Now, now :) Everything I've ever written that requires people on the loading dock to move things in or out of a truck was done with input from those dock workers, including reformatting the report to make it easier for them to work with under bad-weather conditions.
(It got flippin' cold in Columbus OH in December! I made the type larger on the reports so that they could check things off with markers while wearing gloves rather than needing fine-point pens. Exchange went roughly thus:
Dock Supervisor: "These reports are too crowded."
Me: "They look okay to me."
Sup: "Easy for you to say! You don't have to stand out there on an open loading dock in 10° temperatures in a snowstorm trying to reconcile the report to the boxes that actually came off the truck!"
Me [looking out the window at the dock workers huddling over a burn-barrel trying to warm up enough to unload the next truck]: "Point taken. I'll have a new version in an hour or two.")
You do have a point, of course. Because I'm physically surrounded by the people having to use my software (rather than being a Mysterious Unseen Presence in Portland), if I make their lives too difficult, they can come over here and stand on my desk until I fix it.
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(It got flippin' cold in Columbus OH in December! I made the type larger on the reports so that they could check things off with markers while wearing gloves rather than needing fine-point pens. Exchange went roughly thus:
Dock Supervisor: "These reports are too crowded."
Me: "They look okay to me."
Sup: "Easy for you to say! You don't have to stand out there on an open loading dock in 10° temperatures in a snowstorm trying to reconcile the report to the boxes that actually came off the truck!"
Me [looking out the window at the dock workers huddling over a burn-barrel trying to warm up enough to unload the next truck]: "Point taken. I'll have a new version in an hour or two.")
You do have a point, of course. Because I'm physically surrounded by the people having to use my software (rather than being a Mysterious Unseen Presence in Portland), if I make their lives too difficult, they can come over here and stand on my desk until I fix it.