Office Space

Scene from our office break room today: VP of Operations, Manager of Customer Support, Software Engineer (me).

I walked in to grab a plastic spoon. The drawer with the spoons was empty so I grabbed a new box from the cupboard, grabbed a bunch from the box and put them in the drawer, then took my spoon.

The Manager of Customer Support laughed. Just before, she noticed the spoons were gone, took out the box, grabbed one spoon and put the box back.

And just before that, the VP of Operations looked for a spoon, couldn't find one, and made due.

In other words:

The VP of Operations recognized the problem and redefined it as non-mission critical.

The Manager of Customer Support reproduced the problem, immediately discovered a work-around for the person experiencing the problem and passed it on to an Engineer for further examination.

The Software Engineer reproduced the problem and implemented a relatively short-term solution because, well, a better solution like purchasing non-disposable silverware would probably be too time consuming and costly. And anyway, he probably won't have to deal with the problem again very soon. In fact, one could almost argue this is a marginal use case as forks work in almost any situation. And if the forks and spoons both run out..? Well who wants to work for a company that lets that happen?! I bet Google doesn't have that problem.