One-offs and "Bags of Random Crap"

Posted under Blog Posts, Geek Dad Links, Software Design

I am loving woot! at www.woot.com

Where else can you get a bag of random “crap” for only $1.  Sure, it will cost you $5 in shipping, but what do you expect?

It is not entirely an April Fool’s joke.  They suggest that “YOU WILL WASTE FREIGHT IF YOU ORDER FEWER THAN THREE.”  They warn you “not to complain about the crap you get.  Here is a list of commandments that they wrote about buying their bags of crap:

I. Thou shalt expect nothing beyond one bag of some kind and your chosen quantity of crappy items (which should be THREE).

II. Thou shalt not whine and complain when some people’s crap turns out to be nicer than yours.

III. Thou shalt take a moment to consider whether you might be better off just not buying this crap.

IV. Thou shalt not order just one crap and blame it on anything but your own inattention.

V. To paraphrase Stephen Stills, shalt thou not get the crap you want, want the crap you get.

Don’t you wish you could write a set of commandments like that for your customers? 

As a software designer, I know that [our company]‘s flagship products are golden; hand-crafted with the greatest of care and attention, and sprinkled with magic pixie dust and three coats of lacquer.  But some of our fringe software apps really are just crap, and we wish we could be that honest about it. 

You know what I’m talking about.  How about that single one-off utility application that you wrote in 25 minutes to import the suchAndSuch.xml data from the whatchamacallit.ascii file?  You know, the one that the VP’s wanted to start selling as part of the software implementation package?  We software engineers would feel less guilty if we sold it for a $1; That would give us license to say “What did you expect?  It only cost you a dollar!” 

As it is, however, we are left with dull pangs of guilt and mild feelings of resentment towards that stupid little one-off application that got too big for its britches, that small brown bag of random crap that got placed in a much larger, prettier gift bag.  (We can’t take the our crappy little app out of the little brown bag because the bag is what is holding it together!)

By the way, reasonably-priced bags of random crap are popular;  Woot sold out.  Click the screenshot to embiggen.