Techie took out a call center - and almost their career - with a cut and paste error
- Reference: 1719214148
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/06/24/who_me/
- Source link:
This week meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Hugh" who once worked at a call center in Florida – "the kind that sell stuff people don't need and then do all they can to prevent them from cancelling" as he described it.
Oh, yes, Hugh, we know the type.
[1]
The center was built on Ubuntu and a system called ViciDial. Hugh edited and updated scripts on his machine using variables that changed for different campaigns, and the sales agents – some 300 of them – saw updates in real time on the terminals in front of them.
[2]
[3]
As you might imagine, this was not exactly a high-profit business, so an awful lot was done on the cheap. Thus the open source system. Another consequence was that there was no test environment – everything happened in production. Seat of the pants stuff.
Well, as often happens, Hugh found himself with some idle time and a connection to the internet – a dangerous combination. And as often follows from that, he found himself reading some sites on which … let's say … grown-up humor featured strongly.
[4]
We're not judging here. Hugh was, after all, a grown-up.
While we're in the neighborhood …
The subject of NSFW stuff happening at work also came up, as it were, in a submission from a reader we'll call "Frank" who was VP of electronic banking for a very large US financial institution. He had responsibility for all of the bank's ATMs.
One day he got a call from a customer at an international welcome center – the kind of place where foreign travelers stop in to get some local currency. The ATMs at such places had their menu screens in multiple languages. The customer told Frank to read the menu in German, then hung up.
Frank did not read German, so he asked a bilingual friend to check it out.
It transpired that the German text which should have read "… mit der Streife unten rechts …" (meaning "with the stripe down and to the right") actually read "… mit der Steife unten rechts …". Note the missing r.
In case you don't have Google Translate, the typo changes the word "stripe" to "stiff" –we’ll leave the rest to your imagination about how that might be used in colloquial German.
Hugh found some of the jokes amusing, so decided to save them for sharing with others who shared his sense of humor. Some copying and pasting to the clipboard followed.
You see where this is going, of course.
[5]Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station
[6]Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not
[7]A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?
[8]Techie invented bits of the box he was fixing, still botched the job
Before very long there was uproar as 300-odd sales agents realized the scripts they were reading to prospective customers contained language and concepts not conducive to sales patter.
Not even in Florida.
Somehow the contents of Hugh's clipboard had made their way into the variables for ViciDial, and the humor he had hoped to share with like-minded folks was being shared with, well, a whole other audience.
Management demanded an explanation, of course. Hugh explained that "Ubuntu pushed an apt package that caused the script to read from the incorrect NFS mount that contained a former admin's disgusting downloads. How could we have ever known this guy had all of this stuff there?"
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Well, it was that or admit he'd made a total n00b error.
In the end, he got away with it – and was actually pretty happy that the downtime had saved a few hundred people from sales calls they didn't want.
Ahh, the old "former employee's fault" escape clause. Who among us hasn't tried that one on at least once? If you have ever been rescued by a predecessor who may or may not have existed, [10]tell us about it in an email to Who, Me? and we might share your tale to soften some future Monday morn. ®
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Re: mit der Steife unten rechts
Yeah, a really hard proposition.
Re: mit der Steife unten rechts
Nein! Nein!
Bonafide Kraut here, providing unnecessary detail:
"die Streife" means patrol (e.g. plod)
"der Streifen" means strip or stripe
Re: mit der Steife unten rechts
While we are discussing german words:
"der Steife" means "the Stiff one" - a nod to the grown up jokes?
Re: mit der Steife unten rechts
While we're in the neighborhood …
"On which side does sir dress?"
I had thought that use of to dress had passed with captain Peacock and Mr Grainger but clearly not as the previous post indicates.
(Not such a silly question from ones tailor as I am assured a slight adjustment is made to accommodate the difference. ;)
I am sure I would be so embarrassed by the ATM I wouldn't know where to mit meiner Steife* .
* Steife(f?)
It would of course not do ...
to blame the upper echelons in management for skimping on a test environment, which was ultimately the root cause of the issue. I do feel a more experienced BOFH might have hinted that said "grown-up humour" apparently came from somewhere in the system, possibly from management or beancounters, but he would need to spend some serious (paid) overtime researching who he was going to pin it on was responsible for this problem.
Re: It would of course not do ...
Yes, it was a Hugh-ge mistake for him to not do it
Always be prepared to blame someone else.
Always hold your hand up and admit your mistakes ..... when they are small ones. This builds a reserve of trust in your honesty.
When that career ending mistake happens you are far more likely to be believed when you say it wasn't you! It will also give you time to find and delete the log files!
Don't delete the logs, that only raises suspicion!
Dump them full of gibberish, then blame systemd,..
Vicidial
Heh, we tried Vicidial at my old place. The 90s web UI looked right at home with our other aging crap. I don't think we ever actually used it in anger though. Probably just as well!
Crowley!
Thanks to Messrs Pratchett and Gaiman, we already know exactly what the worst thing that can happen to a workplace like that looks like, and in my opinion it can't happen to them all fast enough.
Re: Crowley!
Very good!
Unfortunately the misguided apprentice antichrist restored that scurvy lot to this world and not somewhere more subterraneanly appropriate.
"300-odd sales agents realized the scripts they were reading to prospective customers"
Cleary these odd sales agents don't peruse their scripts before inflicting the contents on their victims.
On the other hand these R rated spiels would be infinitely more amusing than the typical timeshare scams of the period and might have signed up a few adult site subscriptions.
Every time I've ever left a job, I've always told the colleagues I liked that I was leaving behind to not hesitate to throw me under the bus (repeatedly if necessary) to save their own skin once I'm out of the door.
If nothing else, it's a theory you can throw at shouty management that buys you time to figure out what the hell has actually gone wrong, and why. You can always row back later on with "oh on first look we thought it was X, but it actually turns out that wasn't the root cause, it was Y".
"oh on first look we thought it was X, but it actually turns out that wasn't the root cause, it was Y".
With "Y" preferably an ex-employee at an higher level.
"apt package that caused the script to read from the incorrect NFS mount"
Sounds straight from Simon's playbook! Bravo!
"As you might imagine, this was not exactly a high-profit business, so an awful lot was done on the cheap. Thus the open source system"
The 90's called, and Microsoft want their FUD back.
mit der Steife unten rechts
Don't you hate it when you can't get money from the ATM because you dress to the left?