Someone gives you a bug. "The light in the conference room on the 26th floor is on. It needs to be off."
A note on the bug says, “This will take you like 5 minutes. It's just flipping a switch."
You go to the conference room on 26. The light is on, but there's no light switch in the room.
So you prepare to install one. But the designer says it would ruin the room’s aesthetic. Plus, the walls are concrete. With the proper tools, you could install the switch. But no one will approve the purchase of the proper tools. Without the proper tools it will take two days. And they want it done now, because they're afraid that any minute the CEO might decide to go to the 26th floor and happen to walk by the conference room and ask why the hell that light is on.
And now you're getting emails asking why the light isn't off yet.
So now you have to stop and send a group email to explain the situation, and several people start up a panicked email chain.
You know if you wait for the problem to be resolved by anyone discussing it in the email chain, it won’t get fixed. The bug has your name on it, and it's dated today, so you're the one in trouble if it isn't resolved. So you go up into the hallway ceiling on 26, find the wires leading to the light, cut and cap them. Finally. Problem solved.
In order to quell the panic in the email thread, you report back how you solved the issue.
You don’t hear anything for a while. When you do, everyone is concerned that now the light can’t be turned on and off. What if the CEO wants to have a meeting in there? So here’s what they ask you to do: They want you to run wires from the light down into the basement. When someone needs the light to be on or off, they’ll contact you, and have you run to the basement and either connect or disconnect the wires.
You protest the ridiculousness of this solution. Your boss says, “Yeah, I know it’s not ideal. But it’s the only solution we have right now."
At this point you realize you have a choice. You could do this. Or you could quit in protest, and find another job. But you realize that once you start that new job, they’re likely to ask you to do something just as idiotic, if not more so.
So you go run the wires from floor 26 down to the basement. When you get to the basement, you see dozens of wires hanging out of the walls, from all the people who have had to do this exact same thing before. (So that’s where the idea came from.) You set up the wires and label them as best you can, with a short apology to whoever has to deal with this next.
When you get back to your desk, you have a message. QA has reopened the bug. It says, “I see light."
You head back up to the conference room on 26. The light is off. You go back to your desk and close the bug, reporting that you checked on it in person.
QA reopens the bug again. “Room still lit” it says. After looking at the unlit bulb one more time, you tell your boss, who suggests you go back down to the basement and check the wires. You protest that you are looking at the light right now and it’s off. “I know, but this way you can tell QA you checked out absolutely everything."
So you sigh and head to the basement. Sure enough, the wires are not connected. The ends are capped. They are not resting on anything that could conduct electricity.
You report back to QA that you checked the wires, which are not connected, and that you looked at the bulb, which was unlit.
“I didn’t mean the bulb,” says QA. “The bug is about light in the room. There’s still too much light. Shouldn’t you close the blinds?"
You respond that the blinds don’t fall under your control, and that the bug specifies the light being turned off.
Not believing you, QA sends out a group email asking if the blinds are covered by the bug.
Some time passes before you hear from anyone. Finally someone from the email chain calls you.
“Theoretically,” they ask, “could someone participating in a meeting in the conference room on 26 open or close the blinds by themselves if it was too bright or too dark?"
Yes they could, you reply.
“Like, an ordinary person? They wouldn’t need you to do it?"
Yes, an ordinary person. No, they wouldn’t need you. Anyone can do it.
“Great. Excellent. Then we’ll leave that for now. I’ll schedule a stand-up meeting about the blinds issue."
So the bug is closed. Now, the CEO, possibly having caught wind of all the discussion and furtive activity surrounding the conference room on 26, wants to have a meeting there. You get several panicked emails that they need the light on.
You go to the basement, connect the wires, and return to your desk, to find 32 new messages in your inbox. “Something’s wrong—the light’s not on!” “There’s a problem — no light!” “Are you getting these emails?” and so on.
The 32nd email says, “Nevermind—the light’s on."
This process is repeated more or less exactly when it’s time to turn the light off again.
But if there’s any good news, it’s this: after the meeting, everyone forgets that there even is a conference room on 26, so you never have to do anything about it again.