Dear computer, please tell me why...

It might sound like a regular customer service rant.

Yesterday my wife and I went to a large supermarket near the house. Among other things we have bought three bottles of juice that had a special price, something like "take three and get 40% discount". I am not a great believer in discounts so naturally, when we approached the cashier, the only thing that really interested me was to make sure we get it.


As expected, once the purchase was complete, we found out that the computer did not give us the discount on the juice. I would be actually surprised if it did since the complexity of these, so called, discounts is just too large to be practical. It would take a supercomputer to track them all. Without going into technicalities let’s just say that Jurassic Park failed for the same reason.

Of course, we asked: “Why?”

Now, cashiers in those kind of places are caught in constant crossfire between bosses and customers. They have to enforce the random policies invented by the store managers and at the same time patiently explain them to the angry customers that argue with it. Of course the woman at the register did not know why the computer missed the discount in this particular case. She did not invent it and she did not program it into the system. What could she do?

It was at this point that the giant usability problem in this whole system became painfully obvious to me and the poor people stuck behind me in the line for whole ten minutes. This system was not designed to answer the question why? The cashier had nothing she could do with all this complex, full-of-colorful-buttons, vertical-shaky-touch-screen piece of junk. It was of no help at all. In fact, she had only two good old fashioned choices. She could either call the manager or get up and go across the floor to the shelf to see with her own eyes what was written on that bloody label.

Well, since it was never about the money, we closed the account as it is, right before the raging mob behind us managed to get hold of their lawyers. Later, I went to the store management and got my couple of dollars worth of discount back by proving them I was right and they were wrong and we went home happy, to sleep off the heavy headache.

Now we get to the point.

The point is that we were wrong. The very small letters on the discount label stated that it was for “some blah blah card holder only” and we didn’t have that specific blah blah card in the first place. So we were not actually supposed to get this discount and the computer was right after all. It just could not explain it to us, the cashier or the store manager. As a result we all have wasted lots of time and nerves because the computer could not answer the question why?

Deeper analysis of the situation shows that it is as simple as one, two, and three.

One. All these discounts, sales, cards, rules and policies are too complex for any man to grasp. They can only be upheld by complex dynamic computer systems like the one we have seen in that store.

Two. People dealing with these systems are tired cashiers with sore finger from touching the screen all day from one end and angry, suspicious customers, tired from constantly checking, arguing and eventually returning products that were not priced as they expected because they failed to read some small letters somewhere or made a mistake in some complex percent calculation on the other.

Three, and the most important. The system is not designed to explain its rules to the user. It can make a decision but it can’t explain why it made it.

Back in time, moment of sale, customer asks a question, the clerk pushes the “Why?” button, screen comes up. “Dear Sir, the discount for juice is for: 1. Card holders only 2. That bought over this amount 3. And wear a black tie. You were rejected for 1. not having a card. Please be more careful next time and have a nice day”. And if the customer does not believe it, it will show the exact scan of the label that appeared on that shelf so that the customer can be sure he talks about the same sale.

How cool would that be.

Have a nice day indeed.