Sounds like stateless customer service, the ultimate result of applying functional programming principles to running a hotel.
Letters about Soap (1997)
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#32I've taken to the habit of just taking all the toiletries and dropping them in my bag because I bring my own. It's not worth arguing with them, and incidents like this are unfortunately commonplace (as a regular traveler, I attest). The hotel toiletries I end up using for future travels, it's not that I have any issue with them, but rather that I don't always stay in hotels so I always keep my own toiletries.
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#33This reads like a dev happy with their single server when the kubernetes toting new devops hire shows up.
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#34I assume this guy did not want to bin the unused superfluous soap because that would be wasteful. I would feel the same way. Nowadays there is a no-pro that recycles the hotel soaps: https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-...
Great read! thanks for sharing but I have to ask, what is a "no-pro"?
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#35This is an excellent addition to HN and I hope that devs and product managers alike see what happens when everyone tries to do as little as possible without taking the time to understand the bigger picture or even the underlying problem. This could have been solved so simply at any step of the journey.
Hiliariously, my PM brain that can never be at-rest was thinking about how this whole interaction could be improved. Hampered, of course, that this was dated in 1997–now hotels have magical things like in-room tablets.
That's a huge problem. This situation is not something that requires "improvement". It's a well defined, easy to implement, no frills request. And which is particularly tried hard not to be delivered. Any of the parties which are to provide the solution do not use one modicum of brain to solve this. They ignore clear and concise communications and try to play dumb and by the book. Which was the all ask. “Don't play by the book, ignore this part which I particularly don't need“.
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#36Flashbacks of most long support threads I've been on... > Hi I'm $insertNewName and I'll be taking over your case. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Despite 10 other interactions suggesting the same thing :facepalm: That and just finding whatever support article comes up when they stuff a few keywords into their search, no matter that the same document has been linked multiple times before in the thread.
exactly what I thought reading this .
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#37At least things didn't completely escalate. Tangentially, these exchanges reminded me of "Computers Don't Argue":
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#38Part of me thinks this was faked/exaggerated at the time, except... Once on Amazon, I ordered an open tent. Basically, it is just an aluminum frame, 12 feet×12, 8 feet high, with canvas, to keep the sun off when presenting things at outdoor events. The one I received took 5 weeks to arrive, and was supposed to be new. But it was used, with scruff marks on the posts. I sent pics, and said "Hey, this is supposed to be…
My back-and-forth with support wasn't as funny as these, but I had the same thing happen with a subscription to the print edition of Computer Music Magazine in 2019/2020.
It took them over 4 months to ship my first issue. With magazines you usually get the issue for the month after you subscribe, so I waited 6 weeks before emailing support. They told me it should have been sent, they would send a replacement. Repeat this every month-ish and after the 3rd try I gave up.
About a month after my last contact I got 4 copies of the April issue. A month later I got 4 copies of the May issue. And so on for the next year. Rather than ship me a new December (or whenever it started) issue, they just kept giving my account a new subscription and calling it a day.
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#39I assume this guy did not want to bin the unused superfluous soap because that would be wasteful. I would feel the same way. Nowadays there is a no-pro that recycles the hotel soaps: https://thehustle.co/the-surprising-afterlife-of-used-hotel-...
Great read! thanks for sharing but I have to ask, what is a "no-pro"?
I presume it means non profit.
Re: Letters about Soap (1997)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I clicked on it expecting effusive praise of SOAP. Disappointed to find it's still only me, there must be tens of us who like it.
My company has been scaling its way into the realm where the use-cases for things like workload managers and enterprise service busses are just starting to make sense to me. Can you ELI5 the (presumably very enterprise-y) niche where SOAP really shines, above-and-beyond just building regular REST APIs with OpenAPI schemas?
I'll be honest I've never really considered the various drawbacks and benefits against other solutions. It's just something I occasionally run into in a legacy context where I need to integrate to get unblocked.
I think not having used it to any real extent I've not run into the parts people hate. I just get an automatically generated client library that can be treated like normal method calls, more or less.
But I've also not had the opportunity to work with OpenAPI stuff so I'm not sure what the current state of the art there looks like