Hah! This is a new one: Got a cold call from some telesales jerk. He must have left his autodialler running in his lunch break, as when answering the phone all I could hear was a chewing noise.
Had another great WtF last night from my pal who works in IT. It seems there's some sort of curse on the managerial position of his department, in that when anyone accepts the job they become mad. They had a narrow escape with a manager last year who, when he got laid off, decided his final act would be to deliberately fuck up their system so bad they'd have to go into administration (he failed, thankfully). Now they have a guy who received an email with an offer he thought was too good to refuse: A completely unknown company messaged him out of the blue, offering a service where they analyse your company's passwords and decide if they're secure enough. All he had to do was send them a list of passwords and the systems to which they grant access. Thankfully, he presented this idea as a group meeting first, before committing. My pal reported that, "jaws hit the floor".
Now that you're mentioning it... Is this guy working for a blue thumb logo company ? It would actually explain a lot of things.
There are literally dozens of online calculators where you can check the strength of a password without compromising an organization's security. For free.
!?! I am floored. When I first started my job, my password was my first name. Everyone's password was their first name. I was not very popular when i pushed to have everyone's password changed, and some sort of password policy enforced.
I would hope that the next words out of frackwit's boss's mouth were: "You're fired. You're done here, and in the entire IT business. And in Finance, while we're at it, because you are entirely too f*ing stupid to be allowed to operate a computer!!!"
He shouldn't just be fired; he should be fired at. It's like what we've learned from zombie movies or TV shows - if anyone starts saying shit like, "But guys - they're people, too! They're just sick!", kill that person immediately - they'll open the gates to the compound or otherwise do something so monumentally stupid it will ruin everything. This manager is the same type of person - their dumb ideas will get everyone killed.
speaking of upper level incompetence i nearly got fired today. Had my weekly meeting fuckwit co-owner who i have made mention of previously, well he starts going over a variety of tests that we'd completed and given him that he didn't like the results of. They weren't necessarily presenting incorrect information, he just didn't like the answers and these where already established industry tests that we had (unwillingly in my case) bastardized to probably get more favorable results. So obviously everything needs to be gone over again but even more bastardized so he gets the answers he wants and can go and be all smug about how smart he is. So i start to say things for the umptheenth time about how we should do things like, test the method correctly, not jump to conclusions after one set of tests, not change how we test things mid-stream. now i will admit that my tone was less than ingratiating, but i've been stuck with him for an hour and he's insulted me, my co-workers, and our work for three weeks straight or more so screw it i can be snide. then he starts going off about how he "doesn't have time for bullshit" (didn't like when i responded back in kind) and I'm "being insubordinate" so i go back to being silent, glaring daggers, and pretending this is a productive use of everyone's time. I should also mention that this meeting is so dreaded that my immediate coworker and i both have pretty serious anxiety Sunday nights about this thing, and neither of us are really prone to that sort of thing normally. And that two weeks ago he said, with us present, that we weren't good for much more than "following the [procedures] that we give them" ignoring all the work we do to make those, and the fact that more often than not we're the ones who have to find and figure out how the fuck these tests are actually suppose to work. I appreciate you all letting me gripe, and in happy WTF news I'm going to be an uncle before the years out, still trying to wrap my head around the fact my brother got married a year ago but hey! families expanding!
The only reason he brought that to a meeting was that he did not know how to grab all the passwords and machines those granted access, you know that, don't you? XD Incidentally, in my office it was a blast of a WTF :p
@saint I know my safe and distant viewpoint is a whole different kettle of fish to where you're standing, but if I had to work with PHB type dude like that I'd be getting my CV ready to show them just how 'expendable' they think I really am.
I always keep my resume updated just in case I have a bit of an ongoing WTF. Last summer me and this chick got promoted to leads and later on to interim co-managers since our previous manager took a new position. We worked out that she would head ticket assignment and I would take care of meetings and technically challenging tickets, both because I hate the ticketing system and because her English and coding skills are kinda crap. Moving forward, now we have a new manager who also hates the ticketing system so the chick is continuing to perform that function while I went back to my regular lead functions. The problem started when she somehow decided she is now my superior, despite the fact we have the same damn title. She has developed this need to micromanage everything I do. The latest example was two days ago, when I decided to leave early since I was done with my work for the day, and the next morning she practically yelled at me because I "need to check in with her" when I leave early. I simply answered "You don't see the need to check in with me when you leave so I don't see why I should have to do so" which made her blow a gasket. Now I found out she has been marking almost all tickets I do as "simple" despite the fact that I do mostly high-level custom analysis for VP and Chief level execs, while she has been marking all of the ones her boyfriend does as "challenging" despite the fact they are literally just weekly runs of code other people have written. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the boyfriend, who is a trucker by trade and knows not the first thing about code or databases, but got hired solely on the fact that he is her boyfriend and can press a goddamn f5 key. And the new manager is a close personal friend apparently to the point where she and the boyfriend have dinner with her on a regular basis, so if I complain it probably won't work out very well for me. So I think the time is approaching where I will have to consider a new job
It's sad because I really like my job and most of my coworkers, and it affords me more freedom than I believe most other jobs would as far as scheduling, but I feel this situation might become explosive and I'd rather avoid that entirely
Other possibility: Try mentioning it or go over their head to the next superior (if there is any). Otherwise you might end up burned out, because that is a serious threat in your position.
I would back @Durian Khaar 's advice. Defuse it now if you can. Be formal and use facts as you'll explain that there are some conflicts of interest in the situation. You don't have to make it a complain but rather an ascertainment and you prefer to anticipate it than being caught by surprise later. You could also make it in a non formal way first. Based on how your manager's reaction and how much faith you put in it, you can formalised your verbal exchange in a more formal form as a minute report. In this, you'll explain that you acknowledge your manager's feedback on your concern. It would be useful if you end needing to escalate at the higher management level. Try to show that your concern (avoid the term issue) is about the service/company not about the persons. Providing this advice is the easy part I know, the difficult part is to find at what level you have to apply it.
