I've written business software systems for small companies for almost 20 years. Being self-taught with no degree, I've ended up VERY unemployable in the so called "IT" field. So being in survival mode, I've been in and out of various retail establishments as a worker-bee. The software systems that some of these companies use is a total embarrassment!

So this is what you get when you have "trained" people writing software? OMG. The system used at a certain big furniture store in the NY-PA area is one of the most horrific examples of bad design I've had the misfortune of having had to deal with. Lousy interface, clumsy access to data... it goes on and on. When a customer returned to the store and you wanted to find out if they had ever purchased anything, you had to go to one screen to find them, then write down their complex customer number, and go back into the system to find orders based on that number! I mean - how does insanity like this ever get out of the design lab?

Business men, take a tip: Avoid the college-heads and find yourself a good shirt-sleeves, work-a-day designer who loves software and designs from the USERS point of view - not the Accountants.