Comment Re: Arrogant sods (Score 2) 226
Back in the day, there was a bunch of engineers to wrote a TCP stack for VAX/VMS. The company TGV (Three Guys and VAX) had the engineers cycle through taking tech support calls to get an understanding of what problems customers were seeing with the software. It was a very literal port of the TCP/IP stack and tools. Anyone familiar with UNIX would have no problem using it.
In contrast, DEC came out with their own version and it was very hard to use. The interface and command line was very VMS-like requiring anyone familiar with the UNIX to learn DEC's way of doing things.
I've always marveled at the two different approaches. I doubt DEC did any customer focus on their product. That happened a lot at DEC--engineers deciding they knew what the end-user needed. There was a common phrase in the VMS engineer's News group--See Figure One. Which was engineering's response to customer reported bugs and complaints. It was a ASCII art picture of Mickey Mouse flipping the finger.
It's true that the engineering staff didn't sign up to deliver food. But sitting with a Customer Service person for a day, listening to their calls might be a good learning experience in fixing process problems or help them design stuff to make CS people's life easier and able to take more calls.
But no, that's not what they signed up for. Delivering food might expose them to COVID and the company to liability. I can see that. But doing other things to make them better at their job? Yeah, maybe your time at DoorDash is over. Try Uber.