First, Happy 4th of July (early)! I am frantically trying to get to “inbox zero” status before the holiday begins, and failing somewhat because it seems like half of all people are already out of the office. This email just came to me, though, and I thought I would tell you about it. Because here is, in my opinion, a totally hilarious example of technology that is not quite as sophisticated as it should be.
I don’t know if you’re a member of Rite Aid’s ambitious “Plenti Points” program—it is a co-branded system that they rolled out last year that is overcomplicated to the point of absurdism, and I predict that it is not going to last. Here is one example of how they are trying so hard, but somehow failing.
Let me now say that it is NOT THAT HARD to write a simple script that eliminates a zero value parameter and would eliminate the possibility of an email like this going out. The administrators of this autoresponder would simply need to code in a parameter indicating that people with ZERO points would not receive this email, since (as you will see), including me in this distribution produced a totally absurd result.
I give you….technology gone wild!:
