Long Light
Long Light
[Cueball in a car, sitting at a red light.] Cueball: This light always takes forever. I'd like to smack the idiot who designed this intersection. [An engineer steps up onto the hood of Cueball's car.] Engineer: Hi. Cueball: Who the hell are you? Engineer: I designed this intersection. Engineer [arms spread outward]: You're right - I should have just made the light shorter! Never mind the hours of simulation and testing I did. Never mind that this intersection interacts with it's neighbors in a complicated way and it took me a week to work out timing sequences that avoided total jams. Engineer: Clearly, I'm a crappy engineer and you have a better solution. Go on, show me your proposed timings. Cueball: Get the hell off my hood before I start driving and fling you into traffic. Engineer: You can't. Light's red. Cueball: Well, when will it change? Engineer: Tuesday.

This strip depicts a common experience to most people - becoming frustrated with a device, system, or rule that appears to be badly made or have no purpose other than to frustrate the user (in this case, a traffic light that seems unreasonably, inexplicably long). One temptation we might have in these cases is to blame the designer of the system. Here, the designer appears and testifies to the amount of effort that went into the design, considering many factors. He challenges Cueball to come up with a better solution, the implication being that without a similar amount of training and effort, any naive solution would have flaws the designer would be happy to point out. This demonstrates to Cueball and the reader that just because they were unlucky enough to encounter something in a way that was inconvenient for no obvious reason, doesn't mean there is no reason at all.
Of course, all of this has occurred after the designer leapt out of nowhere onto the hood of the car, so he may not be entirely stable. This is elaborated upon in the final panel, where the designer finally admits that red light won't change until Tuesday, but since this comic was published on a Friday, the timing scheme really was absurd after all. It is also possible that the designer has intentionally changed the light specifically to make Cueball wait for a couple of days, or to stop himself from being flung off of the hood of the car.
The title text returns to the original point, reminding us that designers work hard and often encounter complex problems in doing their jobs. Their frustration may also be in part from the knowledge that future users will blame them for unavoidable problems and undervalue their work. With a little empathy, we can find a human connection to these problems, rather than let them drive us crazy.
Randall returns to the theme of the unseen contributions of engineers in 1741: Work .
[Cueball in a car, sitting at a red light.] Cueball: This light always takes forever. I'd like to smack the idiot who designed this intersection. [An engineer steps up onto the hood of Cueball's car.] Engineer: Hi. Cueball: Who the hell are you? Engineer: I designed this intersection. Engineer [arms spread outward]: You're right - I should have just made the light shorter! Never mind the hours of simulation and testing I did. Never mind that this intersection interacts with it's neighbors in a complicated way and it took me a week to work out timing sequences that avoided total jams. Engineer: Clearly, I'm a crappy engineer and you have a better solution. Go on, show me your proposed timings. Cueball: Get the hell off my hood before I start driving and fling you into traffic. Engineer: You can't. Light's red. Cueball: Well, when will it change? Engineer: Tuesday.
