Yeah, it’s time to #CancelMendards. I’ve bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff there, but management hasn’t got a clue. Obviously they are using Agile and off-shore labor for their IT. Yes, it’s that obvious.
Oh, there have been earlier minor debacles. No matter what the Web site tells you,
this bracket will not fit the neck of this fire extinguisher. I had to use the crummy black plastic bracket that came with the extinguisher.
There was just no amount of forcing that would put the fork around the neck without damaging both extinguisher and fork. You all remember Faster, Cheaper, Splat, right? Where one thing was using that God-awful metric system and the other thing was using tried and true American units. Obviously nobody tested the two things together. The parachute designed to open very high in the atmosphere opened something like three feet off the ground. Not much time to slow descent.
We have a similar situation here. Some dufus thinks “5 pounds is 5 pounds.” No. The bracket is for an extinguisher having a total weight of 5 pounds, not 5 pounds of extinguishing material inside it. You need somebody who actually knows about hardware putting stuff in your database, not the cheapest labor you can find.
How We Know They Use Agile and Off-shore Labor
Yes, I’ve blogged about Agile before. I’ve even written a book about Agile. Agile exists for the express purpose of committing accounting fraud and no other reason. If you want to understand the logic behind that statement read the book.
How do we know they have management that is looking up at incompetent hoping to one day be that useful and using off-shore labor? Consider the image below.
This is of course not Menards yard entrance because I’m never going back there. You have to go through a gate much like this to pick up your “curb side” order. All the way around to the back of the building dodging kids on racing forklifts. Nothing “curb side” about it.
Developers from third world countries don’t have automobiles. They don’t have a driving culture and they sure as Hell don’t have many fast food drive-thru situations. You American developers, even if you do not drive, have all been in a vehicle at a drive-thru when a vehicle in front of you has a problem. Doesn’t matter what the problem is, you’re screwed until they get it resolved. It’s even worse when it is a twin lane drive-thru and the putz in the next lane cuts you off, totally hosing the sequence of orders. Now there are going to be two more problems at that window, assuming you get there before you starve to death.
How Agile Pooched This
As a user I would like a guard at the gate to scan a barcode verifying an order is ready before letting a vehicle, that we are going to inspect on its way out anyway, into the yard.
User Story
With actual Software Engineering we use SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle) documentation and Waterfall. Part of that “too expensive and time consuming” process requires us to create system flows, especially if there are points of human interaction.
Please keep the image of all those cars waiting behind the one at the gate while looking at this little user interaction flow. Notice that “No” goes nowhere. They sent some seasonal worker out to the gate with a tiny “pad” and a single application that can scan a barcode from a “we’ve picked your order” email. These fools all think people have imbecile phones. They also believe people will wait around during the busy season for that email. No. I’ve had orders that got picked in the morning but the email didn’t come out until almost 4pm. The person handing me the order told me that. They picked it at 9am but were too tied up to send the email.
Real Software Engineering
This is the reason you have to do these flows and if you don’t what you do cannot be called Software Engineering no matter how many drugs you take. You don’t have to be an IT professional to look at this arrow going nowhere to realize “this process has a severe flaw!” We do these diagrams so we don’t put a hand polished turd in production.
The person at the gate needs full customer service access. They need to be able to pull the order up based on order number or customer name. Your system doesn’t do that, therefore it is a hand polished turd.
Ask Yourself This
How is your seasonal worker supposed to solve this?
- They will get fired if they open the gate to let the vehicle through, even if it is just to pull into the exit lane.
- There is a line of cars behind the one that just has the order number.
- The MBAs in charge of the company couldn’t be bothered to think of this yet they somehow believe they should still have jobs.
Summary
It’s time to #CancelMenards. I most certainly cancelled my order. Hopefully 2024 will be the year Menards goes out of business. We can all hope that Home Depot opens up a Kankakee location and drives the shit chains of Menards and Lowes out of the area.
In the meantime there is Hardware Hank in Herscher and Behrends Farm & Home in Cabery.
Small Business Saturday doesn’t have to happen once per year like Christmas. It can happen every Saturday.
