Latest ‘upgrade’ is latest threat to office productivity

A hammer.

That’s what I’d use.

Only as an example, mind you.

But it’d be a hammer.

You see, we just replaced our computers at work. The old ones (if that term can be applied to something purchased less than two years ago) were starting to misbehave and, rather than spend endless hours looking for "support" from some cubicle colony halfway around the world, we bought new ones.

Unfortunately, the new ones came with "upgraded" versions of the programs we’d been using for years.

I think of "upgraded" programs in the same way I think of those "New and Improved" products advertised on television. That is, I approach them the way I’d approach a rattlesnake with infected gums — carefully and with a huge dose of skepticism about it "helping" me.

So, it’d be a hammer. And I’d set up a training program at every software company in the world.

Then, about once a month, I’d round up all of the programmers and take them into a room. There, I’d show them that hammer.

"See this?" I’d ask. "It’s a hammer. Been around forever. Everyone knows how to make it work. Even if you were an alien from another planet — like, say, Michael Jackson or Sean Penn — you could look at one for a minute and figure it out."

"Ninety-nine out of every hundred people on Earth are happy with hammers just as they are. They don’t need one that hooks to a compressor and can punch nails through a tank. They don’t need one that has the magazine capacity of a Gatling gun. And they don’t need one that has more than one moving part — that being the arm it’s attached to when being used."

"In other words, it’s intuitive. It does what it’s designed to do and does it well. A newer version, say ‘Hammer 2.0’ might have a better grip or be made from stronger metal, but it’d still be designed to basically drive a nail into a piece of wood."

And we’d repeat this training every month. Without fail. Rain or shine. Over and over. Until they understood.

What brought all this on was our "upgraded" software.

Our old version had a simple fax program. If you wanted to send one, you pointed to an icon that said "Fax." (Note: The guy who designed this version has probably been fired.)

The program then told you to place your document in the scanner. Then, you clicked on a tab that said "Scan." When the scanner finished, a little screen appeared in the middle of your monitor asking "Would you like to scan more pages? Yes/No."

You answered, entered an address, hit "Send," and away it went.

I loved that program as I love the Lord.

Cometh the "upgraded" version.

Gone is the neat little "Fax" icon. Instead, when you start the program, you get a screen with three major divisions, two tool bars, and a gazillion tabs and pull-down menus.

Once (if ever) you’ve figured out how to scan your document, the program sits there — apparently in a sort of quasi-Zen mode — waiting for you to do something. Gone is the little box asking if you have more pages to scan. And what was once a two- or three-step process is now a 13-click minefield to be gingerly negotiated.

I won’t even go into our bookkeeping software. Think of the older version as being a simple bow. The "upgrade" is the Gordian Knot and you have no ax.

So, it’d be a hammer.

As an example of a tool that does what it’s designed to do and does it well. That seldom breaks and can be understood by everyone who uses it. That will forever be appreciated for its simplicity.

And I’d tell the software folks to design day-to-day programs the same way.

To be easy to use, intuitive and useful.

And then I’d tell them to leave those programs alone — or else!

Because as Marshal of the Soviet Army Georgy Zhukov once put it, "Better is the enemy of good enough." This was during WWII when he was taking tanks right off the assembly line and rushing them into battle without paint, serial numbers, or any other "upgrades."

By doing so, he kept the Germans out of Moscow and helped win the war.

Reading about Marshal Zhukov, I like to believe that he probably had folks shot if they "improved" anything to the point where it no longer worked like it used to or was more trouble than the earlier version.

I think I love him for that.

Larry Simoneaux is a freelance writer living in Edmonds. Comments can be set to: larrysim@att.net.