Rats in the Mailbox

In the online edition of the excellent newspaper, “The Fergus Falls Journal” of Fergus Fall, Minnesota, the headline reads:

Woman finds rats in mailbox

The story relates, “The woman opened the mailbox on 275th Avenue, located off Highway 210 near Underwood, to find a black and a white rat.”  Even worse, “The woman said she had not ordered rats by mail, according to the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Office.”  (No, I didn’t make up the name of the sheriff’s office!)

Recently, I hesitate to admit, I put metaphorical rats in one of my user’s mailbox.  The one I lobbed in did not, “…urinate and defecate…” on his data, as those at 275th Avenue did, but it might just as well have, for the trouble I caused him.  What I did was make a substantial change to his data without consulting adequately with him and without proof testing it for him. 

We’ll call my poor user, “R”.  R had requested that I make a few changes to the bundle of reports that he used every Monday to consolidate the information for his sales team.  He then took that knowledge and presented it to his boss who gave it to his boss who gave it to the BOSS.  No problem; it took me less than an hour to make the enhancements he wanted.  Then, like the painter that can’t resist one more brushstroke on his masterpiece, I decided to “tighten up the columns a little.”  Then I figured I’d remove some of the out of date fields.  Put a couple of useful rollups in for him.  Reworked the presentation so he could see it both by salesperson, as well as by account.  Then I tweaked a few more things before I leaned back, rested, and admired my work.  That was on Friday.

Monday afternoon I received a call from R, thanking me for all my hard work and praising my helpfulness.  Not. 

In reality, Monday afternoon I received a call from R.  His voice oscillated from anger to despair and back to anger.   “Why had I done that?”  He was hung out to dry in front of his boss and from there, the trouble rolled down hill and up the food chain.  No one could get the numbers they needed.  No one was happy.  I certainly wasn’t by about 30 seconds into the phone call.

After much apologizing to to R and to his boss and bosses all the way to the BOSS, I knuckled down and fixed everything.  In the end, all was forgiven and I  was out not much more than some dignity and an afternoon of work.  But why had this happened?  Why did my good intentions end up as a rat in the mailbox?

It happened because I took the wrong path when I went beyond my mandate.  A user requested a change and he and I discussed it and came to an agreement.  When I went beyond that agreement, I broke the explicit contract between R and me and the implicit one with all of my users, that is, to do no harm. 

The takeaway for me is to be very, very careful when changing someone else’s reports, GUI, or in general, in altering a users view of the data.  Users are funny and set in their ways.  What seems like a minor revision to those of us in love with technology can seem like a shattering event to those who are technophobes.  Even if objectively something is an improvement, without buy in, it may end up a rat in the mailbox—an unwelcome surprise.

Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigfatrat/104501587/