Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early

Back in the days of dumb terminals talking to Unix servers we had an accounts package that had to be fed a new re-licensing key at intervals and it would simply issue a reminder that that was falling due at the start of every terminal session. I'd cobbled together an arrangement (in modern parlance, written an bot) that enabled our order processing system to make account enquiries on it. That got into trouble when it first encountered the reminder. Eventually, because back then our database system, Informix, shared a C-ISAM base with the accounts package, it was possible to persuade it* that the accounting files were database tables and read them directly.

*Create a database with tables corresponding to the structure of the foreign package, delete the data and index files and replace them with links to the files you want to read.

It was a dark and stormy morning...

... some time in the early 90s, and we're hacking out C code in a semi-abandoned warehouse somewhere in Docklands.

Our company had just been taken over, and our shiny (as in 'freshly polished by Andrex') new CEO had this particular morning just been spammed by something called the Federation Against Software Theft, and being one of those types who believed everything he read, he called the tech boss (who we'll call Simon, for that was his name) into his office, where he told him 'Look at this... illegal software, humph... will not be tolerated... inspect the underlings' computers at once... harrumph', etc.

Simon (emerging from the CEO's office) : "OK, everyone, stop work at once. Nobody is to do any work until further notice."

CEO (following him out) : "What? What on earth do you think you're doing? I told you..."

Simon : "I heard what you said. Actually there isn't a single legal copy of the C compiler in the whole company."

Beancounters...

Just back from holiday- before I went away, I put in an order for some critical infrastructure; I'd done everything, identified kit, found supplier, got quotes, pro formas, everything. All Accounting had to do was arrange a bank transfer to pay for it and the jobs done. I get back from holiday and everyone's running around like headless chickens. Our client is up in arms because the equipment we are meant to install this week hasn't even arrived. So, because I was away, the blame got landed in my lap in-abscentia. Until I provided the paper trail, and a statement from the supplier, all pointing the fingers at the Accounts Dept not paying for the order yet.

Now I need another holiday...

Rug Pulled by pissed off third party..

Not being experts in Hosting and unified comms the small company I was in had a shared hosting resource with a partner company (aka 'Kev'' the unified telecomms guru) . For some unknown reason 'Kev' had a falling out without the actual hosting company and closed his super account without telling anyone else.. Which of course cast all our sites adrift as well.. 'Kev' remained in a huff and out of contact, so we had to mad scramble an alternative hosting platform recreate the sites and wait for DNS's to catch up. An interesting Monday morning..

(BTW Always make sure you have ALL the passwords from your supplier\support guys to your unified comms IP voice data PABX box.)

Had a fairly similar situation a few years ago.

We provided and hosted the ticketing website for a prominent Train operating company, and late one Friday night the website disappeared off the internet.

Turns out the TOC still controlled the company domain name on which the site was hosted, and they had steadfastly ignored all the renewal letters and emails from their domain registrar, so the registrar suspended the domain.

Come the Saturday morning, and a veritable shit-storm of abuse is hurled at us from just about every senior member of the TOC staff, threatening all sorts of reprisals up to and including legal action.

They were slightly hampered by the fact that the same domain was used for all their company emails, but they still blamed us anyway.

When we tried to explain that it was out of our control - and in fact only within their control to fix it, we were met with demands - not requests but demands - that we do something about it immediately.

So, given that our agreed support contract was only for office hours, Monday to Friday, we chose to ignore the increasingly desperate threats and cajoling for the rest of the weekend.

On Monday morning I rang the TOC's grandly named "Head of Technology" and slowly and carefully explained the situation. Again. After further investigation, it appeared that the member of staff responsible for managing the company domains had been "let go" and had been the only person who had the log-in details for the domain registrar account.

It took until the Wednesday afternoon before the site was returned to normal operation.

Usually gets worse, the bigger the company ...

From (bitter) personal experience.

You work for MegaCorp, where it can tale a geological age to get a purchase order examined, approved and actioned. Which is your project put back 6 months.

So you try and speed things up by using *your* credit card and claiming back on expenses.

Which works fine. Everyones happy. And now, of course, because it's all working, why bother to switch payments. Just carry on submitting the invoices and getting the money back on expenses.

Until you're made redundant, and lose access to the systems to remove your card details. And now you can't even claim the money back on expenses (as that can only be paid to employees).