Suffer

Prior to her current job, Kathy had worked as a project manager for a software company, and was responsible for one of her firm's largest clients, an insurance company that had earned a household name through decades of television advertising. Kathy's client was replacing their computer systems with software purchased from her firm, and were exacting and at times exasperating in their demands.

"What happens if we enter the wrong data in this field?" they had once asked Kathy.

"The software would detect an error, and advise the user to make a correction," she replied.

"But the user could ignore the error, yes?" they asked.

"Well, yes," Kathy responded, "but the error would become obvious the first time they ran the Daily Revenue Report."

"But what will the report say?"

While she generally hated conference calls, at times like this Kathy did appreciate the free opportunity to roll her eyes. "The report will generate an astronomically high figure, and the validation subroutine will print a message on the report saying that a setup error has probably occurred." That message, she thought, should actually say something like Jesus Christ, will you check your goddam setup, dumbass?

"How high will the amount be?"

"I don't know. I've seen it in testing, and anyone who'd been working for your company longer than a week --"

"Yes, I'm sure, but how is that figure calculated? Is it based on a date range?"

"I don't know," Kathy replied, holding back a sigh.

"Is it a cumulative total, or some average?"

"I'm sorry, I really don't know."

Temporary silence. Kathy knew from experience this meant the client wasn't letting go, but rather catching their breath. "Well, can you find out?"

Temporary silence. Kathy wasn't catching her breath, but stopping herself from screaming. "Again, the user gets a warning when they enter an incorrect value in the setup, and, should the user choose to ignore this" -- Kathy silently added REALLY FREAKING OBVIOUS--"warning, the Daily Revenue Report will clearly show that something is wrong, and where the error was made."

Temporary silence. Oh God, Kathy thought. "We understand that," the client said in a slow, patronizing tone. "But that's not what we're asking. What we're asking is how the total shown on the Daily Revenue Report would be calculated if a user entered an invalid value during the setup."

"Again, I don't know --"

"And that's OK. So what we're asking now is that you find out. That isn't such an unreasonable request, is it?" Kathy hated the way the client ended each of their unreasonable requests with this rhetorical question, but hated even more that she couldn't answer this question honestly.

As the months turned to years on the client's project, Kathy had come to the realization that it was her charge to suffer fools gladly, and forbid them not to come unto her.