This has nothing to do with writing and is definitely a first world problem, but it’s something I see so often now, I’m going to complain.  Hey it’s my blog! 

Why do we need new and shiny all the time? Went to the grocery this weekend – not something I love but has to be done and I’m very familiar with my store so I can get in and out quickly and find what I need. Except this time.  Some corporate marketing wiz decided that everything needed to be rearranged. No doubt there were studies done and there is an excellent reason that laundry detergent needs to be closer to the frozen food rather than leaving the snack foods where they were.  And cookies should definitely be kept away from the breakfast foods – no doubt they battle at night when the lights go out. The problem is, these marketing wiz’s don’t seem to be out in the field very often.

On Thursday (discount day for the elderly) the store apparently had a flood of truly exhausted and frustrated patrons who couldn’t find what they wanted – things that they had been able to find easily before. Their trip went from twenty minutes to over an hour and some of them cannot take that.

It happens on my computer on nearly a daily basis. The refresh icon (which was changed from word to picture that means nothing to me) keeps being relocated on the screen. Now the calendar is hidden in a tic-tac-toe icon and I found out I was far from the only caller to the tech desk to find out what happened there. I’m sure these people need jobs and in order to be thought useful to their companies, they have to keep things changing (maybe so we can’t find them without their help – job security!) but why not develop a “classic” for those of us who don’t crave new and shiny on an hourly basis? See how many people use the classic over the “oooh! new” version and make a decision from that data.  Maybe even (gasp) ask the users what they want – not the high tech users, us worker bees who are just trying to get the job done.

I’ll eventually relearn my grocery store terrain and I switched to Mac to get away from Windows 8. I know I’m not their target consumer and they don’t really care what I think, but I do spend money and I’ll go with classic when I do…