11 ms·

There are a lot of moving parts in many complex systems, and occasionally bugs arise which people who do not build complex systems for a living ascribe to huge

by patio11 13y ago

There are a lot of moving parts in many complex systems, and occasionally bugs arise which people who do not build complex systems for a living ascribe to huge amounts of malice and not, e.g., a mis-transposition in a SQL query or a missing tab in a file compiled by a temp hired by a firm four degrees from OfficeMax. For OfficeMax, the most important takeaway is probably "You should encourage your employees to apologize and demonstrate empathy, and you should give line managers a BatPhone to the CEO's office because this is certainly BatPhone-worthy." (I once worked as a customer service telephone operator for a large office supply store which is a direct competitor of OfficeMax. I'm quite aware that their call center receives, minimally, several hundred calls a month from people who have sharply different takes on consensual reality than most of us do. That said, I also remember the two keys I'd need to hit on the phone to get the Vice President on the line, and I'm absolutely positive that if I had escalated that call in that fashion my boss would have said "That was the right decision.")

brazzy 13y ago
The question is not how that text got to be on the envelope, the question is why a retail company had collected that piece of information about a customer in the first place!
- patio11 13y ago
  Someone typed it into a computer at some time in the past, and after information is in a computer, it remaining in a computer is a much safer bet than "And then it got deleted and we never spoke about it again." For example, suppose a marketing company has a computer system which organizes people by households. They call a household and ask for a particular member. She's recently deceased. They type a note on that household's record, with the intention that the next person accessing that record knows that they should under no circumstances ask for the daughter who recently passed away in tragic circumstances. Some years later, a software or process bug results in that record getting entered into a mail merge.
- sjs382 13y ago
  > In a statement, OfficeMax said the mailing "is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider"
SoftwarePatent 13y ago
patio11, you're usually right on the money, but not this time. While it is true that the programming mistake was probably small, the end result was catastrophic for these parents. I would ask you to step back and reevaluate your "take on consensual reality" in this case. And at what point did anyone consent to being marketed to as grieving parents?
- patio11 13y ago
  Let me try to rephrase to tell you what I meant with that sentence, which I was attempting to phrase delicately. The reason why a line manager might not immediately say "It is probably true that someone claiming we addressed a letter to his deceased daughter means that we actually in fact addressed a letter to his deceased daughter" is because that line manager has to deal with many calls every month from people who are mentally disturbed. For example, I was once accused by a customer of being a CIA operative who hated Muslims because his pencils were late. His pencils had arrived on time. Skepticism about the father's claim was a mistake, but it's not an inconceivable mistake to me. After anyone at OfficeMax had realized that the allegation was true, my ideal state of the world is that the CEO is on the phone within 5 minutes. This is getting conflated with two other issues: "Did OfficeMax actually intend to send this letter?" No. Of course not. "Does OfficeMax having created a system which allows this letter to get sent mean that OfficeMax should fix the system?" Yes, OfficeMax should identify and fix the bug which allowed this to happen. In contrast to many people, I believe that the type of bug which caused this is likely rather minor. I would not agree that e.g. this letter is by itself a persuasive case that direct mail is evil, for example.
- vacri 13y ago
  I have to disagree - this is hardly 'catastrophic'. A troublesome or even traumatic reminder, but a catastrophe? It's a pretty low bar for that word. Somewhere along the line we got the idea that nothing negative must happen to us, and if it is, it's the worst thing ever. We're not that fragile. It's not a nice experience, but neither is it life-destroying.
  - Dogamondo 13y ago
car 13y ago
The biggest takeaway should be to not collect and use dehumanizing and degrading data like this in the first place.
- jdietrich 13y ago
  This is not "dehumanizing and degrading data". Organisations collect this sort of data all the time, precisely because not knowing usually has far worse consequences. I used to work in telesales and we logged this sort of data all the time, because it helped us avoid horrible and embarrassing faux-pas - selling adventure holidays to someone with a tetraplegic child, selling life insurance to someone with a terminal illness etc. We logged it because the customer wanted us to log it. The obvious counter-argument is that nobody should ever use any form of outbound direct marketing under any circumstances, but that's just not going to happen. This is an unfortunate edge-case of a database error that would be merely annoying or amusing in 99.999% of circumstances, but it's not an argument for never collecting this sort of data. The alternative is a sort of institutional amnesia in which the organisation is simply incapable of behaving sensitively because they don't know that there is anything to be sensitive about.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    So you collect peoples' personal data to avoid being embarrassed while talking to them? Christ. >We logged it because the customer wanted us to log it. So customers actually requested that you collect personal information on them?
    - DrewAllyn 13y ago
      > So customers actually requested that you collect personal information on them? "My kid can't walk, so I'm not interested. Please don't try to sell me this again."
      - BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Voluntarily-offered information is not the same thing as information scraped, bought and sold, and you (should) know it.

by patio11 13y ago

brazzy 13y ago

The question is not how that text got to be on the envelope, the question is why a retail company had collected that piece of information about a customer in the first place!

patio11 13y ago
Someone typed it into a computer at some time in the past, and after information is in a computer, it remaining in a computer is a much safer bet than "And then it got deleted and we never spoke about it again." For example, suppose a marketing company has a computer system which organizes people by households. They call a household and ask for a particular member. She's recently deceased. They type a note on that household's record, with the intention that the next person accessing that record knows that they should under no circumstances ask for the daughter who recently passed away in tragic circumstances. Some years later, a software or process bug results in that record getting entered into a mail merge.
sjs382 13y ago
> In a statement, OfficeMax said the mailing "is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider"

SoftwarePatent 13y ago

patio11, you're usually right on the money, but not this time. While it is true that the programming mistake was probably small, the end result was catastrophic for these parents. I would ask you to step back and reevaluate your "take on consensual reality" in this case. And at what point did anyone consent to being marketed to as grieving parents?

patio11 13y ago
Let me try to rephrase to tell you what I meant with that sentence, which I was attempting to phrase delicately. The reason why a line manager might not immediately say "It is probably true that someone claiming we addressed a letter to his deceased daughter means that we actually in fact addressed a letter to his deceased daughter" is because that line manager has to deal with many calls every month from people who are mentally disturbed. For example, I was once accused by a customer of being a CIA operative who hated Muslims because his pencils were late. His pencils had arrived on time. Skepticism about the father's claim was a mistake, but it's not an inconceivable mistake to me. After anyone at OfficeMax had realized that the allegation was true, my ideal state of the world is that the CEO is on the phone within 5 minutes. This is getting conflated with two other issues: "Did OfficeMax actually intend to send this letter?" No. Of course not. "Does OfficeMax having created a system which allows this letter to get sent mean that OfficeMax should fix the system?" Yes, OfficeMax should identify and fix the bug which allowed this to happen. In contrast to many people, I believe that the type of bug which caused this is likely rather minor. I would not agree that e.g. this letter is by itself a persuasive case that direct mail is evil, for example.
vacri 13y ago
I have to disagree - this is hardly 'catastrophic'. A troublesome or even traumatic reminder, but a catastrophe? It's a pretty low bar for that word. Somewhere along the line we got the idea that nothing negative must happen to us, and if it is, it's the worst thing ever. We're not that fragile. It's not a nice experience, but neither is it life-destroying.
- Dogamondo 13y ago

car 13y ago

The biggest takeaway should be to not collect and use dehumanizing and degrading data like this in the first place.

jdietrich 13y ago
This is not "dehumanizing and degrading data". Organisations collect this sort of data all the time, precisely because not knowing usually has far worse consequences. I used to work in telesales and we logged this sort of data all the time, because it helped us avoid horrible and embarrassing faux-pas - selling adventure holidays to someone with a tetraplegic child, selling life insurance to someone with a terminal illness etc. We logged it because the customer wanted us to log it. The obvious counter-argument is that nobody should ever use any form of outbound direct marketing under any circumstances, but that's just not going to happen. This is an unfortunate edge-case of a database error that would be merely annoying or amusing in 99.999% of circumstances, but it's not an argument for never collecting this sort of data. The alternative is a sort of institutional amnesia in which the organisation is simply incapable of behaving sensitively because they don't know that there is anything to be sensitive about.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  So you collect peoples' personal data to avoid being embarrassed while talking to them? Christ. >We logged it because the customer wanted us to log it. So customers actually requested that you collect personal information on them?
  - DrewAllyn 13y ago
    > So customers actually requested that you collect personal information on them? "My kid can't walk, so I'm not interested. Please don't try to sell me this again."
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      Voluntarily-offered information is not the same thing as information scraped, bought and sold, and you (should) know it.