Boss swore by 'For Dummies' book about an OS his org didn't run Welcome again to On-Call, The Reg’s usually-on-Friday column in which readers share tales of being asked to do nasty jobs at nasty times, often for nasty people. And yes, this is Thursday. But Friday’s a holiday (in some places) and lots of you read On-Call, so they made me do one before I started eating too many chocolate …
NSPHB enters The Room.
NSPHB: Big problem here! Can't print! I need it fixed NOW!
IT01: OK, I'll be on it as soon as I can get our @ out of the mess it's got in so we don't lose access to the corporate mail.
NSPHB: ...
IT02: Don't worry. Just open a ticket and we'll get on it as soon as we solve this.
NSPHB: ... ah.
NSPHB: ... well. OK.
NSPHB: Thanks.
NSPHB leaves The Room.
...
IT02: What was that?
IT01: 10$moneys say he's sending something to a printer at a location about 500Km from here. If not more.
IT02: And why would he do that?
IT01: 'Cos he doesn't know.
IT02: But... Why CAN he DO THAT, then?
IT01: He asked for it.
IT01: And he's a Big Kahuna.
IT02: ... But. Not OUR Big Kahuna?
IT01: Nope.
IT02: ...
IT02: Then, WHY? YOU KNEW THIS was going to happen, didn't you?
IT01: Why, YES! I just LOVE the way his face turns that shade of red!
IT02: Oh.
IT02: I think it's OK, then...
...
IT02: So... What do we do, now?
IT01: Now we wait for him to open a ticket.
RIIIIIIIIINNNNGGG
IT01: OR wait for him to call us asking how to fscking open a ticket.
IT01: Yes, NSPHB?
NSPHB: I... How did you know it was me!?
IT01: Well, I'm a bit of a psychotic, you know? And what with that psychosomething in my head and spending so many hours surrounded by the magnetic fields generated by the comms room sometimes I hear voices in my head before answering the phone, not that they're the same voices as those of the one calling, mind you. More like, an Old One kind of voice, you know? Like Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn or something similar. Though I can't seem to recall it exactly when I try to say it out loud, or you'd all be dead by now. Which is not the case... Anyway, that. And also I have a little screen in my phone telling me who's calling but, who cares?
NSPHB: ...
IT01: OK, what have you broken now?
NSPHB: uh... NOTHING! I JUST CAN'T PRINT THIS F**KING TICKET OF YOURS!!!
IT01: Oh! That's probably related to the problem you told us before... Just open a new ticket or use the previous one. <CLICK!>
IT01: Well, look at the time! It's nearly beer o'clock!
IT02: But... It's still two hours to
IT01: BEER O'CLOCK, I SAID! Let's go. Before he recovers and calls back.
I probably fix stuff better when irritated. "I'll show them! I'll show the world how to do it! And then they'll regret... umm... not asking me to take a look at it the previous time so I could fix it quickly and efficiently which is the reason they pay me in the first place?"
Moral of the story?
Don't be indispensable.
From that moment on Roger treated me like I could fix anything, and came to me with all problems
As somebody who's done this before at several companies and government related jobs, this here is the worst thing you can possibly do. The things I could tell you about how my week gets off track by Monday afternoon..
"As somebody who's done this before at several companies and government related jobs, this here is the worst thing you can possibly do. The things I could tell you about how my week gets off track by Monday afternoon.."
No no no no. You are managing it wrong.
Imagine you have a deadline looming for an impossible task, project that will never fly or you just don't want to be the one to get blamed. What you need is A Good Reason (tm).
Fist you lay the ground work by being useful to higher ups. C-level is perfect but department managers can serve. You are looking for someone sufficiently above your pay grade that you can plausibly say "I felt I couldn't say no" and sufficiently remote from your real work that they have no idea what you should be doing.
A former workmate had this game down to a fine art.
From the story, the problem was clearly a dysfunctional working environment. I don't entirely blame "Jeffrey" for sticking around far too long (*** knows, been there myself), and still less for failing to fix it (at that age he wouldn't have the life experience to sort it, let alone the harder problem of being listened to). But ...
Getting one up on pointy-haired "Roger" is the cleaner who sweeps the dirt under the carpet.
I had more than a few of those.
Often they were failed developers who saw the writing on the wall and went firstly into Project Management and then became 'proper' managers or as Dilbert shows us daily, PHB's.
This particular one was called Jon (as opposed to his sidekick John) who liked to hovver. He regularly was to be found looking over my shoulder 'just checking up to see that you were on target' he'd say gleefully.
I installed (or rather taped) a small mirror to the side of my VDU (that shows how long ago it was) so that I could see the hoverer in action. He also demanded to know how many lines of code we'd written every day and got annoyed if we said Zero because we were documenting the code we'd written.
All went well for about three weeks without a 'hovver'. Then en edict came out from John (Jon was away at some Management Training skylark) telling us that personal items including pictures of family and especially mirrors were not allowed as they were potential health and safety risks. John had just returned from a 'Health and Safety' junket to Antwerp.
No one removed anything as Jon had around 10 pictures of his family on his desk. We alls thought, what's good for him, is good enough for us.
sure enough, said edict got rescinded when Jon returned and to my dismay, the hovvering started.
I was in the middle of debugging an OS driver for a new bit of kit when Jon appeared in my mirror.
After a minute or two, he said, "I don't recall giving you a job that involves code like that?"
I turned and smiled sweetly,
"Yes you did. It is part of the product [redacted] release."
"Oh, so whats wrong with it?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. It is spending too much time at elevated IPL."
Jon looked blankly at me.
Then I came in for the kill.
"Do you want to help? You seem to spend a big part of your day looking over my shoulder. I'm sure you can fix it in a flash? I'm obviously out of my depth here."
after some Bluster, more bluster, Jon looks at watch and he beat a hasty retreat and never came back.
Jon left the company a little while later to be replaced by John.
Rinse and repeat...
Those were the days.
PHB's Rulez Ok.
I used to work with someone like that. She was excellent and knew the products inside out; sadly she got dumped with all the crap, but hard problems.
Eventually someone who left talked her into applying for a job at his new place and she was most surprised how keen they were to employ her.
Funnily I was talking to someone yesterday about managers who hover, thankfully ours don't here. He said one place they worked they eventually asked him if he wanted a bell so he wouldn't catch them at anything he didn't want to see.
To the PHBs credit, he got himself a bell and used to ring it.
.. but you don't buy Easter eggs at all, instead you buy blocks of decent quality chocolate that in addition to tasting good still works out loads cheaper per gram than the sugary pseudo chocolate monstrosity of 99% of UK Easter eggs that contain less % of cocoa solids than a proper chocolate eaters turd.
"the look on the face of the disappointed child who thinks it's an egg of solid chocolate."
Greatly alleviated if said egg contains Smarties, as I recall.
Ooh, a childhood memory of Thornton's Easter Eggs has just surfaced. Now they were a treat. Complete with your name in icing on the outside.
"As a previous poster kindly pointed out, it is formally classed as "cheese" and only just escapes being labelled as "tile grout" on grounds of colour."
That is because of the gritty feeling of this "chocolate" in your mouth. Good chocolate is smooth, no grit at all. And it melts in your mouth and still tastes good, with a pleasant after taste.
I agree, most of the cheap stuff sold/labeled as chocolate isn't really.
> Hershey's Kisses as evidence
That'll serve you right for buying pretty much anything Hershey makes – I won't touch it myself. I prefer Ghirardelli chocolates. And real Cadbury chocolate, not the crap Hershey sells here under license.
Why you brits look for the cheapest crap there is when you come over here is beyond me. Staying at cheap hotels because they've got free breakfast and then whinging about the bacon? For God's sake, go somewhere that's got good bacon if you want good bacon. Likewise don't buy the Hershey's shite. Oh, sure, the good stuff'll cost more. You get what you pay for.
My mum used to buy a large bar of chocolate when we were younger.
That was very economic of her thinking 5 year old me would also understand that the price per gram is more important than the magic of the easter experience.
And she obviously thought that me coming home in tears on the first day back at school, because I had been kicked by the other 5 year olds for trying to explain the economic benefit, was also worth it. Because she carried on doing the same and justifying it the same way every other year.
I recall the chocolate flow completely stopped at about 10 years old because my older sister had reached acne-age, chocolate was bad for her, so it wasn't fair to give me any.
...
Now I am much older and I also don't agree with paying for of a box of mostly-air at first thought, but there is no way I would exclude a child from the experience that almost every other child has, just because it makes no sense to my pocket.
When I break down the cost to 10% for the egg, 45% for the reaction and 45% for the peace when they go into a sugar coma, suddenly it seems like a bargain.
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"Symon, you make it sound like Jebus but himself up on a cross because he wanted to."
Well, according to the book* he did, sort of. To make a point.
* Get it over with and read it. All of it. You'll know exactly where you stand afterwards, and why. You'll also gain the power to make sure that Jehova's Witnesses and the like will never ever call on you again after one little chat.
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