[geeks] WTF Stories

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 @ 12:25 -0500, Brooke Gravitt said:

> Ok, I just read this
> <http://thedailywtf.com/forums/thread/101329.aspx> and was wondering,
> anyone have any stories like this?
> 
> I know there have been slow times on projects where I have *literally*
> had nothing to do for weeks on end. And the one time I started a job
> it took almost a month to get a workstation so I just sat all day
> long.

When I worked for NASA, I didn't get my security clearance until the
last day of my contract.

At Bank of America, jobs that were 1 week affairs when I started were
taking 3 months just to get started a year later.

At first there was very little brass.  We were buried with work, but we
got a lot done.  Basically meetings were 15 minute affairs, often done
in hallways, and we just identified problems and started working on
them.

The executive level immediately recognized the danger we were in, and
installed management to avert the disaster of productivity that had
befallen us.

We now had double the people, which increased our work output to an
amazing 25% of what it had been before.

I used to get so bored, I would wander to other departments and ask them
if they needed any help.

One day I accidentally moved past the event horizon of a teleconference.

Unable to resist the gravity well of a software debugging committee
meeting, I became hopelessly trapped in a sea of endless energy doing
zero work.

Basically this was software debugging done with one programmer and 30
executive veeps who couldn't set their own watches.

After about three hours I was finally asked, "What do you think we
should do?"

I said, "I would have taken me 15 minutes to fix the problem when I
first noticed.  However, thanks to your help and support, it has only
taken me three months."

This caused the mass of veep neutrons at the center to collapse and then
explode, mass converted to radiation and, mercifully, light. The extreme
release of energy pushed their IQs into double digits, and they managed
to stutter permission for me to work on the problem.

Another productive day in corporate America came to a close, and I
retreated to a pub whose dress code didn't allow suits, and the songs
were politically incorrect.





-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --
Unknown]