Paradigms are often defined partly in terms of what they are not, or in terms of what they are reacting against. The paradigm of human-centered computing is no exception. So, what is a user-hostile system? Related to that question, the terms kludge and work-around, and the related concept of make-work, have yet to be clearly defined for the intelligent systems community. Human-centered systems are different from user-hostile systems as well as from systems based on a designer-centered approach. This essay tries to clarify the senses of these three terms and suggest ways to study work-arounds, make-work, and kludges as an integral part of human-computer systems-rather than as embarrassing necessities that are best swept under the computing-research rug.