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This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Lionel" who told us he once worked on the help desk for one of the world's largest retailers.
"We had just rolled out Laser Radio Terminals to several thousand stores," Lionel told On Call, before kindly describing the terminals as "an early wireless handheld that looked like a laser gun with a screen."
The devices included a laser barcode scanner that store employees would use to scan incoming stock so it could be registered in point-of-sale systems.
The rollout did not go well.
"Despite lots of testing we kept getting calls about the LCD screen failing after as little as a week of use," Lionel told On Call.
A new round of testing the devices in the mega-retailer's labs could not reproduce the problem, so Lionel was sent to a store to observe how the terminals were being used in the field.
"When I arrived, the store manager escorted me back to the receiving area, complaining the entire way about the 'garbage' we were making them use, and how the old paper-based system was so much better."
Lionel endured that complaint and settled in to watch the staff wield the terminals.