Customer: (after 10 phone calls to several different people at my employer asking the same damn question) "We really need feature X.  Can you do it? If not, I'd like to speak to your boss about feature X."

Sales Rep: "No, we aren't going to do feature X, not for $500, not for $15,000."

Customer:  Geez, who is running that place? I have a book "The Inmates are Running the Asylum".  You guys should read it.  You let your developers tell you what features you are going to add?

Sales Rep: Yes. Because "the developers" includes the owner of the company and the guy who signs my check.

Me: <listening, and cheering!>

I'm so glad I'm an inmate.  This customer would be a royal pain in the ass.  Yay!  +1 for us!!!!

Did you lose the customer?

The VP at my old ISP, when confronted with an exceptionally annoying customer, offered to pay the guy's first month at AOL and go over to his house and install it for him.

The requests I find somewhat annoying are those from IT. 

We make SW for plant batching operations, but it's the IT guys that want all that binary data to somehow free itself into their corporate-style databases on a cron/at job scheduled basis.

Annoying only because you can spend a lot of time on them, and they tend to have nothing to do with how the product runs.

I think deep-down, what the annoying part is, is that the IT people seem to have zero business domain experience in the particular industry, it's all just bits and bytes to them.

The more I get industry-domain experience, the more I see IT as tedious and business-domainless.  It's only from the inspiration and imagination of people like Shark, $--, Aaron, and so on that gives it something of substance.  A discussion of ROR seems so superfluous unless you are a programmer hosting commercial web apps.

The world would be a better place if we only have mainframes and AS/400.

Maybe not :)

Hehe.  I have a lot of respect for the AS/400, that thing was really designed end-to-end, unlike a modern PC which is just open and any John will do.

Open-ness is where problems come in.  Try running an app using 4 com ports, and the client using another com port for their own app.  5 freaking com ports on a PCI bus.  Get all those bastards talking at once, on one PCI bus, and I think you may have some problems.

Speaking of end-to-end, I found a Slashdot conversation comment interesting, that BSD is more end-to-end than Linux.  Linux is more about the bazaar idea where you combine a multitude of possible packages, slapped together however you want.

wow. sounds like you are not working at the worst company in the world, shark ...

>> after 10 phone calls to several different people at my employer asking the same damn question <<

This would happen at a previous employer.  Annoying customer would start calling everyone they knew, asking to get their pet feature implemented.  If *anyone* said yes (or even got a 'maybe'), they would claim that we had promised it to them, and why were we behind on delivering it?

The fastest way to shut them up is by giving them a price that you *would* do it for. If they accept or not, they shut up.

"give them a price" to get them to shut up?  Where do you work?  When I try that, it just starts the negotiations on what the "right price" should be.  And how my estimate is wrong, it "shouldn't" cost that much, take that long, or be that difficult (implication -- if you were more competent, it would cost less).

I work in the real world, aka, where bargaining down from $500,000 is better than bargaining up from $500. :)

Clearly.  Except having that argument with a customer, over a feature that nobody else wants, and even trying to come up with a "realistic" estimate that you can defend to the customer, all takes time.

Sometimes it's MUCH better to nip the whole thing in the bud, and just say 'no'.  Not all the time, but it's nice to have that as an option.

Yeah, it is pretty decent here.  Most days.

Fuck it.  I'm gonna come work with sharkey.

Probably not going to get lucky enough to move in with her and her lover though.  I'm betting that the wife won't be cool with that one.

you think that's the only obstacle ... ?