November 26, 2003 12:02 AM

Broken: two-day break...

Good Experience now takes a two-day break for the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

We'll be back on Monday. Until then, enjoy this picture taken by Brian Winters at Burning Man earlier this year. Somehow it reminds me of that classic scene in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles":

Police Officer: What are you driving here?
John Candy: We had a small fire last night, but we caught it in a nick of time.
Police Officer: Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
John Candy: Funny enough, I was just talking to my friend about that. Our speedometer has melted and as a result it's very hard to see with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going.

November 25, 2003 12:02 AM

Broken: (For fun) New Yorker cartoon

Here's a recent New Yorker cartoon. Woman in a store, shopping for telephones: "Do you have anything newer and more useless?"

November 24, 2003 12:03 AM

Broken: Road sign

Maurice Gaston writes:

This sign caught my eye as I motored down the main road through town. Some bright soul tried to be as helpful as possible by including all the relevant information on this sign for me. Too bad the the type is too small to see at 30 mph...

November 21, 2003 12:01 AM

Broken: Sign for "automatic door"

Victor Stanwick writes:

I took this picture over the summer at my eye doctor's office in Ft. Lee, New Jersey. Automatic door, pull to operate?

I realize that it's a power-assisted door that opens easily with a slight pull, and that the door works perfectly. It's the sign that I think is broken.

November 20, 2003 02:33 AM

Broken: Amtrak's Acela restroom locks

 Kris Arnold writes:

Taking a trip on Amtrak's Acela service (which, as a whole, was very nice), I saw several incidents where passengers opened unlocked restroom doors on other passengers who were using the facilities.

The lock/unlock sign in the restroom seems to indicate that moving the vertical handle to the left will lock the door. But pulling the lever to the left latches the door shut. It doesn't lock the door, which still can be opened from the outside.

The actual locking mechanism is the small, recessed switch below the handle. It shows a bit of red when in the locked position, green when unlocked. Unfortunately, given the position of the sign and the small size of the mechanism, it's easy to overlook it and think the door is locked when it actually is not.

Here are two photos taken from inside the restroom: the first photo taken from a standing position trying to approximate what a passenger would see; the second taken straight on. Both are a bit blurry since they were taken on a moving train.

November 19, 2003 01:18 AM

Broken: HMO customer service

David Pogue, in a recent New York Times e-mail column, talked about a broken process that I've long suspected: HMOs deliberately slowing down paperwork to encourage people not to pursue getting their reimbursements:

...she would submit the proper forms for payment to the H.M.O. After a couple of months, she'd get back -- nothing. As we learned later, H.M.O.'s have figured out that a certain percentage of doctors never follow up; for the H.M.O., that's pure profit.

P.S. For international readers, HMO stands for "health maintenance organization," a company that manages healthcare, and costs, for customers. In the U.S. they have a reputation for caring more about cutting costs, and making a profit, than the health of their customers.

November 18, 2003 01:38 AM

Broken: Safety sign on door

 Alex Cook writes:

These pictures are from my work. I think that our safety officer is going a bit far by posting instructions to open doors! Perhaps he has too many acquaintances in the litigation business.

November 17, 2003 01:32 AM

Broken: Pasting Yahoo Maps directions

Kerah Pelczarski writes:

Yahoo! Maps driving directions use "R" and "L" images instead of plain text for right and left.

Please see tinyurl.com/t39k or attached image.

This is bad because when you copy and paste the directions in order to sync them to a PDA, the all-important right and left directions are missing. A 50/50 chance of going the right way isn't quite good enough. ;)

Here's the text from the above example:

1. Starting at the center of zip code 94043 on LINDA VISTA AVE - go < 0.1 mi
2. Turn   on W MIDDLEFIELD RD - go 0.4 mi
3. Turn   on MOFFETT BLVD - go 0.3 mi
4. Arrive at 215 MOFFETT BLVD, MOUNTAIN VIEW

November 14, 2003 01:25 AM

Broken: Sign to restroom

Mark Hall writes:

I was recently in Zermatt, Switzerland where, after hiking for two hours to the top of the Gorner-grat bahn, I was in need of "the facilities." This is a picture of the sign that is supposed to direct you to them. Maybe it was the altitude, but my first impression was to walk around in a circle (or more exactly a rectangle) and the hope the toilet would magically appear.

In fact, the sign actually indicated that the entrance to the toilets was around the corner (just one corner mind you, not the three depicted). I guess I'm just used to the one-arrow-at-a-time approach to signage.

November 13, 2003 12:36 AM

Broken: Grateful Dead customer service

Seth Godin writes about his broken experience with the Grateful Dead catalog and online store:

Anyway, after a few minutes, a nice guy answered and said, "Are you calling to buy Dicks Picks #30?" I responded in the affirmative. And then he said this (I'm not making this up):

"We won't have it until tomorrow, and until we have it, I can't take your order."

November 12, 2003 03:03 AM

Broken: No-smoking ashtray

Tobin Stearns writes:

I always ask for a non-smoking room when I travel. The old scent of cigarette smoke is annoying, tends to get installed in my fresh clothing and can keep me up at night. So, when I stayed in a Motel 6 recently, I requested an upstairs, non-smoking room.

When I went up to our room, I was pleased to see a No Smoking sign on the door, and another sign inside the room.

But, when I looked a little closer, I noticed that the notice inside the room was on an ashtray - ?

Are you supposed to go stand outside your room with the ashtray in your hand? I dunno.

November 11, 2003 12:03 AM

Broken: Software error message

Gabriel Tinnaro writes:

Well, did it, or didn't it? I love those "WARNING: EVERYTHING IS OKAY"
messages...

Classic mixed message.

November 10, 2003 12:03 AM

Broken: Bose radio buttons

Beth Hondl writes:

This is a little thing, but it could cost me my job. I have one of those much-advertised Bose clock radios that I use to wake up in the morning. The sound is great, and it's generally easy to use.

However, as shown in the picture, directly above the large snooze button there are three smaller buttons, two of which (the ones marked "On/Off" and "Aux") actually turn off the alarm altogether! As far as I can tell, the "Aux" button is meant to redirect the sound to a secondary set of speakers. Since I don't have a second set, the result is silence.

Now, as someone who regularly relies on the snooze button to ease my way into wakefulness, the proximity of these buttons has caused some problems. On more than one occasion, when I've hit what I think is the "snooze" button, I've been a few millimeters off and accidentally turned off the alarm. Of course, I immediately fall back to sleep, then awake to a panic when I see what time it's gotten to be. My boss is starting to think it's not so funny anymore.

Seems like it would be easy to enough to move these two buttons further from the snooze button. If I was hitting the volume button, the presets, or even the AM/FM switch, I would still at least be hearing something to wake me up.

P.S. This is the 100th post on This Is Broken. Thanks to everyone who has sent in additions to the site... please keep sending them!
-Mark Hurst (mark at goodexperience dot com)

November 7, 2003 12:03 AM

Broken: Alabama quarter

Mary Pat LaBoda writes:

It's cool that Braille is included on the Alabama state quarter depicting Helen Keller. However, I'm assuming a blind person would never be able to read it at that scale. In fact, sighted people would have plenty of difficulty without the aid of a magnifying glass, assuming they know the Braille alphabet. They look like specks of dust. I'll bet it was impressive projected in a Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation, though.

November 6, 2003 03:03 AM

Broken: Software error

Alex Pavloff writes:

Blue, huh? The software must be sad.

November 5, 2003 03:01 AM

Broken: Techno-toaster

Laurie Gray writes:

On a recent business trip, I wanted toast for breakfast. I had no trouble putting the toast INTO the toaster; however, I thought it was running long and attempted to get the toast OUT of the toaster. Finally, after 5 tries, I managed to get it out, thanks to the help of a tiny little button on the front of the toaster called "cancel".

I am not sure that I want a toaster that is so technologically advanced that it needs a "cancel" button!

November 4, 2003 03:01 AM

Broken: Ticketmaster feature

Drew writes:

Ticketmaster.com's "ticketFast" feature enables you to print your ticket after ordering. Great idea in concept, but they blew it by assessing a fee for this service. So - in addition to the $6.75 "convenience" charge per ticket, and the $3.05 "order" charge, Ticketmaster will allow me to pay an extra $2.50 for the privilege of using my own paper and ink to print a ticket?

No thanks, I'll let them incur the postage and will instead pocket the savings.

November 3, 2003 03:01 AM

Broken: Gas pump

Mark Towfiq writes that this interface at a gas station kept showing the error message ""Undef Index : 24 in Predef Table". Also broken, in my opinion, is the set of instructions to get a receipt. Whatever happened to "Press YES for receipt"?

November 2, 2003 03:10 PM

Broken: Security in Microsoft Windows

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's personal technology columnist, writes this in his October 23 column:

Windows is riddled with security flaws, and new ones turn up regularly. It is increasingly susceptible to all kinds of viruses, malicious Trojan horse programs and spyware. As a result, Windows users have been forced to spend more of their time and money supporting their computers.

...for consumers and small businesses, there's a simple way out of this endless morass: Buy an Apple Macintosh computer. There are no viruses on the Macintosh's excellent two-year-old operating system, called OS X. And the Mac is a terrific computer -- as good as, or better than, Windows for the typical computing tasks important to mainstream users.