You know how the guy in your linked video at one point comes back with the exact same spoon as has already been presented? Well, you might want to check post #21.
This is one of my dream jobs.
/driveby
Do you have legal recourse in a case like this? (Is it just not worth the time?)
You can sue. An iron-clad contract is needed that clearly specifies how much you will get paid whether or not the client accepts your work. Otherwise you will face a judge and potentially a jury that don’t understand why you can’t draw 7 red lines perpendicular to each other in transparent green ink, in the form of a kitten.
Exactly. In my map example above, I finally got the guy to tell me why he had to have the things he needed and I was able to provide a solution. It was still annoying though since the guy in question still acted like it was my fault that he didn’t know what he wanted.
And then once you’ve won a favorable judgment after months of depositions and negotiations and arbitration and whatnot, you have to collect. From some asshole client who moves his base of operations and changes his incorporation every six months to stay ahead of his creditors while pursuing his ill-informed, idiotic “dream” of providing a product that doesn’t work to people who don’t want it.
Some people are just dumbasses.
Stranger
Very funny and not far off from reality. People who know very little always seem to think they know more than the expert in the field. I had one woman insist that a new roof for the Consulate in Frankfurt couldn’t possibly cost $100K because she had just roofed her house and it was only $10K. Nothing could convince her otherwise.
My boss insisted that we could renovate an entire floor of an embassy in two weeks. No matter how I tried to illustrate that it was a three month job, he could not be swayed. On top of which, he told everyone at the embassy that we would be out of there in two weeks. Lots of pissed off people all along the way.
I took over as quality control manager for a large hangar project and was told that it was already three months behind because of a bust in the steel measurements, and the consequent reorder. First meeting with Army Corps of Engineers: so how do you plan to make up the time? Me: ??? ACE: How are you going to make up the three months? Do you have schedule drawn up yet? Me: WTF? ACE: Do you understand the question? Me: I understand the words you’re using, but they don’t make any sense. The steel production went to the back of the line and won’t be here until it’s completed. While there can be some economies, you can’t buy back three months, no matter what you do. ACE: Well, you’ll have to hire on more workers. It went on in that vein for some time and they never did (or refused to) understand that some things just can’t be done.
Honest to god, people can be so fucking obtuse.
Yea, that sounds nice, but watch out for the two Bobs:
That video pretty uncannily sums up my professional life. 
This is a 3rd quarter request - just before release of the beta.
And why, pray tell, did you not bring out this little gem in the “how to have light travel faster than C” thread?
My new favourite saying! Thanks Chronos!
BTW, the incompetent are fundamentally incapable of knowing that they are incompetent. I proclaim thisDunning’s Law
Meanwhile, this video has me thinking in two different directions: First, I’m trying to figure out a way to meet the client’s nonsensical requirements, as stated. And second, I’m also trying to figure out what questions I can ask the client to determine their real requirements, without cutting off the conversation.
The best I’ve come up with so far is “How would these red lines interface with the rest of your components? I want to make sure my work doesn’t introduce any incompatibilities”.
Indeed, I find that clients are frequently unable to separate a requirement from a conclusion. Instead of expressing the requirement, they express whatever conclusion has popped into their heads. They want the team to implement the conclusion, rather than solve for the requirement.
Yep, that is a large portion of my job, that I am much better at now that I am older. Once you get the “requirements” that make no sense, you smile, and nod, turn into a cartoon psychologist(“why do you think you need 7 kittenish lines”), delving through BS until you get to the deepest bowels of what is driving the “need”. Then you rebuild the whole damn thing.
In my defence, I did a quick search and couldn’t find any refeerence to it being formalized. Ignorance Fought, and Thank You!
And I was only late by roughly 14 years, so considering I was answering zombie threads earlier this week from the same era I can only conclude that SDMB is causing me some kind of mental temporal disturbance.
I agree. This clip is now circulating around my workplace. The engineers and software architects are already devising creative solutions to the client’s problem. So far:
*Accelerating some of the blue lines to red-shift them.
*Drawling the lines in 7-dimensional space.
*Drawing 2 dimensional kittens, such that they appear as lines from certain angles.
Post #22.