BOFH: An architect and his own entirely avoidable downfall "Well, you know what they say," the Boss says, faking sadness. "The candle that burns twice as bright..." "... Should be thrown into the pool of diesel from a safe distance?" the PFY responds. "No, the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long." "Is that a thing though?" the PFY asks. "I mean, if you're talking …
Things like how the Halon system got hooked up to the ventilation system for the boardroom. And how this happened, by some amazing "storm of the century" coincidence, at the same, exact time all the doors in the boardroom were jammed shut. Right after that unfortunate decision to replace the windows with unbreakable polycarbonate. And just when the building telephone's system went out-of-order.
While we all deeply feel the pain of the loss of our leadership, we will somehow find the inner strength to carry on the firm's business. In our individual offices.
To be honest.. I find a bit of implied intimidation works well at times.. such as: "That's an interesting idea but can we think about it for a bit because right now I need to go check the firewall and server logs.". The key is to keep them off guard such that they never know what you're capable of.
Oh we are here, and we do watch and record everything in the office. I had one job as BOFH for an accounting firm in Alaska. One of the partners thought that the IT department was also the janitorial staff. Kept asking us to clean the kitchen, take out the office trash, the final straw was when she asked me, The IT Manager, to vacuum her office one afternoon as it was a bit dusty. The next day her PC, mysteriously would not boot. Took us 2 weeks to get that sorted out. When asked by another partner why it was taking so long to fix her system this tech illiterate was informed that it was because of all of the crap she had downloaded from the internet and as she had locally saved data that was critical it was taking extra time to recover that before we rebuild her system. Oh those were the days. Never let the BOFH have your password and a key to your office when you yourself don't know how to read log files..... As an aside after her abusing 3 other employee's to the point that they turned in resignations this partner was fired. Talk about a happy dance.
<quote>One of the partners thought that the IT department was also the janitorial staff. Kept asking us to clean the kitchen, take out the office trash, the final straw was when she asked me, The IT Manager, to vacuum her office one afternoon as it was a bit dusty. </quote>
BTDTGTTS!!
Probably the shortest tenure at any employer I have ever had - all of 20 minutes.
Hired on to """improve""" their complete IT estate, by mom and dad; because it had slowly deteriorated into a clusterfuck, no thanks to the meddling of """sonny boy""".
FIRST day on the job, """sonny boy""" THINKS I was a member of their janitorial staff, because he demands that I:
1) mop the bathroom floors,
2) sweep out the warehouse, and
3) throw out the garbage.
I was NOT hired to perform janitorial duties, and once """sonny boy""" finished spouting off the mouth, I walked over to the receptionist, and asked: "WHO the fuck foes he think he is?"
"The owner's son." she replied.
"Well tell the owners that, upon reflection, I have decided NOT to take the job, and I wish them luck in finding janitorial staff that can double as IT techs. Also tell them NOT to even bother calling me, as I will block their number, and if they want to know why I changed my mind, just tell them what their `little precious one` had done."
I walked out the door, and never heard from them since. Later, I did hear that the shit hit the fan shortly after they found out what had transpired. My understanding was that """sonny boy""" was swiftly promoted to a position at another employer. I wonder how hard the door hit him on his ass as he was ejected from mommy and daddy's company.
I do remember that word got around to avoid them like the plague, and it must have been more than 6 months later before someone was desperate stupid sufficiently cash strapped enough to take the job.
One of the partners thought that the IT department was also the janitorial staff.
Place I worked at many moons ago (VAR) tried the same shite with the hardware techs. It seems that one of the account managers didn't like us in the weekly staff meeting and convinced the owner that our time would be better spent cleaning keyboards, telephones, carpets, bathrooms, et al.
We quickly rescheduled service calls to that time and made sure that none of us were in the office on that day.
The Boss got the best of the PFY in a fair, dirty fight...?
Simon may have finally got a Boss who can give him a challenge!
Stands to reason, though... Pure Darwinism... Having taken the weak ones out of the corporate gene pool, he was BOUND to make the survivors more able to compete.
Well.. It's not as if the ...proactive defense tactics... of the BOFH and PFI aren't known by Management, HR, and other relevant departments. It's simply that they have as yet been unable to prove anything, or ran into adamantium contract clauses.
There have been "decent" Bosses in the past, and it seems HR have chosen the angle of...containment... this time around, with a Boss who can take as good as he gives, a Balance of sorts, in the hopes of limiting the Threat from Mission Control.
Fighting fire with fire can work, unless one of the Clueless ignores the ..sensitivities of the controlling fire, and crosses the Boundaries. Then you will find that, as in this case, you got *two* fires with a common goal fueling on each other, coming your way....
Always like to see someone channeling Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.
Simon must have been watching it when he wrote this since there are so many Blade Runner references used.
"Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion..."
"Ay?"
"... I watched C-beams... glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate," I continue.
"What beams?"
"All those moments will be lost in time. Like... tears. In rain..."
Looks like the BOFH and PFY had their stories "straight" from the beginning.
Good to see a little communication go so far, like 3 stories far.
even those who DON'T do any actual work dislike open plan offices.
Hard to concentrate on updating farcebook with the latest cat vid with all that incessant "work" babble and phones ringing and printers printing. And don't EVEN get me started on the difficulties of napping...
Reminds me... got booted from our office into the finances' old office recently.
We lost the space that could have had a ping pong table. Next to a pool table.... with a snooker table in the distance for good measure. All with a window(!?!) looking out over the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside.
Now we've barely got enough space for a pool table and nice view of the boss' office. bastards...
(Not AC because I'm 99.9% sure the boss ain't a reg reader)
I'm starting to get just a little scared that the BOFH and PFY are getting affected by huggy feely team building events and other such dross. letting the Architect live might be acceptable negligence but not only one but two management goons make me fear that even the bottom drawer hammer might be replaced with a foam rubber version!
How could they!
If ever there was any group for whom there should be no second chance it's the corporate architect. People who design homes may be fine and dandy. But having worked in school and local authority buildings for a good few years I have absolutely no reason to think they deserve any kind of mercy.
There have been the South facing glass walls that allow temperatures to shoot up to unbearable levels from April to October. Windows that are perfectly located to slice the head off any happy nine year old running past. Central staircases that open onto a busy corridor to create a dangerous gridlock at the end of every session or fire alarm and god forbid a real fire. Atrium entrances with the reception area yards from the door, that waste loads of limited space and make it easy for the casual thief to do a runner. Wiring that runs nowhere near the work stations. Meeting rooms with such terrible echo that you can't hear anything properly, add corridors that amplify every sound so that a door closing sounds like the gates of hell. Lighting that can't be reached to change the. strip when it starts to flash. Carpet tiles that give shocks of static to everyone who comes into the room. Fitted cupboards that open out in front of doorways. The works.
@Terry6..... You forgot the roofs! I've never seen any roof leak like an architect designed roof.
Other than that I echo every word.
I remember seeing a line like 'Subject to local council building permits' whacked on the bottom of a drawing that was for a big shed. Not a stadium, just a shed with a cement floor.
$170 thousand and that doesn't even mean it can be built, wow!
If I ever had to fix a computer for that company I'd bill them to crap with the bottom of the bill saying "Repaired subject to user not connecting power".
"Routine retirement of a replicant"......where "a replicant" == "an architect".
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