March 14, 2008 at 2:16 pm
1. Had a boss that committed my time to two different clients. I was ordered to login to the second client and edit a line of source code each day so the boss could prove to client 2 that I was working on their stuff even though I wasn't. Client 2 was awful surprised how long it took me to do the changes. (It was a fixed bid contract so client 2 was not being billed anything extra.)
2. Setup a portable cart with a computer, laser, etc. in the loft of a warehouse in Kansas in August 1999 in 100+ degree heat. I could barely breath up in the loft. I cannot imagine that equipment lasted too long but that's what the customer wanted. When I came down the stairs, I was soaked from head to toe and the 100+ main level actually felt cool. It's no wonder I didn't die from heat stroke.
3. Part of a team that was asked to work evenings and weekends to meet a deadline. When we did and were getting close to an on-time delivery, management committed to a bunch of change requests. Keep those monkeys working! I protested in the team meeting and was later reprimanded in private for undermining the boss's authority, how dare I question management's decision, blah, blah, blah.
4. Worked for a medical data warehouse. Assets were sold off. I was laid off from lack of money but was asked to transfer the system and data to the buyers. I demanded to see a release form from the owners of the data due to HIPPA regulations. I was mocked but they relented. One owner refused to consent and was angry we still had their data. Apparently, they were under the impression we had destroyed it. Glad I held out for the release form.
March 14, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Here's one for you. My oldest daughter was about 2 years old. She caught chicken pox while at day care. Guess what, neither my wife nor I had chicken pox as kids, and kids being kids, my daughter was more than happy to share. I got it a week later. That entire week, my wife called me a wimp. The following week, she got it. Now here is the fun part.
The company she worked for had stand-alone systems in the remote offices that they pulled data from on a nightly basis. Her boss worked in Denver, but didn't want to come down to Colorado Springs to pickup the system and take it back to Denver so the people up there could do her work that week. Her clients were instructed to deliver their daily work to the office across the hall from my wife's office (she had a key to that office as well). I would drive her out to work, and we would wait until we were sure everyone had left the building (there was a pregnecy center on the first floor) had left. She would then go in, get her work from the office across the hall, go to her office and work. When she was ready to come home she would call me at home, I would loadup our daughter, and drive out the office and pick her up.
This went on for a week.
March 15, 2008 at 9:27 am
When my son caught chicken pox, the day care called me to pick him up at 11:00am. At 1:30pm my manager called me at home and asked me when I could go back to work. I was out less than 3 hours. Besides I already told them my son had chicken pox, people were so 'understanding' and 'sensitive'. I ended up working at night when my husband came home from work and weekend. Still they complained that I took too much time off (maybe they did not count all the nights and weekends I worked), that was the reason they gave me when they promoted a junior programmer. It did not matter I got everything done on time. It did not matter all other department's managers and even the CEO liked my work. My vice president and my manager said having a young child was their excuse not give me the promotion.
I sent out my resume the next day.
When I resigned, the HR kept asking me the real reason why I resigned. They said three people in my department left within 2 months. The CEO came to say good-bye to me.
Then I heard after I left, the vice president left (the company forced him.).
March 15, 2008 at 10:02 am
I had a rough job with a new manager at one point. He was a "failed projects" guy brought in to try and get us to finish a large project quicker. After a few months I was tired of it and when I got paged out of a comedy club "just to see how quick I'd respond", I'd had it.
The next morning I resigned.
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March 17, 2008 at 6:20 am
Hmm, used to have to do all sorts of mad stuff, but luckily now I mainly deal with just the SQL side of things, but in the past I have....
1)Server failure in Frankfurt at 10am, requiring replacement chassis, no engineers available. So, Packed chassis in huge suitcase, drove down to Heathrow in less time than it should have legally taken. Parked car in short term parking, sprinted to plane. Flew to Frankfurt, arrived, drove straight to site, swapped chassis, revived server much to amazement of German customer. Packed broken chassis in case, drove back to airport, ran to plane and caught flight back to London, drove home!
At least the company got stung for the short term parking charges
2)I was forced to fly out and spend two weeks working in Italy at less than a days notice as a customer did not believe we could be looking at their servers unless we were physically on site to do it. The problem was not even with the SQL servers!
3)Paged at 9pm on Christmas eve by an on call engineer because a customer had removed 2 disks from their RAID array and trashed all their databases, when asked if the customer had a backup, they said yes, they are backed up to the same disk array!
Spent all night and much of the following morning repairing databases and extracting as much usable data as possible. In the end I got 1 hours sleep before the relatives rolled up for Christmas day and the kids woke up.
March 18, 2008 at 5:38 am
1. I have taken nail-cutter with me in the office since i was very very busy in that period 🙂
2. came in the office after 7 PM by finishing the meeting with client for preparing MOM's 🙂
March 18, 2008 at 12:57 pm
How about "I really apologize but AP cannot get checks to run and I don't know how to reset the table to get the process going again.."
I was at my Grandmother's funeral....
March 24, 2008 at 10:01 am
Well I am a little late getting to this, but I think I have made the mistake thinking that my job was my life.
1. Took two-week leave to work at a World/National Boy Scout Jamboree and was saddled with a laptop. The bad thing was no vehicles allowed in the jamboree area. I rode a bike to an outside support building and logged onto users systems in England and Korea. The laptop was really not one but was a portable PC. This was in the early 90's.
2. Got a call on Thanksgiving Day of a user created problem at one of our military installations. I left the table and was at their site within 3-hours, but was not able to return until the following Tuesday. By then, my family had returned to their homes in Washington, Florida and Mississippi.
3. Went with the 82nd Airborne when they deployed to the Middle East the first time. The trip was planned to be for 2-weeks, but I did not return until the bombs started dropping 89 days later. I missed birthdays of my wife, son and daughter; Thanksgiving, Christmas, News Years and my 22nd wedding anniversary.
4. Worked on a job contract after being with the company only 13 months. The work had to be done during lunch, after work and on weekends. This was done over a 2-month period with no compensation from the home office. Oh, they did at times provide crackers, cookies and drink during some of the lunch periods. The company did retain the contact another 5-years, but lost it the next go around to another competitor. What was difficult to understand was why the team never got a thank you from any of the other employees on wining the contract and they remaining employed.
March 24, 2008 at 5:34 pm
While we're on the subject...
Thanks to all the folks in the military keeping all of us safe or keeping those that can't defend themselves safe... think of all the birthdays, anniverseries, births, school starts, graduations, and other "firsts" they will never get to see even if they do happen to make it home safely. And thanks to all the folks who have loved ones in harm's way or have lost someone who was in the service of their country...
... our worst daily problems pale in comparison.
--Jeff Moden
March 24, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Here, here, well said, Jeff.
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