forms of customers who had signed up on that day of the month. [billing steps removed] 5. When a customer called to cancel their service, they would stop that customer from being billed further by simply – I shit you not – finding that customer’s signup form and trashing it. No signup form in the pile, no more bills going out. You gotta hand it to these people. The seminal startup essay “Do Things that Don’t Scale” didn’t come out until 2013, and these legends were doing things that didn’t scale way back in the late 90s. They got 20,000 signups billed with the process equivalent of a shoelace and a discarded sauce packet." Assuming they distributed the signup forms evenly amongst the 20 working days of a month, that would mean the billing group would have 1,000 bills to handle each day. Slogging day in, day out, forever. Might as well have named the group/department Sisyphus.