[hinkley]

I got a general contractor talking shop once and he confessed to me that they overwhelm the customers with cosmetic choices on purpose. People need to put a certain amount of energy into a process to feel they have done their due diligence, and it often doesn't really matter how that energy is spent, just that it is.

In his case it was to distract the customer from worrying about things they can't control, like physics and building codes. The bones of a building only allow so many locations for a sink, for instance. Trying to fight that can snowball an entire project.

Easy decisions that you ultimately question leave a sliver of doubt and regret in your mind. I could have done more. I should have said something. Things you work your ass of on and still don't succeed, you can say you did your best.

[teddyh]

This is exactly the “Important Corollary Four” from Joel Spolsky’s old blog post The Iceberg Secret, Revealed from 2002: <https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/02/13/the-iceberg-secret...>

[okeuro49]

> The bones of a building only allow so many locations for a sink, for instance

Why not just tell the customer that instead. I'd rather pay for someone to tell it to me straight, than someone who wants to purposefully overload the customer with trivial decisions.

[hinkley]

Because you don’t get paid for arguing with customers. Neither the physical time nor the stress.

If you don’t deal with it all day you may have no idea/empathy for the sorts of coping mechanisms people develop to reduce trauma. People can be the worst. They pay you for copper and expect gold.

Also as I stated above, until the customer has invested a certain amount of energy into the process, they will second guess themselves and you. Reviews are often tainted by how the customer feels about themselves. Ultimately the same problem the Duck is solving. They need to pee on it to mark it as theirs.