Accountability Is Necessary - Everywhere
Each day I goto work, and as faithful as the rising sun, some idiot will screw something up. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to expect these foul ups, but when something totally ridiculous happens every day, it’s kind of hard not to. New days bring new adventures, and new adventures result in tyrant colleagues/managers doing as they please. In this post, I’m going to illustrate a few real life examples of exactly what I’m forced to deal with on a day to day basis.
Incompetent Colleagues Taking Credit
The IT industry is flooded with know-it-alls that have this false impression of being better than everyone simply because they consider themselves an expert in a particular field. Well that’s not the case with this particular guy. He knows everything, in fact, this guy tells me how I should do my job; despite the fact I trained him, have been working here longer than him, and he resumed my old position’s duties. Here’s a typical conversation, and yes, this type of conversation occurs at least once a day. For this scenario, I’ll use the fictitious names: Jim, Sam, Kate, and myself, Guy. Just guess which one is the moron.
Jim: Hey Guy, do you know if there’s a way to run something similar to Microsoft’s Remote Installation Service for Linux? I’d like to have the ability to remotely install Linux images like we do with XP.
Guy: Yes. In fact, there are many options. You could setup an NFS file share, or configure a Linux server pretty much the same way a RIS server works. All you need is tftp, dhcp, samba to install from Linux to Windows, and PXELinux for a user/tech friendly boot menu.
Sam: Yea, you just get Linux runnin with NFS and some PXELinux, that’ll work.
** brief silence **
Jim: So wanna help me set one of these up? Sounds like it could be fun.
Guy: I’d love to, but it sounds like Sam knows what he’s doing - he can probably help better than I can.
Jim: Alright. Sam, you got some free time to help me out with this? I’m pretty new to Linux.
Sam: Yea, well… You know, uuhh.. I got some stuff to do - heh. ** walks off **
Kate: Hey - didn’t he just repeat what you just said, Guy?
Guy: Why yes Kate, yes he did. And it’s not the first time.
The truth is, Sam had absolutely no idea what the hell he was talking about. He has no experience with Linux or even NFS/PXE for that matter. Now maybe some of you reading don’t know what all that shit is, and that’s fine. The point is, he opened his mouth in an effort to sound intellectually important when he shouldn’t have. My father once told me, “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t speak unless spoken to.” and that was always the case, especially when entering a new environment. Soak in all the information you can, pay attention to those around you to learn their behavior patterns, how they think, why they do what they do, etc, etc. Sam, only one month into the job has to stick his face in everything, everywhere, all the time. Here’s another real life example that happened just last week. Again, fake names, expect mine.
Kate: Hey guys - we’re getting a lot of calls from users complaining their account is being locked out.
Guy: Just instruct them to use p-synch.
Sam: Yea, have ‘em use p-synch.
YEA, I just said that. And NO ONE ELSE catches on that this guy mimics correct answers just to make himself sound all knowing. If that’s not bad enough, when he’s put in a situation where he can’t copy someone, he’ll just make random shit up. This guy had the nerve to tell the head of IT security that our organization had 2,600 users using a particular service, when in reality, that number is more like 1,200. Why did he say 2,600? To sound like he was important. Instead of saying, “Ya know Bob, I’m not entirely sure at this point, but I’ll get back to you right after the meeting.” this guy lied in front of management and colleagues. When I pointed out that fact that he lied to all these people, guess what happened. Absolutely nothing - no accountability…
Where The Hell Did My MediaWiki Go?
I’ll keep this one shorter. To sum this up, I spent weeks going through the proper procedures, following strict policies, and adhering to guidelines to provide our customer service representatives an in-house, centralized data repository (a knowledge base for technicians). Currently, phone technicians are forced to scatter across several resources in order to find necessary technical documentation and information. So the idea of a Mediawiki was born, and the technicians themselves seemed to like the idea.
After TWO MONTHS of waiting for a virtual server to run the Mediawiki, myself and a couple other people spent a few weeks installing, setting up, configuring, securing, customizing, updating, modifying, adding content, removing content, etc, etc. The Mediawiki was really starting to take shape, everyone (including senior/upper management) was very pleased with the results. So I submit a ticket to our server team to create a DNS entry so we can migrate out of development and into production. The very same day at around 3pm, someone deleted the entire virtual server image. Not the media wiki, not the Linux installation, but the entire virtual image/partition. And oh, how convenient, would you believe my server (out of ALL the servers) wasn’t included in the tape back-ups?
The VMWare client application reported who deleted the image and when. After looking up the name in active directory, I concluded the account was an alias - ie: fake. There were no profile details, but they happened to be a member of the Domain Admin group - lovely. There’s absolutely ZERO chance of finding out *who* actually deleted the image, and that means no one is going to be held accountable for destroying months of work.
Wrap - It - Up
I could continue, but there’s really no point. The final question I propose is:
What the hell happened to accountability?
Our Commander in Chief runs wild with his evil posse, child molesters roam the streets and live next door to you; Yet the war on drugs is holding people accountable for destroying their own minds. Sometimes the logic of this whole existence just really doesn’t make any sense, and it’s probably not suppose to. Instead of letting all this mindless nothingness get me down, I leverage the energy as motivation to succeed, take care of my family, and attempt to live a long and happy life. You should do the same.
Technology Made Simple
Here is the...
Man, Sam sounds like a real pathetic d0lt.
It’s really unfortunate that people can’t come up with something on their own so they can honestly take credit for something. I know, personally, I would feel like quite the jackass if I had to use other people’s brains to make myself look better - How pathetic is that? At that point, that should be motivation to stop being an idiot and do something for yourself…
How do we know the “author” didn’t just make this up (or conveniently min-interpret the situations) because he is feeling the small penis syndrome? Anyone who takes time to bash a coworker in this manner obviously struggles with constructive ways to handle problems with TEAM members and should probally re-evaluate their own actions. Also, look up constructive criticism, and in the future be more wary of making oneself sound like an asshole. Think anyone wants to work with you now? Not if they think you are going to post a blog about them. But it sounds like this person can do everything himself anyway and cannot, or WILL not learn from anyone else around him. Oh, and P.S. there is NO room for mistakes around this “guy”, who is, according to his self -serving blog, perfect.
To answer your first question, you don’t know whether or not the “author” didn’t just make this up. Perhaps this is a brilliant work of fiction. And how could you know whether or not I’m suffering from “small penis syndrome?” Are you a clinical psychologist that specializes in these types of disorders? If so, according to this definition:
A proposed diagnosis for men who have anxiety about the size of their penis when they don’t have a clinically small penis.
there’s no relevant indication or reference in the context of this article, so you’re obviously poorly educated if you are in fact a doctor. Hell, even if you’re not a doctor.
And the remark about, “struggling with constructive ways to handle problems with TEAM members” - why is this person’s behavior my responsibility? Since when does an IT job also mean providing behavioral counselor services? Just because the individual has the need to copy others, and blatantly lie about information he’s unaware of, doesn’t justify why I should come up with a constructive way to handle his problem(s). Please elaborate on this, Dr.
“Think anyone wants to work with you now?” Yes, in fact plenty of people do. Just today I’ve done work for two of my clients, and I just received an email from my third client of the day. If you’re referring to my day job, sure, plenty of people do, whether I choose to blog about them or not. And as mentioned in the article, the names are fictitious.
Toward the end there you go a little bi-polar. Who exactly is “this person” when you say, “but it sounds like this person…?” Also, no where on my “self-serving” (<– what???:confused:) blog do I claim perfection in any area.
I couldn’t help but notice the originating source of this unusually rude and threatening comment came from a government network. Perhaps lee.vickery@dca.state.fl.us (the IP’s administrative contact) will have to hear about this waste of network resources since your comment obviously isn’t official work for the government.
How do we know the “author” didn’t just make this up (or conveniently misinterpret the situation) because he is feeling the small penis syndrome? Anyone who takes time to bash a coworker in this manner obviously struggles with constructive ways to handle problems with TEAM members and should probally re-evaluate their own actions. Also, look up constructive criticism, and in the future be more wary of making oneself sound like an asshole. Think anyone wants to work with you now? Not if they think you are going to post a blog about them. But it sounds like this person can do everything himself anyway and cannot, or WILL not learn from anyone else around him. Oh, and P.S. there is NO room for mistakes around this “guy”, who is, according to his self -serving blog, perfect.
How do we know the “author” didn’t just make this up (or mis-interpret situations to suit his own convenience) because he is feeling the small penis syndrome? Anyone who takes time to bash a coworker in this manner obviously struggles with constructive ways to handle problems with TEAM members and should probably re-evaluate their own actions. Also, look up constructive criticism, and in the future be more wary of making oneself sound like an asshole. Think anyone wants to work with you now? Not if they think you are going to post a blog about them. But it sounds like this person can do everything himself anyway and cannot, or WILL not, learn from anyone else around him. Oh, and P.S., there is NO room for mistakes around this “guy,” who is, according to his self-serving article, perfect.
How do we know the “author” didn’t just make this up (or conveniently misinterpret situations to improve his own image) because he is feeling the small penis syndrome? Anyone who takes time to bash a coworker in this manner obviously struggles with constructive ways to handle problems with TEAM members and should probally re-evaluate their own actions. Also, look up constructive criticism, and in the future be more wary of making oneself sound like an asshole. Think anyone wants to work with you now? Not if they think you are going to post a blog about them. But it sounds like this person can do everything himself anyway and cannot, or WILL not learn from anyone else around him. Oh, and P.S. there is NO room for mistakes around this “guy”, who is, according to his self -serving blog, perfect
Was it necessary to post that FOUR times, “Ms. Smith?” You just made yourself look like a douche and therefore lost all credibility anyone might have considered giving you. DOLT.
Oh, P.S. - Why should he be wary of making himself sound like an asshole, when you clearly weren’t wary of sounding like a moron? It’s people like you that cause the asshole to come out in others.
Why is Ms Smith sitting at work reading Guy’s blog if she doesn’t value his opinion? Obviously Ms Smith took this post a little too personally, which just tells me that what is posted is true and Ms Smith is just making an embarrassing attempt to stick up for “Sam”. How can Ms Smith attempt to debase Guy for “taking the time to bash a coworker” on his own website (that is equally available for her NOT to read as it is FOR her to read) and, in almost the same breath, diagnose him with “the small penis syndrome”??? Quit your fucking crying!!! As someone who has had the (dare I say) honor of knowing Guy outside of Nullamatix.com, the one thing I respect the most about him is the fact that he’s an asshole! If you don’t want him to post a blog about you, don’t say or do ignorant things in his presence. You should be so lucky to have someone posting blogs highlighting your faults. Eventually you’ll start thinking about things before you do or say them… clearly, you could use the encouragement to process that extra thought.
Well, glad to see I am such a popular discussion piece on your blog. Not really sure why or where any of this came from but sure hope everyone feels better now that they got all that off their chest. This is far from over, fyi.
Dun dun dun!!! lolz
Wow Ms. Smith must be sucking ol’ sambag’s nuts there. Her fucking enter key needs to be fixed, I hope she’s not dumb enough to purposely submit the same comment 4 times. Well let me correct myself, she sent a fucked up one…”min-interpret” then corrected it as if the mistake would override itself or something, then followed it up with “misinterpret”. Then we get another fucked up spelling, and HOLLY SHIT it’s one more correct one. I also noticed that she really can’t make up her mind between article and blog since she said “self-serving blog” on 3 and “self-serving article” on 1. Why didn’t you ask Sam?? He knows the difference between a “article” and a “blog”. This bitch really doesn’t have a fucking clue now does she. Also, how bout we get a little fucking grammar education going on here “ms. smith”. Since you want to be such a sophisticated individual you should no it’s, Ms. Smith with “capital letters” (ie… [shift]m[/shift]s. [shift]s[/shift]mith), not to mention the fact that you put “Oh and P.S…” P.S is not to be preceded by anything and should be 3-5 lines below the last line of the paragraph. But, that’s only MLA saying that’s correct, I’m sure sambag knows the real answer.
A victim of poor grammar attempting to give grammar lessons… ouch.
Everyone needs a Sam/ms. smith in their office/blog for entertainment value. All we can do is laugh.. Without dumb people, smart people wouldn’t exist!
Very insightful
Thanks for sharing that perspective.
What happened to the free speech in this country? I as a foreigner living here almost 20 years I am FED-UP with all the sensitivity bullshit. We all are humans with faults, as none of us is perfect and ought to admit to our shortcomings. It came down to where the fat people are not allowed to be called fat, the stupid are not allowed to be called stupid, the Mexicans are not allowed to be called Mexicans because they are Hispanics and don’t dare to call anybody a retard since he is mentally challenged. Any forthright opinion is being punished by some bleeding sensitive asshole because in reality they feel offended themselves in their own insecurities.
I do believe that as humans we are equal on a very primal level, however, we all have different qualities and faults and we ought to embrace them because that’s what makes us unique. With that said, we have to have the right to express how we feel as this is still called a free country.
I don’t mind to be called a foreigner, or a German kraut, or a skinny bitch. I don’t get offended when people laugh about my accent - I laugh with them. The reason is that I know what my qualities are - they give me my sense of self worth; and I know what my faults are - they give me a the motivation to grow and expand. You know this when you practice awareness.
Sam, Guy and Ms. Smith all have the right to express their views without feeling real hate or adversity. I am sure all three of them have qualities that no other people on this Earth have, as they are unique beings. As for their faults, they ought to recognize them. acknowledge them and either correct or accept them as they are. It is their free will and decision what they do.
Drucilla,
YEEAAAA! Well said. Thank you for sharing this valuable incite. I think everyone should learn a thing or two from this.
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There’s no “I” in team. There’s also no “I” in dumbassmotherfuckers. No matter where you go there’s gonna be some schmo who would rather point the finger than use the small portion of that gooey substance between their ears. Take some initiative people! There are always going to be those people who get paid more than you and know half as much. I’m not tooting my own horn, but if i don’t know something, well damnit i go find our! I don’t stand there with my finger in my nose wondering when someone’s going to come tell me how to do it. Ok. I’m done..for now. Thanks for the vent. Needless to say, i work with a few “sams”