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Admin
==== Raised: 28/Dec/2017 Time: 07:00 Priority: Critical Impact: Severe Raised By: Dude
Description
No aspect of TDWTF allows me to post frist. All machines fail to post frist and we are unable to accomplish our goals today. Loss of functionality severely impacts our testing timescales and we must now escalate to senior management to get a resolution.
Admin
Should this become a Classic Article?
Admin
I agree K.
Admin
One hing strains my disbelief. Why not push for having this "funny error message" written literally as-is in the bug report? That would have fixed the whole issue remotely, most probably (and it would lead to the discovery that it was not a software error).
Admin
Nah, the original ending is more plausible, though the actual ending is the correct one.
Addendum 2017-12-28 09:45: ETA: How come some of my posts here get through, but others are stuck in the infinite purgatory of moderation?
Admin
Frist found, working as intended, ticket closed.
Admin
The only she did wrong in her reply was the use of the f**cking moron category in my eyes. The rest is just stating the facts as they are. If any person in the management chain has any objections to any of the other statements made, they should have their heads examined (but what else is new). It should be enough to state these stupid mistakes to make most who read the reply to fill in the moron part themselves.
Admin
Would a moron of that severity even be able to actually F**ck with out error?
Admin
A moron can't be of that severity without enough money to pay some woman to hold his hand through the entire process.
Admin
Neither Darren nor any other developer or person involved could investigate this ticket?
TRWTF is Darren (the submitter, natch) not investigating it himself or assigning another dev to investigate.
Admin
She can't count. She's only counting the unused portions of the US trip, but because his actions wasted the trip the costs should include the whole thing. Off the top of my head, "1 wasted return flight £300" means there's also one flight for £300.
Admin
If I read this correctly it was one return flight at £1500 with a wasted flight at 300. That all adds up to me.
Admin
The ticket specifically said that Darren was completely bypassed in all of this. Without knowing the exact organisation and degree of toxicity within it, it's hard to make any assumptions about what the submitter did or didn't know. Certainly I've been in situations where some smear of nut butter has launched a full nuclear response to something while I've been on holiday only to end up looking like a tit when I've resent instructions that I'd already sent him. Twice.
Sadly, the universe is in an arms race. Whenever we idiot proof things the universe build a better idiot.
Admin
As Cathy mention something about "bypassed my manager", this is either inconsistent, or something has been made up to season the story, or Mr Green kept telling everyone that Cathy had broken something without wanting or being able to tell what exactly.
Admin
"She can't count. She's only counting the unused portions of the US trip, but because his actions wasted the trip the costs should include the whole thing. Off the top of my head, "1 wasted return flight £300" means there's also one flight for £300."
I believe this return flight is a flight back to the US, seeing as there is an "emergency return flight" right above that one and that would be the flight New York->London.
And there is a chance I'll look like a fool in the future if the reply that Mr A left right below your comment says what I just did, but it's currently stuck in moderation.
Admin
The ticket only said Green escalated to senior management, and we also know Darren was involved enough to leave her a voice message.
Admin
If Green is escalating the ticket directly to senior management, as it says, it's consistent since Green bypassed Darren going up the chain.
But going back down the chain, senior management doesn't deal with developers, they deal with managers. That's why Darren left a voicemail, and that was likely him instructing her to get on a plane coming back.
Admin
My second favourite story on TDWTF after ITAPPMONROBOT. Needs to be added to Classics.
Admin
To add a story to Classic Articles:
https://github.com/tdwtf/WtfWebApp/blob/master/TheDailyWtf/Views/Home/Index.cshtml#L31
Admin
"One hing strains my disbelief. Why not push for having this "funny error message" written literally as-is in the bug report?"
Two thoughts: 1) nobody actually read the bug report other than Mr. Green and Cathy. 2) Managers who did read it saw "funny error message" and didn't think anything of it, because they are typical users who do not read or understand error messages. "Funny error message", to them, fully describes every error message they've ever seen.
Admin
WRT the first paragraph, one of the most important aspects of QA is doing it right? Really? Who knew!
Admin
There are three additional massive WTF's here.
Why does it have to be Cathy, specifically, that has to look at this "bug"? Have some of the other developers work on it. Any one of them would have also found the problem right away.
The claim that Cathy must have caused the bug. They have no evidence of that. It could possibly have been the fault of any of the other developers. Again, Cathy specifically does not need to be on the hook for this.
"Cathy must have checked something in without telling us." A quick look at the logs of the version control tool will tell what was recently checked in. Nobody thought to check the logs? Any of the other developers could have looked at it.
Admin
Sadly I've worked in similar outfits. All it needs is an overbearing management team who's members believe themselves geniuses. I've had incidents where a quick view of the logs has shown (in one case) illegal activity with medical data by a c level manager - all because I HAD to fix a bug he'd found over Christmas. The bug turned out to be the validation rules around prescriptions. Such behaviour is rare but does happen if your management team is arrogant an clueless enough.
Admin
The claim that Cathy must have caused the bug sounds to me like a common malady I'm prone to call the Omniscient Imagination Fallacy: "If it occurs to my imagination, it must be True!". You'll find it both in business and in politics (on both the left and the right).
Admin
If Cathy was the only developer unable to defend herself (can't clear your name if you're incommunicado), blame would naturally fall to her. By the time she heard about the problem, it was too late to put up a defense; escalation had already happened. It's a WTF, all right, but perfectly plausible.