Reality check

I know I need to let go of this, but it's been an ongoing problem for several months, and came to a head this week.

My boss agrees with me on this, and that ought to be more than enough validation for me. Still, I'm baffled as to why it's been such a problem.

Consider the following brain teaser:

Imagine that your company has a product called Chicken, and you are responsible for writing the help for the Butt section of Chicken. Also imagine that you are the first competent person to work on Chickenbutt in several years, so that:

The first version of Chickenbutt help reflected the state of the product as of release 1.0.

There were a few point releases of Chicken after that, but no accompanying help releases. A knowledgeable person tells you that there were no Butt changes in any of those Chicken releases.

The next Chicken release was 2.0. Chickenbutt had some changes due to release 2.0, but the help was not updated at that time because the people in charge of doing that work were two cappuchin monkeys with severe substance abuse problems and no organs to grind. (One of them was eventually laid off, I'm told, while the other got promoted... neither of them took notes on what they "did.")

The next Chicken release was 2.1. You, the spunky new superstar employee, updated the Chickenbutt help to the 2.0 level, and there were no additional changes due to 2.1.

A really obnoxious but wealthy customer wants to see the Chickenbutt help as of the 1.1 release. One of your coworkers, who may also have some cappuchin monkey DNA, has to figure out (based on what I've outlined above) which version to give this customer. (Hint: the odds of picking the right one at random are 2 out of 3.)

Now, here's the brainteaser: How many emails does it take to make the coworker understand that it's not okay to send the help for Chickenbutt 2.1? (Hint: This is a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer. I kept a random sampling of my emails as evidence, but it seemed like overkill to keep all of them.)