State prisons, stiletto heels and PCs with foot pedals. There are just some things that even the most experienced IT Manager cannot anticipate. Welcome to the "blooper zone."
A few years ago, Rodney West was a Manager of workstation roll-outs for a consulting company. In this specific case, he was in charge of the daunting roll-out of an electronic medical records system to the state's 37 prison medical clinics including the implementation of workstations.
In the extremely rural prison locations he had the workstations un-packed and installed by the local staff. As is to be expected, some of the staff were highly computer illiterate. However, Rodney assumed the users could at least point, click and type. In addition, he had setup a temporary call center to get over the typical hurdles associated with a roll-out and implementation of this nature.
Sounds like a well-planned, well-prepared roll-out, right? Well, there are just some things that even the most experienced IT Manager cannot anticipate. This is where we enter the blooper zone ... Cue the Twilight Zone theme once again as we dive in!
Rodney visited the call-center one day to get an idea of some of the problems that were coming in. This is when he received THE call that would have the team talking for a long time afterwards. When Rodney picked up the phone, an aggravated female voice rang out into his ear complaining about her new PCs foot pedal.
"How am I supposed to use this 'thang' when the cord sticks out in front and it keeps 'gettin' wrapped around my stiletto heels?" she said. "Besides, it won't stay still and keeps 'slidin' around and them little buttons are too small for my feet, but I can 'hit'em' when I take off my shoes and use my toes!"
Baffled by this complaint and unable to even fathom what she was talking about, Rodney asked the nurse to please describe this 'thang' that was causing her problems. So she went on to describe her foot pedal.
"Well its kind of rectangle, has two buttons on top and some kind of rubber ball inside it, and the cord sticks out in front of the buttons." It was then that light dawned on Marblehead... Rodney asked her who had placed this piece of equipment on the floor.
Her response: "I don't rightly know? I just found it 'thata' way and commenced to 'usin' it." Rodney took a deep, deep breath and replied: "Ma'am, that isn't a foot pedal." 2 seconds of silence followed as he composed himself. "It is called a 'mouse' and is supposed to be used on the desk surface right next to the keyboard."
The genius that unpacked and set up the computer had put the mouse on the floor as a foot pedal. Needless to say, the company paying for all this had skimped on the user training prior to roll-out.
Conclusion: Buy computers with automatic transmission for the technically unsavvy.
