• (cs) in reply to cklam
    cklam:
    levi_h:
    Edward Royce:
    Another good experience was with a mother-daughter teaming.

    But that had nothing to do with IT, now did it?

    11 minutes between the two posts above: Are we getting old, slow and decrepit here now ? Or what ?

    We have standards: it was too easy, like taking candy from a baby.

  • (cs)

    Someone please send Alex more stories so that he doesn't have to re-use them over and over again!

    Getting pretty sick and tired of this kinda crap.

  • (cs)

    This reminds me of that time I was searching for cheap-but-good hotels once. I found one that advertised as having "Hot water 24-hours a day".

    You'd wonder why would a hotel would advertise that as a bonus ... but then I found out that some cheap hotels didn´t have 24hour hot water. Especially during the night.

  • Jean Naimard (unregistered)

    I did also work for a company without hot water, but they are cool people (anybody who’s happy to see me when I walk in unannounced is cool) and I still take care of their website after all those years.

    CAPTCHA: quibus

  • (cs) in reply to random0xff
    random0xff:
    Perhaps the worst part of the site(s) is that it was originally designed to be bilingual (English and Spanish). To accomplish this, there is a “languages.asp” file that contained... you guessed it, a dictionary object mapping certain sections to the equivalent words in English/Spanish.

    Sooo, how should you do that? There is no i18n support in classic ASP. I saw a site that did this once, and it was actually pretty nice. All the strings are in a separate file, and you can use it to print out an overview to see which strings were missing, and to let a translator fill in the blanks.

    The WTF is in the implementation details. Dictionary keys should be the English-language strings to make understanding things easy. The example given should be:

    Response.Write dictLanguage("Your price") & ":" & dictLanguage("$") & prce
  • (cs) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    random0xff:
    Perhaps the worst part of the site(s) is that it was originally designed to be bilingual (English and Spanish). To accomplish this, there is a “languages.asp” file that contained... you guessed it, a dictionary object mapping certain sections to the equivalent words in English/Spanish.

    Sooo, how should you do that? There is no i18n support in classic ASP. I saw a site that did this once, and it was actually pretty nice. All the strings are in a separate file, and you can use it to print out an overview to see which strings were missing, and to let a translator fill in the blanks.

    The WTF is in the implementation details. Dictionary keys should be the English-language strings to make understanding things easy. The example given should be:

    Response.Write dictLanguage("Your price") & ":" & dictLanguage("$") & prce

    ...which is pretty much exactly what gettext uses. The only problem is that it can make things a bit messy if you have a large block of text (like, say, a paragraph of instructions, complete with newlines), at which point it gets more convenient to use shortened string IDs (though preferably more along the lines of "price_label" instead of "prod_view_45").

  • (cs)

    Yeah. All of the sentences in the languages.asp file were something like that, typically name_of_page_and_section_random_number. Of course nothing to actually give a hint about what the sentence was displaying.

    The WTF is that our site was only in English, not bi-lingual, so there wasn't even a need for it. The previous developer was just too lazy to modify the code. Same like he would not modify the database structure, so there were dozens of null, varchar(255) columns that had no data in them whatsoever and weren't used for anything at all. Duplicated, of course, because of that second company who had an exact copy of every file in our system, with a couple of values changed.

    If you want to hear more WTFs from this company, do a search on my username on the forums. I've posted quite a few code snippets from this nightmare.

  • K (unregistered)

    Holy crap, I think we worked for the same company... I'm not kidding.

  • (cs) in reply to Julie
    Julie:
    ...But the six-person husband/wife team...
    Wow...were they members of that Polygamist group in Texas?
  • Trbofly (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    I honestly had this exact same experience. In fact, I thought it was the same company until the story mentioned ASP. (The company I worked for used ColdFusion). The Husband used the Wife as the owner to qualify for government sales. He thought he was a visionary but was instead a complete moron. I lasted 5 months.

    Sad thing is, the entire IT team that reported to me had hoped I would save the company. When I jumped ship, they all followed. Including his personal assistant and manager of HR. Even his business consultant who was trying to define a better business plan jumped when I left. All within 3 months.

    Some people are CEO's, while others are simply given the title because they own the company.

  • notJoeKing (unregistered) in reply to Eric
    Eric:
    The real WTF is that you he gave any notice, instead of just clearing out his desk that day, as thats what I would have done. If you are leaving without something else lined up anyhow, putting it off 2 weeks wont help much

    You are TRWTF... for everyone else who isn't living in their parent's basement, 2 weeks notice gives you 2 weeks to continue to collect a paycheck while you look for a new job.

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to notJoeKing
    notJoeKing:
    Eric:
    The real WTF is that you he gave any notice, instead of just clearing out his desk that day, as thats what I would have done. If you are leaving without something else lined up anyhow, putting it off 2 weeks wont help much

    You are TRWTF... for everyone else who isn't living in their parent's basement, 2 weeks notice gives you 2 weeks to continue to collect a paycheck while you look for a new job.

    I generally try to line things up before leaving. I'll go on a few interviews and see if any offers come in. Even if things are going well, I still send out resumes now and again. You never know what disaster may befall your current employer. Plus, when the time comes for your review and you're sitting on an offer you can pull it out and at least leverage benefits/salary. It's sort of a dick thing to do, but hey, that's business.

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    I think caucasian women are no longer considered minorities, precisely because they were often used as sock puppets (or whatever the term is for false owners). It was also iffy since a married couple, in many ways, is often one person under the law.

  • (cs)

    Remember, I didn't have an offer. It's been two months and I still don't have a job lined up yet. I gave notice because I wasn't going to be a dick, whether or not they deserved it. I even went back to the office one day because something wasn't working right (They paid me for it, obviously), and I've talked to my successor a couple of times on the phone to talk him through some issues.

  • Robert S. Robbins (unregistered)

    There is a huge demand for web developers so I don't see why you can't do some freelance consulting to keep yourself from being dependent on a bad employer. I used to work for a woman who ran a web development shop in her home. She had me working in her kitchen and we only had one server running everything you get with a MSDN subscription. When I lost that job I just went into business for myself and immediately landed on my feet doing the same things I did for her and her clients.

  • (cs) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    jkupski:
    The best part is that women actually outnumber men in the US. To quote Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word... I don't think it means what you think it means."

    Women are a majority, but woman-owned businesses are a minority. It's the latter that's getting the preferential treatment.

    I may be overdosing on this site; but it seems to me that businesses not owned and run by a motley collection of mentally sub-par dingbats are very much in a minority.

    What box do I have to tick to become a preferred vendor to the air force?

  • (cs) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    At least when I left I trained my replacement (another consultant, who was a friend/business partner of The Husband's side business that sounds like a scam) during my last week, and told him I'd answer my cellphone if he had any questions.
    The side business sounded like a scam?
  • JamesQMurphy (unregistered)

    I also worked for a husband/wife team, but it was a residential house builder. I was hired to do database management, but it turned into a purchasing role. At least we had hot water, but The Husband was a screaming, ranting lunatic, and prided himself on the ability to make grown men cry. (No joke.) I lasted six months before I had enough -- took temp jobs before I found a "real" software job.

    Red Flag #1: While I was waiting for the interview, I observed the staff. Very serious, all business, which is fine, but one thing I heard was them constantly using The Husband's name, as in, "Husband has to approve this," or "Make sure you tell Husband," etc. Instant tip-off that the guy was a micromanager.

    Red Flag #2: During the interview the Husband actually said, "We're like a family here." If you ever hear this, run -- it means, "We're like a dysfunctional family here."

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    At least when I left I trained my replacement (another consultant, who was a friend/business partner of The Husband's side business that sounds like a scam) during my last week, and told him I'd answer my cellphone if he had any questions.
    The side business sounded like a scam?

    Yes. The husband started another company while I was there, that sounded like a scam. It was some kind of credit card but not credit card, that supposedly was founded by one of AOL's co-founders (Revolution something, as I recall); his job was doing some marketing or something for it, and he had these referral programs that would give you money for joining.

    He started it with, as I recall:

    • His son's best friend's father and brother (brother being the consultant who replaced me)
    • His teenage daughter's soccer coach
    • Some investors, I don't know whom but they supposedly had several offshore teams in India to do any technology. The big scheme at one point was to make an Amazon-like clone that would cater to merchants using this not-a-credit-card thing.

    I was not involved in this at all, but he spent more time focusing on this than the e-commerce business. Like I said, it sounded like a pyramid scheme or some kind of money laundering scam.

  • Eric (unregistered) in reply to notJoeKing
    notJoeKing:
    Eric:
    The real WTF is that you he gave any notice, instead of just clearing out his desk that day, as thats what I would have done. If you are leaving without something else lined up anyhow, putting it off 2 weeks wont help much

    You are TRWTF... for everyone else who isn't living in their parent's basement, 2 weeks notice gives you 2 weeks to continue to collect a paycheck while you look for a new job.

    TRWTF is not saving enough as you work that the 2 weeks makes a difference to you :) i've got a mortgage, car payments, etc, and i'd still rather deal with taking a 401k loan or cashing something else in than work for a jackal like his boss was.

  • K&T (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    I think caucasian women are no longer considered minorities, precisely because they were often used as sock puppets (or whatever the term is for false owners). It was also iffy since a married couple, in many ways, is often one person under the law.

    That was the case at my last company. She was only able to get the 8(a) cert if she could give examples where her company lost opportunities because she was a woman.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to DeLos

    Women are not a minority group, but they share the same paranoia, which is after all, the defining feature of all minority groups :)

  • Amused (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    Hate to break it to you but as business owners, women certainly are a minority in this country. Duh.

  • (cs)

    The other thing I can notice is, what happens if you want to put the currency symbol after the number instead of before? You could make a function for currency-format and call that one, then you can do other stuff having to do with currency formats as well. Of course, none of this is necessary if your web-site is only in English.

  • GermanGirl (unregistered) in reply to JamesQMurphy

    How about working for a mother/son team, who hated each other and had regular screaming matches, and changed the payment structures on a weekly basis? Or how the screaming matches would filter out of the front until everyone else within stomping distance was somehow involved/to blame in some way?

    I figured out the crazy dynamics there pretty quick, and when they came out to try to yell at me because they were pissed at each other, I'd tell them to go blow it out their portholes.

    That might not be bad enough, how about I actually worked for them twice? And I saw the son again, about a year after I told him to take it and shove it, and he begged me to come back for a third run? Can't tell who is more insane, them or me.

  • Godot (unregistered) in reply to ClaudeSuck.de
    ClaudeSuck.de:
    Swombat:
    Umm... The real WTF is that he took the job in the first place. Interviews go both ways - you need to convince yourself that the company is a place you want to work for before you join.

    TRWTF is that bosses like this stay in business for several years during which they ruin the life of quite many people.

    True. In my first job I had not one but two of those iron-fist monkey bosses: I finally quite after 8 months suffering from a posttraumatic stress disorder. Life is good and IT is a great business. puke

  • Godot (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    Excellent clarification, Mike. What bothers me is that: "demonstrating preferential treatment based on Race or Gender" is discrimination. Yet, providing 'advantages' for Minority-owned businesses is Anti-Discrimination. ONLY IN AMERICA!!!!

    This is true in all europe, too! All hail to mediocrity!

  • fruey (unregistered)

    My wife worked for a stingy boss for a while. He was so cheap that when they moved, he decided to keep the old stationary, and have her cross out the old address and stamp the new address on it.

    This would maybe have made sense for a few weeks, until he got over the move cashflow problems and then got new envelopes, notepaper etc. printed. It went on for four years. When she left, she worked out that the hours spent crossing out and stamping would have paid for new stationary several times over.

    And... the business was an accountancy firm!

  • PC Paul (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Remember, I didn't have an offer. It's been two months and I still don't have a job lined up yet. I gave notice because I wasn't going to be a dick, whether or not they deserved it. I even went back to the office one day because something wasn't working right (They paid me for it, obviously), and I've talked to my successor a couple of times on the phone to talk him through some issues.

    I was in the same situation, same sort of dodgy husband-wife setup. I am also conscientious and was prepared to help out my successor.

    However, when I gave my notice in, they told me not to come in any more, i.e. take 'gardening leave'. And then they didn't pay me for the last month I worked there or the gardening leave - even when I took them to court they just folded the company and started another one. Legally, somehow.

  • AF (unregistered) in reply to notJoeKing
    notJoeKing:
    Eric:
    The real WTF is that you he gave any notice, instead of just clearing out his desk that day, as thats what I would have done. If you are leaving without something else lined up anyhow, putting it off 2 weeks wont help much

    You are TRWTF... for everyone else who isn't living in their parent's basement, 2 weeks notice gives you 2 weeks to continue to collect a paycheck while you look for a new job.

    Also, it helps in finding a new job if your previous reference doesn't say "He just walked out one day without telling us."

  • (cs) in reply to Crabs
    Crabs:
    snoofle:
    A Nonny Mouse:
    my first ever company hired me because i'm a girl, as did my current one.

    Hmmm.... Are you a manly girl (you are in IT, right?), or that rarest of (IT) rareties; a girly-girl beacon of beauty whose mere presence can light smiles, server farms and young men's fancy on fire ???

    OMG a girl on teh internetz!!!!11oneeleven!

    xD

  • jwh (unregistered) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    Red Flag #2: During the interview the Husband actually said, "We're like a family here." If you ever hear this, run -- it means, "We're like a dysfunctional family here."
    I agree. I just left a company that prided itself in being family-like. The term I heard most often during my last few months was "dysfunctional". I ran.
  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    Are you kidding? No overhead, modest profits guaranteed by their minority business status. It'd be more ridiculous to imagine them going under.
    It takes work, but it's possible. I once put in a purchase request for some test equipment, loaded out with options, that cost around $35k. Since it was so expensive, it had to sit on the state purchasing site for two weeks while bids were submitted.

    When bidding finished, there was this one company that bid something like $19k. The purchasing person and I were both surprised and wondered how the heck they did that. After a minute, I realized that they probably bid the base price for the item with no options. But, we had to award it to them anyway, state law being what it is.

    So the item came in three weeks later (normal lead time is two weeks), and sure enough, it was the base model with no options installed. No, they didn't ship the options separately; they have to be installed by the manufacturer or a rep. So I told the purchasing agent, and she smiled and said, "My turn."

    Long story short, we shipped the equipment back to the low bidder, awarded the purchase to the next lowest bidder (who had to trip over themselves getting the deals they worked out with the manufacturer back into place, it had been a month at that point), and invoked the clause in the contract that stated that if a vendor failed to deliver the product exactly as specified, they not only had to take it back and not get paid, but they had to pay the difference between their bid and the next lowest bidder. So they got none of our money, had an item they could at best sell refurbished since I had opened it, and owed us $12k. I heard the business owner, some guy just arrived from Africa, called our purchasing agent up and begged to be let off the hook.

    Sometimes the system works, and when it does, it can come down hard on people. Moral of the story: contracts are only as good as their penalty clauses.

  • (cs) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    I once put in a purchase request for some test equipment, loaded out with options, that cost around $35k.

    When bidding finished, there was this one company that bid something like $19k. The purchasing person and I were both surprised and wondered how the heck they did that. After a minute, I realized that they probably bid the base price for the item with no options. But, we had to award it to them anyway, state law being what it is.

    So the item came in three weeks later (normal lead time is two weeks), and sure enough, it was the base model with no options installed.
    [...] So they got none of our money, had an item they could at best sell refurbished since I had opened it, and owed us $12k. I heard the business owner, some guy just arrived from Africa, called our purchasing agent up and begged to be let off the hook.

    Why not just phone them up and check that they understood the bid before awarding them the contract? Instead you just ended up wasting a whole load of your time (therefore peoples taxes) and the bidder's money.

    "The process be praised."

  • Tourist (unregistered) in reply to Patrick
    Patrick:
    notJoeKing:
    Eric:
    The real WTF is that you he gave any notice, instead of just clearing out his desk that day, as thats what I would have done. If you are leaving without something else lined up anyhow, putting it off 2 weeks wont help much

    You are TRWTF... for everyone else who isn't living in their parent's basement, 2 weeks notice gives you 2 weeks to continue to collect a paycheck while you look for a new job.

    I generally try to line things up before leaving. I'll go on a few interviews and see if any offers come in. Even if things are going well, I still send out resumes now and again. You never know what disaster may befall your current employer. Plus, when the time comes for your review and you're sitting on an offer you can pull it out and at least leverage benefits/salary. It's sort of a dick thing to do, but hey, that's business.

    I have been doing that as well the last few years. It keeps you motivated to learn stuff and keeps your interview skills honed. Don't misunderstand me, I do like my job but it is always good to have options.

  • rslite (unregistered) in reply to the real wtf fool
    the real wtf fool:
    Mike:
    I once put in a purchase request for some test equipment, loaded out with options, that cost around $35k.

    When bidding finished, there was this one company that bid something like $19k. The purchasing person and I were both surprised and wondered how the heck they did that. After a minute, I realized that they probably bid the base price for the item with no options. But, we had to award it to them anyway, state law being what it is.

    So the item came in three weeks later (normal lead time is two weeks), and sure enough, it was the base model with no options installed.
    [...] So they got none of our money, had an item they could at best sell refurbished since I had opened it, and owed us $12k. I heard the business owner, some guy just arrived from Africa, called our purchasing agent up and begged to be let off the hook.

    Why not just phone them up and check that they understood the bid before awarding them the contract? Instead you just ended up wasting a whole load of your time (therefore peoples taxes) and the bidder's money.

    "The process be praised."

    They gain $12k (that is if they can really get it from the lowest bidder) so that could make up the time spent with this. And I bet they had other things to do in that time, rather than waiting for the packages to arrive.

  • Cris (unregistered)

    You gave them two weeks notice! That was generous of you.

    Best strategy with those places is to not start working there in the first place. Usually a critical eye during a "tour of the office" just after your interview should give you enough insight to know whether you should sign that contract or not...

  • AdT (unregistered)

    there simply wasn't time for that. Id hat two bee sad, sow they're U half id.

  • JPW (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    My wife is the same way. Her mother is a Caucasian American who happened to be born in Venezuela, so my wife qualifies as being Hispanic for all sorts of things.

  • JPW (unregistered) in reply to JPW
    JPW:
    My wife is the same way. Her mother is a Caucasian American who happened to be born in Venezuela, so my wife qualifies as being Hispanic for all sorts of things.
    Erm, I meant to quote the 1/16 Cherokee person above...
  • LightStyx (unregistered)

    This is why only idiots study business and journalism. Real people do engineering.

  • Shiftless Coward (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT

    Canada too, unfortunately.

  • NoToiletPaperForYouToday (unregistered)

    Tip: next time have a trip to the rest room and check for toilet paper. I worked for a company that wasn't buying any and the situation wasn't much different.

  • James (unregistered)

    Hmmm. The Husband sounds like a Narcissist! Blame you for their mistakes. Get angry when something doesn't work as they believed it would - even though it's blindingly obvious that it wouldn't work.

    You are well off out of there!

  • JustChris (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    One of my Filipino friends tried using his Spanish-origin name to apply for a Hispanic-only scholarship. They eventually found out what he was up to.

    Captcha: esse. How fitting.

  • JustChris (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    dpm:
    A friend of mine is one-sixteenth Cherokee (one of his great-great-grandparents) which had absolutely no effect on his life --- he didn't look, talk, eat, worship or act different from everyone else in the neighborhood --- except when he was fully-grown and suddenly realized that if he checked that little box, he was instantly much more likely to win contracts. So he did. And there's absolutely nothing illegal about it.

    Really? I'll have to use that to my advantage; I'm one-half Puerto Rican but don't look or act it. And all this time I've been checking "Caucasian - Not Hispanic" like a sucker.

    One of my Filipino friends tried using his Spanish-origin name to apply for a Hispanic-only scholarship. They eventually found out what he was up to.

  • (cs) in reply to JustChris
    JustChris:
    One of my Filipino friends tried using his Spanish-origin name to apply for a Hispanic-only scholarship. They eventually found out what he was up to.

    Right, except in my case I really am half Puerto Rican, so it's not like I would be lying. My mother was Caucasian and my father was Hispanic, so I could prove it if I had to.

    To update just how cheap these people were, they refused to pay me unemployment. Now before you say that I quit, so I shouldn't get, I've had two companies that I quit agree to pay unemployment, one was a place I had only been at for 3 months. This place was too cheap to even do that, after all I did for them.

  • Lim (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    I find this funny because the company I currently work for is a husband/wife team, and when I started they didn't have hot water either for the same reason. It is a family business, they are my husband's aunt and uncle and my husband tends to be their tech support. My first winter there I discovered that it is very painful to try to wash your hands in near freezing water. We had a Christmas Miracle in that the pipes froze and broke, so they had to turn on the heat to fix it. We were all very happy about that, but after it went back to cold, I told my aunt that I couldn't take it any more and we have had hot water for the last 2 years. I don't know how they could stand it for the first 10 or so they were in that building.

  • SomeName (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    Yet another proof that women ALWAYS had privileges and white men are being discriminated against for at least a decade by now.

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