This story was sent to me by a friend from work. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

In my county (Wake, NC) you can request library books online and an automated telephone system calls you when the books arrive. Every time the system calls, it asks for my wife, referring to her as “Suzanne the 1000th Farnsworth”. WTF, we think… there must be 999 other Suzanne Farnsworths in Wake County. This has gone on for years and has simply been an inside joke for us.

Last week, after a nine year hiatus, I actually stepped foot in the library. Suzanne the 1000th Farnsworth had forgotten to return some books and the automated system was calling daily, counting down the days until it was going to send out the automated goons to collect.

While returning the late books and paying my $8 fine, I asked the librarian why the automated telephone system referred to my wife as Suzanne The 1000th Farnsworth. She looks at the entry in her database and everything looks fine:
Name: Suzanne M. Farnsworth

Now if you look at that for a minute, you will see the reason for one of the most absurd software bugs I have ever encountered. Yes, “M” (her middle name is Marie) is 1000 in Roman numerals. I guess if my name were “Pope John Paul IV”, then I would want the system to interpret Roman numerals. Of course interpreting Roman numerals in the person’s middle name or something on the order of “M”, is just plain stupid.

I guess all those poor saps out there whose middle initial are I, V, L, X, C, D or M have their own inside jokes too.

True story.

[tags]geek, software, automation, bug, bugs, library, voice, robot[/tags]