Oh man oh man oh man do I ever. Whenever my job as a tech writer became crucial to the success of someone performing that job, I felt like it was a REALLY bad idea. Sadly, no matter how much I would beg and plead whenever a situation like that arose, no one would listen to me. So I learned to shut up and write good instructions. The last time I had to write something like that, I was instructing field installers how to completely dismantle and reassemble delicate electronics. It was a bad idea all the way around, but no one was going to get angry at the stupid programmers for hard coding a serial number into the system, which is what made the stupidity necessary - can’t send the whole stack of cards back to the factory for a swap out when one of those cards was hard coded into the program.
