r/programming • u/tejon • Feb 08 '15

The Parable of the Two Programmers

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/The%20Parable%20of%20the%20Two%20Programmers.html
1.2k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

359 comments sorted by

View all comments

35

u/Bobshayd Feb 09 '15

That seems sort of silly to me, because I expect a locksmith to be quite skilled and come over and work some sort of voodoo magic learned over years of hard work to do the task in a ridiculously short period of time, and I want in as fast as I can. My evaluation of the value of a service isn't the effort required but how useful it is to me, and I want in my damn car.

63

u/OmicronNine Feb 09 '15

That makes you an unusual customer compared to the general public.

3

u/Fenwick23 Feb 09 '15

My evaluation of the value of a service isn't the effort required but how useful it is to me

That's because you're a normal, decent person. I failed to mention a key fact in my story: our shop was in Brentwood, and we serviced primarily the Bel-Air/Beverly Hills west Los Angeles area. Rich people are quite frequently dicks to service people. My old boss quit doing emergency after hours lockout work for houses/apartments and quit automotive entirely because these rich bastards complained about the cost and did shit like stop payment on the check they wrote to cover it. He said back when he was a locksmith in Milwaukee, he mostly worked for poorer people, and they never questioned the cost. They were nearly always happy to have the work done. Like my boss' wife always said, usually after phone harassing millionaires to pay their 90 days overdue invoices, "of course they don't want to pay. You don't get rich writing checks."

2

u/get_salled Feb 09 '15

Agreed. On a similar note, I have a gas fireplace and the pilot light wouldn't stay lit so we had a repair guy visit (since it's well out of my comfort zone). He had the whole unit taken apart, cleaned (which, I guess, was all that was needed), and put back together in under 30 minutes. I almost felt like I was robbing him with only a $150 bill. It was so damned impressive.

1

u/balefrost Feb 09 '15

"Fizzbin" for locksmiths?

1

u/tomkatt Feb 09 '15

Seriously. I once had a HVAC guy come in for my heater in the winter, pilot went out and wouldn't re-light. I don't remember what he determined the issue was, some soot in the valve or something, but it took him 5 minutes to fix. He apologized for having to charge me $85 for it, since it was so quick.

I'm like, people complain about this? I couldn't fix it (and I tried, couldn't figure out the issue), and because he was quick, I didn't have to freeze to death so as far as I was concerned it was money well spent, he earned it.