You: "So you want action A to happen immediately when the button is pushed AND 3 seconds after that when the button is still held action B should happen?"
Customer: "No, I only want action B when it is held for 3 seconds"
You: "Todays technology can't do that"
Customer: "What. Wait. Why?"
You: "Because at the point when action A would be triggered we would have to know the future to tell whether the button will have been held for 3 seconds or not."
This is entertaining, but also cringe; clients and product people aren't generally idiots. They just have requirements that they can't adequately express.
Requirements capture is part of every eng job I've had.
They aren't generally idiots but sometimes their mental model of the problem space is incomplete and they don't understand what they're asking for. This is fine if they don't want to specify details. However when they do it can result in impossible requests.
Agreed, but as a former freelancer: Sometimes your customer doesn't know what they want and instead of figuring it out together they sketched together an internet-research-fuled plan that they want you to follow to the point, even if the plan is inefficient, doesn't solve their problem etc.
I usually managed to convince those people to come up together with a new plan while making sure they still feel like their original work is somewhat in there — after all I was the expert they came to with their issue, would be a bit idiotic to not pay for my expertise..
Sometimes this does not work, then I usually just told them I won't take that project. And projects like these don't make any sense, the customer will complain about their own planning mistakes as if it was your fault, you get angry, they get angry, everybody loses.
The best customers are those who know the problem they want to solve very well, as well as having some idea how a potential solution could look, but who thank you if you have an even better solution.
I hear you and I understand what you're saying, those are some good points. Can you express what you require out of a none cringe comedy skit that this lacks?
Customer: "No, I only want action B when it is held for 3 seconds"
You: "Todays technology can't do that"
Customer: "What. Wait. Why?"
You: "Because at the point when action A would be triggered we would have to know the future to tell whether the button will have been held for 3 seconds or not."