Bug List
1. Maintenance requests at my apartment complex take a while to be serviced.
Why: There are only a few maintenance technicians at the complex to save on costs, so these workers must handle a lot of requests individually.
2. Many people park at my complex who do not live there, making it challenging to find a convenient parking spot.
Why: My complex does not use a decal system to vet parked cars, and the lot is conveniently located to take the bus to school, so many students park here in transit to UF.
3. On game days, transportation via ride-servicing apps is expensive and unreliable.
Why: With the sudden increase in out-flowing traffic following a football game, there are too many customers hailing cars for the driver base to satisfy, causing an increase in price and rarity of rides.
4. There is no definite way to prevent package theft from my porch, so I'm always worried when I order something on Amazon or a family member gets something for me.
Why: I cannot insure that I will be home at the same time as a package is delivered to accept the package, so the package may sit at my doorstep unguarded for a few hours and can be stolen.
5. My phone loses its charge more quickly while I'm mapping a drive, so for long trips I often have an almost dead phone when I get to where I'm going.
Why: Having my phone constantly update its position via GPS drains the battery faster, causing the small Li-ion cell to be depleted after sustained use.
6. Often the textbook I am supposed to buy for a class is entirely useless, or there are more beneficial studying resources to use online that are a fraction of the cost.
Why: I often don't know if the textbook is actually important to the course until a month or two into it, so usually I elect to just buy the book and take the loss if it is never used.
7. There is a gap in time between when my lease ends at my current apartment complex and when my lease starts at my new one, meaning I have to move all my stuff back home first and then to the new complex, rather than a direct trip only a few minutes down the road.
Why: Apartment complexes need time after a lease ends to clean the apartment and fully prepare it for the next tenants, often leading to a gap between when most complexes end their leases and start new ones.
8. The large trash bin for the complex is far from my apartment, so I end up putting off taking out the trash since it takes longer than I would like.
Why: It likely isn't economically feasible or advantageous for the complex to add more trash bins or to collect trash from each apartment.
9. While driving is more convenient to get to school, parking on campus is expensive and rare to find.
Why: With limited space available for new construction, the school elects to create new lecture halls over parking garages, likely because profits from tuition far exceeds profits from decal sale.
10. While bus systems are usually reliable, they take much longer to get to school than individual transport and are often very crowded.
Why: Since buses are expensive to own or lease, RTS tries to use them efficiently by setting many stops for each route and packing as many people into the bus as possible.
11. The Chick-fil-A in the Hub is a convenient location to eat after class, but the line in the afternoon is always extremely long, so I don't justify the wait.
Why: With a large student body living on campus, everyone wants to get lunch close by and around the same time, leading to an influx of customers in the mid-afternoon.
12. Since the difficulty of a class is often more dependent on the teacher your get than the rigor of the class itself, it is often difficult to accurately control the difficulty of my semester.
Why: College professors are given more freedom to change their curriculum than other teachers, leading to a large discrepancy in the difficulty of classes between professors.
13. Traffic on Archer Rd in the afternoon is nearly stationary at times, making it difficult to get groceries for dinner before evening.
Why: With a lot of people getting off of work in and around the university, there is a large outflow of vehicles causing major road traffic.
14. Pedestrian traffic around the university often slows bus movement to a standstill, as students will often cross the street without walking signals.
Why: Since the dorms are right next to the university, most of these students walk to all of their classes, causing sustained increased pedestrian traffic flow, some of whom do not follow traffic signals.
15. Internet reception sometimes doesn't reach to my room, which means I occasionally have to do homework in the living room which isn't as quiet.
Why: Since our internet provider rents out the router instead of letting the customer purchase one, they likely cut costs by produce lower quality, cheap products for general use.
16. There are sometimes noisy people at the pool late at night, which makes it difficult to sleep.
Why: To save money the complex doesn't have remote access to the local amenities, allowing anyone to access the pool and random people coming late at night.
17. If I go to a fast food place late at night it will usually take awhile, even if there are only a few people in front of me.
Why: Late at night the restaurant is understaffed to save on costs, which makes wait times longer.
18. The model apartments that are shown during tours are usually not entirely indicative of the apartment you're getting, adding unnecessary guesswork to the process of signing a lease.
Why: While the complex wants to attract the most customers with a very nice apartment, they also want to cut upfront costs by not making each apartment as nice as the model version.
19. At Walmart, if I ask a worker where an item is they usually give me a vague indication of the area it's in which may or may not be correct, rather than give me specific instructions on hoe to find the item.
Why: Since Walmart gets its business by offering less expensive goods than other stores, they must cut costs in other areas such as worker pay, leading to less skilled individuals applying for positions.
20. A lot of entertainment companies come out with sequels or remakes that are not very engaging and are a waste of money, but flood the market so there's nothing else in theaters.
Why: After creating a winning story, entertainment companies play it safe by continuing a franchise that people enjoy because they know that a good portion will still pay to see it, regardless of quality.
Reflection: Coming up with the bug list was easy at first, but soon became difficult to do. While my first couple of entries were stuff I was actively annoyed with, I soon had to dig deeper into my memory to find stuff that annoyed me in the past or were slight grievances that I had stopped caring about. Doing this assignment made me inadvertently think about solutions to these problems, and while many seemed impossible to fix, some seemed solvable in a viable way, which was interesting to consider for future entrepreneurship endeavors.
Why: There are only a few maintenance technicians at the complex to save on costs, so these workers must handle a lot of requests individually.
2. Many people park at my complex who do not live there, making it challenging to find a convenient parking spot.
Why: My complex does not use a decal system to vet parked cars, and the lot is conveniently located to take the bus to school, so many students park here in transit to UF.
3. On game days, transportation via ride-servicing apps is expensive and unreliable.
Why: With the sudden increase in out-flowing traffic following a football game, there are too many customers hailing cars for the driver base to satisfy, causing an increase in price and rarity of rides.
4. There is no definite way to prevent package theft from my porch, so I'm always worried when I order something on Amazon or a family member gets something for me.
Why: I cannot insure that I will be home at the same time as a package is delivered to accept the package, so the package may sit at my doorstep unguarded for a few hours and can be stolen.
5. My phone loses its charge more quickly while I'm mapping a drive, so for long trips I often have an almost dead phone when I get to where I'm going.
Why: Having my phone constantly update its position via GPS drains the battery faster, causing the small Li-ion cell to be depleted after sustained use.
6. Often the textbook I am supposed to buy for a class is entirely useless, or there are more beneficial studying resources to use online that are a fraction of the cost.
Why: I often don't know if the textbook is actually important to the course until a month or two into it, so usually I elect to just buy the book and take the loss if it is never used.
7. There is a gap in time between when my lease ends at my current apartment complex and when my lease starts at my new one, meaning I have to move all my stuff back home first and then to the new complex, rather than a direct trip only a few minutes down the road.
Why: Apartment complexes need time after a lease ends to clean the apartment and fully prepare it for the next tenants, often leading to a gap between when most complexes end their leases and start new ones.
8. The large trash bin for the complex is far from my apartment, so I end up putting off taking out the trash since it takes longer than I would like.
Why: It likely isn't economically feasible or advantageous for the complex to add more trash bins or to collect trash from each apartment.
9. While driving is more convenient to get to school, parking on campus is expensive and rare to find.
Why: With limited space available for new construction, the school elects to create new lecture halls over parking garages, likely because profits from tuition far exceeds profits from decal sale.
10. While bus systems are usually reliable, they take much longer to get to school than individual transport and are often very crowded.
Why: Since buses are expensive to own or lease, RTS tries to use them efficiently by setting many stops for each route and packing as many people into the bus as possible.
11. The Chick-fil-A in the Hub is a convenient location to eat after class, but the line in the afternoon is always extremely long, so I don't justify the wait.
Why: With a large student body living on campus, everyone wants to get lunch close by and around the same time, leading to an influx of customers in the mid-afternoon.
12. Since the difficulty of a class is often more dependent on the teacher your get than the rigor of the class itself, it is often difficult to accurately control the difficulty of my semester.
Why: College professors are given more freedom to change their curriculum than other teachers, leading to a large discrepancy in the difficulty of classes between professors.
13. Traffic on Archer Rd in the afternoon is nearly stationary at times, making it difficult to get groceries for dinner before evening.
Why: With a lot of people getting off of work in and around the university, there is a large outflow of vehicles causing major road traffic.
14. Pedestrian traffic around the university often slows bus movement to a standstill, as students will often cross the street without walking signals.
Why: Since the dorms are right next to the university, most of these students walk to all of their classes, causing sustained increased pedestrian traffic flow, some of whom do not follow traffic signals.
15. Internet reception sometimes doesn't reach to my room, which means I occasionally have to do homework in the living room which isn't as quiet.
Why: Since our internet provider rents out the router instead of letting the customer purchase one, they likely cut costs by produce lower quality, cheap products for general use.
16. There are sometimes noisy people at the pool late at night, which makes it difficult to sleep.
Why: To save money the complex doesn't have remote access to the local amenities, allowing anyone to access the pool and random people coming late at night.
17. If I go to a fast food place late at night it will usually take awhile, even if there are only a few people in front of me.
Why: Late at night the restaurant is understaffed to save on costs, which makes wait times longer.
18. The model apartments that are shown during tours are usually not entirely indicative of the apartment you're getting, adding unnecessary guesswork to the process of signing a lease.
Why: While the complex wants to attract the most customers with a very nice apartment, they also want to cut upfront costs by not making each apartment as nice as the model version.
19. At Walmart, if I ask a worker where an item is they usually give me a vague indication of the area it's in which may or may not be correct, rather than give me specific instructions on hoe to find the item.
Why: Since Walmart gets its business by offering less expensive goods than other stores, they must cut costs in other areas such as worker pay, leading to less skilled individuals applying for positions.
20. A lot of entertainment companies come out with sequels or remakes that are not very engaging and are a waste of money, but flood the market so there's nothing else in theaters.
Why: After creating a winning story, entertainment companies play it safe by continuing a franchise that people enjoy because they know that a good portion will still pay to see it, regardless of quality.
Reflection: Coming up with the bug list was easy at first, but soon became difficult to do. While my first couple of entries were stuff I was actively annoyed with, I soon had to dig deeper into my memory to find stuff that annoyed me in the past or were slight grievances that I had stopped caring about. Doing this assignment made me inadvertently think about solutions to these problems, and while many seemed impossible to fix, some seemed solvable in a viable way, which was interesting to consider for future entrepreneurship endeavors.
Looking through John's blog, I realized that a lot of those same problems I have encountered myself. Reason being is probably because I feel that since we are in similar shoes by going to a university and living in a complex, we encounter the basic problems that occur within this environment. It also appears that most of these problems occur due to financial situations between businesses trying to save money on cost.
ReplyDeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteGood work on your bug list! A lot of your ideas were very creative and differed from mine a lot. I found that mine had more to do with things that were super tiny that most would regard as trivial, whereas yours were much more big picture and relevant on a day to day basis, especially for a college student here at UF. I do agree that many of your bugs seem unsolvable (at least at first glance due to how set in stone those involved, such as businesses, are). Perhaps if you were to break some of them down into smaller and smaller sub components (kind of like how I did in my blog), you might be able to find smaller issues that could be feasibly tackled.
Hey John,
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to see how many bugs on your list were very different from mine. I currently live in a dorm, so it was interesting to me to see that many of your pet peeves involve living at an apartment, which I do not need to worry about just yet. However, a few of the problems, like issues involving transportation, I share, as Gainesville is sometimes a process to get around in. Lastly, I was envious in that you found some solutions to your issues while writing this, as many of my issues I still have difficulty preventing.