On about my 3rd contract, straight out of Uni, I got a gig as a support monkey working for a 3rd part company on a site in london (standard charter). I was asked to upgrade DOS on a PC from 3.2 to 5 - tells you how long ago this was. I started the installation and it promted me to say that there was a 32mb partition on the 40mb disk and that version 5 could utilise the full 40mb. Did I want to move the partition? Figuring it would warn me if it was about to do something bad I figured I'd give it a go. Next thing the HD springs into life and up pops formatting 1%, 2% etc. I had to then tell my boss what I had done, where I was taken off site. The PC I was 'upgrading' belonged to the IT director. I was like an excocet missile heading in there and lasted a total of 3 hours.
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Rule Number 1 - Assuming that you have a valid contract in place always try to get your poo onto your timesheet, provided that the timesheet is valid for your current contract and covers the period of time that you are billing for.
I preferred version 1! -
Originally posted by SallyAnne
Gotta love northern birds."Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. "
Thomas JeffersonComment
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Originally posted by TonyEnglish
jesus. and i thougth i had a bad first day. thats a total fck up story.Comment
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Email seems to be the worse culprit. A work colleague sent an email to our team about options for an office Christmas do with questions such as “do we take partners?” etc
As he was a mate, I sent him my replies and then slagged off some tart in HR who would be coming.
Weeks later I get a very curt reply from aforementioned tart with snippet of my email saying “I don’t think I should have received this bit”.
The dozy t0sser had only just bundled up all the email replies and mailed them off to her direct.
Very close shave…
Most unprofessional thing I did was to run a test program that streamed data to a very public place. Problem is the “routing” company still authorised my network and off went the stream of test data to be displayed to thousands of people.
Normally I fill test data with all sorts of profanity but for some strange reason, I copied previous live data. That could have lead to a prosecution I reckon… I really did sh1t myself…If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.Comment
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I once wrote in a call log that "the user's laptop's NIC port was NFU".
I forgot at the time that the user was a Managing Director who rang the service desk to enquire on the progress of the call. The monkey who answered the call read back to the MD my log entry verbatim and who was then asked by the MD what 'NFU' meant. Allegedly, the monkey suggested it stood for "No ******* Use".
I then got a call from the Service Desk manager asking why I had put acronymed expletives in a call log. Quickly thinking on my feet, i told him it was my short hand for "Non-Functioning Unit".
I got away with it.Comment
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Not wise...Originally posted by hyperD"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. "
Thomas JeffersonComment
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I've been there as well. And it was proper data that I blatted.Originally posted by TonyEnglish
But actually, look it it from the perspective of the company: Would you let a monkey work on your machine, upgrade the OS without backing up the data?
It was their fault IMHO.Comment
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Originally posted by KentPhilip
i just remember one.
working in an investment bank. sat next to the associate director, my manager, who was going through a tough time with the wife, and not that i knew, but had a thing for a woman manager who sat opposite him.
one day while he left his desk, i went onto his machine and sent a IRC message to the woman stating my managers love and affection for her....Comment
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I had to give some training on web development once that inolved teaching the users about all facets of web dev and usage, including how cookies are used and stored. Little did I know that some colleagues had been browsing left handed websites on the training PCs, which resulted in cookies from some of the web's more exotic sites. In a room of 8 people you've never met before and are supposed to be training it was very embarassing indeed. Needless to say the culprit was taken outside and shot."Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. "
Thomas JeffersonComment
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Oh dear, here we go.
I was doing some testing on an online messaging service for Thames TV. I sent out a message saying "Bog off everyone", thinking that no-one else was using the system. Unfortunately, some very senior users were on the system at the time, and complained to my boss. I made out that I meant to say "Log off everyone", but it was a typo. Got away with it.
In my first contract, as part of my testing I commented out a bit of code that would stop some data being sent out to the recipient, a major bank. I forgot to put the bit of code back in, and when I ran the program against Prod, it sent out loads more data than it should have. The bank refused to pay for the work, which came to about £10k. I thought I was going to be terminated straight away, but it was used as an excuse to introduce strict QA procedures. Got away with that one too.
A few years ago I did some development work in an extremely complex batch system, which I unit tested thoroughly. I tried and tried to get the users (French) to carry out system testing, but they couldn't organise it for some reason (because they were French?), and they decided to get the changes moved to Prod without testing it properly. Just before Christmas. I told the support manager it wasn't ready to go live, but he said "It's their decision, don't worry about it". The change went in, stuffed up everything, and cost the client close to £2million to sort out the mess. I was apoplectic with worry, but the support manager stood by me and said "Not your fault". Got away with that one too.
Phew. That's a kind of therapy for me, getting all that out in the open.Comment
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