Dumb Customers

There’s this one project at work that I continue to receive hassle about from the powers that be. I don’t know if this can be strictly considered dumb, I guess it’s more a carefully balanced mix of an egotistical disregard of others and conceited pride. I often get told to make very specific changes to this application, which I can’t question as “I do not understand the full picture”, so for an easy life now I do them without protest.

The problem is as the project grows or the whims of the clients change a lot of these changes no longer really make sense any more. Every time this happens though I get called in or receive a phone call asking me to explain why I’ve been so short-sighted. Normally I don’t mind that so much and after a couple of glasses of Chianti I tend to forget about it.

After spending most of last weekend researching into ways the application can generate a quite specific report that the client requested, with other demands, I finally completed it mid-week. On Friday I received a phone call. Of course I no longer expect any thanks for any effort but I didn’t quite expect to be asked why I can’t even understand the most basic concepts.

It turns out that a couple of the buttons that he specifically asked to be a particular colour, to make them stand out, a couple of months back shouldn’t be that way. There needs to be greater uniformity and it shows a great lack of attention to detail on my behalf to have made them that colour.

This seems to be a recurring theme where I’m being reprimanded for others choices and mistakes. When someone is reprimanding me for their own choices and mistakes, can that be considered dumb or actually very clever?