At work, I have to deal with a very fussy and sensitive telephone reporting system. This system is absolutely essential to a wide variety of tasks, and I have to pull about half a dozen different bits of information found in different reports from this system on a daily basis for both internal and external reporting. Without this system working I cannot get my job done in an effective manner, and yet this system does not work well. One never knows exactly what settings one can use for the same reports on a day-to-day basis. One day you can have 130 users for a given report for three days, and the next day you may not be able to have 30 users for a single day. There is no rhyme or reason as to what is safe and what is not, and sometimes even within the same day running the same parameters can lead to a vastly different response, ranging from success to one of any number of frustrating error codes that force a restart of the entire process, to even worse errors that kick one out of the software altogether. Never have I worked with a more temperamental system, one whose tolerances were so widely variant and indeed which had no areas that were entirely safe to work in, with an ever shifting line of what worked and what didn’t work at all, and what prevented any work from being done whatsoever.

Now, I do not hold my software responsible for these serious problems, as irritating as they are on a daily basis. My frustrations with the software have been intense, and communicated often and widely, to the extent that the makers of the software have been well aware of the precise parameters that have caused problems at different times, and have even involved somewhat tense face-to-face conversations about the lack of reliability of the software. I am aware that the software does the best job it can with how it is made. The problem is that often, almost daily, I want to find the people who made this piece of software the broken mess that it is and take them behind the woodshed for a beating if they are still alive. Those are the people who deserve my frustration with the problems of the software, and yet as is often the case it is the people who are ultimately responsible for a mess that are often the most elusive, and it is the end results that are openly visible to the world and that have to be dealt with by other people who are also simply trying to do the best that they can. This is certainly not just or fear, much less fun, but there is a lot about life that is not either fair or fun.

It is one thing to understand that software is entirely programmed by its designers, however inexpert they might be at their task, and to understand that as human beings we are not programmed so completely, and yet we too are the results of design as well as an implementation process that is at best troubled and at worst downright horrific. Determining what is a safe parameter is no more straightforward for people at times than it is with the troubled and unfortunate reporting software that I have to work with, and my empathy with anyone else who (like me) has to cope with this system does not make the task of dealing with this system any more enjoyable. I may not have a choice of whether I have to work with it if I want the information that it has, but it doesn’t mean that I always like it. Far from it. Understanding does not bring enjoyment, even if it redirects my ire towards those who are responsible and not merely that which is there in front of me. Yet the ire still remains because it is a travesty that such problems should exist in the first place.

There is much in this world that is at the sorry state of my tormented telephone reporting system. We live in a world full of brokenness, where we may not know from one day to another or one moment to another whether a gentle touch, or a wave and a friendly smile, or an innocent comment, will be taken for what it is or if it will be taken as a threat, and responded to accordingly. While we are all responsible for how we live our lives, we are also all filled with a lot of fairly automatic programming that does not work as well as it was originally designed to do, for one reason or another. Overcoming these flaws and proclivities is a lengthy and uncertain and harrowing process, and by no means easy or guaranteed of success. Yet the most obvious solution to broken things is to fix them, or to seek a new creation that does not have these errors. Those who have a particular degree of compassion and understanding for that which is broken and in distress have a great longing to see things functioning well and fulfilling on their promise and potential. Yet this is not a very straightforward process to achieve, even as we seek to work within the design constraints in this life that we live, in the hope that we may be judged mercifully, for no one ought to know our state better than we ourselves, except for He who created us for a better fate than many of us now enjoy.