• AndyL (unregistered)

    The performance problems will never be fixed. But a series of patches and additions will be made. Many inexperienced programmers individually try to fix similar problems. A year or two from now an email will go out

    ...the code between us and Tammy Burns is badly bloated.

    Of course, eventually the badly bloated code will be replaced with a brand new package created jointly by a highly paid team of experts and the experienced in-house team. This will be a disaster and an email will go out complaining that

    ...the code between us and Tammy Burns is being done by too many people.

    This Frankenstein of a software interface will go online and will cause many issues, eventually one of these error's will be serious.

    ...the code between us and Tammy Burns has completely and totally fucked the regional vice president 's TPS reports up!

    Finally a lone hacker will stay up all night to fix it.

    ...the code between us and Tammy Burns took me all night long to nail. But it was worth it.

    This is fun, I could play this game all day.

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to Mitur Binesderti
    Mitur Binesderti:
    It's fairly easy to tell that these are doctored as the they are all written in the same, or similar, voice. We should just start calling this TheDailyBS.

    My submission a while back was only lightly edited, and a true story.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to J
    J:
    The part that's bringing in the feminism is the "especially when it's directed towards women" part. Violence in the work place shouldnt have a worse responce if the victim is female instead of male and vise versa.

    Bingo!

    That's sexism. But just like racism, it's only offensive in 1 direction, not both. That's what the Left has taught me.

  • Jon Doe (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Jon Doe:
    Eric:
    Um.. I don't think that alerting your manager about a threat you believe someone made against you counts as feminism.

    Looks like you didn't read the whole email either! LOL

    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    She clearly stated "especially when it's directed towards women". That's what I meant by feminism... Threats of violence should not be trated any more specially if they're directed towards a woman, it's the same thing regardless who it's directed to.

  • (cs) in reply to Dan Wiebe
    Dan Wiebe:
    *snip*

    That's why I said "the code between us and Tammie Burns" rather than "Tammie Burns' code."

    Thanks for clarifying that. I've been wondering about the curious structure of that phrase ever since I read it. Working my way down through the posts before adding anything... good thing, too. :)

  • (cs) in reply to Rich
    Rich:
    if brain comes in without me in the morning, tell him to come back and get me
    In my case, it's far more likely that after coding all night I would be coming in without brain, rather than the reverse.
  • Herby (unregistered)

    This reminds me of two guys looking out the window and saying: "Boy, the headlights on that one are special" and the reply by the other guy: "Right, and the bumper is interesting as well" And the female that overhears the conversation says: "You two are a bunch of sexist pigs, I'm going to report you!"

    And they really were looking at a classic car on the street!

  • solmead (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Jon Doe:
    Eric:
    Um.. I don't think that alerting your manager about a threat you believe someone made against you counts as feminism.

    Looks like you didn't read the whole email either! LOL

    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    Except in her email to her boss she said:

    I don't think violence (even jokingly) belongs in the workplace
    Which means she thought it was probably just a joke.
  • slamb (unregistered) in reply to morry

    You're almost certainly right (and honestly avoiding violent terms isn't that bad an idea) but it would be awesome if HR and upper management instead reminded Tammy and all of the managers to examine facts before making decisions and displayed a willingness to fire anyone who repeatedly fails to do so. This is the real solution to this and so many other problems.

  • Lev (unregistered) in reply to Da' Man

    Some people still prefer text-based emails, without the HTML stuff

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Dan Wiebe
    Dan Wiebe:
    "the code between us and Tammie Burns"
    How about: the code between Tammie Burns and us?

    Tammie's mis-read of the email is typical not of females but managers in general. Too many words, no pictures. I suggest using Power Point next time.

    And for those that were offended by the picture with the story, how about a refresher course at Man School. No actual managers or programmers were harmed in the telling of this tale.

  • rast (unregistered) in reply to Just Some Guy
    Just Some Guy:
    OK, I'm far from being a politically correct treehugger, but a picture of a bruised woman who had presumably been "beaten into submission" is pretty awful.

    She fell down the stairs.

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Dan Wiebe:
    "the code between us and Tammie Burns"
    How about: the code between Tammie Burns and us?

    Then he would be reprimanded for atrocious grammar,

    us needs to be beaten into submission.

    Or for recommending self-flagellation.

    Or for imitating Golem.

    Tammie's mis-read of the email is typical not of females but managers in general.

    Amen! Many managers would attribute it to the shear volume of emails they get, though. I suspect mine get an order of magnitude more than I do... ok, maybe half an order.

  • Jason (unregistered) in reply to void

    Woah. good line

  • (cs)

    Hmm. I'm surprised no one has mentioned that you can't tell what the subject of the sentence is; no one has brought up mixed metaphors and dangling participles. Us needs to be beaten into submission for forgetting.

  • notme (unregistered) in reply to Just Some Guy
    Just Some Guy:
    Mitur Binesderti:
    It's fairly easy to tell that these are doctored as the they are all written in the same, or similar, voice. We should just start calling this TheDailyBS.

    My submission a while back was only lightly edited, and a true story.

    Link or it didn't happen.

  • (cs)

    wat

  • (cs)

    a lot of people here don't know the difference between "Feminism" and "Feminazism"

    that's ok.. the Feminazis don't know the difference either... but BOY are the real Feminists ever pissed about it.

    (feminism was about gender equality, not about "omg men suck")

  • (cs) in reply to ZaM
    ZaM:
    better line: "but the code between us and Tammie Burns must be studied and redone"

    Sadly agreed. I winced when I read the "beaten" line, not because I had poor reading comprehension, like everyone in this poor bastards company, but because adding phrases like "beaten into submission" into a mass email never ends well. Ever.

    Someone will always take offense. The more pissed you are, the more you need to sanitize your communications. People know that I am irate when the reply email is one terse "see spot run" sentence without subclauses or complex objects. "The problem was in code A. I have applied a hotfix. There will be a performance cost until the final fix can be applied."

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Dan made two mistakes, firstly, his poor choice of words, secondly, being accusatory in an e-mail that he sent to a large group of people. It would have been enough to say he fixed the problem, what the cause was and then talk to the people responsible the next day. It's pretty poor form to send out an e-mail in the middle of night that basically says "Hey everybody, Tammie fucked it up." Tammie then made the mistake in reading comprehension, aided by the unfortunate placement of a line break in her e-mail client, and the mistake was compounded by nobody up the line bothering to re-read the whole message and spot the misunderstanding. But, the whole thing could have been avoided if Dan had refrained from finger-pointing in the first place.
    Since when did "between" mean "on her side"
  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    And if your eye jumps to a word which may grammatically be in the middle of a sentence, scanning backwards to find the beginning of the sentence would be an entirely appropriate course of action. That said, this person clearly did not believe a serious threat was made, but rather believed (i can overuse bold too) that an inappropriate joke was made.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to josh
    josh:
    what my grandparents used to tell me when i was young was "at the beggining of the 1000 mile long journey, the first thing to do is to smoke a bowl pack, and take the first step." ( its real trippy!) so i hope this proves my point that we all have our own journey, and there will be confusions like this for us every day of our lives and if you say wtf to that, you should smoke a bowl with me sometime.

    Are you the guy writing our requirements?

  • A Gould (unregistered) in reply to morry
    morry:
    $100 says that one of two things happened afterward:

    1. a note came out from HR saying something like "refrain from using terms that could be construed as violent in conversations or emails".

    2. everybody got to go to a "sensitivity to violence in the workplace" workshop.

    Bonus points if they bring up this event as an example.

    Seriously - in that position, my responses (in order) would be:

    • laugh hysterically once I figured out what happen
    • print/forward original email for records
    • aggressive requests for apologies from all involved due to damage to my reputation.

    Really, the OP had them by the short and curlies in this case. Taking into consideration the damage they had already caused to his professional reputation (as seen by the responses in his office), you're in a position to ask for.. well, pretty much anything you want.

  • (cs) in reply to Dan Wiebe
    Dan Wiebe:
    Wow. My first submission, published. I'm surprised at the degree to which it was fictionalized.

    I should clarify, in case somebody who knows her reads this, that Tammie Burns was not the developer responsible for the problem. I don't know who that developer was. She was the manager of the group responsible for producing the data, and I was in the group responsible for consuming it. Between the two groups, it went into Never-Never Land and came back, and somewhere in Never-Never Land was the place where the CR character was helpfully being added.

    That's why I said "the code between us and Tammie Burns" rather than "Tammie Burns' code."

    Just sayin'...

    So....

    Give us the straight poop.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Jon Doe
    Jon Doe:
    Anon:
    Jon Doe:
    Eric:
    Um.. I don't think that alerting your manager about a threat you believe someone made against you counts as feminism.

    Looks like you didn't read the whole email either! LOL

    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    She clearly stated "especially when it's directed towards women". That's what I meant by feminism... Threats of violence should not be trated any more specially if they're directed towards a woman, it's the same thing regardless who it's directed to.

    I'll give you that one. I don't know why workplace violence towards women would be worse than violence towards men either.

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    josh:
    what my grandparents used to tell me when i was young was "at the beggining of the 1000 mile long journey, the first thing to do is to smoke a bowl pack, and take the first step." ( its real trippy!) so i hope this proves my point that we all have our own journey, and there will be confusions like this for us every day of our lives and if you say wtf to that, you should smoke a bowl with me sometime.

    Are you the guy writing our requirements?

    No the requirements guy is on crack and crystal-meth.

  • (cs) in reply to undrline
    undrline:
    Hmm. I'm surprised no one has mentioned that you can't tell what the subject of the sentence is; no one has brought up mixed metaphors and dangling participles. Us needs to be beaten into submission for forgetting.

    It's not a mixed metaphor. A mixed metaphor would be something like "don't count your chickens before you put your eggs in the basket."

    It's not a dangling participle. The sentence reads (subject) (prepositional phrase describing the subject) (verb). If there was no object, then you could have a dangling participle. That's what that means.

    The sentence would have to read something like "Between (whatever her name is and us), needs to be beaten into submission" which obviously doesn't make sense.

    Having "THE CODE" at the beginning of the sentence is a very solid object which should be enough to keep any native speaker from losing track of what the sentence is about. Anyone with a solid knowledge of grammar would skip over the prepositional phrase anyway because prepositional phrases always modify the subject...They never contain the subject.

    In short, there is no grammar problem with the sentence. The only problem is that the prepositional phrase is klunky and unnecessary. "The code needs to be beaten into submission" is more than sufficient. If you really have to have more, use a real adjective (e.g. "the (something) code needs to be beaten into submission") rather than using the crappy prepositional-phrase-acting-as-adjective thing.

    It's purely a style thing.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Mike:
    josh:
    what my grandparents used to tell me when i was young was "at the beggining of the 1000 mile long journey, the first thing to do is to smoke a bowl pack, and take the first step." ( its real trippy!) so i hope this proves my point that we all have our own journey, and there will be confusions like this for us every day of our lives and if you say wtf to that, you should smoke a bowl with me sometime.

    Are you the guy writing our requirements?

    No the requirements guy is on crack and crystal-meth.

    Oh yeah that's right... My apologies.

  • BetterThanYou (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    Looks like you still haven't read the whole email trail dickforbrains.

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to notme
    Just Some Guy:
    My submission a while back was only lightly edited, and a true story.

    Link or it didn't happen.

    The Nightmare Dream Job.

  • bramster (unregistered) in reply to Rich
    Rich:
    <sarcasm> The real WTF is that proper English would be "but the code between Tammie Burns and us." Then the whole issue could have been avoided!

    Obviously, he didn't listen to his mother when he said, "me and Jim are going to the candy store," and mom would reply, "No..., Jim and I..."

    But kudos for using "us" instead of "we!" </sarcasm>

    On a related note, years ago I got an email from a colleague who had been coding all night:

    if brain comes in without me in the morning, tell him to come back and get me

    After staring at it a while, I finally realized he meant Brian, who was normally his ride into work.

    A numer of years ago, working on a big laser printer, we would often fill requests for personalized notepads.

    The requested name was P. Brian Somebody

    The person who made up the pad typed in P. Brain Somebody. We all had a good chuckle on that one, because the guy really was a bit of peabrain

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Kazan
    Kazan:
    a lot of people here don't know the difference between "Feminism" and "Feminazism"

    that's ok.. the Feminazis don't know the difference either... but BOY are the real Feminists ever pissed about it.

    (feminism was about gender equality, not about "omg men suck")

    Just like how Environmentalism was about the environment, but now it's nothing more than an excuse to be used against capitalism and for Statism.

    So when I tell people I'm an Environmentalist they react like I'm some Leftie. That's when it's helpful to say "I'm a REAL environmentalist. That means I actually do spend time in the woods and want to preserve them; not just stand in front of an EPA office with banners and slogans chanting about mother Gia."

  • (cs) in reply to Matt
    Matt:
    Kazan:
    a lot of people here don't know the difference between "Feminism" and "Feminazism"

    that's ok.. the Feminazis don't know the difference either... but BOY are the real Feminists ever pissed about it.

    (feminism was about gender equality, not about "omg men suck")

    Just like how Environmentalism was about the environment, but now it's nothing more than an excuse to be used against capitalism and for Statism.

    So when I tell people I'm an Environmentalist they react like I'm some Leftie. That's when it's helpful to say "I'm a REAL environmentalist. That means I actually do spend time in the woods and want to preserve them; not just stand in front of an EPA office with banners and slogans chanting about mother Gia."

    heh, I actually read that as "capitalism and satanism" at first
  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Given that she clearly believed (wrongly) that a threat of physical violence had been made against her, you think the best course of action would be to go talk to the person threating her?

    In most corporate environments, if you have a problem with a cow-orker, you take it to YOUR superior. End of story. Your superior then assesses the situation (fail in this case), and discusses the situation with that person's superior. They then decide the next steps. Tammy, in this case, dealt with things correctly (IMHO), and it was all the tiers of management that got lost in the highlighter that fail.

    The reason you do this is, unfortunately, for 'records' purposes down the road. If you don't have a record that you have a complaint about something, then later complain about a similar event, the first person could (whether you worked things out between the two of you) claim "But you didn't complain about it before!!!", and get a freebie the next time around.

    This isn't for the 80-90% of people that we have to work with that don't suck, it's for that 10-20% that do.

  • Chelloveck (unregistered) in reply to A Gould
    A Gould:
    - aggressive requests for apologies from all involved due to damage to my reputation.

    Lots of luck on that. To save face the higher-ups would simply point out that the "beaten" phrase hardly belongs in a professional email anyway, and reprimand you for that. They can't apologize at this point without making themselves look bad.

    Not saying that's the way it should be, just that that's the way it is.

  • Dan Wiebe (unregistered) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    Dan Wiebe:
    Wow. My first submission, published. I'm surprised at the degree to which it was fictionalized.

    I should clarify, in case somebody who knows her reads this, that Tammie Burns was not the developer responsible for the problem. I don't know who that developer was. She was the manager of the group responsible for producing the data, and I was in the group responsible for consuming it. Between the two groups, it went into Never-Never Land and came back, and somewhere in Never-Never Land was the place where the CR character was helpfully being added.

    That's why I said "the code between us and Tammie Burns" rather than "Tammie Burns' code."

    Just sayin'...

    So....

    Give us the straight poop.

    Other than the modification above, the poop is straight enough for the consumption of folks who aren't actually named in the post (I and Tammie go by our real names; all the other names were generated by Alex) and who didn't actually work for the company (which isn't mentioned by name) at the time. Alex perhaps makes me out to be a touch more heroic than I actually was, but I won't complain about that.

  • guest (unregistered) in reply to Eric

    Um.... I think you must be a manager working at the same company. Read. The. Mails.

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Anon:
    Dan made two mistakes, firstly, his poor choice of words, secondly, being accusatory in an e-mail that he sent to a large group of people....

    Agreed

    What are you talking about? He said it wasn't her fault. He said that the problem was between "the code between us and Tammie Burns".

    First of all, they should've read it over before freaking out.

    Secondly, she thought it was a joke and still freaked out? I don't understand people. My coworkers can threaten to "kick my ass" if I don't fix my code, and I wouldn't run to my supervisor.

    She seems to imply if it's directed towards a woman, that makes it different, and somehow abusive.

    Multiple layers of stupid here.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Chelloveck
    Chelloveck:
    A Gould:
    - aggressive requests for apologies from all involved due to damage to my reputation.

    Lots of luck on that. To save face the higher-ups would simply point out that the "beaten" phrase hardly belongs in a professional email anyway, and reprimand you for that. They can't apologize at this point without making themselves look bad.

    Not saying that's the way it should be, just that that's the way it is.

    Agreed, quit while you're ahead.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to BetterThanYou
    BetterThanYou:
    Anon:
    It looks like you didn't read the post. I've bolded the important word. It doesn't matter that she was wrong, if you believe a co-worker has made a threat against you (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman), reporting it to your manager would be an entirely appropriate course of action.

    Looks like you still haven't read the whole email trail dickforbrains.

    Well, aren't you a charmer. Your mother must be very proud. Good job taking what I said out of context.

  • (cs)
    Even Tammie Burns, who no longer feared being beaten into submission because of some bad code
    The lack of an ending period in this article by Alex needs to be beaten into submission.
  • (cs) in reply to Eric Rehmeyer
    Eric Rehmeyer:
    Violence against women is never funny. Epic fail.
    However, violence against those who can't even be bothered to RTFA is not only funny, but encouraged.
  • (cs) in reply to s0be
    s0be:
    Anon:
    Given that she clearly believed (wrongly) that a threat of physical violence had been made against her, you think the best course of action would be to go talk to the person threating her?

    In most corporate environments, if you have a problem with a cow-orker, you take it to YOUR superior. End of story. Your superior then assesses the situation (fail in this case), and discusses the situation with that person's superior. They then decide the next steps. Tammy, in this case, dealt with things correctly (IMHO), and it was all the tiers of management that got lost in the highlighter that fail.

    The reason you do this is, unfortunately, for 'records' purposes down the road. If you don't have a record that you have a complaint about something, then later complain about a similar event, the first person could (whether you worked things out between the two of you) claim "But you didn't complain about it before!!!", and get a freebie the next time around.

    This isn't for the 80-90% of people that we have to work with that don't suck, it's for that 10-20% that do.

    So wrong I wish I could report it as offensive. If you have a problem with a co-worker, you should talk about it with THEM. If you talk to them and can't resolve the situation, THEN go talk to a supervisor. It's called acting like an adult. Few things in the workplace piss me off more than when people have a problem with something I do and aren't man or woman enough to just talk to me about it.

  • Anon Cow Orker (unregistered)

    I like my women battered, but fried also works.

  • Anon Cow Orker (unregistered)

    Jokes about violence against women are not welcome here.

  • Rob (unregistered)

    At this point, I'd say this post has been beaten into submission.

    That said, anyone who'd take offense at an email written at 2-something in the morning clearly is spoiling for a fight. I would most certainly have waited until the writer woke up and asked what the hell he meant before getting the tar boiling and the feathers out of the pillow...

  • IT Girl (unregistered) in reply to Preston Sumner
    Preston Sumner:
    Eyrieowl:
    Just Some Guy:
    OK, I'm far from being a politically correct treehugger, but a picture of a bruised woman who had presumably been "beaten into submission" is pretty awful.

    Yeah, that picture...I thought the pictures were supposed to be adding to the humor of the story, not horrifying the reader. It...verges on inappropriate, and certainly doesn't help the joke out.

    Are you people being serious?

    I can't speak for them, but I'm serious. That photo is disturbing and really detracts from an amusing story about how easily people can misunderstand each other. I don't see a misunderstanding in that photo.

  • Anon Cow Orker (unregistered) in reply to IT Girl
    IT Girl:

    I can't speak for them, but I'm serious. That photo is disturbing and really detracts from an amusing story about how easily people can misunderstand each other. I don't see a misunderstanding in that photo.

    I'd hit it!

  • Peter Brülls (unregistered) in reply to Eric
    Eric:
    Um.. I don't think that alerting your manager about a threat you believe someone made against you counts as feminism.

    You didn't read the message, did you? "...especially against women" is a dead giveaway.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt
    Matt:
    Kazan:
    a lot of people here don't know the difference between "Feminism" and "Feminazism"

    that's ok.. the Feminazis don't know the difference either... but BOY are the real Feminists ever pissed about it.

    (feminism was about gender equality, not about "omg men suck")

    Just like how Environmentalism was about the environment, but now it's nothing more than an excuse to be used against capitalism and for Statism.

    So when I tell people I'm an Environmentalist they react like I'm some Leftie. That's when it's helpful to say "I'm a REAL environmentalist. That means I actually do spend time in the woods and want to preserve them; not just stand in front of an EPA office with banners and slogans chanting about mother Gia."

    *sigh*

    your first sentence makes me thing you're a Climate Change Denier (The modern Flat Earther). Sad. A real environmentalist (like you claim to be) would realize that a 50% increase in what is the steady state of the carbon load in earths atmosphere since the industrial revolution, with no explanation except anthropomorphic sources, is a problem.

    Instead you deny it and whine about how it's against capitalism and is pro-statism.

    STOP Confusing Laissez-Faire and Capitalism. Pollution is a cost of production, right now everyone is externalizing it, all we're talking about is forcing them to pay for that cost instead of shucking it off on everyone. That company paying that cost will get passed onto the consumer sucking up the product. Maybe that will lead to better production efficiency, less glutanous consumption, etc. I fail to see how merely ENFORCING THE CONCEPT OF TRUE CAPITALISM is "anti-capitalism". Oh right, because you think Laissez-Faire is a form of capitalism, it's not. Laissez-Faire is a form of corporatism (that "Statism" you complained about)

    STOP listening to Rush Limbaugh and the rest of those hypocritical America hating scum sucking bottom feeders.

    and Stop confusing New agers (who often are environmentalists) with the Environmental Movement.

    You are a fail blackhole.

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