Wheelie bins.
I am definitely turning into a grumpy old man, not because I am grumpy per-se, but because the people who have replaced me since I retired* from local government management seem incapable of handling some of the basics. The latest the Garden Waste Bin calendar. They appear to have automated the calendar generation software to produce the calendars for each round and date. So far so good, and probably more efficient at their end. Their end being the key point – it isn’t more efficient in my time at the user end!
I don’t want to have to fire up my phone, tablet or desktop PC every time I want to check to see if the fortnightly collection was last week (d**n it I missed it) or this week? I just want a sheet of paper with the dates on to keep handy with the other calendars.
So here is the rub – it comes up on the screen fine but you can’t print it from there as when you do you just get the header line and a blank page. I am pretty sure this is because it is an auto-generated pdf display it is not a true PDF, not can it be exported as a PDF. The closest is an option to export it as a jpg image. Sounds good, but the numpties haven’t bothered to look up the dimensions of an A4 sheet of paper, an international standard which almost everyone in the UK uses as that is what the printer manufacturers design as the default. No the image creation setting generates a jpg file too tall and wide to print without either being cropped first or the user having to tweak printer settings to get it to fit. Something they probably won’t spot until after wasting the ink on the first sheet they have printed. That is a basic and fundamental c*** up.
Very, very, sloppy programming somewhere with regard to the output. Yes the generate calendar setting is good, but it has left the customer with a lot of faffing about to actually print the thing off?
At least our local authority lets you print a full year, once you have sized the page correctly, the area where my very elderly mother lives generates a large print calendar covering only a few weeks. At 101 she does not own any means of accessing it herself and to print her calendar off for her means several sheets of paper and a need to constantly remember it is time for another print run.
When are modern local government officers going to revert back to the traditional idea of customer service in the public sector that it has to be easy for the lowest common denominator to actually access the service and be convenient for everyone. At present it often isn’t, the new fangled IT (In relative terms) actually getting in the way!
The other annoying thing this week, a competition entry form that will not accept a landline number as valid; I have both that and a mobile – why should I be forced to add my mobile as the option and what about people like my mother who either only own a landline, are legitimately ex-directory, or have no phone at all!**
This may read like a rant but I can’t help thinking that IT, which is supposed to be a help, is now not doing so because the generation using it for much of the systems design are so wedded to it they (a) don’t realise some people aren’t and (b) so rarely use anything else the idea of using paper output (because for some applications it remains the better option) is overlooked.
*2008.
** they don’t have to use a personal piece of IT, libraries have internet access.