Is It On The Trolleh?

My Dear Fellows & Dear Princess Normal,

When I was a developer I fecking hated analysts*. This is because they tended to write documents that said things like this:

1. System renders fund management screen.
2. Actor enters fund management details
3. System calculates fund values across all fund series.

And nothing in there about HOW the system does any of this stuff. Or what "fund details" are actually entered. Or even what a fund series IS.

This is because a lot of analysts think computers work on magic and are powered by psychic elves. You just tell a computer what you want and ALA KAZAM it is done. 

Worse, if you have the temerity to ask such analysts questions, they treat you like you are a slow-witted, mouth-breathing donkey.

When I was working on the Agricultural Entitlement Allocation project for Scottish Government I asked how the system worked out the value of Agricultural Entitlements. 

"Oh you just take the total number of Entitlements and multiply them by the Flat Rate," said Arsey Analyst.

"And the Flat Rate is...?" I prompted.

Arsey Analyst looked at me like I was an idiot. "It's the Flat Rate. The Basic Payment Scheme Rate. The rate allocated for the Basic Payment Scheme."

He assumed the air of someone who had given an actual answer.

"Yes, but WHAT IS IT?" I asked. 

"It's the Flat Rate. It's the rate you apply to work out the value of Entitlements," he repeated slowly. 

Oh I SEEEEEEE, I wanted to say. The rate that is FLAT. Not the lumpy rate. Or the pointy one. That's made things PERFECTLY CLEAR. What a FOOL I was for asking.

Long story short, the Flat Rate - the thing that was EEEEEEASY and just there and just obvious, wasn't calculated or stored anywhere. And he didn't know how to work it out either**.

As a developer, my coping mechanism was to employ a technique I named  "Is It On The Trolleh?" I called it this after a sketch by Victoria Wood.

Unfortunately I cannot find a YouTube link to it anywhere, but Victoria  used to do this sketch where she played Kimberly, a particularly slow-witted Yorkshire lass whose job it is to serve dessert in a posh restaurant. 

She rocks up to the table of posh patrons with her sweet trolley. The posh couple tell her they don't want dessert. This perplexes her. The concept of "no sweet" doesn't make sense. 

"Is it on the trolleh?" she asks them.

They reply they don't want dessert. They just want coffee. She doesn't understand coffee either. "Is it a sweet?" she asks them. "Is it on the trolleh? Can yer point at it?"

Most importantly, she REFUSES TO GO AWAY until they point at it. At one point they ask her to go away and so she wheels off, only to return ten seconds later.

"I thought we told you to TAKE THE TROLLEY AWAY," says Posh Patron.

"I did," replies Kimberley helpfully. "Then I brought it back. Would yer like a sweet? Is it on the trolleh?"

This sketch is my inspiration for whenever some ARSEHOLE tells me something is obvious. "Can yer point at it?" I mentally ask them. "Is it on the trolleh?" And I don't go away. I start to enjoy being annoying because it is sort of funny.

I keep up being Kimberley and asking them to point at it until they either give up, or answer my question or realise that oooooooooh... no, it's NOT on the trolleh. They CAN'T point at it. Like the effing Basic Payment Scheme Flat Rate.

I had a day like that at work today. Today I actually heard a Tech Designer say OUT LOUD to a developer, "Just because the agency doesn't have a status yet, that doesn't mean it has NO status."

Of course. It's obvious. No status is a status. But not having a status is not a status. The status is that it doesn't have a status, but that's not "no status". Don't you get it, developer?

The poor developer looked at us, horrified. 

I wanted to take him to one side and tell him about the trolleh.

So that was today. Which has nothing to do with my very handsome friend PunkyCat, here showing his love of books.

S.

* Except those named "Mad Dog" or "Saranna".

** BPS Flat Rate = BPS Budget for the financial year, divided by the estimated number of Entitlements allocated in the current financial year. Of course, someone has to first input the BPS Budget, and there was nowhere on the system to do that anywhere thank you so very much Arsey Analyst.***

*** Not that I'm bitter.