Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo
First came the facepalm, then the faceplant, then the loss of face
Who, Me? Monday is upon us, but before you use the new week to explore opportunity and adventure, The Register presents a new installment of Who, Me? It's our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of flops, failures, and foul-ups.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Lydia" who told us she works on a team that not long ago had the chance to demonstrate a semi-autonomous humanoid device she can't describe in any more detail, because the customer was a defense agency.
"It's one of those things that looks more brittle than it is, but can still be broken," she told The Register. The device was also so new that the team was still writing documentation on the day of the demo, the audience for which was a group of investors.
Moments before the demo, Lydia noticed the machine's battery was running low.
"I told two other team members and the more senior went to fetch the backup battery," she explained. The team prepared to power down the machine before plugging in the replacement power source, a procedure that took perhaps five minutes.
The junior team member had a different idea: remove the depleted battery, then quickly insert the replacement. The youngster figured this would be faster, and therefore more impressive for the investors.
Lydia issued firm instructions not to adopt that plan.
"We had never done this before, and I felt it could cause a malfunction," she said, then acknowledged this was a good idea and told the junior to test it another day.
"Do a write-up, and take the credit for testing a potentially new feature – LATER," she counselled.
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As that conversation ended, the senior team member approached with the backup battery.
The junior then ran to the older man, grabbed the battery from his hands, sprinted to the machine, and performed a hot swap.
"The unit fell like a rock," Lydia wrote. "It face-planted off the podium. And the junior looked back at us like he was SHOCKED that things played out that way."
Getting the machine back on its feet took 15 minutes – three times longer than an orderly battery swap.
The investors laughed it off and suggested Lydia and her colleagues reschedule the demo for another day. The team accepted that suggestion.
The junior kept his job.
"I am all for pushing boundaries," she said. "But he sure as hell isn't allowed to touch the expensive stuff anymore."
Have you ever derailed a demo? If so, demonstrate your skill with words by clicking here to send your story to Who, Me? ®
