If a tool doesn’t work on the first try, some people move on.

So, what would you do if an IT team asked you to try a new interface and, within minutes, you were stuck in a loop with no way back to the menu?

Would you stick around and fill out their questionnaire?

Or would you show them exactly what you’d do in real life and just walk away?

In the following story, one employee finds himself in this exact situation.

Here’s what he decided to do.

You told me to treat it like a finished product.

I used to work for a company that 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 our complex jobs and travel arrangements, which were core functions of the company.

The IT department wanted people to test their redesigned software.

One day I was at an office and some people from IT had a small table set up with a sign asking for 5 minutes of our time to help them make our computers easier and faster for us to use.

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 as I would interact with the computer if I had just 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 tried to use it, but wasn’t successful.

I tapped “buttons” on the page mockups and 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. When I tried to use the function, however, I got stuck in an endless loop trying to back out of it when I couldn’t figure out how to use it.

They kept flipping back and forth between two pages that each had a BACK button, which I was trying to use to get back to the menu.

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

Fortunately, they must’ve never gotten it working.

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.

They said that they really needed more information to get it right, and I agreed with them as I walked away.

That redesign never got implemented.

Yikes! That new system sounds like a nightmare.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about this story.

This person thinks they were trying to account for undetected bugs.

According to this reader, he shouldn’t have helped.

Yet another person who thinks he made their job harder.

Here’s someone who’s impressed that IT even asked for an opinion.

He could’ve been more cooperative.

Next time, he should pass on these opportunities if he doesn’t intend to take them seriously.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.