When Technology Fails

As I entered I was astounded to see The Effective Detective quietly laughing. I could not allow this rare occurrence to go without some comment.

“Sir, are you feeling alright?” I asked

“Eh? Watson, what would cause you to ask such a question?” The Detective replied to my question with another question.

“I rarely see you in such a jovial mood. I deduced there must be something strange afoot,” I answered his question directly, albeit with a slight smile on my face.

“I see Watson. You are mocking me. No matter. Watson, are you familiar with the concept of personalization in email?” The Detective, still smiling, shot back.

“Of course sir. It is similar to using the mail merge function of Microsoft Word to include contact information in the subject and or content of the email. For example first name. It is designed to make the email more personal and friendly. However, I fail to see anything humorous in that choice of email tactics,” I replied, now feeling a bit puzzled.

“Correct Watson, there is nothing inherently humorous in the use of personalization. Where the humor enters is when the technology used to implement it occasionally goes south,” answered The Detective, who actually seemed to be stifling a laugh.

“Sorry, sir. I am still not following.”

“Observe Watson,” The Detective said as he repositioned his laptop so I could see the screen. “Check out the salutation on the first message.”

“‘Hey blank field’,” I read. “What the blazes?”

“And this one Watson?” The Detective opened another message.

“#FName# you need to check this out!” Now I began laughing.

“Precisely Watson, technology is often hailed as a panacea to all of a business’s marketing woes, but sometimes, the technology fails, and at least in these cases, hilarity ensues,” The Detective, still smiling began his explanation. “There is of course a dark side to this too. A member of your list could assume your technology’s failure is yours as well and abandon you as a potential vendor. However I feel that most would react as I did, with laughter and a shared sense of the risks of completely relying on technology,” The Detective took his customary pause to allow me to interject my thoughts.

“Shouldn’t they report it as a bug to the software manufacturer sir?” I asked, unsure of my mentor’s lackadaisical attitude to the problem.

“Rubbish, Watson. You have no idea if this was truly the software’s error. The data might have been coded incorrectly, who knows? Why would you waste your time and the vendor’s time on chasing down a ghost. Of course there will be some literal-minded jerks out there who believes that even such a minor issue that could have happened for multiple reasons, is a reflection on the  competence of the creator. If we all reacted like that, we would never get anything out the door, we would be obsessing over the table alignment on a page until the wee hours of the morn, and never launching. No thank you,” The Detective looked at me expectantly to deliver the closing observation.

“So you are saying it is OK to laugh, but not OK to judge, criticise or obsess over it. Just let it go, and understand that the best of us or even machines cannot avoid all mistakes. Who knows, it might even make you seem more human,” I replied after a few seconds of contemplation.

“Excellent Watson! Lets move on to less humorous work, shall we?” exclaimed The Detective, ending the conversation.