This is a new phenomina to me. I had always known that people skip-read through things, and don't necessarily read in any depth something that they are reading because they have to, rather than because they want to, but I had always believed that even if something is skip-read, it could not be too badly mis-interpreted.
How wrong I was. The afforementioned heavily-over-budget project that I am currently involved in is a case in point. All communication with the "client" is done electronically, so there is generally an audit trail (or should that be trail-of-destruction?) to follow. The current argument I am having with the client is well documented, and absolutely unbelievable.
A little background information: the "bit of kit" that we are providing requires compressed air. We provide a compressor for that. In this case the client had decided that they wished to have an "all singing all dancing" compressor. Not content with a single-head air compressor, they determined that they needed a double-head compressor. Not just a twin-piston compressor, but two completely independent compressor heads, feeding one reservoir. Now this is where it gets a little more techy.... the arrangement we have on this twin-head compressor is called Duty/Duty, which means that both compressor heads turn on and off at the same time. An alternative (and common) arrangement is Duty/Standby, whereby the duty compressor works most of the time, and the standby head works only if the duty head cannot keep up with demand, or if it breaks or similar. Duty/Duty is simpler, as Duty/Standby requires some form of additional sensor/switch for the standby head to be independently energiesed.
All good so far.
As part of the customers list of "shit they expect us to do for free", one of the items was to provide a means of detecting if the teeny-tiny little foam air filter on the inlet to these compressors had blocked. Now, this is a fairly ridiculous thing to ask for, as any fool would know that these air filters never block solid, and they are just a means of keeping crap out of the compressor head, nothing more. The very idea of them blocking is somewhat ridiculous, and to be able to detect that is even more absurd. A while back we responded to the customer along the lines of "you'll never measure anything to do with these filters." The following conversation went something along the lines of:
Cust: "we want to detect if a filter is blocked to initiate a duty/standby changeover"
Supplier "You'll never detect it. Just check them every month. Also, it's Duty/Duty, not Duty/Standby.
Cust: "If we cannot detect a blocked filter, how will we initiate a Duty/Standby changeover?"
Supplier: "It's Duty/Duty, not Duty/Standby, so no changeovers. Just check the filters regularly.
Cust: "How will the Standby head operate then?"
Supplier: "It's NOT a Standby head, the unit is Duty/Duty"
Cust: "but how can we detect a blocked filter?"
Supplier: "open the damn cabinet and look at it."
Cust: "so how does that change the unit over to the standby head?"
Supplier: "there is no F*****g Standby head, it's a Duty/Duty unit."
Cust: "If there is no standby unit, how will we have redundancy?"
Supplier: "the Duty/Duty heads are individually redundant. If either fails, the other continues.
Cust: "So how does that initiate a Duty/Standby changeover?"
Supplier: "Dear customer. You are an idiot."
And so the long day continues.
Four Grand and about 3 solid days work this stupid compressor has caused me so far. It supplies about 30 Cu ft FAD per day, and a £99 cheap-'n'-nasty compressor from the market would be just as fit-for-purpose. Unbelievable.
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