Monsters—from the Id!

The exchange, paraphrased

Someone at my job: “We’re getting an extremely high bill for this new feature we added to our software license from vendor X. We see that we have an excessive number of applications that use this feature. Please review your applications that use this feature, and if you aren’t getting the full use out of the feature, please change your applications so that you don’t use it. If you just created an application to test out the feature, delete it.”

Me: “I don’t have any test apps, but I use that feature, and I think I’m getting the full use out of it.”

Them: “We [i.e., ‘you’] would need to find an alternative because this feature is expensive.”

Me: “So, what you really mean is that it doesn’t matter whether I think I’m getting the full use out of this feature because you’re disabling it regardless. What are my alternatives?”

Them: “We’re eliminating this for reasons X, Y, and Z.”

Me: “I’m not arguing that you need to keep it. I want to know if you’re disabling other features, too, so that I know what I have to work with.”

I’m waiting for the reply to find out what’s available as an alternative.

What would’ve saved time

Them: “Everyone, this new feature is more expensive than we were led to believe, so we’re disabling it. You can still use features X, Y, and Z as an alternative. If you need help modifying your application so that it no longer uses this feature, contact us.”