• Dogga (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    UK Ian:
    This article is soooo false - Pubs don't open at 10am.
    Are you *seriously* suggesting that any pubs EVER close in the UK?
    Maybe it's really Australia. Yanks wouldn't know the difference. Funny spelling, funny accent....
  • EA peon (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Don L:
    Cinderbox and plywood?!?!

    Where I worked, we had to code using typewriters from the 17th century, we had to write 10.000 lines of code and work for 28 hours per day, the building didn't have a roof or walls, we were constantly whipped, and we had to walk 30km to get to the toilet which was occupied except 5 minutes of the day, we didn't have any breaks, and we had to work in complete darkness in the middle of the freeway.

    But we were happy!

    So you worked at Electronic Arts?

    +1

  • tation (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    frink:
    TRWTF is american working conditions

    Yep. In the US, in general, you're not allowed to drink alcohol at lunchtime. Neither are you (apparently) allowed to masturbate during the day. Neither are you allowed to view adult literature, in whatever medium.

    And from my experience, bizarrely, it appears that a lot less useful work actually gets done in the US than in the UK. And, for the record, it seemed to rain a lot more in Florida than it does in Britain - not only more frequently, but also considerably more heavily. (Except for Manchester, of course, where it's famous for raining almost continually.)

    So TRWTF here is the fact that the American took a long time (well over a day) getting over the culture shock?

    I thought Manchester has 2 weather patterns:

    1. It's raining
    2. It's about to rain
  • Dogga (unregistered) in reply to method1
    method1:
    Geoff:
    <quote>his mood much improved. </quote> umm LSD?
    probably "just having a quick pipe" as a crackhead programmer friend used to say - this is a story about London after all. I used to work with a guy who drank at least 5 pints of Stella every lunchtime (I later found out he was on anti-psychotic meds as well - a heavy combo by anyone's standards) He would then sit literally motionless for 3 hours.
    APS. <speculation> There is a pub that has deliberately made a happy hour from 11AM-7PM (we're not so good on time calculations in Australia) with the objective of luring Public Servants away from their office. It seems to work. It gets particularly busy between 12 and 2, and even those who remember to hide their lanyards, look very much the public servant...

    (I think at least one of the stakeholders in this establishment is ex-IT - he used to work for the three letter company that got taken over by the two letter company). </speculation>

  • Plumber (unregistered) in reply to method1
    method1:
    Geoff:
    <quote>his mood much improved. </quote> umm LSD?
    probably "just having a quick pipe" as a crackhead programmer friend used to say - this is a story about London after all. I used to work with a guy who drank at least 5 pints of Stella every lunchtime (I later found out he was on anti-psychotic meds as well - a heavy combo by anyone's standards) He would then sit literally motionless for 3 hours.
    This was not the pipe you are thinking of.
  • Bob (unregistered)

    I was just thinking that the only bit that sounds remotely UKish was the pub meetings. Then I realised that each meeting only involved one round. Shenanigans!

  • K (unregistered) in reply to UK Ian

    The pub in Edinburgh Waverly train station starts serving alcohol at 8am. it's only the it guys and the oil riggers that seem to buy booze though

  • Hyderamediocre (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    The Artical:
    The walls were up, if unpainted, and the roof was finished on the northern side of the building. Maybe there wasn't any carpet, and maybe the water wasn't hooked up, and maybe the windows weren't installed yet, but it was a building, with four walls and most of a roof, and it had spare phone lines and electricity...they improvised chairs and desks out of cinderblocks and spare plywood.
    Acomodations is much nicer than 80% of ofice in Hyderabad!

    Yeah, but what if you count the other 20% of the office?

  • Boyter (unregistered) in reply to Dogga

    I walk past several pubs on my way to work (8am) and they are all open, so certainly not Australia.

    The worst thing is that they usually have quite a few patrons. One of these days I am going admit defeat to join them.

  • (cs)
    And yes, there were a few merits to Colin Baker's run, even before you count Peri's two positive attributes

    Remy, would you kindly cut down on that? I can tolerate it when commenters occasionally do things like that, but an editor is just setting a bad example.

  • causa (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox
    lucidfox:
    And yes, there were a few merits to Colin Baker's run, even before you count Peri's two positive attributes

    Remy, would you kindly cut down on that? I can tolerate it when commenters occasionally do things like that, but an editor is just setting a bad example.

    Love it!!
    Bring it to our attention and condemn it all at the same time.

    You honestly think the whole world is out to get you, don't you?

  • (cs)

    So you get free beer on the job, and a project that's easy enough you can do it drunk, and all you have to do is work in an unfinished building. Meanwhile plenty of Britons have to work outdoors. Sober. WTWTF?

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    frink:
    TRWTF is american working conditions

    Yep. In the US, in general, you're not allowed to drink alcohol at lunchtime. Neither are you (apparently) allowed to masturbate during the day. Neither are you allowed to view adult literature, in whatever medium.

    And from my experience, bizarrely, it appears that a lot less useful work actually gets done in the US than in the UK. And, for the record, it seemed to rain a lot more in Florida than it does in Britain - not only more frequently, but also considerably more heavily. (Except for Manchester, of course, where it's famous for raining almost continually.)

    So TRWTF here is the fact that the American took a long time (well over a day) getting over the culture shock?

    My job doesn't have any problem with any of that. Of course, they don't know about it either, because it's none of their business. What you do out of the office or in the restroom is private.

  • Keloran (unregistered)

    They said they us modems, which tells me this was before 24h licenses were available, which means the 11am licensing laws applied, so if they went to the pub at 10am they must have broken in, since you legally couldnt even open the door till 10:30, nm serve beer (should know used to own pubs)

  • Doozerboy (unregistered) in reply to Keloran
    Keloran:
    They said they us modems, which tells me this was before 24h licenses were available, which means the 11am licensing laws applied, so if they went to the pub at 10am they must have broken in, since you legally couldnt even open the door till 10:30, nm serve beer (should know used to own pubs)

    Perhaps they worked in an area where the local economy meant that they could open the pub early. For instance pubs around fish markets are allowed to open at 6am.

    Or it's more likely that the author of the article was exaggerating the amount of time spent in the pub for comedic effect.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Gunslinger
    Gunslinger:
    Matt Westwood:
    frink:
    TRWTF is american working conditions

    Yep. In the US, in general, you're not allowed to drink alcohol at lunchtime. Neither are you (apparently) allowed to masturbate during the day. Neither are you allowed to view adult literature, in whatever medium.

    And from my experience, bizarrely, it appears that a lot less useful work actually gets done in the US than in the UK. And, for the record, it seemed to rain a lot more in Florida than it does in Britain - not only more frequently, but also considerably more heavily. (Except for Manchester, of course, where it's famous for raining almost continually.)

    So TRWTF here is the fact that the American took a long time (well over a day) getting over the culture shock?

    My job doesn't have any problem with any of that. Of course, they don't know about it either, because it's none of their business. What you do out of the office or in the restroom is private.

    I have seen suggestions that surveillance cameras are installed in restrooms in order to ensure the occupants are not indulging in unsanctioned behaviour.

    The frightening thing is that this was discussed as a perfectly serious suggestion (in the name of "security" and cracking down on workplace crime (!?!? not as if there had been any reports of any) before someone made the point that this may be considered by some as too large an invasion of their personal privacy to be tolerated. The suggestion was then dropped, albeit (from what I understand) reluctantly.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Except for Manchester, of course, where it's famous for raining almost continually.
    Actually, the most clouded-over place in Britain (or at least England) appears to be Yarnfield in Staffordshire, about an hour's drive south of Manchester. There's a training centre there, Yarnfield Park, that used to belong to British Telecom. (They're no longer the owner, but still the largest customer.) There you'll actually find a small 'forest' of wooden telephone poles of different shapes and sizes, where people are trained how to climb them.

    It started out as Beatty Hall, an accommodation camp for a very large munitions factory during World War 2. You see, in those days, bombers still required a direct visual of the target, and since this was the statistically most cloudy place in England, it was ideally located to thwart the Germans.

    At some point, I used to work for British Telecom in Amsterdam (an episode of my life that I'd rather forget about, but that's another story). When my manager first went there, he still had to sleep in barracks, but by the time I went there they had hotel facilities.

    Because of the constant clouds and, consequently, rain, the walking paths between various buildings are actually covered over. Obviously, the two days I was there it was mostly sunny and it didn't rain once.

  • (cs)

    So the real WTF is that Scott didn't realise that he was being made to work in illegal working conditions?

  • Doc D (unregistered) in reply to dohpaz42

    This reminds me of an interesting episode at work! I'm currently the housekeeper at a school and recently we moved some more servers into our "server room", a small corridor that leads to a storage room. It used to get quite hot so when we installed a second rack of equipment we had an airconditioner installed. Then a few days later two consultants came along to set up the new servers. It was getting ridiculously hot and they were complaining loudly and claimed that the cooling was inadequate, naturally i grabbed the remote (yes it is consumer grade :)) to see if it was set in the wrong mode or something. The airflow was at minimum so i turned it up a bit, then one of them (standning next to the aircon) yelled at me telling me he could not work there due to the airflow!

    I left of course, I hate being yelled at, but a few minutes later I realized what a WTF this situation was! Turning down the airflow and then complaining that it´s not enough isn´t very clever is it? ;)

    Other than this there was only one wtf: (to my knowledge at least :) the other consultant protested against the use of "consumer grade equipment" when he saw our HP ProCurve eight port gigabit switch. He never complained about the one with 24 ports though (also a HP ProCurve gigabit switch). To this day I still wonder, did i miss something? Or does he actually believe that 8p switches are always consumer grade???

    These to episodes made me realize something: I could do their job better. So I'm off to school to learn more about networks, and hopefully I'll have some more wtfs to post here soon, maybe even some of my own ;)

    Cheers!

  • Doc D (unregistered) in reply to dohpaz42
    dohpaz42:
    WC:
    Robert would drive me nuts... Right up until he told me that he's already estimated WAY more time than I needed to do everything. And then he'd be my best friend, and welcome to continue his beer and porn addictions. I'd probably ask him to tape up the windows, though.

    Nah, I'd tape them myself.

    I agree, in all respects. At my current job, I sit directly under the air conditioner - where I'm at we've had 100+ F days and the A/C is blowing 68F air all over me. I've been told that the maintenance guy (a friend of the owner or some such) would fix this, but it's been three months with no fix. So one day I decide to place a large sheet of paper over the vent (tucked away in the drop ceiling) to redirect the air away from me. Sometimes you just gotta fix sh*t yourself.

    This reminds me of an interesting episode at work! I'm currently the housekeeper at a school and recently we moved some more servers into our "server room", a small corridor that leads to a storage room. It used to get quite hot so when we installed a second rack of equipment we had an airconditioner installed. Then a few days later two consultants came along to set up the new servers. It was getting ridiculously hot and they were complaining loudly and claimed that the cooling was inadequate, naturally i grabbed the remote (yes it is consumer grade :)) to see if it was set in the wrong mode or something. The airflow was at minimum so i turned it up a bit, then one of them (standning next to the aircon) yelled at me telling me he could not work there due to the airflow!

    I left of course, I hate being yelled at, but a few minutes later I realized what a WTF this situation was! Turning down the airflow and then complaining that it´s not enough isn´t very clever is it? ;)

    Other than this there was only one wtf: (to my knowledge at least :) the other consultant protested against the use of "consumer grade equipment" when he saw our HP ProCurve eight port gigabit switch. He never complained about the one with 24 ports though (also a HP ProCurve gigabit switch). To this day I still wonder, did i miss something? Or does he actually believe that 8p switches are always consumer grade???

    These to episodes made me realize something: I could do their job better. So I'm off to school to learn more about networks, and hopefully I'll have some more wtfs to post here soon, maybe even some of my own ;)

    Cheers!

  • (cs)

    I preferred it when daily wtf did stories on IT rather then meta storeys

  • Ru (unregistered) in reply to Helix
    Helix:
    I preferred it when daily wtf did stories on IT rather then meta storeys

    TRWTF is that what a limey might call the frist storey, yanks would call the second.

  • (cs)

    Even their local network is in the cloud.

  • Someone who can't be bothered to login from work (unregistered) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    So the restroom was a hole in the floor. I thought Londoners switched to squat toilets anyway to accommodate the large Asian population, so no surprises there.

    Not as far I'm aware. Most of the foreign population in this part of London are Polish or Russian anyway.

    Akismet can kiss my arse too, idiotic service. Seriously? OK, I shall just adding random crap to this post until it STFUs. Lalalalalalalalala.

  • neo (unregistered) in reply to K

    There a pub open in Edinburgh 24/7 if you know where to look. I remember when the liscensing hours opened up going to 'Straties' in Gorgie at 6am one morning. I thought it was going to be quiet - it was like a Saturday night!

  • Doozerboy (unregistered) in reply to Someone who can't be bothered to login from work
    Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
    hoodaticus:
    So the restroom was a hole in the floor. I thought Londoners switched to squat toilets anyway to accommodate the large Asian population, so no surprises there.

    Not as far I'm aware. Most of the foreign population in this part of London are Polish or Russian anyway.

    Akismet can kiss my arse too, idiotic service. Seriously? OK, I shall just adding random crap to this post until it STFUs. Lalalalalalalalala.

    I wish they'd hurry up and install the robo-toilets that they have in hotels in dubai.

    All you need to do is sit and shit. The toilet then washes your arse & gives it a blow-dry

  • Someone who can't be bothered to login from work (unregistered) in reply to Ed
    Ed:
    Yeah, it rains sometimes here. Yeah, we like to go to the pub. But how can that possibly be relevant to an IT WTF?

    I live in one of the driest places in England and I'm teetotal...

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Doozerboy
    Doozerboy:
    Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
    hoodaticus:
    So the restroom was a hole in the floor. I thought Londoners switched to squat toilets anyway to accommodate the large Asian population, so no surprises there.

    Not as far I'm aware. Most of the foreign population in this part of London are Polish or Russian anyway.

    Akismet can kiss my arse too, idiotic service. Seriously? OK, I shall just adding random crap to this post until it STFUs. Lalalalalalalalala.

    I wish they'd hurry up and install the robo-toilets that they have in hotels in dubai.

    All you need to do is sit and shit. The toilet then washes your arse & gives it a blow-dry

    As one of my colleagues used to tell our trainees when I was posted to the middle east on a training contract: "The job's not finished till the paperwork's done." Nobody had the heart to tell him that the "joke" went several miles over the heads of the trainees.

  • (cs) in reply to Doozerboy
    Doozerboy:
    Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
    hoodaticus:
    So the restroom was a hole in the floor. I thought Londoners switched to squat toilets anyway to accommodate the large Asian population, so no surprises there.

    Not as far I'm aware. Most of the foreign population in this part of London are Polish or Russian anyway.

    Akismet can kiss my arse too, idiotic service. Seriously? OK, I shall just adding random crap to this post until it STFUs. Lalalalalalalalala.

    I wish they'd hurry up and install the robo-toilets that they have in hotels in dubai.

    All you need to do is sit and shit. The toilet then washes your arse & gives it a blow-dry

    I heard it's there in Japan too. I was told of a rich guy there who had this throne (literally) with adjustable jet (for special needs too, here's your douchebag discussion all over again), programmable massage for feet and arse, laptop that would come down on your knees, all of this of course with automatic disinfection of everything between users. IMO all it lacks is automatic urine analysis and "happy ending".

  • (cs) in reply to UK Ian
    UK Ian:
    This article is soooo false - Pubs don't open at 10am.

    Seems you don't work near a Wetherspoons?

    Admittedly, it's a stretch to call that a "pub".

  • (cs) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    Matt Westwood:
    Except for Manchester, of course, where it's famous for raining almost continually.
    Actually, the most clouded-over place in Britain (or at least England) appears to be Yarnfield in Staffordshire, about an hour's drive south of Manchester. There's a training centre there, Yarnfield Park, that used to belong to British Telecom. (They're no longer the owner, but still the largest customer.) There you'll actually find a small 'forest' of wooden telephone poles of different shapes and sizes, where people are trained how to climb them.

    It started out as Beatty Hall, an accommodation camp for a very large munitions factory during World War 2. You see, in those days, bombers still required a direct visual of the target, and since this was the statistically most cloudy place in England, it was ideally located to thwart the Germans.

    At some point, I used to work for British Telecom in Amsterdam (an episode of my life that I'd rather forget about, but that's another story). When my manager first went there, he still had to sleep in barracks, but by the time I went there they had hotel facilities.

    Because of the constant clouds and, consequently, rain, the walking paths between various buildings are actually covered over. Obviously, the two days I was there it was mostly sunny and it didn't rain once.

    Wait, something doesn't quite add up. This comment is:

    i) interesting ii) correctly-spelled iii) grammatical

    As far as I can tell, this is simply not acceptable on TDWTF. Somebody alert the mods!

  • Ed (unregistered) in reply to Ru

    We zero index, you guys are the weird ones.

    :D

  • Ed (unregistered) in reply to Someone who can't be bothered to login from work
    Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
    Ed:
    Yeah, it rains sometimes here. Yeah, we like to go to the pub. But how can that possibly be relevant to an IT WTF?

    I live in one of the driest places in England and I'm teetotal...

    My zero indexing comment should have this above it.

    Reply is the crappest button ever in this damn comments thingy.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    Robert:
    Can we have less of the England bashing please? This is the second time in a couple of weeks. (A return to taking the mick out of Indian outsourcing is fine by me, but feel free to go back to omitting the country when setting up the scene).

    Seriously.

    Yeah, it rains sometimes here. Yeah, we like to go to the pub. But how can that possibly be relevant to an IT WTF?

    N.B. For the record, that job sounds awesome. How many free trips to the pub per day? !!!! :D

    I don't think masturbating at work is acceptable, even in the UK...

    Well, depends on the office. If you work in reproductive health it's pretty much mandatory, IIRC.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Actually, no - TRWTF is going for ice creams on a rainy day. It's not the done thing. In fact it's completely crass.

    Eh? Going for ice creams on a rainy day pretty much the heart of summer in the UK.

    "If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain"

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to dohpaz42
    dohpaz42:
    WC:
    Robert would drive me nuts... Right up until he told me that he's already estimated WAY more time than I needed to do everything. And then he'd be my best friend, and welcome to continue his beer and porn addictions. I'd probably ask him to tape up the windows, though.

    Nah, I'd tape them myself.

    I agree, in all respects. At my current job, I sit directly under the air conditioner - where I'm at we've had 100+ F days and the A/C is blowing 68F air all over me. I've been told that the maintenance guy (a friend of the owner or some such) would fix this, but it's been three months with no fix. So one day I decide to place a large sheet of paper over the vent (tucked away in the drop ceiling) to redirect the air away from me. Sometimes you just gotta fix sh*t yourself.
    I've got an even faster fix -- swap desks with me.

  • (cs) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    I keep my desk stocked with tequila, I send the smoking-hot receptionist (who doesn't even work for me) out to get me limes in the afternoon, and by the time the day ends, I'm starting to get seriously faded.

    All of which is expensed to the company, of course.

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    "They also had a check with a large number of zeros in it."

    Were there any digits to the left of the zeros? How about a decimal point?

    "We can't tell you the exact amount, but it was in the 7 figures."

    Umm... "$10,000.00"?

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Yep. In the US, in general, you're not allowed to drink alcohol at lunchtime. Neither are you (apparently) allowed to masturbate during the day. Neither are you allowed to view adult literature, in whatever medium.
    But this was a satellite TV company. How else are you going to test the PPV capabilities?

    (Yes, I know the article say it was "Internet porn". That was just a stop-gap until they got the PPV up and running.)

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Don L
    Don L:
    Cinderbox and plywood?!?!

    Where I worked, we had to code using typewriters from the 17th century, we had to write 10.000 lines of code and work for 28 hours per day, the building didn't have a roof or walls, we were constantly whipped, and we had to walk 30km to get to the toilet which was occupied except 5 minutes of the day, we didn't have any breaks, and we had to work in complete darkness in the middle of the freeway.

    But we were happy!

    Wow, a whole ten lines of code a day. :-)

    You had to "walk" 30km to get to the toilet? You had feet? Lucky bstrd.

  • Ken B. (unregistered)
    christianshoes:
    Woman High Heels are one of the most adored form of footwear ever, whether you love them of hate them, because of their such extreme variety and diversity by shpae, colour and look, they are always popular by so many women and girls.
    But the spam filter lets that through? Twice!
  • (cs) in reply to Ken B.
    Ken B.:
    christianshoes:
    Woman High Heels are one of the most adored form of footwear ever, whether you love them of hate them, because of their such extreme variety and diversity by shpae, colour and look, they are always popular by so many women and girls.
    But the spam filter lets that through? Twice!

    The spelling errors and poor grammar tricked the filter into thinking it was a real comment.

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    I have seen suggestions that surveillance cameras are installed in restrooms in order to ensure the occupants are not indulging in unsanctioned behaviour.

    The frightening thing is that this was discussed as a perfectly serious suggestion (in the name of "security" and cracking down on workplace crime (!?!? not as if there had been any reports of any) before someone made the point that this may be considered by some as too large an invasion of their personal privacy to be tolerated. The suggestion was then dropped, albeit (from what I understand) reluctantly.

    But, the fact that (AFAIK) it's illegal wasn't an issue that was discussed?

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Ru
    Ru:
    TRWTF is that what a limey might call the frist storey, yanks would call the second.
    So, what do they call what us yanks call the first?
  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Doozerboy
    Doozerboy:
    I wish they'd hurry up and install the robo-toilets that they have in hotels in dubai.

    All you need to do is sit and shit. The toilet then washes your arse & gives it a blow-dry

    Don't tell Robert. You won't be able to get him out of there. (Well, at least, not for 15 minutes.)

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Ken B.
    Ken B.:
    Ru:
    TRWTF is that what a limey might call the frist storey, yanks would call the second.
    So, what do they call what us yanks call the first?

    Ground floor. That's what the "G" button does in the lifts. That's elevators to you.

  • some guy (unregistered) in reply to Ed

    No, sorry. We can't have less England bashing.

    Seriously.

    The climate sucks. The oppressive government sucks. The work ethic generally sucks. The traffic sucks. The superiority complex sucks. It's a full spectrum-suck, actually.

  • Someone who can't be bothered to login from work (unregistered) in reply to Ken B.
    Ken B.:
    Ru:
    TRWTF is that what a limey might call the frist storey, yanks would call the second.
    So, what do they call what us yanks call the first?

    The ground floor, because generally it is. Except the Barbican Centre, where its ground floor is actually something like -3 compared to the rest of the Barbican.

  • (cs) in reply to Boyter

    Yes, last time I was in Sydney, the morning I was to leave I was down to the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel on the corner to get some breakfast around 8:45.

    I was told that the grill didn't open up til 9. But, a few people were around having drinks. I figured it was just night workers stopping for one on the way home or something. I did think it odd that at 8:45 AM I could get a beer but not brekky.

    Related to some of the comments about pubs closing in the UK, the last time I was there (1999), they closed at 11PM. Did something change and people finally come to their senses, allowing them to stay open later?

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to some guy
    some guy:
    No, sorry. We can't have less England bashing.

    Seriously.

    The climate sucks. The oppressive government sucks. The work ethic generally sucks. The traffic sucks. The superiority complex sucks. It's a full spectrum-suck, actually.

    ... but for all that, it's far superior to the USA in every way.

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