A guy I have literally known my entire life called last night seeking my expertise. He owns a company that creates and sells custom headstones, foot markers, and other burial markers. He has asked for my help in creating his business a website as well as a few software tools that will help with their day-to-day tasks. One of the creepiest requests he made was for a system that could monitor all of the local newspapers’ websites (and a few not so local) and give him a list of everyone in the obituaries. Seems pretty simple, but not so creepy …. yet. Since he makes his living by selling to the survivors of those who have recently passed, I could understand where he’s coming from. In fact, my great uncle passed away earlier this week and we had his funeral yesterday. So, it was convenient that I already knew someone that could hook us up with a monument. Lucky for us, there are people, like my friend, that are in the business of providing headstones and monuments. Anyways, back to the story.
Even though I understood why he needed a program that could do this, the creepiest part was yet to come. He asked that the system would also scour the web for the next of kin to the deceased along with their phone number and even their address. Ok. This was beginning to get a little creepy. He explained that by knowing the next of kin, he could mail them a sympathy card for sharing his condolences as well as slipping in a business card for that “just in case” moment. Ok. I’m still cool with this. I could see how it would be nice to receive a sympathy card from someone during rough times, even if it was nothing more than a marketing ploy.
But, here comes the true kicker. He also requested that the system lookup the household income of any survivors so that he would know before hand whether it would be worth making further contact or to simply leave it at the sympathy card. That was definitely on the list of weird things I’ve been asked to program. To me, that just seems a little too creepy. But, being the weirdo that I am and the good friend that I am, I went ahead and wrote the program for him anyways. I worked on it most of last night and have a pretty nice application ready for him to test. Anyways, I just found the whole thing a little strange and thought I would share it with anyone that might be interested in reading about it. And, for anyone interested, yes, I am not above creating anything for anyone no matter how weird or creepy it might be. That’s just part of the territory of being a good developer and marketer.
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