Everyone’s seen at least one enormous red button with a label like “GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR INITIATOR VALVE – DO NOT PUSH!”, oui? Of course there’s always a villain around to press the button and ostensibly end the world, but the general concept prevails.
Given the tendency of Plus users to do the most illogical things possible while refusing to read or apply any kind of instructions given and then blame the software for behaving “unexpectedly”, it seemed only fitting to provide them with the one thing they couldn’t screw up: the Do Not Click button.
A lot of thought went into the Do Not Click button. Its placement was particularly important – it had to be accessible yet unobtrusive enough to go unnoticed for a while. The button itself had to be recognizable as capable of performing an action, yet simple enough to be overlooked by a casual glance. It had to display enough of a warning to be clear that clicking was ill-advised, yet low-key enough to beckon seductively. The final product is thus:
Fetching, no? It was placed at the very bottom of the About dialog, which I doubt anyone ever accesses unless by accident. If any one of the 150 users happens upon it, however, he’s all but guaranteed to email the other 149 to tell them about it. And that’s when the fun starts.
“What happens when the Do Not Click button is clicked?” one might ask curiously. Let me give you the most likely scenario:
User: “What’s this thing that looks like a stop sign with a white X in it? That looks weird. Wait, there are some hieroglyphs beside it…they say ‘d’…no, ‘D’…I’ve got it! It says ‘Do’! Phew, that was hard work. I’d better take a break so as not to strain myself.”
<- four hours later ->
User: “Why is there a window that says ‘About’ open? This stupid software, always doing things I don’t tell it to! I’m going to create a helpdesk ticket for IT to fix it! No, I should compose a poison-filled email about how crappy Plus is and how it’s always broken and send it to all of the other field technicians so they can join me in my uninformed griping!”
<- two hours later ->
User: “All that typing made me hungry. I’m going to go to the expensive steakhouse down the road and charge a hefty three-course to my company credit card and then take a nap.”
<- the next day ->
User: “Hmm, what’s this window that says ‘About’? There’s a button that has a stop sign with a white X in it. It doesn’t say what it does…<click> Nothing happened. <click> <click> <CLICK> Stupid Plus! How can I be expected to perform any work if this trashy program won’t do anything? Those idiots in IT are just trying to keep me from doing my job!”
Sadly, this is probably a realistic depiction of events. However, the Do Not Click button does do something – it records the number of times it’s been clicked. Yes, that’s right – there’s a persisted click count. When the user submits work (which is supposed to happen once every few days), the cumulative click count is stored to a server-side database along with the user’s username. There it waits until an intranet-accessible web page is requested, wherein it’s included in a report showing the users clicking the Do Not Click button the most.
And here’s the best part: Any “bug” report about the Do Not Click button being broken can be closed with “The button works as intended. Do not click the Do Not Click button.” When the question of why the button exists comes up, the answer is “The button is there to keep an issue from occurring. When the button is clicked, the issue occurs. If the button is not clicked, the issue does not occur. This is why it says ‘Do Not Click’ on the button.”
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