What can I say about the people here? They really amuse me looking at how they go about in their daily work. My first encounter was the day before yesterday, when the users requested to make some changes to their system. But what caught my attention was when I saw my colleagues themselves defining what they should include in the system rather than they making the changes to meet the user requirements.
My second funny encounter was yesterday, when they requested to make some changes to the customer letters we normally generate out for them. Now it seems that instead of keying in the date when the letters are generated, they want us to generate and print the letters without informing us of the exact dates to be inserted into the letters.
Since we are in no position to argue, we agreed. Then they said they will fill in the dates themselves. Fine as well, since it’s their customers. When my colleague asked how they were going to fill the dates into the already printed letters, they replied they will rubber stamp the dates before sending out the letters.
Now this is where the trouble will arise. Each time we generate the letters, each branch of the bank has about 30,000 customers and we need to generate 2 types of letters each time. Each week we generate the letters for 6 branches.
Simple math would tell us that,
1 branch = 30,000 letters x 2 = 60,000 letters.
6 branches = 60,000 x 6 = 360,000 letters.
Imagine the amount of letters generated in 10 weeks.
So when we asked the user if they are sure they want to rubber stamp the dates on the letters themselves rather allowing us to print the dates for them, they replied in the affirmative.
Again when we pestered them if they are sure they want to take this approach, again they replied in the affirmative and they said ‘Don’t worry, we have the rubber stamp and ink.’
Hello? You should be more concerned about who exactly is going to stamp all the letters and not worry about whether you have the rubber stamp and ink!