Customer Support built a parking space allocation app

“It's basically a spreadsheet with buttons.”— Plant Manager

Reason:

Because the prototype has 32,283 production records. Built during an offsite instead of the thing they were asked to build.

Built by:

Kevin, someone from Procurement

Build time:

8 evenings

Built with:

Airtable plus four Zapier zaps

Database:

Firestore because the prototype needed to ship by Friday

Authentication:

nobody knows the password, but the browser still does

Deployment:

running on port 9000 in production

Responsible:

the business

Documentation:

comments beginning with TODO 2025

Security situation:

no security review, no plans for one

Future disaster:

It will eventually process €240,000 per month.

Age: 5.2 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 1 owner so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: €519k per year, 113 users, alive 273x longer than intended.