You must log in or # to comment.
I heard in the film industry back before drones that directors would get the scripts to how they want them and then add in a shot from a helicopter. Then the execs whose job it was to cut unnecessary expenses from the film would obviously nix the shot and the director was left with their original vision intact.
The most powerful move is having nothing worth taking.
My ex had an ancient high-mileage Mitsubishi Mirage that we paid $300 for. The catalytic converter had been removed so the CEL was permanently on. She would constantly complain about it being on and that I needed to fix her car. Thing is, there was nothing actually wrong with it. So one day I removed the bulb and told her that I changed the spark plugs. She never complained about the car again.
Game developers used to be weeks or months ahead but only reveal pitiful, inch-at-a-time progress. As long as the “producer” believes progress is being made they’re happy. No time to add a new feature, we have barely even made spec as it is (the project is complete you just don’t know).
I was working at a company, where many employees at the office whined about temperature of their rooms, so I finally decided to put every room a controller and tucked the cable away somewhere under the skirting board or something. The controller wasn’t working, but everyone was able to set it to their preferred temperature, and the complaints stopped.
How did you provide the necessary 24V power to these?
E: Oh nvm, you made this up
E2: you also did not run any cables under a skirting board or “something” because if this actually happened it was you who attached the wires… because thermostats only come with bare terminals as the signaling wires and power wires are snaked through the walls and connected to the furnace or controller. If your story is to be believed, you went out and bought a bunch of thermostats, then went out and bought a bunch of random wires to connect to them. (This should also cover your anticipated lie that they were not digital).
E3: the notion that you would have an adjustable temperature setting, while the thermostat ALSO displays the present room temperature, and you just glossing past the idea that nobody’s going to notice. Additionally, the idea that some busybody is going to allow them to sit there with nothing said is sheer madness. It’s almost like you’ve never had a job in a real office.
I fucking cannot stand people like you. Stop making up BS because you’re lonely.
while the thermostat ALSO displays the present room temperature, and you just glossing past the idea that nobody’s going to notice.
Thing is, that idea only pops up in your post. @Krudler@lemmy.world doesn’t say anywhere in their post that people could see the current temperature, just that they stopped complaining once they had a control they could set to the temperature they wanted. That’s how most thermostats worked back in the day. There was no “It’s currently 62.5°F” display in action. If you felt hot, you set the thermostat to a lower temp. If you felt cold, you did the opposite.
Just playing devil’s advocate, but if the story is old enough then they could’ve been rotary style, and they pulled a wire to sell the effect (I’ve done the same thing with fake surveillance cameras).
Exactly…you don’t need to supply 24vdc if there’s no display to power, just a dial that does nothing but satisfies the user.
I covered that possible lie in my expansive bullshit call out. You either did not read or you do not understand.
Go check it out, you might come to believe that I’ve installed maybe a hundred of these and actually know what I’m talking about.
How old are you?
In the 80s and 90s, thermostats had physical dials and mechanical temperature metres that did not require power. They only had two terminals for sending a signal to the controller of the furnace.
This is one. They were everywhere until the mid to late 2000s.
I already covered that bullshit possibility in my calling out
Yeah I was thinking the same thing hahahaha
deleted by creator
I work as an appliance repair technician, servicing household appliances such as refrigerators, dryers, and washing machines. Most of my work comes through home warranty companies, so the homeowner isn’t paying me directly. My responsibility is to diagnose the problem and perform the necessary repairs.
Every so often, you encounter a customer who has convinced themselves that a particular part needs replacing, and no amount of professional explanation will persuade them otherwise. As a technician, I have a few options. I can simply refuse to replace a part that isn’t defective and justify my decision to my supervisor, or I can replace the part the customer insists on having replaced without actually changing anything. I can bring in a component, make it look as though I’ve performed the replacement, and call it a day.
Sometimes, people just want to feel vindicated. They want confirmation that they were right all along, regardless of whether they actually were. And occasionally, it seems easier to give them that satisfaction than to spend an hour arguing with someone who has already made up their mind.
I’m amazed any of your clients actually let you repair anything. Field service is the norm in my (day job) industry and customers just do nothing but bitch and moan and whine and tantrum and threaten and obstruct because they think it’s going to get them a new product delivered instead of a repair. “You mean now I need to wait for parts? That’s unacceptable!” “I paid for a new product, not a repaired product!” “I paid a ‘lot of money’ for this [obvious convenience item] and I can’t live without it, you need to get me a new one immediately or I’ll charge back my credit card!” Etc., etc., et-fucking-cetera. If I took another drink every time I heard any of the above in one day, I’d be dead before quitting time.
Oh my god, dude. Every. Single. Day.
“You mean I have to wait a week?!”
Yes. It’s a home warranty. Parts requests take longer to process. If you want it fixed quickly, you can pay me out of pocket, and I’ll be back tomorrow.
“Why won’t they just replace it? It was repaired once ten years ago!”
I have absolutely no influence over whether your home warranty company decides to replace your appliance. If I did, I’d have them all replaced.
“But they said you have to recommend it for replacement!”
I have no control over the decision-making process at your home warranty company. I can diagnose the problem, recommend the necessary repairs, and provide my professional assessment. What the company chooses to do with that information is entirely up to them.
These people don’t seem to understand that they’re paying into a multibillion-dollar industry for what amounts to a contractual gamble with some very significant limitations.
I have to spend an absurd amount of time explaining to customers that they’re not necessarily being ripped off or scammed. They voluntarily signed a contract agreeing to a particular kind of service, with specific terms, exclusions, limitations, and a claims process that is often considerably less convenient than they imagined.
The home warranty industry isn’t designed to provide you with the fastest, most convenient, or most comprehensive solution to your appliance problems. It’s designed to provide a service within the financial and contractual limits established by the company.
You can argue about whether the contract is worth what you’re paying for it, and that’s fine. But you cannot sign up for a product without understanding what it actually provides and then act surprised when the company delivers precisely the kind of service its business model is built around.
And somehow, I’m the one who has to explain all of this while standing in your kitchen with a toolbox.
Sorry. Rant over.
As someone that has sent the literal exact same robot-vacuum-cleaner about 10 times for repair (because they just keep sending it back without doing anything): sometimes the customer is actually right.
The customer is always right in matters of taste.
Is the full saying.
If a customer wants to buy an ugly sweater, for example, they should be able to do so.
Sometimes, people just want to feel vindicated. They want confirmation that they were right all along, regardless of whether they actually were. And occasionally, it seems easier to give them that satisfaction than to spend an hour arguing with someone who has already made up their mind.
You’d go far in politics.
I’ve had it the other way around, not even on purpose. As the designated nooby sound engineer for the evening I had to mix the bands monitoring as well as the live mix for the audience. During the sound check one of the band members wanted their vocals to have a bit more “pop” in the mix, and not knowing what that exactly meant I asked them what they wanted. I don’t really remember what it was they said, but it was something about boosting certain frequencies. Now, I have never had to do this before, and while I in principle knew how to do it the request kind of took me out of the flow so in the moment I completely forgot. So while this musician was looping his vocals so I could make the change, I was just selecting random menus on the console hoping I would end up at the right one. And, at some point, the guy was like, “oh yeah that’s perfect!”
I had not changed any EQ at all. I wasn’t even close to the right buttons, so to speak. But he still liked it, so I shut up and let them do their thing. Honestly I think it might’ve been his on inflection into the mic that made him change his mind, not the actual EQ, but whatever, he was happy with the mix and I was happy that I did not look like a total noob (even tho I was)
Ah, sounds like you accidentally found the DFA slider!
Bikeshedding - where people feel the need to give feedback even when none is needed, resulting in inane comments about things that don’t matter.
Pro tip, if you’re a software engineer, especially working on UIs - leave something annoying on your UI in the demo. Something small enough to not be a huge deal but big enough so that an exec or director would notice it. Make a button slightly too big, or the width of a divider too large. They’ll call that out, feel like they contributed, and likely the entire demo will be spent talking about the inane thing on the page. Then go fix the 2-ish lines of code and move on with your day.
How is it called when you make a comment, the artist pretends to do something, you are too hesitant to say thats still shit and proceed with okay thats fine?
I used to do a similar thing when I was in middle/high school. I do not consider myself to be a great writer, but when I was in school, I did very well for what my teachers expected at my grade level (I liked to read a lot). Most teachers I had wanted us to write essays or stories and then spend the next few classes fixing up our rough drafts into a final draft. I knew my first rough drafts were better than most other students’ final drafts so I would purposely put in spelling and grammar issues and maybe spend a few sentences off topic. Those would be the things I fixed to create my final draft. Doing that gave me more time to focus on subjects I had a harder time with.
Your tip is also known as The Queen’s Duck.
Illustrators know this as the “hairy arm”: adding an undesirable minor detail to give the art director something with whose removal they can put their stamp on the project, without wrecking the rest of it or making too much work for the artist.
When designing, I try to provide options and typically one is a “throw away” simple option that took no effort. Like I change a color or a minor element. Just to provide the illusion of choice.
If I don’t provide multiple options on the initial drafts people lose their damn minds. They try to redesign something that shouldn’t have their input. This let’s them talk about which one they like better and not fixate on one design and tear into it.
Also I get the low effort feedback. Everyone has some opinion on visuals, because it’s easy to say “what if…”. Big part of the job is coming prepared knowing what people will start picking at with answers ready to why you did what you did. Or just bullshitting on the spot.
Or just bullshitting on the spot.
ah, so like pretty much every job ever. got it.
I use this a lot in presentations, and have taught this to colleagues I have mentored.
However I kind of understand the urge, when I’m on the other side and have to give feedback, saying “everything looks great” seems kind of lazy, or a cop-out. I have to fight the need to find something to nit-pick.
This is valuable advice I wish I had known decades ago. You can’t always avoid shit managers.
or customers.
it works everywhere, even on me
I use it with customers, to hide something I haven’t quite figured out yet or know will result in a lengthy conversation that’s been had a dozen times before with no change in outcome
my team knows that there’s only so much time for review, so if they put dumb things to catch in reviews of their work, they can slip larger things by the quality review process. they also understand that that’s on them — if there’s so much wrong with something that it would simply take too long to point it all out, the problem is with their work, not with the reviewer.
only somewhat related, but shout out to the guy who would repeatedly make the same mistakes on drawings over and over again. he would put up a review package of 100 drawings, the common mistake would be noted explicitly on the first couple, and then on the 3rd the note would read “applies to all subsequent drawings”. that guy would then only fix the ones that were explicitly called out. either a complete dumbass or lack of giving a shit, I don’t know which. I’ve probably worked with both.
I think bikeshedding is more commonly that people will argue about the materials of the bike shed over more important points of discussion. ex a bad thing because it detracts from more important decisions, not because it requires unnecessary change
queens duck as mentioned below better fits the tip (which is valid)
When I was a software pm I loved being able to tell someone “you nailed it that’s awesome can’t wait to show this to [person relevant to their review packet]!”
That’s the value that the engineers wanted me to add.
Been in contexts to give feedback and people pressure me when I say things like “I’m not a stakeholder, so no standing to give feedback” or “Ok, seems fine”. It’s evidently not “leadership” if I’m actually content with something or content to leave something alone I have no right to meddle with.
Actual leadership is, “This work looks good, let’s not waste any more time talking about it.”
Don’t be noncommittal, instead approve the work and push for moving forward. When someone suggests that more criticism is needed, indicate that they’re the one holding up progress.
Though you do run the risk that they love something you intended to be annoying. “The dart board value selector widget will make our product fun and exciting for gen Zs, I must report this to the board immediately so we can invest in converting all of our widgets to darts-based!”
Or make it too annoying and they might question your competence. “Yeah, he did quickly change the button that counted how many times you pressed it to a text box where you can enter a value but why would he have thought we’d have wanted that button in the first place!?”
This leaves out the tidbit that Leeland says he flips the switch and plucks the strings from a different position, which does significantly change the tone. He just doesn’t want to turn the knobs, which he might reasonably be reluctant to do for any number of reasons. It’s not “I’m just gonna do what I want. Fuck the recording engineer” its “Ok. You want a different sound, but I know the better way to change it, so here, I’m gonna flip a nothing switch so we don’t have to argue about it”.
That’s interesting, because you would think that even the newest, least experienced producer would know that you can change the tone of the bass just by adjusting where you play on the strings. So, presumably this is something he uses on “executive producers” who are just there for the credit.
In this line of thought a producer who knows what they want would probably ask for that thing specifically, not just for “a different sound”.
My mom used to do faux decorative wall painting for rich clients. They would pick a sample and she would paint the walls to match but she found that they often complained after the work was done, even when it was exactly what they wanted.
She ended up getting a spray bottle with water that had a bit of food coloring and called it a “toning layer” that she would spray on the wall. It didn’t change anything but it made the clients think their feedback mattered, she said it almost always worked and they’d be elated afterwards.
In the same idea, artist will give the clients multiple samples with one being terrible to help them select the better options.
That is how the actual talented people at Apple treated Steve Jobs. He was a fucking moron.
I have a feeling that’s how his oncologist treated him, too. “Well, you could just eat a lot of fruit instead.”
Okay, thank you for that one.
It’s not often that a post on the internet makes me laugh out loud like that.
Except sometimes they selected it and thus hilarious examples of modern art and corporate identity were brought to light
Or worse, they select it, but want some changes and end up blowing the budget, timeline, and good taste out of the water all at once.
This doesn’t always work. Sometimes clients pick the terrible option. T_T
That’s why you always hide a duck in it
What does that mean?
The scenario will play out in one of two ways:
- Client spots the duck. You remove the duck. Everybody is happy.
- Client does not spot the duck. You snuck a duck into their bullshit, you sneaky little fuck. Everybody is happy.
Hide-a-Duck sounds like a lawn ornament you put your spare key in.
Or a sexy-time game.
My father would tell a story about an IBM tech from back in the pre-PC days. She had one of those Dick Trickle kind of names, where the name parses as a phrase? To not outright dox her I’ll call her Robin Banks.
Robin would be at a customer’s site working on an IBM minicomputer or unit record equipment, when a secretary would flag her down and ask her to adjust the “tension” or “weight” or something on a Selectric typewriter. IBM Selectric typewriters don’t have any kind of adjustment on the key travel or typing feel. What she would do is walk up to it, type a little, agree that it felt off, take a small flathead screwdriver, stick it through an opening in the side or back of the case, pretend to adjust something, she’d take a cloth, damp it with some of the light oil they used on all the intricate little mechanisms in old computer hardware, wipe the key caps with it. Then say “Okay, try that” and inevitably they were happy with it.
Another story from Robin, in an office with a good size secretary pool, one of the secretaries kept bitching about her typewriter. It doesn’t type right, it doesn’t work right. Robin noticed that this particular secretary had been issued a blue Selectric, all the other secretaries had red ones. She swapped out the case with one of the other typewriters, just the shell, same machine, and wouldn’t you know it typed much better!
What she would do is walk up to it, type a little, agree that it felt off, take a small flathead screwdriver, stick it through an opening in the side or back of the case, pretend to adjust something, she’d take a cloth, damp it with some of the light oil they used on all the intricate little mechanisms in old computer hardware, wipe the key caps with it. Then say “Okay, try that” and inevitably they were happy with it.
50% chance that this actually changed something, namely the smell of the device. the machine would have an unpleasant smell and people would complain about it without knowing what it is. she goes over it once and now it smells nice, and people are happy. doesn’t need any screwdriver for that, that’s just for show.
She wasn’t cleaning it, she was applying a thin sheen of oil to the keycaps, to slightly alter their texture. That would make the act of touching and removing your fingers from them feel slightly different. Most of what it did was satisfy their need for attention.
I have a friend that is a producer. They’ve had people try stuff like this before.
They just assume the artist/client is… Uh…Eccentric, and politely move on, making a note of it for later.
The resignation in this comment is palpable and I laughed a lot. Thank you.
:(
I use to run sound mixers for events and local bands, and had a dummy slider that I’d move when a family member wanted to hear their special boy or whatnot. Everyone in the industry knows this trick. Almost everyone plays along.
I like how the comment ✨ evolved ✨
It’s important not to be rude
producers and engineers do this to musicians too, pretending to turn up the monitor mix on the console while looking at the artist until they signal “ok”
The ‘DFA slider’ (does fuck all), just move it and ask if it sounds better.
Well they should at least turn up their monitor if they ask lol geez.
monitors are for the artist only, and if they’re too loud, they start messing up the mix coming through the mains–after a lot of time spent by the sound guys ringing out the monitors, pre-sound check, depending on the acoustics of the room. a lot of artists don’t know and don’t care how any of this works-- they want what they want and don’t care what “problems” they’re causing for everyone else.
hence the pretend turning up the monitors
Don’t most places use in-ears these days?
100% this.
Yeh, this is common.
I’ve heard of PPI (Producer Pleaser Indicator) which is a mixing desk channel not routed anywhere but can be fiddled with to meet client demands.
And there is the DFA (Does Fuck All). Similar conceptYeah we had a DFA slider on our board! Good for placating meddlers, but also excellent for pranking new people. “If it starts to sound too tinny, lower the DFA very gradually till it sounds right” and then watch them very seriously fiddle with it for ages or until someone laughs lol.
Heard a similar story from bassist Chuck Rainey about being asked by a producer before session not to play slap during a certain section of a song. Same guy kept saying “something is missing but I don’t know what” and kept making them retake. Then the one time Chuck decided to slap again, the guy said “yes that’s exactly what I’m looking for”
Peg - Steely Dan, I think that was.
