Getting a car towed - Attention to details

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're consenitating our season where we're looking at errors, mistakes, a little bit of where things went wrong and how we can learn from those, where those maybe helped with future endeavors or where they're just a good cautionary tale. This episode, we're going to talk about getting a car towed, essentially. This situation is, I think it's another one that's similar to the prior episode where there is some level of assumption. But really, we're going to look a little bit more at another recurring theme we will see, at least for myself, is maybe attention to details. Now this story was, again, in my youth, traveled to another town, a few hours drive and went to Chicago to, this is awesome, seems to be a recurring theme, went to see a show and had some buddies with me. It was snowing lightly because it was Chicago in January or February and we're looking for a parking spot. It's one of those that we didn't, I don't even remember if there was a parking garage around, but we were just sort of trying to find a parking spot for the show we were going to. And I don't know, a couple blocks down, there's a parking lot that was pretty much empty. And it was a business parking lot. It was like a bank or something like that. But most of the slots, or I think all the slots, maybe were empty. So I'm like, okay, well, we'll just pick a spot and park and we're good to go. We go to the show and we come back out and the car's towed, the car's gone. And so this is Chicago. So while my prior story, I assumed it was stolen in Chicago, I assumed it was towed because they tow you pretty quick or at least did. And I think they still do. And that was my first call I made was because all these places, these businesses have a little sign somewhere that says that if you're towed, here's our towing company, here's the number. Well, there were no signs in the parking lot that said that this was business only or you get towed after certain hours or anything like that. And so I was looking around and I was getting pretty hot about it. I was not happy because I'm looking around like, hey, there's no reason for them to tow me. There's nothing posted here that says that you're going to tow people just because they're in the parking lot. And so I'm sitting there and just fuming about a little bit and trying to figure out how I'm going to approach this with the tow company because I'm thinking they towed me and that was an error. And so we're sitting there and looking around trying to figure out is there any sign. And we spent a good deal of time looking around like, OK, nothing's posted anywhere. And I go back to the sign and I'm just about to call and give them a piece of my mind. And I'm looking back over the parking lot and I see where the car was and where it gotten the tracks, has it gotten drawn away? And I see something. And it doesn't make me feel good because I go over to the parking spot that I was in and start looking a little closer at it and start sweeping some of the use my foot and sweep some of the snow away. And it turns out I parked in a handicapped parking spot. It's one of those, it's just life is a little funny like that. There's probably, I don't know, 30, 40 parking spots in this parking lot. I think two, maybe three were handicapped. I couldn't see the marking because it was on the pavement. It wasn't anywhere else. The curbs weren't painted or anything like that. There was nothing other than on the pavement that showed you that it was a handicapped spot. And that happened to be one of them that I parked in. So I call them, figure out where they're at, get a cab or walk. I can't remember how we got there, but we get to the tow yard, get that free, you know, pay the fee, get the car, drive home. Fun times. And it was actually probably a little more fun because I borrowed my girlfriend at the time. I borrowed her car and drove that and had to call her at, I don't know, midnight or something like that and say, by the way, what's your driver's license, the license plate number for your car so that I could track down who had it and verify that yes, that was the right car. And again, this wasn't cell phones or anything. So it was, you know, had to find a line, a landline and call her. So she's like, wow, great job. Way to go. And you got my car towed. And at least it was something I could take care of. But you have fun times all around. Now, this is one where assumptions come into play a little bit because I assume that, you know, hey, no big deal. But there's also an attention to detail there is that although, yeah, you can say, okay, not entirely my fault. The snow was covering that sign, you know, the parking lot thing, the thing on the pavement that said this was handicapped. But we did spend a good deal of time double checking, you know, afterward after it had gotten towed for that sign. So maybe it would have been good to have checked for that sign beforehand. So it may have been good to look to see if there were, you know, reserved or handicapped parking or anything like that. Now it's one of those that, you know, honest mistake because there was snow on it, but it wasn't like it was that heavy. So we probably could have just, you know, swept around a spot just to make sure there was nothing like it. You know, there's nothing that was going to get us in trouble, particularly knowing that it was a city where they towed pretty easy. Now flip side of that is this company or whoever, you know, the people that put this together and made that a handicap spot, it was not user friendly. It was not obvious that that was that kind of a spot. Now maybe you say, you know, most of the days you're going to be able to see it, especially, they probably go in, they sweep the parking lot and clean it up and that for their guests and their customers. But it's still something that you have to see that spot. So if there's a car there, it's going to cover it unless you know it's there. And now I think that is why you see in a lot of places, you'll see like a little sign standing up that marks it or you will see like the, you know, if there's a curb right there, you'll see it's a different color or something like that to signify that this is a special parking spot where it's handicap or anything else. And so from a usability point of view, now maybe you really don't care, but if you care enough to do something like create a handicap parking spot, you should care enough to make sure people can easily see that that exists and where it's at. And this gets into some of our design decisions and things like that. There is a thing called security by obscurity, which is basically, yeah, nobody's ever going to use that because it's really hard to find it. We need to make sure we do the opposite in most cases. If you've got something that you're spending time on, you should allow it to be properly known. You shouldn't hide it. You need to make sure that there is documentation or notifications or whatever that go out in order to let people know, say, Hey, it's there. I recently did a presentation on content channels like podcasts and blogs and all the YouTube videos and things like that. And one of the recurring themes for all of those is that once you put that work in, you need to make sure that you have a mailing list that you notify or you tell your friends and relatives or whatever it is. You take ads out, whatever it is, so that people can know, people that might be interested in that work that you did, that they can know that it's there. And this gives us actually a couple of different lessons that come out of this one. And this is again, this happened decades ago and it is stuck in my mind at times. I find that it has affected a little bit my attention to detail where I'm going to be a little less quick to assume that what I see is exactly it. I'm going to spend a little more time looking around, verifying the environment that I assume I'm in and making sure that that is all correct, particularly when it comes to parking spots. I want to make sure that I'm in a valid one so that I don't get towed. And, you know, that's just the tow experience alone was something that has helped me immensely over the years, because although I got towed, I don't know, probably three or four times, maybe, maybe not that maybe it was only twice. It felt like a lot a few times in a period about a year and a half. Since then hasn't happened. I don't push it. I don't, you know, I make sure what's safe and what's not. I look at if it's questionable how something's marked, then I'll just find something safer. I'll walk a little further or whatever it is. But it's also a it's stuck with me at times in design as I've, you know, as I've gotten into my career and looked at systems and solutions and we've talked about requirements and design for solving people's problems. And it is it particularly goes to like secondary functions. It's usually when you're solving a problem, usually there's a couple of key things that you like, let's say it's an application and it does a couple of things that are its main features. Those are going to be pretty obvious. It's usually pretty easy to find those. You know, it's like the first button or the first menu item or or something along those lines. But sometimes there's and a lot of times there's these like secondary or tertiary type functions and features that may be very useful, but they're not they're not documented or they're not easily reached. Sometimes just because of there's just too many things. If you think back several years now and actually to some extent, even today, if you when you look at like the ribbons that are used and stuff like that, you look like a Microsoft Word or Excel. There are hundreds of features. I would say definitely dozens of menu items and within those and some of those pop item pop windows and stuff like that. There's there's a lot of features there and you could have something that's very cool, very useful. For example, a lot of times the developer related functions and features are there, but they're actually hidden. You have to like turn them on. You have to go set some flag somewhere that turns those on and then know where they're at. If you've got stuff like that, you may want to consider a different approach. And it doesn't mean that you have to make it obvious to everybody that here's how you turn on the developer flag, but maybe something that is sort of like a primary option somewhere, you know, menu item, something visible enough that's like, hey, developers look here and you'll see that like websites do this fairly well because what you'll see is if you jump to the bottom of a lot of websites, particularly like any of the banking sites or places that have APIs or things like that or tools where developers will want to work with their data, their site, there will be like a section for developers or a menu item there at the foot. That's like, you know, developers click here, you know, something along those lines that for somebody that is going to find that useful, there is a way to fairly easily for them to find it. And it doesn't get in the way of others, of people that are doing the primary functionality. But instead, if you're looking for that, you can find it. There's nothing more frustrating than wanting to find something, wanting to work with a company and not being able to do it. And it does sort of fall into that old there's a lot of and there's still some out there, I think, but these like subscription places and stuff like that where you can subscribe real easy, but canceling your subscription is almost impossible. And actually, I've run into that one where I ended up I had to my card was expiring. And so I could I tried a couple of times and I basically paid like one extra month or something like that. And when it expired, I was like, fine. And suddenly they started contacting me and said, hey, we need you to update your payment method. I'm like, hey, you need to pay me for this stuff that you would not you had no way to cancel. So think about, you know, think about that picture of a parking lot with, let's say, you know, a hundred parking spots and one handicapped. And the only way you can find out where the handicapped spot is, is by looking on the pavement itself, looking on the asphalt and then cover it with a light covering of snow or leaves or something like that. How do we make features and carve outs and special things like that visible to the people that we want to make them visible to? So in my case, this is great attention to details one, because in my case, yes, I could have and should have paid more attention to the parking spots and how things were set up, maybe assumed because it makes sense to assume that there is there are handicapped spots somewhere. And just to double check that I didn't park in a handicapped spot. But on the the people that that business, their attention to detail, they should have thought through that a little bit more so that the people that wanted to access that handicapped spot would be able to find it, particularly in Chicago, where it does snow. And maybe they clear stuff fairly quickly. But how often do they do that? I mean, do they really, you know, is it like as soon as it snows or sweeping it? Or does it maybe sit there in the day for an hour or two? Both sides of that, that should have been more visible. It should not have been as difficult to find. And so whatever it is you're doing, whether you're creating a feature, whether you are you have some achievement that is useful, think about like maybe what's on your resume and things like that. Make sure that there are ways that you can get that information to the audience that cares about it. You put the work in to get it done. So why not make sure that that is made available to the people that will find it useful? That being said, I'm going to wrap this one up and we will come back. We're going to continue. We're just getting started on a long season of mistakes. Who knows, this could go on for the rest of my life, actually. But until then, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Newer Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of Develop-a-Newer. One is the book, The Source Code of Happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the Develop-a-Newer site. You can also find it on Amazon, search for Rob Rodhead or Source Code of Happiness. You can get it on Kindle. If you're a developer, you can find it on Google, Google Play, Google Play Store, Google Play Store, Google Play Store, Google Play Store, Google Play Store, Google Play Store, and Amazon Prime member. You can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our mastermind slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week, and this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time we talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at Develop-a-Newer.com if you would like more information. Now go out there and have yourself a great one.