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Snooooooze..... PANIC!!!!

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  • Snooooooze..... PANIC!!!!

    I have a bug in my queue that's been bouncing around since March. So a good three months plus. A customer had a problem, the filesystem went down, and among other things (like almost all the functionality of the box being gone) a process that my group has responsibility for threw an error message and a dumped a core file.

    A quick look at the core shows that the process threw a fit because it couldn't talk to the filesystem. So I put together a way for the process to start up that doesn't make those calls to the filesystem. (They don't appear to have been needed anyway.) I need permission to check into a couple of active software branches, so I request it.

    That's on July 1st. I have vacation from July 2nd through 6th, but since this is almost four months old I figure that's fine.

    I get a text at the airport on the 2nd from a co-worker. A field support engineer has decided that THE CUSTOMER IS STEAMING NOW AND THIS MUST BE FIXED! And that this particular process throwing a fit must be the cause of all the other problems. Obviously.

    No, I can't open my work email because I don't have my work computer with me. Because I'm on vacation.

    OK, forward it to my gmail, and I'll respond to it on my phone. And I hope that's all you need, because I'm getting on an airplane for six hours and won't have any network connection.


    So, I had a good vacation and came back Saturday. Sunday, I opened up my email with some trepidation. Turns out the FSE decided that this was a SUPER URGENT PROBLEM and sent out his email at 6:30 AM on July 2nd.

    So, my response gets forwarded into the discussion by my coworker, but there is a ton of misinformation flying around as well. The thread grew to over 100 emails. Eventually, someone gets through to the FSE's head that the old and slow hardware is causing issues, and that replacing it will help the actual cause. But he is still freaking out about this trivial side-issue, insisting that it is causing his problems.

    And my boss is asking why this small side problem is causing the major issue, because he is clueless. And ignores the earlier responses about how it's not the cause. And did I mention that he's actually my boss' boss, because my boss left nine months ago and they haven't hired a replacement yet?

    So, the hardware gets upgraded, and there are problems. OMG IT MUST BE THAT COMPONENT STILL! But it turns out that this is a second issue that is known and is fixed in a later release.

    But he wants us to guarantee the customer that upgrading will solve every one of their problems, because the CUSTOMER IS SOOOO MAD NOW GUYS PLEASE WE ARE GOING TO LOSE THIS ACCOUNT AND ITS AWFUL OH NOES!!! Which of course we can't really do, because there may be other issues with this semi-broken setup that will need to be resolved once they get to the later release....

    So my read is that this guy just sat on the problem for three and a half months, then half-assed a couple of things, and then decided that everybody needed to panic on his behalf.

    And the best part? While I was writing this I just got another bug and another email from a different party saying "OH NO I HAVE PROBLEMS THAT MUST BE CAUSED BY THIS AS WELL". So I have to start the education process all over again, because this bad piece of information got out and people are panicking about it....

    I really do need to get the f**k out of here...
    “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
    One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
    The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

  • #2
    You have my sympathies. It amazes me how wrong information can get stuck in the collective consciousness of a workplace
    My son thinks I'm Lucifer Morningstar. I'm not sure he's wrong.

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    • #3
      Sounds like someone just sitting on a problem, waiting for it to go away. When you start poking around in something else... OMFG! THAT must be the problem! Let's all dogpile on THAT issue over there that's totally unconnected to me!

      For such individuals, we have the trebuchet. No, we're not going to fling things at them with a medieval siege weapon. We're not that kind of heathen, damnit.
      And hey, happy coincidence. Two problems that are fixed with a hardware solution.

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      • #4
        Around here, known issues will sit around, not be touched, until it causes an a major problem or outage. then it gets everyone into a PANIC and the issue turns into a 'Hot' item, and we are told to drop everything else and work on it, until another known issue sitting around not being touched kicks off the next major issue or outage, and then *THAT* becomes the Hot issue, regardless of any previous 'Hot' issues we are presently working on.


        Wash, rinse and repeat.
        Just sliding down the razor blade of life.

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        • #5
          Was it Twain who said that "a falsehood goes around the world before the truth can put its shoes on"?

          (Quick Google search says: Unlikely, but it is unclear where the saying actually came from.)
          “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
          One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
          The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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