Comic Transcript
BOSS: Why are we not inflicting pain and misery on our customers?
ALICE: We are.
BOSS: You lie! I have read our latest customer satisfaction reports, and our customer satisfaction is increasing! This complacency is unacceptable!
ALICE: It’s not complacency, Boss, it’s desensitization.
ALICE: Every time we enact a new program of pain and misery, customer satisfaction decreases. But over time our existing customer base slowly adapts to the new bugs, instabilities and security flaws — because they have no other choice — and new customers simply assume that computers are supposed to work that way, so they don’t know enough to be miserable. Eventually customer satisfaction increases as a result.
BOSS: I see.
ALICE: To counteract this we’ve been working on a predictive algorithm that will anticipate these upticks in customer satisfaction so that we can introduce new pain and misery before desensitization sets in.
BOSS: What form will this pain and misery take?
ALICE: We’re leaning towards administering random electric shocks through the keyboard. Legal is switching the EULA and the warning label as we speak.