'Devoted' graphic designer refuses to take accountability for botched project, declaring: 'It's the customers who are at fault, not the design'

Author image for Sienna Varady
Sienna Varady
Feb 13, 2024 1:00 PM EST

Working in graphic design means paying close attention to numerous small elements that come together to form a polished result. The manager in the story below is in complete shock. As a BigCo, OP is in charge of a few dozen agents. For quite some time, OP had been in need of a skilled graphic designer; therefore, when an opportunity arose and a qualified candidate was found, OP quickly hired her.

As a modest thank you for joining the company, OP provided the new graphic designer with access to fifteen computer screens and two enormous monitors. Naturally, none of this was necessary to complete the task at hand, but the company felt generous. Nevertheless, their goodwill and enthusiasm for the newest member quickly faded when the new graphic designer committed an awful misstep! Let's just say that, without giving too much away, OP came up with the ideal plan to exact revenge on the designer and settle the score!

Having said that, read the story below to find out how the new graphic designer made a mistake, how she strongly objects to taking the blame, and, well, how OP settles the score in the most amusing way imaginable! When you're done, don't forget to check out the story about the chief navigator's new phone policy that backfired after one soldier played the system!

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  • 01
    ONION "It was not my fault, so it's not my problem..."
    via Canva
  • 02
    It looks perfect on my monitor. Ok, I can work with that.
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 03
    Working at BigCo with lots of agents in the field. Agents had pretty decent 15" laptops to work with customers in the field. New project comes up to give the field people some better tools. Project owner and the other stakeholders haven't been pleased
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 04
    with the way the old apps work. "Looks like it was scraped from a 3270 terminal" (pretty close, but well before my time). They make sure I hire a "real graphics designer" to develop the GUI. Fine, I can do that.
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 05
    Interviews, offers made, designer arrives. Suze is nice, programming team is excited to start, looks all good. As a gesture of "welcome to our IT group" get her the developer setup. souped up 15" laptop, docking station, two big monitors. Developers like it, they get to put
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 06
    windows all over the place, life is good. Suze seems to be happy. Pretty soon her, the lead developer and the business liaison go to make a great GUI experience. Time passes and I check in with the PM. "Going ok, on schedule, and we
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 07
    have the GUI walk through in the morning". Super, I ask about how that's going to work. "Built a mock up as static web pages, they can just click through the pages. Dev team gave some fake data for the drop downs." Sounds like it's under
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 08
    control, I go off to see what fires may be getting started elsewhere. Next day come back from my last meeting of the afternoon. Email box is showing full red alert (Lotus Notes unread emails) and my message
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 09
    light is on my desk phone. Before I can mouse click my way into the mess, my boss comes into my office. "Kilted, what exactly happened in the demo today?" "No I idea <PM> says it was all set, business liaison was good, I had
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 10
    other priority ones so I skipped it." "Poor move, get on top of the disaster NOW". Find PM, Business liaison, Suze and started asking questions. Demo in the conference room went fine. They sent the link out to the field
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 11
    people to look at. Field people had some issues. "Like what?" "Well a few said it was completely unusable" said Suze. She turns, pulls up a browser window on one of her big monitors. "This is it, a very nice clear GUI."
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 12
    It looked a little busy to me, lots of boxes on one page. "Hey can you drag that down to your laptop screen?" Yep looks pretty crowded now that it's 1/3 size. "Suze, it looks a little tight". "Yes, but it looks perfect on my monitor"
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 13
    as she slides it back to the big monitor. "People in the field have 15" screens." "Well we should get them bigger ones, it looks perfect here, and I'm the GUI expert." Sigh. Second sigh. Tell the PM to meet me in my office, tell the others to go home.
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 14
    Long unhappy conversation with PM, much arm waving, etc. May have use the F word a few times. Maybe a few times in the same sentence. Bottom line was going to be hard to move Suze from the "works perfect on my monitor".
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 15
    Next day, Suze comes storming into my office "What the f ketyf ck happened to my f king monitors some f kwad f king stole them that f ker." breath "And they left a f king note, what the f k does "Eat the Dog Food" f king mean."
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 16
    Wow. She could be management material. "Oh, that is a phase we use, "Eat our own dog food. Every time we build a new system that has user impact we are the first users. So when it's bad we get to see it first."
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 17
    Suze yells "What does that mean to me!?!" No f words. Maybe not management material. It means that your users have 15" screens, you had a giant screen and kept going "it looks perfect on your monitor. Now you have 15" screens
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 18
    to see what they see. Ya know, eat the dog food." Suze sighed and walked away. Four days later the revised GUI demo went very well and she got her monitors back.
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 19
    (Monitors was from the IT storage area, they were happy to get rid of two of the old monitors, unamused when they came back)
    via u/kiltedturtle
  • 20
    CoderJoel 1 day ago Reminds me of being a freelance web dev in the mid 90's. Customer complained about the images on their website that they supplied. I drove to their office, they pulled up the website and the images looked fine.
    via u/CoderJoel1
  • 21
    Several small discussions later I learned the complaint originated with one of the VP's admins. She had an old monitor and PC. It either didn't support or was configured for 16 bit graphics so the images looked bad. So did most any other image from any other website.
    via u/CoderJoel1
  • 22
    Z4-Driver 1 day ago Seems that in the project description the 'must work on a 15" screen' was missing.
    via u/Z4-Driver
  • 23
    kirby_422 1 day ago I'm not a UI person at all, and even I would make sure things display in a usable fashion at at least 720p, and possibly a phone. I find it kind of hard to believe a dedicated UI person wouldn't be testing wrapping, scaling, etc.
    via u/kirby_422
  • 24
    witchy_crochet - 1 day ago I think eat the dog food is my new way of problem solving when the problem creator doesn't see the problem.
    via u/witchy_crochet
  • 25
    notme8907 1 day ago OMG! I work in graphics (mostly packaging) I have the opposite problem trying to convince marketing that they can not judge the graphics by looking at it on their screens. They need to print it out to see what it's going to look like at that 100% size.
    via u/notme8907
  • 26
    (In the case of web graphics- Please don't zoom in and ask me to add a paragraph of text to a banner that is 320 pixels by 50 pixels.)
    via u/notme8907
  • 27
    nekkema · 1 day ago Suze sounds pretty stupid if she could not understand the obvious issue, she should have been fired
    via u/nekkema
  • 28
    Onk Academic_Nectarine94. 1 day ago I was thinking the same thing. But, if she learned her lesson, maybe she'll make a decent manager later (though I doubt it. She's
    via u/Academic_Nectarine94
  • 29
    already in the "I'm an expert" and "looks good from where I sit" bandwagon...)
    via u/Academic_Nectarine94

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