Not all innovations make life easier.

This employee worked for a company that constantly improved its technology and workflow.

IT asked for feedback on a redesign mockup and he volunteered to test it.

He was doing well initially, but he got stuck and didn’t want to try to figure it out any longer.

Read the story below to find out what happened.

You told me to treat it like a finished product.

I used to work for a company. They constantly, but carefully, innovated with its employees and technology.

I had a very busy job that involved a lot of travel.

The company had computers at each of its offices. Employees like me would use them to manage all of our complex jobs and travel arrangements which were core functions of the company.

This man noticed the small table that IT set up.

One day, I was at an office.

Some people from IT had a small table set up.

They had a sign asking for 5 minutes of our time.

They want us to help them make our computers easier and faster for us to use.

He volunteered to test the redesign mockup of their computer screens.

I volunteered, and they had me sit at their table in front of a notebook.

Each page in the notebook mimicked a redesign of the computer screens that we used.

The IT testers asked me to interact with the mock-up just the way I would interact with the computer if I had just now walked up to it and found it like this.

They wanted to see how ready their design was for employees to use without additional training.

He pressed some buttons and navigated the menus.

I tapped “buttons” on the page mockups.

They flipped to the resultant next “screens” in their notebook all while using a stopwatch and making notes.

I successfully logged in and navigated the menus to the function I needed.

He got stuck in an endless loop.

When I tried to use the function, however, I got stuck in an endless loop trying to back out of it, especially, when I couldn’t figure out how to use it.

They kept flipping back and forth between two pages.

Each had a back button I was trying to use to get back to the menu.

He stood up and walked away.

I stood up, grabbed my bags, and started to leave.

They became quite animated and asked me to stay and complete a feedback questionnaire.

I told them that I just had.

If I had encountered a computer like that at work, I would have just gone to another computer, leaving my login active and compromising corporate security on that computer because it didn’t work and I didn’t have time to figure out what was wrong with it and how to fix it.

The IT staff wanted more information, but he left them.

They said that they really needed more information in order to get it right.

I said I agreed with them as I walked away.

That redesign never got implemented.

I guess it’s a good thing they had people test the mockup to see if it worked. Otherwise, it would’ve been a disaster.

Let’s see what others have to say about this on Reddit.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

This person states what they would have done.

While this person gives a petty idea.

Here’s another honest opinion.

And finally, people are calling him out.

Sometimes, the best feedback is walking away from the problem.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.