Please excuse the fact that I have to use general terms and vague references here. I hope that this story is entertaining despite the removed specifics.
Before a recent release, our software allowed the user to do X. There was a bug reported that the user shouldn't be able to do X. We fixed the bug as part of the aforementioned release. Then all of a sudden our users were freaking out because they could no longer do X. We now have conflicting requirements.
- Don't allow user to do X
- User must be able to do X
We decided not to make a quick change to allow the user to do X again; we knew this would just result in a never-ending cycle of bug reports. Instead, we concocted a workaround that uses a different configuration to allow the user to do X again.
Release notes were updated and users were informed that a known issue exists, but there is a workaround. The documentation explicitly states that Configuration A will not allow the user to do X, per requirements. Configuration B on the other hand will. Configurations A and B are subtly different, and would logically seem to be the same--but they are not the same.
Despite the published workaround, this issue was still being communicated as extremely critical, causing a work stoppage. We were then told that the workaround doesn't actually work. Perplexed, I asked for details on what specifically failed with the workaround. The response was something like this:
Our configuration is just like what the workaround shows. Except instead of using Configuration B, we used Configuration A because it should have the same result.
I then had to send a note stating that the known issue document specifically states that Configuration A will not allow the user to perform X. Hence the known issue and the workaround.