Posts by sandman 653 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jul 2009
Quite sound (pun intended) advice. I had some quite valuable books stolen in Portsmouth, I didn't bother with the police, just went almost literally around the corner to the nearest antique/second-hand bookshop, recognised my books, pointed out to the shopkeeper (fence) my signature inside each one, and issued a few brisk threats involving physical harm and property damage. My books were grudgingly returned.
Let's assume you've done all of the things mentioned in the article and your CV has been passed on to the employer. You're one of three who've made the cut, you've all got similar experience and qualifications, what else can elevate you above the competition. Here's where pure randomness comes in to play. I got one job because I put Formula I in the interests section of the CV, seriously, my future manager turned out to be an absolute F1 nut. Of course, I don't know how many other prospective people were completely revolted by the mere idea. ;-)
Back in the 70s, The Royal Brunei Yacht Club was mostly run on alcohol. Chinese restaurants would serve Tiger Beer from teapots into teacups, complete with saucer, so as not to offend Muslim customers. Expats seemed to have two main occupations, drinking and adultery. It's a lot stricter now, sadly. ;-)
Ah, the days of upgrading the office computers. Carefully remove the case (carefully because they were really cheap and the unground metal edges would rip your hand open). Admire the bright yellow fluff gathered around the board. Remove. Smile at the rivulets of dried tar on the inside of the case. Wipe clean. Note how sticky the motherboard was. Shrug. Insert new modem/memory/graphics card/whatever. Carefully close case. If careless, wipe new bloodstains off case and get a plaster. Repeat 12 times.
I had one like that, he wasn't particularly good at any form of IT/Design/etc, but deliberately only employed people who were. He said his job was to protect us from all the corporate crap and in return, he'd bask in the reflected glory of our (hoped for) successes. He was as good as his word.
Ah yes, when I was a sprog doing technical drawing and engineering at the local technical college, one of our instructors got his tie caught in a lathe. Unbelievably, ties worn with boiler suits were a mandatory part of the uniform. That time I had to dive for the emergency button before we had an unfortunate meeting of chuck and face.
Oh yes. I've been sworn at about that. Me "Is the computer turned on at the plug socket". Salesperson "Of course if f***ing is, do you think I'm stupid?" Hmm, better not comment. Wander across to his desk, machine is humming happily away. Me "Is the monitor turned on?" "What's a monitor?" "The TV thing". Again, "Of course if f***ing is." "Is it plugged in?" (Having already looked under desk and seeing that it's not). Silence...
Yep, we had a plug with a DO NOT TOUCH sign on it in bright red, bold, underlined, plus the plug switch was taped down with yellow and black electrical tape. We were running 3D renders of a new building overnight (back in the day, when it would take all night). We had a super-urgent request for a drawing that had to be shown to a certain royal personage with an interest in architecture the next day. I started the render and left for the night. The cleaner came in, could't find a spare plug, so just pulled off the tape and plugged the vacuum cleaner in. Next morning panic ensued and the cost of a motorcycle courier to get the drawing to its destination in time for the crucial meeting was considerable. The whereabouts of the cleaner is unknown... ;-)
The number of times I've had to patiently explain to senior management that nothing, repeat nothing, should ever be launched on a Friday. (Usually explaining that they will have to respond if anything goes wrong and/or there'll be a whole weekends worth of irate customers to deal with, works).
A simple tactic is to tell everyone you're going to be out of contact, because you'll be spending most of your holiday exploring deep gorges/rain forests/coral reefs/etc with no reception. Many people will believe you because there is a strange belief that outside Britain and the US, mobile coverage is poor, when the situation is exactly the opposite. Then, when at your destination, turn the phone off and lock it securely in a nice steel hotel safe - just to be sure.
I used to work for a US company that had the worst blame-avoidance culture I've ever met. Anything that went wrong was always someone (or something) else's fault. We had a minor snafu one day and a meeting was held to deflect responsibility. I just opened my mouth and said "Yep, my fault, I screwed up, I'll fix it" Absolute silence, apart from the sound of jaws hitting the table and brains gently frying. :-)
Don't remind me. I've been through quite a few passport photos. The sequence was something like this: Chubby schoolboy (aren't you a bit young to be flying by yourself?); Total stoner (step out of the line please); Carlos the Jackal (the bastard even had the same glasses) and Serbian warlord (not helped by the fact that the background was half red and half blue, looking like I was standing in front of a flag, all I needed was an AK47). Fortunately the latest one looks at least semi-human and I get through at the same rate as most dubious travellers these days.
Ah, yes, I had to maintain our company's computers back in the old smoking days. the tar would happily build up on the cooling fans, mingling with the usual dust and crud to make an effective caulking agent. It was a bit of a competition to see which fan would stop working first. The site of lines of tar running down the inside of the casing really put me off smoking.
Oh there were some classics in the days when many people were meeting computers for the first time. Although I was the IT project manager, people assumed that I would be happy to fix their little problems. My favourite went like this. "My computer isn't working!" "OK, have you switched it on?" "Yes, do you think I'm bloody stupid?" (Biting inside of cheek - hard). "Have you turned the monitor on?" "What's a monitor?" "The big TV thing on your desk." Silence...
Same problem, different (and politer) user. Computer on? Check. Monitor on? Check. Hmm, screen still black and no little light. Is the monitor plugged in? Nope.
When I were a lad, I was doing metalwork at our local technical college. Bizarrely we had to wear boiler suits (sensible) and shirt + ties (gibberingly insane). Watching one of our instructors getting his tie caught in a lathe rather demonstrated the idiocy of that rule. A lucky hit on the emergency stop button prevented a facial puree and a pair of tin snips took care of the tie. Were the rules changed? Of course not, don't be silly.
One company I had the pleasure of working for had a particularly unpleasant sales person who hated the IT Department (someone must have told him he couldn't have a new laptop sometime in the past). He particularly hated one member, who to be fair did have an incredibly loud and annoying laugh. While said sales drone was on holiday, we replaced all his Windows sounds with a recording of the laugh. Being technically completely ignorant, he couldn't find out how to remove it. Since his manager and the CEO were in on the joke he couldn't even get any joy by whining to them. Eventually, he had to abase himself and ask us to fix the "problem". Oddly, he still hated the IT mob after that incident...
Yes, I also worked for an organisation where one of the directors insisted their PA print out all emails so they could read them and then dictated the answers. Fast forward a few years and management changed. This lot would only look at bulleted PowerPoint slides. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Back in the day I worked in an old office with another 5 people. The electrical system was almost as venerable. We started out with just two computers, one running the database and my CAD setup. Then desktops became cheap and the other three got one each. When winter came, the old steam heating couldn't provide enough output to keep us warm, so fan heaters were turned on. One heater was fine, two heaters OK, but a third was just too much and there would be screams of frustration as everything went dark and cold. Being a poor charity, it took a couple of years before we could afford to replace the wiring for the whole building. It looked like a scene from a Dickens' novel as we huddled over the keyboards in winter coats, woolly hats and fingerless gloves.
Sometimes you can get away with it. I was the IT analyst on a large eLearning project. As such, I wrote the specs for the project - comprehensive specs, very, very, comprehensive specs. This was in the days when the differences between browsers was a real problem. So, to cut a long story short, a director hands the project build over to an external design company and everything proceeds. Six months later, I'm invited to the unveiling in their building. During the presentation the designers of the quasi-3D environment (it was a trend, even though users hated it) proudly stated that it only worked on IE5 (could have been 5.5). I pointed out that the client only used Netscape and banned IE... The director turned round and snarled "Why wasn't that in the specs?" At this stage I lost my temper and replied "It was, I wrote them, did you read them?" and stormed out before I started using unfortunate language.
Later that day, back at base, I was called into his office. Mentally clearing my desk I was more than a little surprised when he offered me a job in his own department. I politely refused, mostly on the grounds that he hadn't got a clue what he was doing really. After that I always produced a PPT with the mission-critical specs to present to those with short attention spans, as well as the full document.
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