Many many years ago,
back in the days when Microsoft's email address had exclamation points,
an internal tool was developed to permit Microsoft
employees to view and update their Benefits information from the comfort
of their very own offices.
Welcome to the paperless office!

One of my friends noticed an odd sentence in the instructions for
using the tool:
"Before running the program, make sure you are logged onto your email server."

"That's strange," my friend thought.
"Why does it matter that you're logged onto your email server?
This tool doesn't use email."

Since my friend happened at the time to be a tester for Microsoft's
email product, he tried a little experiment.
He created a brand new email server on one of his test machines
and created an account on it called billg.
He then signed onto that email server and then ran the tool.

Welcome, Bill Gates. Here are your current Benefits selections...

"Uh-oh," my friend thought.
"This is a pretty bad security hole."
The tool apparently performed authentication by asking your email server,
"Hey, who are you logged in as?"
The answer that came back was assumed to be an accurate representation
of the user who is running the tool.
The back-end server itself was not secured at all; it relied on the
client application to do the security checks.

My friend sent email to the vice president of Human Resources informing
him of this problem.
"You need to shut down this tool immediately.
I have found a security hole that allows anybody to see anybody else's
Benefits information."

The response from the vice president of Human Resources was calm
and reassuring.
"My developers tell me that the tool is secure.
Just enjoy the convenience of updating your Benefits information
electronically."

Frustrated by this, my friend decided to create another account on his
test email server, namely one corresponding to the vice president of
Human Resources.
He then sent the vice president another email message.

"Please reconsider your previous decision.
Your base salary is $xxx and
your wife's name is Yyyy.
Would you like me to remind you one week before your son's tenth birthday?
It's coming up next month."

A reply was quickly received.
"We're looking into this."

Shortly thereafter, the tool was taken offline "for maintenance."

Bonus reading:

JenK shares her experience with the same incident.

It seems that the United States has gone satisfaction survey mad.
You get your oil changed,
they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey.
You make a doctor's appointment,
they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey.
You call the company technical support phone line,
they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey.

These surveys typically ask you to rate how well various aspects
of the interaction went,
be it how easy it was to make the appointment,
how knowledgeable the person who helped you was,
how long you had to wait,
whether the music in the waiting room was soothing,
and
what really bothers me is that all of these satisfaction surveys
are striving to score "exceeds expectations" on every question.

Um, if you are exceeding all expectations, then people will
adjust their expectations so that what was previously
"exceeding expectations" is now just "meeting expectations".
In other words,
the only way to
consistently exceed expectations
is to intentionally set low expectations.
I think these people look to

Lake Wobegon as their ideal town,
because "all the children are above average".

Sometimes I try to explain this on the satisfaction survey.
One such survey asked, "How can we improve our performance
from 'somewhat satisfied' to 'extremely satisfied'?"
I replied,

Manufacture some sort of artificial disaster,
let everyone know about the fake disaster,
keep them up to date with hourly fake status reports,
and then "resolve" the problem three hours later,
thereby making people think you're really awesome.

Another time, I simply responded,

I am satisfied with "somewhat satisfied".

Bonus chatter:
One time, I was told by the person assisting me that I would receive
a satisfaction survey in the mail and that
"the only thing they look at is whether you rated something exceeded
expectations or not. All the other ratings are meaningless."

Of course, all management is doing is devaluing the meaning of
"exceeds expectations."
Now, when somebody actually exceeds expectations, you have no way of
saying "This really did exceed my expectations;
it's not just one of those
perfunctory exceeds expectations that everybody is required to give."
I wonder if they will just

go one higher and create a category called
significantly exceeded expectations.
Of course, the natural next step
is to require all customer service representatives to
meet this new level of service.
Merely exceeding expectations won't be good enough any more.

Fake Steve Jobs
put on the map
the wonderful insanity of the fake celebrity blog.
(I'm sure there were others before Fake Steve Jobs,
but that's the one that made it cool and hip.)
Copycats sprung up, from

Fake Steve Ballmer
to

Mock Mark Cuban,
but none of them really had the staying power of good old Fake Steve Jobs.

(movie trailer voice) Until now.

Introducing
Walt Mosspuppet,
a fake video blog starring a puppet version of the technology reporter.


Walt Mossberg reviews Snow Leopard


Walt Mossberg's Guide to Surviving Windows 7


Walt Mossberg: "I am Responsible for Apple's Success"

I love this guy.

Sure, your company don't have an office, but that's okay.

You can rent a fake one,
with a fake receptionist, fake staff, and fake conference rooms,
and whenever somebody stops by asking for you,
the receptionist is trained to say that you're "out".