Some days I have assignments which take me to other field offices or to the central office or just out in the field to remote locations.

Today was such a day. On the one hand, the day went very quickly, with so many out-of-the-ordinary events and locales; on the other, it was very tiring because I could not pace myself (as usually I am able to do in my own office) and because I had to be constantly "on" -- as if I were on stage, or on review, or on call.

One event was a training session for a new application being rolled out to all users (approximately 65 of us are supervisors/managers). Once again, we found ourselves in the toils of a user unfriendly enviroment, though the group I had been assigned to was labeled "Super Users" and we are very skilled in the various applications in the corporation.

User unfriendly. Again. No parallel testing again. Using obscure calendar codes again. It felt like "Back to the Future" and I'm learning machine level programming. Again.

I finally had to speak up, even if I was the only one. No one backed me up; everyone else just sat there stony-faced, because they all want to be promoted and they know this application is the first-born of a very ambitious, ladder-climbing middle manager. We're being told it can't be made any more user-friendly. Baloney. I know enough programming to know that the user shell is only that--a shell. And it can be modified at will, if someone has the will (and the brains) to do it.

Was anyone on the development team a Super User? No. They were all IT professionals, and once more we are saddled with software that is clunky, kludged and difficult to use.

Again.