News: 1622187010

Not quite in at the same level, but once I worked for a company as a consultant, and my line manager decided that I should write all of his correspondence for him since I was well known for writing very good documentation. I tolerated this for a while, up to the point where he told me to write a very complicated and highly self-serving letter to a customer, while at the same time complaining that my project schedules where slipping since I could not spend as much time on them as I should be doing (being distracted with other things). At that point I handed him another letter I had just written, my resignation, and told him that he should write his own letters - I was not his secretary.

I would have probably written that letter to the client with a couple of extra sentences tucked away - something like "UCAP is too busy doing my job instead of his own because I'm a self important PHB"*

* or what ever

I was working as a contractor for general IT support which migrated into App packaging.

In the middle of trying to roll up a tricky app I was asked to make the IT manager and some sales reps some tea.....

I had the senior director yelling at our tech support staff that his brand new IBM 327x Terminal was completely dead as he could not get any response form it. He was incandescent as it had failed after 2 days use, I found this strange as we had very carefully checked this device out and tested over a couple of days in advance because we knew if anything went wrong it was going to be DEFCON 5. We were at the time working 200% on preparing the release of the new banking application and a whole ton of new products were going to be launched based on the new capabilities, so every minute counted as any delay was going to be a major issue, so I was not at all keen on any interrupts. So I went on a personal visit to his office on the top floor, where I was greeted as if I have killed his first born. It was obvious what the issue was, so I sat him down, using plain simple language directed his hand to the brightness control and turned the brightness control up so he could see the screen. He was of course not happy as he believed the control had somehow managed to change itself when he was not there and demanded a new terminal. So we swapped it with one from the ops room that we cleaned up which had been in use for about 2 years and bagged ourselves a new one. He of course took credit for the successful update to banking application and the new products launch. As with every story there was a happy ending, when he got out of line with a new female employee in the secretary pool (For this was some time ago!), his tear down of the poor young woman did not go down well with the chairman as it was his grand-daughter. So he departed to explore new exciting opportunities ...........

"if anything went wrong it was going to be DEFCON 5"

Sorry to be pedantic, but DEFCON 5 is "Normal". I think you meant DEFCON 1 :)

Never be sorry for being a pedant!

Fnarrr! ;-)

Damn... beat me to it.

As the kids say, "user name checks out" ;-)

There was the time I was dispatched ~50 miles out of my way to collect an item from a holiday camp in Blackpool. The item turned out to be a small carrier bag of dirty underwear belonging to my MD's younger son whom had left it there the previous week. At the rates I was normally charged out for site visits, he could have bought new undies ten times over.

My uncomplimentary writing up of this on my pre-timesheet notes got me called up to the MD, where I was told off for my attitude, and given words to the effect of I was no longer wanted. So I went home, phoned a specialist employment law solicitor, whom jumped at the chance to claim costs off them of more than I earned in a month! I think it only took one phone call and they settled! Those were very expensive undies indeed!

That's the call that every employment lawyer is just waiting for! Easy money, and a good war story to tell your colleagues.

What I wonder... how many managers on the receiving end of this would be clever enough to take note of that lawyers contact information privately in case they need a good employment lawyer at some time...

The daughter of the company's owner rings up. Her computer keeps beeping. Turned out she'd left a heavy book on the keyboard.

Just as I read this, display says no signal, user, Saint somebody can't be bothered, except to fire off a Flare, another new computer issue to be sure!

Manger wanted me to interrupt a quite complex bit of fault finding to post a letter, even after I informed him I was going that way for lunch later, and the morning post had already gone. Was told to get out, so I did, and contacted head office. The guy there said while he agreed it was over the top, it was not company policy to reverse a mangers decisions (or something like that). Off the record I was then given the contact details of a similar company with vacancies - dramatically better environment and pay.

and expected its upper echelon staff to be treated with a degree of reverence most often reserved for saints and dictators."

We know just the sort of place.

Admit it, you're talking about El Reg HQ right?

While doing my PhD I ended up in the group of (unpaid) BOFHs who looked after the lab's IT equipment and generally helped out with IT support stuff. I was overrunning a bit on the PhD and get a surprisingly stern talking-to from my supervisor about completing my actual research work and stopping the (technically voluntary but someone has to do it) BOFH/IT Support stuff.

Literally the next day he phones up to ask me to help get his printer working!

He had the decency to look at the floor while I was there which could have been embarrassment but could also have been to avoid my massive grin.

(and he did say thank you)