Weathering the Broken Links

Do they really think that enumerating all sorts of stupid things you can do with gasoline is a deterrent to its misuse? Can any statisticians speak up as to whether these sorts of lists actually reduce frivolous civil lawsuits?

I rather think that the following list would have been perfectly acceptable and just as complete.

• For use as a motor fuel only…DUH!
• Yep, it’s a known carcinogen.  What, are you going to stop driving!?

Wow! I got a call from none other than Jerry Garcia. No, not from beyond the grave. Rather this Jerry Garcia, the CIO of Cardtronics.  I never told anyone at Cardtronics about my blog post.  I merely had described the problem to someone in a voice mail and asked for a callback.  Jerry found the blog post, associated it with my earlier phone call, and took the time to explain to me what happened.

It turns out that I was wrong when I surmised that there were no hotkeys/accelerators.

The screen does not indicate any sort of accelerator or hotkeys for automatically selecting one of the common withdrawal amounts

But I was right that they weren’t displayed on the screen.  According to Jerry, the ATM is equiped with some sort of radio transmitter that visually impaired people can tun into with a radio to get verbal directions.  If you were to be listening to what the ATM is saying when you get to the screen asking for the amount, you’d hear it saying to press the 5 key to withdraw $20.  And the keypad has tactile landmarks that allow a visually impaired person to locate the proper keys.

Further, Jerry indiciated that they’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to accomodate those with disabilities and given the hardware available on the particular ATM model, this was deemed to be the best design.  As I was a little caught off guard with the call and the information on accessibility, I wasn’t able to offer any suggestions for alternatives.  It seems most of the obvious ones add burdens for the visually impaired.

But as I type this up, I wonder if it might be good for Cardtronics to try and add two things to the displayed screen:

1. a message explaining that there are Numbered hotkeys for each of the dollar amounts
2. the number for each amount displayed in a small font or icon next to each dollar amount

In effect, it wouldn’t prevent someone from fat fingering the ATM and selecting the wrong amount.  But it would, give those of us blessed with good vision an indication that the numeric keypad below the screen is expecting input that may affect our transaction.  I don’t know if this is possible with that model of ATM and I’m aware of some of the perils of cluttering the screen with extra information that may not be obvious to your average user.  However, I think it would reduce the liklihood that others get bit by my mistake, and it might even raise awareness that there are disable people with special needs.

Mr. Garcia: thank you for your top notch response to a customer gripe.  Now that I understand what happened, I can accept the design issue…nothing can be perfect and compromises often win out.  I hope that it can be improved at some point and I’ll continue to use your machine; it is so convenient.

A few weeks ago I had a birthday. I sort of knew it was coming, but then completely forgot about it. I was almost caught flat-footed with no gift to give to myself. But thankfully livejournal’s automated systems gave me a timely reminder.

Thank goodness, embarrassment averted.

* No…I’m not actually Joe Smith.  I’ve [poorly] photoshopped in the name to protect the not so innocent.  Please don’t email that poor guy with the email address joesmith@gmail.com.

UPDATE:

In the spirit of doing something about issues rather than just venting, I submitted a support request.  And the fine support folks at livejournal, very quickly informed me that:

“You have added yourself to your friend’s list, so when the system goes to send out the birthday notifications to your friends, it sends one to you too.”

It’s certainly a very good answer.  But it does beg the questions:

• Why does their friend system allow me to be my own friend?
• Still, why won’t their automated systems recognize that it’s sending this notification to yourself?

Oh, I remember.  It’s software and, while it’s easy to develop for the common/average case, coding for the exceptions is troublesome.

I was at urgent care this weekend for a broken digit.  While waiting for my x-rays to be checked, I spotted a pile of some vaguely familiar instruments heaped haphazardly on a wheeled cart.  Lo and behold a pile of vaginal specula (speculums for those who never studied Latin)!

Not being a woman I found it a little exciting.  But then I noticed what else was on this cart, and got sort of turned back off: cleaning supplies. Latex/nitrile gloves and antiseptic hand cleaner, OK.  Windex and floor cleaner, not OK.

Further, were those specula waiting to be used?  Or were they recently used, cleaned, and waiting to be autoclaved somewhere?  Either way, another turnoff.

Okay. They must not have a good place to store everything.  But it seemed that putting this stuff on a cart and leaving on display it in an area where patients hang out is not the brightest thing to do.

We all know that there’s stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we just don’t really want to know about…you know, the stuff the minimum wage burger flippers are doing way in the back.  My advice is to keep this stuff out of the customer’s view.  Roll that cart of oddly mixed stuff back into a closet somewhere please.