The Farmer

when the chips are down...someone shoved me with a metaphor...

he said "designers are like farmers".

And then i came up with the rest of the story myself...
If designers are like farmers in the agricultural supply chain. then test engrs must be the QC who ensures that the food supplies are ok for consumption; marketing and sales pple would be the traders and retailers respectively at the other end of the chain.
So..it starts with the farmer at the start of the chain..who ploughs and sows to give us rice..or vege..watever farmer u choose to have.
after we get the rice...QC folks would need to go through the batches of rice and make sure that there are no bad nuts in them.
then we have the traders who act like middlemen between the farmers and retailers....supplying the goods to the retailers..ensuring that the flow of food supply goes without a glitch.
and at the end..the retailers are probaly the supermarkets..big hypermarts or small mama-shops...they are the ones who have the final interface with the customers and are obviously the ones who gather direct feedback from the customers too.

One dae..Mr X went to get a packet of rice. and then he discovers to his horror.. that there's a hole in the bag and a black pea in it.
he runs back to the shop and asks Mr Retailer "there's something terribly wrong with the rice! i can't eat this!! how can there be a pea in the rice! i paid for rice..not peas! explain!"
Mr Retailer only said "beats me"
and ding dongs it to Mr Trader who ding dongs it back Mr QC who just ding dongs it back to Mr Farmer.
But Mr Farmer doesn't know either. Simply bcos his farm only grows rice..not peas. he, of cos, had no idea how peas got into the bag in the first place. Moreover...all along, the previous bags of rice had turned out ok...
maybe a pea had fallen into the bag during packaging? maybe a rat chewed its wae into the bag bringing a pea into it? maybe here..maybe there...
But so wat. everyone else is standing in a row..pointing fingers at the farmer..and expecting him to fix the fault..without lifting a finger to help (dats cos all the fingers are busy pointing at the farmer..where got finger left to help leh)...
For he's the one who planted the rice.
And somehow most of us have forgotten that Mr Farmer is at the crux of the supply chain. If he stops growing rice..we have no rice.
And most of the time...he's paid the lowest of them all. Paradox.